Fantasy

Product Information

When my sisters and I were growing up, Tapestry was a key record in the house. Our mum also loved James Taylor and Joni Mitchell, who played and sang on it, so it was on in the car a lot. Our mum was from Philly on the east coast, so it was always in my mind that Carole was also a Jewish east-coast girl. She’d write these amazing, emotive songs and sing them in an almost optimistic or carefree voice. Ken Yerke, Barry Socher, Sheldon Sanov, Haim Shtrum, Kathleen Lenski, Miwako Watanabe, Glenn Dicterow, Polly Sweeney, Robert Lipsett, Gordon Marron - violin I brought Hank Cicalo, my recording engineer from Los Angeles, out to Central Park to record the show as it might possibly become an album,” Adler explains. “Then I had the notion, having done the film Monterey Pop [Adler had produced the groundbreaking 1967 music festival together with John Phillips] I felt that something this big should be filmed. I had no idea what I was going to do with the film at that time, but I felt that something this important should be documented.” I also have to mention the cat on the cover. It may sound trivial, but that was the most “me” I’d ever seen on a record cover, and maybe opened up the possibility that a person could be humble and modest and human rather than superhuman, and be a triumphant musician. Bethany Cosentino, Best Coast King, producer Lou Adler and Taylor in Los Angeles during sessions for Tapestry in 1970. Photograph: Jim McCrary/Redferns Stephin Merritt, the Magnetic Fields

January 5, 2023 - The brand new feature-length concert documentary “ Home Again: Carole King Live In Central Park,” which presents musical icon Carole King’s triumphant May 26, 1973 homecoming concert on The Great Lawn of New York City’s Central Park before an estimated audience of 100,000, will premiere January 19 at New York’s IFC Film Center via Abramorama. The film will then be released wide on February 9 (also King’s birthday) streaming exclusively on The Coda Collection. Directed by George Scott and produced by Lou Adler and John McDermott, the film presents the complete multi-camera 16mm footage filmed and recorded by Adler in 1973 but never before released. King didn’t need the advice. The estimable guitarist Danny Kortchmar, whose work shone on both “Tapestry” and “Music,” says that King knew exactly where she was going in the studio. “Carole really knows what she wants,” he told me in a recent interview. “She’s a very astute producer and arranger.” Tapestry was around our house when I was growing up, but I connected with it more when I moved to California because it’s the blueprint for anybody who’s starting off in songwriting in LA. Carole King made this incredible transformation from Brill Building songwriter to performer, but she didn’t go crazy or self-destruct. She was able to remain a good parent and – especially now I’m a father – she has always been a role model for me. I’ll be honest that the song of hers I’ve heard the most is Where You Lead as the Gilmore Girls theme – the version she sings with her daughter. How many hours have I spent sitting on the couch with my mom harmonising to that song? It’s a tradition we’ve carried on a few times during quarantine over the phone. Abramorama will release the film theatrically at New York’s IFC Film Center starting January 19 with a special presentation featuring a Q&A with Lou Adler. Additional theatrical screenings in other US cities as well as international markets will also be announced. The IFC Center, the ultimate entertainment space for New Yorkers seeking out the best in independent film, opened in June 2005, following an extensive renovation of the historic Waverly theater. The film will also be presented as part of a special event at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles on January 26 where Adler and other special guests will be featured.In spite of everything already mentioned, the rest of Carole King's albums hold up well-enough on their own and are probably very overdue for a critical reappraisal.

I would have just turned 18 when Tapestry came out, when I was really being influenced by singers and songwriters. Carole King was an inspiration. She was a woman, and she wrote amazing songs – so you’d learn by listening to It’s Too Late or whatever, over and over. She set the stage for other singer-songwriters who came along after her, because there wasn’t a market yet and the industry didn’t know what to do with us. The radical thing about Tapestry is its refusal to be iconic. The original Shirelles version of Will You Love Me Tomorrow, arguably the best song of the 60s, is so clearly a masterpiece that King’s own version could never compete with it. Instead, she sings it slowly and plaintively, with no flattering reverb, making the answer to the title, heartbreakingly, “Probably not”. Ouch! Lucy Dacus Recently I went on a little excursion into Carole King's early '70s discography because I wanted to sort out why the same singer/songwriter who made Tapestry only seems to be remembered for the one album and the songs she wrote that were hits for other people. In doing so I hit upon a couple of discoveries and theories which I will relate to you now: When King went on tour in 1971, after releasing “Tapestry” and before recording “Music,” it was with James Taylor and a band they shared including Kortchmar and bassist Charles Larkey, King’s husband at the time. Her memoir includes the thrills of those shows, her first as a headliner in her own right. But, a noted homebody, she writes, “Even with friends on tour, even with my husband there, I often felt lonely and isolated. Normal life seemed a distant dream.” As Kortchmar puts it, “Once she’s onstage, she lights up and she digs it, and she’s very comfortable and happy. It’s before and after that she has doubts about the whole thing.”New film features exclusive interviews & never before seen performance footage from her landmark 1973 concert on Central Park's famed Great Lawn. On February 10, a live album, Home Again, will be released digital ly via Ode Records and Legacy Recordings, the catalog division of Sony Music Entertainment. Pre-save the album here . None of us singer-songwriters were known for our voices, and we had to get past that. I had to get past the fact that I wasn’t going to sound like Linda Ronstadt or Joni Mitchell or Carole King, but from Carole I learned that you can accept your own voice and work within your limitations, which was liberating. Danielle Haim