|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
"It is eclectic. They're not necessarily songs that I think the Carpenters would choose, let's put it that way. We took a lot of risks -- a lot of things worked, some didn't. We ran the gamut with her to see where we could go." - Phil Ramone is talking in early 1980 about Karen Carpenter's first solo album, which he has been producing in New York. And he's not kidding about the stylistic range. The album includes a high-stepping disco tune that could coax a wallflower out on the dance floor; a taut, propulsive rocker that's closer to the Cars than the Carpenters; and an arid country ballad that's a classic "saloon song" -- that is, if the saloon is in a small, dusty town in Texas.
In the same interview, Ramone explained why he wanted to work with Karen. "I thought a voice like that should get a chance to do some other things," he told me. "Once somebody has been in a mold for a long time, people tend to classify you and don't ever think you can change."
The Carpenters had broken that "mold" repeatedly in recent years by recording songs as disparate as the 1937 torch classic I Can Dream Can't I and Klaatu's 1977 space fantasy Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft. Still, by early 1979, the Carpenters had been typecast as purveyors of sweet, romantic ballads. The solo album was largely designed to show that there were other facets to Karen; that she had the talent and range to do other things.
Karen was barely out of her teens when she and her brother Richard burst onto the pop scene in 1970 with Close To You. Now, after nearly a decade of international stardom, she was still seen as a wholesome girl-next-door from Downey, California. The perception was not inaccurate, but it was one-dimensional and limiting. With the solo album, Ramone had wanted to announce, "I'm grown up. Please allow me to show you."
The solo album differs from the Carpenters' trademark sound in a number of ways. The settings are sparse, the lyrics are frequently sexy and provocative and the spirit is playful. The overall tone is one of self-discovery and personal and creative risk-taking.
Karen took delight in scruffing up her goody-two-shoes image -- just as her friend Olivia Newton-John had the year before in Grease. This comes across most emphatically on the mad disco romp, My Body Keeps Changing My Mind. Karen sings the song with a liberating sense of joy and abandon -- as if she had cast off the prom dress in which she always seemed to be photographed for a leather mini.
The album includes three disco tracks -- an unmistakable sign of the times. Disco was at a white-hot peak when the sessions got underway in May 1979. The pop charts that month included dance hits by such diverse acts as Blondie, Cher, Kiss and Earth, Wind & Fire.
The congruity of Karen's voice, the very essence of warmth, singing disco, a cool musical style, is part of what makes these tracks so appealing. My Body Keeps Changing My Mind ranks with Barbra Streisand's Main Event / Fight and Barry Manilow's Copacabana (At The Copa) as the most irresistible blend of disco and easy listening pop. The recording was dated the minute the tape stopped -- it fairly screams "1979" -- but that's part of its charm. Timeless ballads were Karen's forte, but here she seems to relish the chance to tear into a tune that was just for the moment and just for fun.
One of the biggest risks on the album was the choice of an oldie -- Paul Simon's Still Crazy After All These Years. Though the song was considered a contemporary classic, very few artists have covered it. That's not surprising: Still Crazy is a dark and challenging piece of material. The mood changes with almost every line. Yet when Simon suggested that Karen sing the song, she rose to the challenge. There's considerable irony in Karen singing the line, "I ain't no fool for love songs / that whisper in my ear." Karen, after all, made her name as a singer of love songs that whisper in your ear. It's also jarring to hear Karen, whose voice typically radiated such hope, sounding so world-weary and cynical. But that's what the song called for. In that regard, Karen is very much like an actress playing against type; like -- to cite another image-defying example from 1980 -- Mary Tyler Moore, America's other icon of sunny wholesomeness, playing the cold mother in Ordinary People. It would have been easier for Karen to sing one of Simon's pop songs -- say, Something So Right or Was A Sunny Day -- but she took a bigger risk and reaps a bigger pay-off.
To be sure, not all of the gambles worked. All Because Of You, a dry-as-dirt country ballad, is a failed effort. But at least the track showed that Karen was open to creative experimentation. And that was the entire point of the project.
The solo album is not a definitive portrait of Karen Carpenter -- nor was it intended to be. It is a provocative snapshot of her at age 29. Future projects, with Richard and other producers and artists, would have revealed still more facets of this complex woman and multi-dimensional artist.
The idea for the album came about when Richard Carpenter decided to take 1979 off to enjoy his first sustained break since the Carpenters were signed to A&M 10 years before. Richard had arranged and orchestrated all of the Carpenters albums -- and had produced them since 1973.
In truth, both Karen and Richard deserved -- and needed -- a break. By early 1979, they had recorded nine albums, starred in four network television specials, and headlined countless tours all over the world.
