E-mail a friendCarole King
airdate March 28, 2008
A member of both the Songwriters and Rock and Roll Halls of Fame, Carole King has written some 400 songs recorded by more than 1,000 artists, ranging from "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" for Aretha Franklin to the theme song for TV's Gilmore Girls. She also made her mark as a performer with the award-winning album, "Tapestry"—which is being re-issued to mark her 50th anniversary in the business. The Brooklyn, NY native began playing piano at age 4 and now has her own label, Rockingale Records.
Singer-songwriter demonstrates how she writes music and discusses her environmental work. (3:01)
Carole King
Tavis: I am pleased and honored to welcome Carole King to this program. The legendary singer-songwriter is celebrating - I know it's hard to believe - fifty years in the music business with a special re-issue of one of the most celebrated albums in all of popular music history, "Tapestry." The two-CD set is called "Tapestry: A Legacy Edition." It is in stores April 22. Her most recent DVD, "Welcome to my Living Room," the disc includes so many of her classic songs, including "It's Too Late," is out also. Take a look.
[Performing]
Tavis: Carole King, nice to meet you.
Carole King: Nice to meet you.
Tavis: I was saying to my producer a minute ago, so many hits, so little time. So many hits. I don't have the time to discuss all the hits you've written.
King: Oh, well, fifty years is a long time. It's amazing because I'm actually not much older than that (laughter).
Tavis: I was about to say, how does one look like you look, have the energy that you have and have been in the business fifty years? It almost seems like it's not really true that you've been around fifty years with this.
King: Rock and roll, babe (laughter).
Tavis: (Laughter) That's the point. Most people burn out long before fifty years in rock and roll.
King: Yeah, it was drugless, more or less, rock and roll (laughter).
Tavis: (Laughter) That ain't real rock and roll then, if it's drugless.
King: Well, hence the more or less.
Tavis: I got it. The more or less part. Seriously, what does it mean for you? What does it feel like for you to be celebrating fifty years in this volatile music business?
King: You know, I've seen a lot of changes, but good music still touches people. It still reaches peoples' hearts and that's the heartening part, but we kind of have to fight our way around a lot of changes. One of the ways that I've fought my way around the changes is I started my own record label and the DVD that you mentioned is out in that venue, so you get it on my Website.
Tavis: That begs at least two obvious questions for me at least. One, in the order that you offered your statement, what for you then is good music? I agree with you that there's always a place for good music, but I'm always fascinated particularly by a songwriter of your stature. I'm curious as to Carole King's definition of what good music is.
King: You know, for me, I'm always like on the spot when I'm trying to think of a specific. I can never do it. I mean, I can think of someone like Nora Jones or John Mayer. You know, there are people that have just come up every year and you see them on the Grammies. It was nice to see that. I was a presenter on that show. Feist, as a matter of fact, she was someone that I presented to.
But to me, it's a song that touches peoples' hearts and a lot of the music today is about the production. I think there's value in that too, but for me, I think I see myself and a lot of people want to hear a song that touches your heart with a good melody, a good lyric, you know, words that just speak to you. That's what I think is still important. There's enough of it in today's market that people reach for it. I think sometimes they have to look harder to find it.
Tavis: Another great songwriter who I've interviewed any number of times, Smokey Robinson.
King: Oh, yeah.
Tavis: Smokey said to me many times that a good song for him is a song that gets covered over and over and over and over again, never loses its power. And by that definition, you have written a lot of good songs.
King: Thank you so much. I had help on many of them. I co-wrote with Jerry Goffin. A lot of them I co-wrote with Toni Stern, a woman, Toni.
Tavis: Another thing I want to ask, back to your earlier statement, what does it say to you that, after all the years you've been doing this, fifty years now, and all the hits that you have written and all the times your music has been covered, as I mentioned ago, that Carole King felt the need -for whatever reasons. I'll let you unpack this for us - to start your own record label. What is it about the business that forced you into the making the decision to start your own record label?
King: The fact that, when you're dealing with a record company and they have their place certainly, but you're sort of encouraged to go in a direction that they feel will be more commercial. Again, I have nothing against commercial, but there's a sense that, as an artist, whatever you feel, if you're a painter or a writer or whatever, I think you have to do it for yourself first and to please yourself first. Then if you want to orient it towards a market, that's fine, but I still think you have to please yourself first.
