Murray
Well-Known Member
The Carpenters
Yesterday Once More:
A Critical Reassessment Of Their Work
by Paul Grein
Goldmine Magazine, March 8, 1991
PART ONE OF THREE
The Carpenters is a '70s issue?
Well, of course. Karen and Richard Carpenter were one of the
most successful music acts of the '70s, and were arguably the
most successful American act. Furthermore, they at once
reflected and helped shape the "cooling of America" values
that dominated pop music and society in general in the first
half of the '70s.
But the Carpenters' relationship to the decade that spawned
them was much more complex than that. For all their success
in the '70s--eight gold albums and ten gold singles between
1970 and 1978--Karen and Richard were out of step with the
music and values of much of their own generation. At a time
when "Stairway To Heaven" and "Aqualung" were being
played in college dorm rooms from coast to coast, the
Carpenters were on a Bob Hope TV special singing "We've
Only Just Begun"; Back when most young people were deeply
distrustful of the establishment, Karen and Richard were at the
White House being toasted by President Nixon as "young
America at its very best."
The Carpenters, then, both reflected their time and stood
outside of it. To be sure, the fact that the Carpenters went
against the grain is one reason that they hit so big. They filled a
void in the rock-sated music world of the 1970. In the same
month that Karen and Richard landed their first gold album,
Close To You, gold records went to albums by Neil Young,
Joe Cocker, Jethro Tull and Grand Funk Railroad.
In a 1981 interview, Richard Carpenter suggested that the
Carpenters' role in bringing back a softer music style made
them a target. "We spearheaded a return to a softer sound with
'Close To You,' so the rock critics really laid into us. Whereas
the Captain and Tennille were sort of in our bag, but didn't take
near the flak that we did."
Indeed, the Carpenters came to be regarded as "the enemy" by
many in the rock world. Tom Nolan shed light on this
phenomenon in a 1975 article on the Carpenters:
"So here are these neatly-dressed kids, a polite-seeming
brother-and-sister team, materializing like a weird hallucination
in the midst of acid-rock and offering their alternative to 'In-A-
Gadda-Da Vida,' singing, of all things, a bank commercial. The
grumbling began, and grew louder in proportion with their
success. You'd think they were an arm of the government, the
way some people reacted! What was it they thought the
Carpenters represented? Domesticity, perhaps? The nuclear
family? Saturdays spent shopping for sofas at Sears?
Capitalism itself?"
Precisely. It was the Carpenters' image, rather that their music,
that most critics and naysayers were reacting to. When Bette
Midler said of Karen, "She's so white, she's invisible," she was
mocking Karen's persona, not her talent, a distinction that at
the time was not always clear. (For the record, Midler has since
said that she regrets the jokes. " She had tremendous talent,
and I was a jerk for saying those things," Midler told Redbook
earlier this year. "I was young and stupid and crazy and
though I was doing profound and enduring stuff. But I wasn't--
I was adding to the ugliness in the world.")
The Carpenters are not blameless on the image issue. Indeed,
at times it seemed that Karen and Richard and their handlers
were doing everything they could to hurt their chances of
being taken seriously with some goody-goody publicity
materials, saccharine album covers, overly commercial,
novelty-oriented singles and tacky variety specials.
The tragedy is that the Carpenters' goody-two-shoes image
came to overshadow their music and kept them from receiving
their due for making some of the best recorded of their time.
And more to the point, it kept Karen Carpenter from receiving
widespread recognition as one of the finest singers of her
generation, a singular and enduring talent on par with Barbra
Steisan, Dionne Warwick and Linda Ronstadt.
Things might have turned differently. Karen recorded a solo
album in 1979 with Grammy-winning producer Phil Ramone,
best known for his work with Billy Joel and Paul Simon. The
album would likely have opened up a second career for Karen
that could have carried her through the '80s and beyond.
Instead, the album was shelved and she reteamed with Richard
to record an conventional Carpenters album (Made In
America) which did little to reverse their negative career
momentum. Three years later, she died of heart failure, the
result of an eight-year battle with anorexia nervosa. She was
just 32.
As marvelous as the Carpenters recorded legacy is, it is
impossible to listen to those records without feeling a sense of
loss for what might have been, if Karen had just had the
courage and self-confidence (and encouragement and backing)
to take the next step.
THE CARPENTERS: AN APPRECIATION
Karen and Richard Carpenter assembled a body of work that
rivals Dionne Warwick's string of hits with Burt Bacharach and
Hal David as the most captivation proof of the artistic potential
of non-rock pop.