But Karen was, in her own words, "never much of a relaxer," and couldn't imagine taking an entire year off. "I was OK for a little bit, but then I was anxious to get back to work," she told me in the first of two interviews in the summer of 1981.
A hiatus also made sense because the Carpenters were in a commercial slump in 1979. All acts experience such downturns eventually, but Karen and Richard had long managed to defy the odds. They had assembled a string of 16 consecutive Top 20 hits from Close To You to There's A King Of A Hush in 1976 -- hits that made them the #1 American act of the 1970s, according to Joel Whitburn's authoritative book, Top Pop Singles 1955 - 1993. Yet in the three years since Hush, the Carpenters had been unable to return to the Top 20. Their most recent single, I Believe You, stalled at #68 in December 1978, their worst showing to date.
For a variety of reasons, it seemed like a good time to take a break and/or try something new.
Herb Alpert, who had signed the Carpenters to A&M, came up with the suggestion for Ramone to produce the album. Ramone had known the Carpenters since 1970, when they opened a concert at the Westbury Music Fair for Burt Bacharach, with whom Ramone was working at the time. A Grammy-winning recording engineer in the '60s, Ramone had by the late '70s become one of the hottest producers in pop music. He had demonstrated his blend of commercial smarts and artistic sensitivity on such hits as Paul Simon and Phoebe Snow's Gone At Last, Simon & Garfunkel's My Little Town, Barbra Streisand's Evergreen, Billy Joel's My Life, and Chicago's Alive Again.
"I'm going to experiment with just Karen alone and see how it works," Ramone told me in an interview in the spring of 1979. "We have some dates booked in mid-May and we're going to go in a totally different direction with her. (The idea is) not to keep the same image. The Carpenters will be the Carpenters. This would be a solo album."
At the time, several adult contemporary artists, notably Olivia Newton-John, were cutting somewhat harder-edge hits. Speaking generally of this trend, but in a way that hinted at the direction he would take Karen, Ramone said, "There's no reason soft artists can't have some sensuality and earth underneath their music."
Karen and Ramone began talking about the solo album in January 1979. On February 16th, the day after Ramone won a Grammy for record of the year for producing Billy Joel's Just The Way You Are, Karen flew to New York to begin planning the album with Ramone. On May 1, she returned to New York to begin work on the project. "I didn't know what I was going to run into when I went back there," Karen recalled two years later. For the first two weeks, she stayed in a sumptuous suite at the U.N. Plaza Hotel. Then Ramone and his future wife, Karen Itchyumi, invited her to stay with them at their home in Poundridge, NY. On the daily 43-mile commute to Manhattan's A&R Recording Studios, Ramone and Karen auditioned tapes of hundreds of songs.
The Carpenters' fan club newsletter announced Karen's solo album in a brief "news flash" in April 1979. The news raised hopes, concerns and speculation, which the next newsletter, dated September, attempted to sort out.
"The fan club has been inundated with anxious inquiries pertaining to the Carpenters' latest movements," it began. "To dispel any rumors that the group has "split up," Karen wishes to assure you this is not so. The reason for the temporary lapse in their recordings is that after 10 arduous years... Richard felt the need for a long vacation which probably will extend into the New Year. Karen reaffirms that they will resume work on their album whenever Richard feels ready.... In the meantime, Karen has enjoyed her recording sessions in New York, and was happy to meet Billy Joel and Paul Simon. Her album is progressing well, and she anticipates its release early in the New Year. She returns to New York next month."
The sessions continued, off and on, for most of the next year. It was a busy and productive period for Ramone, who was also working on Joel's Glass Houses (which spawned the chart-topping It's Still Rock And Roll To Me) and Simon's One-Trick Pony (which yielded Late In The Evening).
Ramone's immaculate production gives Karen's album a sophisticated sheen. The album features such world-class musicians as Bob James, Michael Brecker, Louis Johnson, Greg Phillinganes and Ralph McDonald. Ramone also called on the services of some of his other production clients. Peter Cetera of Chicago wrote and sang harmony vocals on Making Love In The Afternoon. Billy Joel lent his crack rhythm section -- including Liberty DeVitto and Russell Javors -- which played on a series of songs. Javors also wrote two songs for the album.
Rod Temperton, a protégé of Ramone's long-time friend, Quincy Jones, also wrote two songs, the creamy pop/disco confection "Lovelines" and the exquisite ballad If We Try. Temperton also wrote some songs for another high-profile, image-reshaping solo album that was being recorded in the summer of '79 -- Michael Jackson's Off The Wall.
In the 1981 interviews, Karen said that she considered the album to be "an interesting experience and a good experience.
