THE OFFICIAL REVIEW: "CLOSE TO YOU" (SP-4271)

[Chris May]

“CLOSE TO YOU”​

Catalogue Number: A&M SP-4271
Date of Release: 08/28/70
Chart Position- U.S.: #2; U.K.: #23; JAPAN: #53
Album Singles: “(They Long To Be) Close To You”/"I Kept On Loving You"
"We've Only Just Begun"/"All Of My Life"
Medium: Reel/Vinyl/8-track/Cassette/CD​

Track Listing:

1.) We've Only Just Begun 3:04 (Williams/Nichols)
2.) Love Is Surrender 1:59 (Ralph Carmichael)
3.) Maybe It's You 3:09 (Richard Carpenter)
4.) Reason To Believe 3:02 (Tim Hardin)
5.) Help 3:02 (Lennon/McCartney)
6.) (They Long To Be) Close To You 4:34 (Bacharach/David)
7.) Baby It's You 2:50 (Bacharach/David/Williams)
8.) I'll Never Fall In Love Again 2:56 (Bacharach/David)
9.) Crescent Noon 4:09 (Richard Carpenter)
10.) Mr. Guder 3:17 (Richard Carpenter)
11.) I Kept On Loving You 2:13 (Williams/Nichols)
12.) Another Song 4:22 (Carpenter/Bettis)

Album Credits:

Producer: Jack Daugherty
Arrangements and Orchestrations: Richard Carpenter
All Vocals: Karen and Richard Carpenter
Drums: Karen Carpenter and Hal Blaine
Keyboards: Richard Carpenter
Bass: Joe Osborn and Danny Woodhams
Woodwinds: Jim Horn, Bob Messenger and Doug Strawn
Engineer: Ray Gerhardt and Dick Bogert
Art Direction: Tom Wilkes
Photography: Kessel/Brehm Photography
Ludwig Drums and Wurlitzer Pianos

 

[Mark-T]

From "Begun" to "Another Song", not a missed beat to be found.
This album is still a joy to listen to- and it is the one that convinced me Karen and Richard were an act I would love for a lifetime.

Favorite cuts: "Begun" (which started it all for me), "Reason to Believe" (the first country flavored song I ever liked), "Love is Surrender",
"Maybe Its You", "Baby Its You" (shoulda been a single), "Crescent Noon".

After all these years, this album still brings a rush of emotion like no other work since.

 

[Dave]

The '60's-styled trappings...the amaturish musician-ship...the rejection by RCA and the contract with A&M, almost "Not-Meant-To-Be"...

...That was then...

...This is NOW!!!


The hit singles "Close To You" and "We've Only Just Begun" ushered in the-'70's with a breezey freshness...

The filler like "I Kept On Loving You", "Help" and "Reason To Believe" were just as deserving of airplay as the hits...

While the "personal songs" like "Crescent Noon", "Another Song" and "Mr. Guider" are the pleasant balladry to mid-tempo story-telling satires that still keep the listener in awe to this day...

The Brother-&-Sister-Carpenters, Karen & Richard finally ARRIVE!!


Dave

 

[aaflyer98]

For their second album with A&M, Richard & Karen prove that they are the best. Many many songs on this album could have been singles. Simply one of their best.

 

[Jeff]

Close To You? Classic, well-worn and the actual beginning of something big!.

Jeff

 

[jfiedler17]

Not an album I usually listen to its entirety - their covers of "Help!" and "Reason to Believe," for one, I just never got into - but this album is nonetheless truly where the Carpenters found their sound and deservedly scored their first major commercial success, and there's enough strong "filler" here that it's surprising that there were only two singles released from the album. My fave cuts are the two big hits, of course, but I like "Love Is Surrender" and "I Kept on Loving You" just as much, if not even more!

Jeff F.

 

[enigma]

I agree with most of what was said I love this record. Its one of my favorite Carpes record and I still listen to it regularly. I do not like Mr Guder dispite Karens great drumming and vocals but other than that I love this record top to bottom. Highlights for me are Crescent Noon and Baby Its You as well as Reason To Believe. I also love Karens drumming on the Help and especially Another Song where she does her best drumming outside of the live venues. I noticed right off the great leap that was made between Offering and Close To You records what a difference! This record was not the best record but it is certainly amongst the best The Carpenters did. Just my thoughts.

 

[Harry]

A superb outing through and through, CLOSE TO YOU remains a favorite to this day. Start to finish there's not a track on there that I don't like, and there's much to love.