The indispensable ingredient in the Carpenters' success was
Karen's extraordinary voice, which radiated humanity and
hope , warmth and wisdom. No female singer of the modern
pop era commands greater vocal control or technical skill. And
non comes close to Karen in conveying compassion or
understanding.
**PAGE 2**
The most distinctive aspect of Karen's style was her
conversational ease and intimacy. This understated approach
was evident from the opening line of the Carpenters'
breakthrough single, "Close To You." But Karen's whispery
vocal on that 1970 smash scarcely hinted at the power and
intensity that she held in reserve. Those qualities first became
evident the next year when she tore through "Rainy Days And
Mondays" and "Superstar" with a still riveting authority.
Remarkably, Karen was all of 21 when she recorded those
songs (and Richard was just 24 when he wrote the haunting
arrangements). Even now, one is amazed at how Karen
seemed to possess the wisdom of the ages when she was
barely out of her teens.
Karen's voice was best described by Tom Nolan in a 1974
Rolling Stone cover story on the Carpenters. Nolan observed
that Karen expressed "fascinating contrasts: youth with
wisdom, chilling perfection with much warmth."
While Karen was the star of the act, much of the Carpenters'
success was due to Richard's production, song writing and
arrangement skills. With long-time collaborator John Bettis,
Richard wrote six of the Carpenters' hits, including four that
reached the Top 10. Richard also proved highly successful in
finding songs by other writers, many of which have become
standards. The Carpenters helped to introduce such prized
songs as "We've Only Just Begun,""Superstar" and "I Won't
Last A Day Without You." Richard showed a special flair for
revamping oldies, reviving both famed hits like the Beatles'
"Ticket To Ride" and forgotten misses like Ruby and the
Romantics' "Hurting Each Other." Richard received five
Grammy nominations for his arrangements, including those
for "Close To You," "Superstar," "Sing" and "Calling
Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft."
Given their combined talents, it's not surprising that Karen and
Richard found a responsive audience for their music. What is
striking, even in retrospect, is that their impact was so massive-
-and instantaneous. The Carpenters didn't just hit they
exploded. "Close To You" shot to #1 in just six weeks,
becoming the first of six consecutive million-sellers for the
duo.
The Carpenters' tremendous impact was reflected in the voting
for the 13th annual Grammy Awards. Karen and Richard won
Grammys for Best New Artist (beating Elton John and Anne
Murray, among others) and Best Pop Vocal Performance by a
Duo or Group (Beating the Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, the
Jackson Five and Chicago). They won the latter award the
following tear as well.
The duo's songs were also recognized by the motion picture
academy. "For All We Know" won the 1770 Academy Awards
for best original song; "Bless The Beast And Children" was
nominated for the Oscar the following year.
The Carpenters specialized in music that used to be called
"easy listening" and is now called "adult contemporary." One
problem with those terms is that they carry connotations of
background music, while classics like "Rainy Days " and
Superstar" are absolutely foreground; they demand listener
involvement. In a literal sense, though, the term "adult
contemporary" defines the Carpenters precisely. Their best
music is thoroughly adult--and also completely contemporary.
It is also utterly timeless. Perhaps because their music was
never trendy, it still sounds fresh today. That's quite a feat in
the disposable world of pop music., where last year's hit often
sounds like, well, last year's hit.
HOW NOT TO BUILD AND IMAGE IN THE MUSIC
BUSINESS:
For quick energy, Karen Carpenter sometimes ate a peanut-
butter cup, but not an amphetamine.
We know that, because it was included in a special supplement
on the Carpenters published in Billboard magazine in
November 1973. The special, which the Carpenters sanctioned,
also contained this little nugget: "Soft rock stars like the
Carpenters are proud to belong to the establishment. Their
lifestyles as well as their music reflects traditional middle-class
American values."
Virtually all of the Carpenters' early press materials included
this sort of thing. A 1973 bio noted that, "Their personal appeal
is rather that of wholesome, unaffected Boy and Girl Next
Door." And then it really started to ladle on the syrup:
"Richard and Karen know what's happening, but unlike many
of their musical peers, they don't feel the need to be negative
about it, to rebel, or to tout convention by outlandish dress,
stage manners and hairstyles. They don't put people on; they
don't put people down. They're sincere. For the Carpenters,
being 'high' means a natural, spirited buoyancy that needs not
aid from chemical preparations. And this comes through a-
plenty in their music...It takes a lot of self-knowledge and a
deeply-ingrained sense of values NOT to go Hollywood or
'play super-star' when you've made it as big as the Carpenters
have. But that's what Richard and Karen, after all, are about.