Having my own record label and the DVD distribution gave me the power. It was empowering. Yes, I may, you know, not have the broad reach that they have, but it enables people to come directly to me and get as close to me as they can instead of having to go through a whole middle man series of, you know, people who would have an influence on the product. I didn't want that.
Tavis: Yeah. You keep saying these things that keep making me come back with follow-ups, so forgive me for all the follow-ups.
King: Oh, good. That's what you call a conversation (laughter).
Tavis: Imagine that, a conversation. Only on PBS (laughter). Seriously, that's why I like being around here. I love being on PBS for that very reason.
King: The same reason, exactly.
Tavis: And we can have conversations. So you said a couple things I want to follow up on. The first is, you said you are into pleasing yourself where your songwriting is concerned or your performance. I get that. I totally get that. So many artists don't have the luxury to do that.
King: That's right.
Tavis: You have the luxury to do that, but again, what does that mean for you? In the songwriting process, in the performance process, what for you pleases you? You said it. Now I want you to unpack it for me.
King: Okay. It's hard to give specific answers to what pleases me except that it resonates as true, as coming from me, with honesty. It could be anything from, say, well - "You've Got a Friend" was a song that came purely. It was inspired and came from a place almost outside of me and a combination. A song called "Safe Again" on my "Love Makes The World." I'm not sure if it's on the DVD, but it's a song that also came from that very pure space.
When I'm writing for an artist, you mentioned before, we were talking about Aretha and was "Natural Woman" written for her? It was. The title was given to us by Jerry Wexler, her record company executive. Jerry Goffin ran with it and wrote that lyric and I wrote the music, so you see three writers on that.
That was the honesty of wanting to speak in the voice that we thought was Aretha's and she agreed because she sang it (laughter). So there's an honesty and an integrity that to me is the key. That's what defines, you know, what Rockingale allows me to do.
Tavis: Here we go again. More follow-ups. You mentioned Aretha and you mentioned "You've Got a Friend." Talking to Chris McDonald, our producer, I had to have Chris look this up because I knew I was in the ballpark. I just didn't know how close I was. I knew that you written "You've Got a Friend" and
I've talked to J.T. about this many times, James Taylor. Everybody knows that James did that. You can never see James in concert without people screaming for him to perform that song, his version of "You've Got a Friend."
I did not know until today, though, how close the two of you released that song to the public. So you write the song and you put it on your album which comes out in March 1971. James, who had heard you perform the song, recorded it as well and put it on his album which came out the very next month in April. So in 1971, March and April, the same song comes out from these two towering artists and, gee (laughter).
King: Well, there's a reason for that. I did not know that he had recorded it. He surprised me. I was at a session -
Tavis: - surprised you? Isn't that illegal (laughter)?
King: No, actually.
Tavis: How do you take Carole King's stuff and record it and say, "Carole, surprise!" (laughter).
King: The truth is, once I record it and release it, anybody can record a song. It's the first release that does not get to have the element of surprise (laughter). But I was at a session playing on some other track of James's because I was his side man at the time. We do say side man, whatever your gender.
Tavis: Sexist world we live in, yeah.
King: (Laughter) Hey, if Rosemary Clooney can sing it and Dave Frishberg could write it, I can say it.
Tavis: (Laughter) Fair enough, fair enough.
King: You know, I was at the session and Peter Asher who was producing him and managing him at the time said in his British accent, "Carole, we'd like you to hear something" and then I hear coming out over the speaker this wonderful version of "You've Got a Friend" that everybody has since been listening to. It was wonderful. It was such a great surprise. And may I add that James likes to say this about that song. He said, "I love the song. I didn't know at the time that I'd be singing it every night for the rest of my life." (Laughter)
Tavis: (Laughter) I've heard him use that line many times. How does it feel then, with all the hits you've written for yourself and for others, to have somebody surprise you with a song and, by your own admission, the version that he put out makes him a star and everybody knows your version, but they really know the James Taylor version of that song?
King: Well, first of all, he was already a star and, second of all, when they sing it that way - if anybody sings a song of mine the way James sang "You've Got a Friend," it only makes me feel good. When Aretha sang "Natural Woman," it was like, okay, I can die now (laughter) and, thankfully, I didn't. You know, it just makes me feel great.
Celine Dion singing "The Reason" which is on that album from "The Titanic" that, you know, was just such a great album. That song never came out as a single, but when it heard her sing it, it was just amazing.
