Fact #148401

In 1970, Carole King was as much earth mother/housewife as she was working musician. Indeed, Tapestry took its name from the needlepoint piece she was working on to relax between takes. Yet, with this album she emerged as rock’s first great feminist spokeswoman of the 70s,

Superficially it looked as if King was coat-tailing contemporaries like Joni Mitchell or Laura Nyro but in fact she had been a working songwriter, and occasional artist, for over ten years, composing over 100 Top 40 hits with lyric-writing partner Gerry Goffin, eight of which reached No1.

As that decade ended, however, there was a very pragmatic reason for King to change her modus operandi. The success of Bob Dylan and The Beatles meant that the majority of successful artists now wrote their own material. “Today the need for outside writers is less,” she explained. “The only way for me to get my songs heard was to sing them myself.”

Most of the songs on Tapestry were pieces she had done as demos, intended for other artists. “In 1969 I did the album before Tapestry called Writer,” she has said, “and one before that was with the group called City. That was me easing into being an artist, but I always preferred being a songwriter. So Tapestry was the album in which it came together. Tapestry was really a collection of songs that I was doing demos of.”

As her producer Lou Adler noted, “When she was writing for other people, Carole was, in effect, impersonating somewhat the sound and feel of an artist’s hit.” To become a singer-songwriter, she had to find her own identity, and Adler knew how to help her find it. “I had a definite theme in mind, to have that lean, almost demo-type sound, with a basic rhythm section and Carole on piano, playing lots of her figures. Those are things everyone always liked about her demos.”

Although she undoubtedly blazed a path for women songwriters in the seventies, King has said, “In my career I have never felt that my being a woman was an obstacle or an advantage. I guess I've been oblivious. I just do what I do and assume it s going to be well received if I m good at it. Nobody has ever said, ‘You can’t do this, you re a woman.’”

James Taylor, who had persuaded King to return to a performing career, was also ever-present in the studio, partly because he was recording Mud Slide Slim nearby. “We would record my songs,” remembers King, “then go to another studio where James was recording his album. It was one kind of continuous album in our minds.”

The album’s core song is probably You’ve Got A Friend, which says King, “was as close to pure inspiration as I’ve ever experienced. The song wrote itself. It was written by something outside of myself, through me.” Unfortunately, she was denied the opportunity of releasing it as a single, because James Taylor got there first.

“Tapestry maybe cost $15,000, but I doubt it was that much,” says Adler. “I remember the first ad, ‘Honesty Is Back’.” The timing could not have been better. The simple veracities of King’s lyrics and her understated performances came as a soothing balm to listeners who, for the past five years had been subjected to the excesses of psychedelia and prog-rock. Asked why it became such a huge success, King has said, “Right time and the right place.”

Although Tapestry established her as the first superstar female singer-songwriter, she has remained modest about her achievements and her status. “I just did what I did and, interestingly, you mentioned that a lot of this stuff was coming from a mature woman. Goffin wrote some of the lyrics and he’s a man, and Toni Stern wrote some of them, and she’s a woman. Gerry writes amazingly from a woman’s point of view. Think about Will You Love Me Tomorrow, (You Make Me Feel Like a) Natural Woman, and one I didn't write with him, Saving All My Love For You. I didn't feel the weight of responsibility even though I wrote a lot of those lyrics too. I just didn't think about it.”

Even so, it’s hard to disagree with Jon Landau of Rolling Stone whose review called it “an album of surpassing personal intimacy and musical accomplishment, and a work infused with a sense of artistic purpose.” On June 19, 1971, it hit No1 on the Billboard albums chart, whence it refused to be dislodged for fifteen weeks, ultimately spending a total of 302 weeks on the chart - the longest-charting album by any female solo artist. At the Grammys, she collected Best Album, Best Song, Best Record and Best Female Vocalist, and went on to sell 10m albums by 1973.