They're sincere, wholesome, unpretentious living proof that
these virtues can survive and, more important, can be lauded
and identified with by American youth. The Carpenters are the
most popular vocal duo in the country. The next time anybody
grumbles worriedly about the direction of the young
generation, just remind him of that!"
Even people who loved the Carpenters were apt to feel a little
queasy after wading through all of that. So imagine how
people felt who didn't particularly like the Carpenters.
The early press materials also seemed determined to position
the Carpenters as being anti-rock. A 1970 bio stated that the
Carpenters were creating a "counter-revolution" and that they
were "bring back the 3H's--hope, happiness, harmony--that
have been missing in this last musical decade of dissonance,
cynicism and despair disguised as 'relevance.' " the bio noted
that the Carpenters had begun to make headway a few years
earlier, " but, alas, the year was 1966, and the rumblings of the
hard-rock youth quake was pre-empting the criterion of talent
with that of trendiness."
This white-hat, black-hat positioning popped up again in
Digby by Diehl's liner notes for The Singles 1969-1973, Karen
and Richard's first greatest hits album. "Their music is
refreshing relief in our stormy age of social chaos, economic
problems and bad news, when the turbulence of the Rolling
Stones or Janis Joplin seems more in tempo with the times."
The battlelines were drawn. It was Karen and Richard against
the rock establishment. And in a rock-dominated business,
that's fighting a losing game.
The irony? The Carpenters' early records show strong rock
influences. Karen's 1966 debut single on Magic Lamp Records,
"Looking For Love" backed with "I'll Be Yours," is rhythmic,
propulsive pop-rock that is light years from easy listening And
the Carpenters' first two albums for A&M featured such pop-
rock staples as Neil Young's "Nowadays Clancy Can't Even
Sing," the Youngbllds' "Get Together," Tim Hardin's "Reason
To Believe" and the Beatles' "Ticket To Ride" and "Help."
More important, the albums include liberal use of
contemporary rock shadings and textures.
END OF PART ONE OF THREE
Yesterday Once More:
A Critical Reassessment Of Their Work
by Paul Grein
Goldmine Magazine, March 8, 1991
PART ONE OF THREE
The Carpenters is a '70s issue?
Well, of course. Karen and Richard Carpenter were one of the
most successful music acts of the '70s, and were arguably the
most successful American act. Furthermore, they at once
reflected and helped shape the "cooling of America" values
that dominated pop music and society in general in the first
half of the '70s.
But the Carpenters' relationship to the decade that spawned
them was much more complex than that. For all their success
in the '70s--eight gold albums and ten gold singles between
1970 and 1978--Karen and Richard were out of step with the
music and values of much of their own generation. At a time
when "Stairway To Heaven" and "Aqualung" were being
played in college dorm rooms from coast to coast, the
Carpenters were on a Bob Hope TV special singing "We've
Only Just Begun"; Back when most young people were deeply
distrustful of the establishment, Karen and Richard were at the
White House being toasted by President Nixon as "young
America at its very best."
The Carpenters, then, both reflected their time and stood
outside of it. To be sure, the fact that the Carpenters went
against the grain is one reason that they hit so big. They filled a
void in the rock-sated music world of the 1970. In the same
month that Karen and Richard landed their first gold album,
Close To You, gold records went to albums by Neil Young,
Joe Cocker, Jethro Tull and Grand Funk Railroad.
In a 1981 interview, Richard Carpenter suggested that the
Carpenters' role in bringing back a softer music style made
them a target. "We spearheaded a return to a softer sound with
'Close To You,' so the rock critics really laid into us. Whereas
the Captain and Tennille were sort of in our bag, but didn't take
near the flak that we did."
Indeed, the Carpenters came to be regarded as "the enemy" by
many in the rock world. Tom Nolan shed light on this
phenomenon in a 1975 article on the Carpenters:
"So here are these neatly-dressed kids, a polite-seeming
brother-and-sister team, materializing like a weird hallucination
in the midst of acid-rock and offering their alternative to 'In-A-
Gadda-Da Vida,' singing, of all things, a bank commercial. The
grumbling began, and grew louder in proportion with their
success. You'd think they were an arm of the government, the
way some people reacted! What was it they thought the
Carpenters represented? Domesticity, perhaps? The nuclear
family? Saturdays spent shopping for sofas at Sears?