"It was fun cutting it and seeing that I could do all that -- sing a different type of tune and work with different people. I wasn't sure if I could do it myself. I was scared to death. I knew one producer, one arranger, one brother, one studio, one record company, and that was it. It was a different surrounding, working with different people with different habits... I didn't know how they worked, they didn't know how I worked. I'm used to blinking an eye and an engineer knows what I want or Richard knows what I'm thinking."
Karen said she chose Ramone for a variety of reasons. "We've known Phil for years. We both like the artists he works with. He's a very personable guy." And she praised him for his support and encouragement. "If he hadn't been as gentle and sensitive as he is, I couldn't have done it. He knows how close Richard and I are."
The album took longer to record than anticipated, but it was finally given a catalog number (SP 4804) and placed on A&M's release schedule in early 1980. By chance, the album would have coincided with the 10th anniversary of the release of Close To You.
But it wasn't to be. The album was shelved in May 1980. Many factors no doubt went into the decision to shelve the album, but the major one was summarized by A&M president Gil Friesen, who told me: "Karen thought about it long and hard and decided that the duo takes precedence. That was the priority in her life and there was no way she wanted the solo project to interfere."
Karen made that same point in the 1981 interviews, while at the same time reaffirming her faith in the solo project. "It's a good album," she said. "It just dragged on so long, it seemed all of a sudden to be getting in the way of us going back to work again... It got to a point where I had to make up my mind because Richard wanted to go back to work and... I wanted to go back to work too as the Carpenters."
Karen refuted speculation the solo album was meant to signal the end of the Carpenters. "It was never planned for me to drop the Carpenters and go cut a solo -- that would never happen, ever," she said firmly. "If Richard hadn't gone on vacation, I never would have done the solo album."
It seems likely that the disappointing showing of the Carpenters' eclectic 1977 album, Passage, may have made Karen and those around her wary of again confounding audience expectations. Passage was the Carpenters' most adventurous album, but it was also their first to stop short of gold since Ticket To Ride in 1969. And here was an album that departed from the traditional Carpenters sound even more emphatically.
"I'm sure there would have been people who would have been shocked and a lot of people would have loved it," Karen told me in 1981. "I didn't put it away because I was dissatisfied. We ran out of time."
Though disappointed, Ramone was gracious about the decision to shelve the album. "Maybe this was the stimuli the Carpenters needed to go into the studio and work real hard to make a new album," he told me in May 1980.
The following month, Karen and Richard began work on what became their last studio album, Made In America. The album, which was released in 1981, spawned the duo's first Top 20 hit in five years, Touch Me When We're Dancing. Tragically, it was to be Karen's last hit. She died on February 4, 1983 at the age of 32.
Ramone, who remained good friends with Karen until her death, continues as one of America's most esteemed producers. In February 1981, he won a Grammy as producer of the year. Three years later, he won another Grammy as one of the songwriters on the Flashdance soundtrack. More recent triumphs include Julian Lennon's platinum debut album Valotte, Frank Sinatra's Top 10 albums Duets and Duets II, and the Passion original cast album, which brought him his eighth Grammy in 1995.
None of Karen's solo recordings were made public for nearly a decade. But in 1989, bowing to continuing fan interest, Richard included four of the solo tracks on Lovelines, a collection of previously unreleased Carpenters recordings. Two years later, he included two more solo tracks on the Carpenters' box set, From The Top. But this marks the first time that Karen's solo album has been released in its entirety. And it marks the first time that nine of the tracks have been released at all.
As enjoyable as Karen's album is, it's impossible to listen to it and not think about what might have been. This, after all, was just Karen's first step as a solo artist -- a step made when she was far from her physical and emotional peak. It makes you wonder what she'd have been able to accomplish when she again had body and soul together.
She might have re-teamed with Ramone for another album, or worked with Arif Mardin, or David Foster, or Quincy Jones. No doubt she would have also continued to record with Richard, perhaps juggling the two careers as Phil Collins has alternated solo and Genesis projects.
Karen released just nine studio albums in her lifetime, an amazingly small output for an artist of such renown. For Karen's legions of fans, it's a maddeningly small output. They can now rest in the knowledge that they have access to every album that Karen ever recorded.
So return with us now to those halcyon days of 1979-80. Jimmy Carter was President, the Iranian hostage crisis dominated the news. Dallas became a national obsession, Margaret Thatcher was elected Britain's Prime Minister, Evita opened on Broadway, OPEC was a household word, Kramer vs. Kramer was the hot movie, Pope John Paul II made his first trip to the U.S.... and Karen Carpenter began an important new chapter in her life and career.
Paul Grien, A&M Publicity Department
 |
 |
|
|
Buy: |
Buy: Karen Carpenter CD |
Last changed: Sun Jul 8 18:47:36 EDT 2007