Tavis: Again, you've worked with so many of these towering artists, a historical figure like Aretha Franklin, like The Queen - and Aretha is The Queen. Let's just set that controversy aside. She is The Queen. I'll leave that alone.
King: And if we didn't think so, she would still think so (laughter).
Tavis: And what Aretha thinks is the rule anyway, it's the rule anyway (laughter).
King: It's true.
Tavis: But when you look at an artist of her stature and it is one of the first songs that comes to mind for all the hits that she's had, I mean, that is at the epicenter of her corpus. As a songwriter, to have Aretha belt out a song that only Aretha could do makes you feel like what?
King: Incomparable feeling. I can't even describe it. Over the moon. I mean, she does what she does better than anybody. She was just in that Gospel thing on the Grammies when they had the gathering of the Gospel and it reminded all of us that that's really Aretha's roots. I mean, she just came of age in that genre. It was just wonderful.
Tavis: Take me all the way back. We said earlier that you're celebrating fifty years now. You started playing piano when?
King: Four.
Tavis: Four years of age. How did that happen for you?
King: My parents were kind enough to put a piano in my house (laughter).
Tavis: And you just climbed up one day and -
King: - you bet. It was a draw always.
Tavis: I really want to hear this. How do you explain that? And I ask that because so many of us live our lives, so many people get to the point of living fifty years and just then figuring out what their purpose or what their life really is all about. A lot of people are late bloomers. For those who happen not to be late bloomers like you, how do you explain in your way being drawn to this at four? I mean, this would seem to me to be what you were gifted and placed here to do.
King: It was definitely a gift and I have been trying for my whole life to be responsive to it and also not let it dominate my life in the way that it happens for so many people who are in this business. I've had a life outside of the music business, as well as having the music. Part of the importance to me is to protect my soul, my spirit, and that's what generates the music. So it's a striving for balance that I like to think I've managed.
Tavis: I want to talk about that effort to find that balance with your life outside of music. One more music question, though, first before I do that, Carole. There are any number of artists who fit into this particular scenario and I suspect it's probably true for almost every artist because it's kind of hard to get around it, which is to say that there is going to come a time in your career where you have more bona fide hits behind you than you have in front of you.
No matter how prolific a writer or an artist you are, if you're Carole King, if you're Aretha Franklin, if you're Stevie Wonder, if you're Prince, if you're Tony Bennett, run the list. There comes a time in your life, a different time for different people, of course, where you got more hits behind you than you have chart-toppers in front of you.
For one who's used, though, to having that kind of success, how do you stay in the business and continue to navigate a life when you have realized that, with all of this stuff you still do, your biggest commercial hits are behind you? Does that make sense?
King: It does make sense, but I don't think about it like that. To me, first of all, having one hit, I'm ahead of the game. Having as many hits as I've already had, I'm ahead of the game. Any song that I write, any act that I do that touches people, whether it's in music or not, is important to me. So I don't see anything as behind me other than it's just life unraveling. I see lots of things in front of me. If they're not hits at the level of "Tapestry," that never occurred to me as anything to strive to keep or whatever. I just strive to make every day matter.
Tavis: Since you mentioned it, talk to me about "Tapestry" because it doesn't come much better than that.
King: I didn't know it was gonna be what it turned out to be.
Tavis: You had no idea.
King: No, I didn't.
Tavis: Wow.
King: I was just doing what I'd always done, writing songs, making demos, putting them down the way that I heard them in my mind, and it was the right time and the right place and the right combination of things. Of course, the cover and the cat (laughter).
Tavis: (Laughter) yes.
King: I mean, I could not have imagined. I'm incredibly grateful that it's touched so many people. I've heard so many stories and every person's story is important to me. Many people say, "Oh, you must have heard this before." Yes, but never from you (laughter), you know?
Tavis: Yeah (laughter).
King: And it's important. But one woman that really made an impression on me was a woman who grew up in Afghanistan. I had met her in the United States and she was telling me that, back in the 1970s in the secret harems, you know, back there where they weren't allowed to have anything, they were listening to "Tapestry." I could not believe that, and that was really special to me because, you know, to have my music reach that far into some place it wasn't supposed to be and lift people, especially in this case, lifting women, amazing.
Tavis: Given your last comment about writing stuff as you hear it, I felt obligated to ask as a follow-up how the songwriting process works for you, but I want to tweak that question just a bit because I've seen you do this. I've seen you do what you probably refer to, I think, as Songwriting 101.