Capitalism itself?"
Precisely. It was the Carpenters' image, rather that their music,
that most critics and naysayers were reacting to. When Bette
Midler said of Karen, "She's so white, she's invisible," she was
mocking Karen's persona, not her talent, a distinction that at
the time was not always clear. (For the record, Midler has since
said that she regrets the jokes. " She had tremendous talent,
and I was a jerk for saying those things," Midler told Redbook
earlier this year. "I was young and stupid and crazy and
though I was doing profound and enduring stuff. But I wasn't--
I was adding to the ugliness in the world.")
The Carpenters are not blameless on the image issue. Indeed,
at times it seemed that Karen and Richard and their handlers
were doing everything they could to hurt their chances of
being taken seriously with some goody-goody publicity
materials, saccharine album covers, overly commercial,
novelty-oriented singles and tacky variety specials.
The tragedy is that the Carpenters' goody-two-shoes image
came to overshadow their music and kept them from receiving
their due for making some of the best recorded of their time.
And more to the point, it kept Karen Carpenter from receiving
widespread recognition as one of the finest singers of her
generation, a singular and enduring talent on par with Barbra
Steisan, Dionne Warwick and Linda Ronstadt.
Things might have turned differently. Karen recorded a solo
album in 1979 with Grammy-winning producer Phil Ramone,
best known for his work with Billy Joel and Paul Simon. The
album would likely have opened up a second career for Karen
that could have carried her through the '80s and beyond.
Instead, the album was shelved and she reteamed with Richard
to record an conventional Carpenters album (Made In
America) which did little to reverse their negative career
momentum. Three years later, she died of heart failure, the
result of an eight-year battle with anorexia nervosa. She was
just 32.
As marvelous as the Carpenters recorded legacy is, it is
impossible to listen to those records without feeling a sense of
loss for what might have been, if Karen had just had the
courage and self-confidence (and encouragement and backing)
to take the next step.
THE CARPENTERS: AN APPRECIATION
Karen and Richard Carpenter assembled a body of work that
rivals Dionne Warwick's string of hits with Burt Bacharach and
Hal David as the most captivation proof of the artistic potential
of non-rock pop.
The indispensable ingredient in the Carpenters' success was
Karen's extraordinary voice, which radiated humanity and
hope , warmth and wisdom. No female singer of the modern
pop era commands greater vocal control or technical skill. And
non comes close to Karen in conveying compassion or
understanding.
**PAGE 2**
The most distinctive aspect of Karen's style was her
conversational ease and intimacy. This understated approach
was evident from the opening line of the Carpenters'
breakthrough single, "Close To You." But Karen's whispery
vocal on that 1970 smash scarcely hinted at the power and
intensity that she held in reserve. Those qualities first became
evident the next year when she tore through "Rainy Days And
Mondays" and "Superstar" with a still riveting authority.
Remarkably, Karen was all of 21 when she recorded those
songs (and Richard was just 24 when he wrote the haunting
arrangements). Even now, one is amazed at how Karen
seemed to possess the wisdom of the ages when she was
barely out of her teens.
Karen's voice was best described by Tom Nolan in a 1974
Rolling Stone cover story on the Carpenters. Nolan observed
that Karen expressed "fascinating contrasts: youth with
wisdom, chilling perfection with much warmth."
While Karen was the star of the act, much of the Carpenters'
success was due to Richard's production, song writing and
arrangement skills. With long-time collaborator John Bettis,
Richard wrote six of the Carpenters' hits, including four that
reached the Top 10. Richard also proved highly successful in
finding songs by other writers, many of which have become
standards. The Carpenters helped to introduce such prized
songs as "We've Only Just Begun,""Superstar" and "I Won't
Last A Day Without You." Richard showed a special flair for
revamping oldies, reviving both famed hits like the Beatles'
"Ticket To Ride" and forgotten misses like Ruby and the
Romantics' "Hurting Each Other." Richard received five
Grammy nominations for his arrangements, including those
for "Close To You," "Superstar," "Sing" and "Calling
Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft."
Given their combined talents, it's not surprising that Karen and
Richard found a responsive audience for their music. What is
striking, even in retrospect, is that their impact was so massive-
-and instantaneous. The Carpenters didn't just hit they
exploded. "Close To You" shot to #1 in just six weeks,
becoming the first of six consecutive million-sellers for the
duo.
