Vickie's note: This is a piece of an interview that I was listening to one night, and this section I found interesting... hope you enjoy it.
It opens with Barry Manilow's I Write The Songs
Interviewer: We're chatting with the Carpenter's today in our current series of retrospective reviews - people we've talked to over the years that we really go a kick out of, and we chatted with the Carpenter's on several occations, and the reason I wanted to play that (the Manilow song) to open this segment with - I talked to Karen once and I said "Did you ever hear a song on the radio, Karen Carpenter, and thought to yourself "Man, I wish I would have recorded that"?
Karen: Mm..Hmm. That happens once a week! (laughs)
Interviewer: Does it really?
Richard: Oh, yeah.
Karen: It's happened quite a bit.
Richard: Sure, I Write The Songs is a perfect song for Karen and, uh...
Karen: Killing Me Softly?
Richard: Oh, yeah! Killing Me Softly
Interviewer: Yeah, yeah, that would have been a perfect...
Karen: I wasn't in the right place at the right time. (laughs)
Interviewer: You weren't on that airline that what's her name was...
Richard: Roberta Flack, that's right...
Interviewer: How about either of you, you're biggest disappointment with regard for a record you made that you had the greatest amount of enthusiasm over but for whatever the reasons are, the public doesn't take to a recorded performance YOU feel is perfect. It just for some reason didn't happen. This is going to be "double 0 above 1" and we'll say it doesn't even... well, maybe it hits the top 10 but it doesn't reach your expectations...
Richard: Yeah, Only Yesterday
Interviewer:Only Yesterday ...
Richard: Yeah.
Karen: Went to 4
Richard: Yeah, it did very well - it went to number 4
Karen: It went to 3 below 1 (giggles)
Richard: But, it sold over 600,000 copies, which is nice, umm...
Karen: it's good, nice... yeah, we kinda thought that was going to do it
Richard: I thought that one was really terrific
Vickie: Another clip from the same tape... this one caught my attention because it once again reminded me of how much work went into the making of the songs... how some songs can be left unfinished... and also to the musical genius of Richard. Now, there are some things concerning Richard's ideas that I don't agree with, but when it comes down to imagining how he can hear in his mind all the different parts that all the different instruments will play - what the flute will play, what the oboe will play, what the drum will do... for all the songs he writes... it's just overwhelming. Of course, Karen's giggles throughout all her interviews are contagious, and her little humorous comments add life to what could otherwise get a bit dull...
Interviewer: We talked about the Carpenters' music and got some of their thoughts that went into the make-up of the finished product. You listen to their singles and their albums and each track or performance sounds so darn clean, uncluttered, and it sounds as if so much tender-loving care went into each one that they do, and I mentioned to Richard and Karen the fact that each album track was done... it sounded as if it was going to be a single record. And I asked them to give us an idea about the planning of a Carpenter's album... what went into the planning?
Richard: It's a long process. We have a person at A&M records who works for us and all the stuff comes from the publishers, and from people we meet on the road, and unknown people who just see what label different artists that are interested are on, they send it all and it all goes to A&M. And he goes through the thousands of things and narrows it down to hundreds of things that he thinks I'll be interested in. Then I take the hundreds home. And, uh...
Karen: (laughs) you don't see him for days!
Richard: yeah, listening, listening, listening... and of course they come in a variety of recorded ways - cartridges, cassettes, dubs, singles, little local record company singles, just...
Karen: singing telegrams...
Richard: ... tapes, and you have to have all the different machines to play everything on.
Interviewer: And all the different speeds, too.
Richard: Oh, yeah... 45, 33...
Karen: And some of them are right in the middle (giggles)
Richard: ... 15... so it takes time to do. And I listen to all of them, and of course I write some of the tunes, myself, and John Bettis writes the lyrics, so we usually don't get ALL the material that's going to go onto the album at once and then go into the studio. We start with several things, go in... and do the tracks... by tracks I mean we work it bass, piano, and drums - basic foundation to the tune. And... then we'll start with usually something like overdubbing guitar next, or electric piano on top of what we've got. And we do one thing at a time, to achieve better sound. So you don't have... if you do it all at once in a studio you can have different instruments 'leaking' into the drum microphones, whatever, it doesn't give you as clean a sound.
Interviewer: How many tracks do you usually have, total, to work with?
Richard: 24. And that, again, takes time. So instead of in one hour where you could get 35 musicians say, on one song, we start with three and add one, add one, add another, add another, and then do the vocals, and then move on to the next song, and the next. Then when we have four done, we call in a string section. Because the union allows you to do four tunes in one session. And we complete it, and put it aside, to be mixed, then start in again.
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Last changed: Sun Oct 21 19:04:33 EDT 2001