King: Right, and that's on the DVD. You can see it live (laughter).
Tavis: Exactly. You can see it on the DVD. So Carole King sits in front of an audience of people and somebody says something to you.
King: Well, Carole King and Gary Burr and Rudy Guess, who are my band mates.
Tavis: Yeah.
King: But it's important because, for me to do that by myself, I would never do it. But with two people like Gary Burr and Rudy Guess, I write with them, more often with Gary. Gary is a well-known songwriter in Nashville who's written a lot of country hits mostly.
To get up there, it's a collaborative thing, but someone would throw an idea at us or we might. Someone would say, "Okay, I have a title" and then we just run with it and bounce off each other. You know, you're flying blind. You don't know if it's gonna work or not.
Tavis: But it's live. It's amazing, yeah (laughter).
King: Oh, the scariest thing I ever do. I'm not doing that anymore in front of people because it's very naked. It's really vulnerable and naked and you don't know if it's gonna work or not. When you're doing that, you know, in a room, you make a something where there was a nothing, you know, you're not being watched by thousands of people.
Tavis: How does the Songwriting 101 that we see on the DVD, creating something on the spot, juxtapose that for me how the process really does work for you in your process.
King: It works the same.
Tavis: The same?
King: It works the same. It's just that there aren't four thousand or five thousand people watching you. But it's like, you know, - give me a phrase.
Tavis: Love.
King: Okay, love. So I would say, you know, let me see if I could think of something. "Love makes the world a better place" or as I actually wrote, "Love makes the world go around and around." But, you see, the first one was on the fly. The second one is a song I already wrote. But you can take that anywhere.
Then if you or a fellow songwriter - if I sang, "Love makes the world a better place," the fellow songwriter might answer, "And it puts a smile on your face" and now you're into a song, and that's how it goes.
Tavis: That's what I was gonna say, as a matter of fact. I was just about to say that (laughter).
King: And in your case, it puts a Smiley on your face, but I'm not going there.
Tavis: Yeah, I'm gonna say "a Smiley on your face," but that's a whole other issue.
King: But I see you're wearing green, which must be our segue into the environment (laughter).
Tavis: Yes, I was about to go there next. How'd you know?
King: Just had a guess.
Tavis: And you're psychic too. I really was gonna go there because you said a few minutes ago that you have tried to find this balance in your life and you have a life outside of music. At the center, I would think, of that life outside of music is the work you've done for so many years now on the environment.
King: It has become that. I moved to Idaho thirty years ago. I've been living in Idaho longer than anywhere else I've lived and it's a beautiful, beautiful environment. It's in the northern Rockies.
One thing led to another and I got drawn into, first of all, caring about that environment and then learning about it, that it is an ecosystem, and then working with people on legislation that was designed by scientists because it takes the ecosystem into account and involves the whole northern Rockies into five states.
So I started working with members of Congress because my famous name gets me in the door, but then I'd better know what I'm talking about and I do. I've been doing this work for eighteen years and we are closer and closer to passing this bill.
Tavis: I'm about to ask you whether or not you were finding as time goes on with all the issues about the environment, global warming, etc., etc., that people are getting finally to be more responsive to people who are concerned as you are.
King: Oh, totally. There's been such an awareness. Everybody is now green, you know. Green is cool. Whatever it takes, you know. But also, people are aware of global warming. This particular legislation is called the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act. It also stops the drain on taxpayers' money because, right now, we are paying to build roads into areas that should be left alone and that's what the bill does. It protects these areas and stops the drain on taxpayers' money. What's wrong with that?
Tavis: As I said at the top of this conversation, so many hits, so little time. I feel like I haven't done justice to everything that she has given us. She's got a lot of product here (laughter).
King: You have to do Volume 2 (laughter).
Tavis: You have to, and you got to come back.
King: I'll do it.
Tavis: All right. So Carole King "Tapestry" now is out celebrating the release of this wonderful CD so many years ago, and "Welcome to my Living Room." The DVD is out as well, but more importantly for us right now, up next - I've been waiting on this - a special performance by Carole King, so stay with us.
From her classic album, "Tapestry," here is Carole King joined by Gary Burr and Rudy Guess, performing "Where You Lead." Enjoy, good night from Los Angeles, and keep the faith.
[Performing]
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