The Carpenters' tremendous impact was reflected in the voting
for the 13th annual Grammy Awards. Karen and Richard won
Grammys for Best New Artist (beating Elton John and Anne
Murray, among others) and Best Pop Vocal Performance by a
Duo or Group (Beating the Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, the
Jackson Five and Chicago). They won the latter award the
following tear as well.
The duo's songs were also recognized by the motion picture
academy. "For All We Know" won the 1770 Academy Awards
for best original song; "Bless The Beast And Children" was
nominated for the Oscar the following year.
The Carpenters specialized in music that used to be called
"easy listening" and is now called "adult contemporary." One
problem with those terms is that they carry connotations of
background music, while classics like "Rainy Days " and
Superstar" are absolutely foreground; they demand listener
involvement. In a literal sense, though, the term "adult
contemporary" defines the Carpenters precisely. Their best
music is thoroughly adult--and also completely contemporary.
It is also utterly timeless. Perhaps because their music was
never trendy, it still sounds fresh today. That's quite a feat in
the disposable world of pop music., where last year's hit often
sounds like, well, last year's hit.
HOW NOT TO BUILD AND IMAGE IN THE MUSIC
BUSINESS:
For quick energy, Karen Carpenter sometimes ate a peanut-
butter cup, but not an amphetamine.
We know that, because it was included in a special supplement
on the Carpenters published in Billboard magazine in
November 1973. The special, which the Carpenters sanctioned,
also contained this little nugget: "Soft rock stars like the
Carpenters are proud to belong to the establishment. Their
lifestyles as well as their music reflects traditional middle-class
American values."
Virtually all of the Carpenters' early press materials included
this sort of thing. A 1973 bio noted that, "Their personal appeal
is rather that of wholesome, unaffected Boy and Girl Next
Door." And then it really started to ladle on the syrup:
"Richard and Karen know what's happening, but unlike many
of their musical peers, they don't feel the need to be negative
about it, to rebel, or to tout convention by outlandish dress,
stage manners and hairstyles. They don't put people on; they
don't put people down. They're sincere. For the Carpenters,
being 'high' means a natural, spirited buoyancy that needs not
aid from chemical preparations. And this comes through a-
plenty in their music...It takes a lot of self-knowledge and a
deeply-ingrained sense of values NOT to go Hollywood or
'play super-star' when you've made it as big as the Carpenters
have. But that's what Richard and Karen, after all, are about.
They're sincere, wholesome, unpretentious living proof that
these virtues can survive and, more important, can be lauded
and identified with by American youth. The Carpenters are the
most popular vocal duo in the country. The next time anybody
grumbles worriedly about the direction of the young
generation, just remind him of that!"
Even people who loved the Carpenters were apt to feel a little
queasy after wading through all of that. So imagine how
people felt who didn't particularly like the Carpenters.
The early press materials also seemed determined to position
the Carpenters as being anti-rock. A 1970 bio stated that the
Carpenters were creating a "counter-revolution" and that they
were "bring back the 3H's--hope, happiness, harmony--that
have been missing in this last musical decade of dissonance,
cynicism and despair disguised as 'relevance.' " the bio noted
that the Carpenters had begun to make headway a few years
earlier, " but, alas, the year was 1966, and the rumblings of the
hard-rock youth quake was pre-empting the criterion of talent
with that of trendiness."
This white-hat, black-hat positioning popped up again in
Digby by Diehl's liner notes for The Singles 1969-1973, Karen
and Richard's first greatest hits album. "Their music is
refreshing relief in our stormy age of social chaos, economic
problems and bad news, when the turbulence of the Rolling
Stones or Janis Joplin seems more in tempo with the times."
The battlelines were drawn. It was Karen and Richard against
the rock establishment. And in a rock-dominated business,
that's fighting a losing game.
The irony? The Carpenters' early records show strong rock
influences. Karen's 1966 debut single on Magic Lamp Records,
"Looking For Love" backed with "I'll Be Yours," is rhythmic,
propulsive pop-rock that is light years from easy listening And
the Carpenters' first two albums for A&M featured such pop-
rock staples as Neil Young's "Nowadays Clancy Can't Even
Sing," the Youngbllds' "Get Together," Tim Hardin's "Reason
To Believe" and the Beatles' "Ticket To Ride" and "Help."
More important, the albums include liberal use of
contemporary rock shadings and textures.
END OF PART ONE OF THREE