Back in 1970, I'd gotten the "Close To You" single, so I was familiar with that track and its flip side, the magnificent Nichols/Williams song, "I Kept On Loving You". Without much background information, and all of the overdubbing, I'd assumed that Carpenters were a multi-personed group, with several girl and guy singers, and perhaps some that played instruments. My mind pictured a "New Christy Minstrels" type of group. Once I learned that it was pretty much all Karen and Richard, a brother and sister, doing just about everything, I was even more impressed.

I waited throughout the summer for an album to come out. When I heard selections from that album playing on the radio (gee, what a novel idea!), I ran out to buy it. I was thrilled as I perused the track-listing that there were more Bacharach-David songs, a few home-grown songs and even another Beatles cover. I was disappointed though not to find "Ticket To Ride", that other record that I remembered them doing on it, and I was not yet aware of OFFERING.

What a treat when I finally got home and listened to it straight through a couple of zillion times. What a terrific second single this "We've Only Just Begun" was. What a great version of "Help" this was. Isn't that neat how "Close To You" is extended on the album?" Even the filler tunes were exquisite in their arrangement and execution, from "Love Is Surrender' to "Crescent Noon". And what a great finish to the album with "Another Song" being a vocal that turns into a wild instrumental!

For me it was another fantastic album from those "Herb Alpert-people" with the mustard-colored label, and an album that I cherish to this day.

Most of the songs here have gotten remix treatments somewhere along the line. Not counting the 5.1 treatments, the most recent addition to my collection was "Another Song's" remix on that Japanese SWEET MEMORY set.

Harry
NP: CLOSE TO YOU, Carpenters

 

[A&Mguyfromwayback]

I heard Ralph Carmichael in concert once (arranger/orchestrator for people like Nat King Cole and Ella, as well as one of the first in the 60's to even attempt contemporary Christian music) saying that Richard Carpenter came to him after hearing "Love Is Surrender" in a church youth musical Ralph had written, asking if the Carpenters could record it with the lyrics slightly changed to be less specifically Christian and more appropriate for a pop album.....Ralph said he didn't know them, but gave his permission - and boy, was he glad he did! (And he loved their version.)

I love the little nods to Sergio Mendes in that song, by the way - the countoff, the little yell, etc....

 

[Chris May]

I remember the first time I heard this album. I already was enthralled with "We've Only Just Begun" and "(They Long To Be) Close To You" (as I had recently heard them on "The Singles, 1969-1973"), and was pleasantly surprised when I heard the extended fade out on "Close To You" featured on the album mix.

"Love Is Surrender" was the third runner up. That catchy electric piano tag at the top of each verse, and those harmonies; especially at the end featuring Richard in falsetto had me sold immediately. My other favorites included "Baby It's You" (again featuring Richard's falsetto range harmonies), the Bacharach/David classic "I'll Never Fall In Love Again" and the album's closer featuring exotic time signatures, excerpt from Handel's "Messiah" etc.-- "Another Song".

This album is truly the beginning of classic "Carpenters". It is a great place to start for anyone wishing to give themselves a fair shot of ear candy. This one is timeless. -Chris

 

[no1kandrfan]

Close To You was the 1st Carpenters album my sister brought home. I believe she listened to it once, before I took it over, and I never gave it back. She's still a Carpenters fan to this day, but she doesn't match my devotion.

CTY (the single) was all over the dial here in California, as I would imagine it was in the rest of the country. I heard it about 10 times in 1 day (yes, I counted), and loved Karen from the moment I first heard her sing. The album pretty much confirmed what I already knew - this was the start of something big!

My favorite album tracks are Love Is Surrender, Mr. Guder, and Help - which should have been a single, and a few years later I read that Richard had planned on releasing it. I've always wondered how the public would have reacted to it - after all it was a big change from the softness of CTY.

I'll Never Fall In Love Again still amazes me - all those voices, and it was all "them". This concept was too much for my 10 year old mind to grasp, and I was fascinated when watching the Jerry Visits.. special years later, to hear Richard talk about the process, and watch them in the studio doing back-ups for Hurting Each Other.

I probably listen to this album at least once a month - one of my all time favorites.

Mike

 

[Ed Bishop]

**** stars...holds up quite nicely, a little filler, but overall, a great listen, pure pop at its 1970 best.

 

[Dave]

Yes, CLOSE TO YOU is the album which got Karen & Richard "officially" noticed...!! Suprising how many versions of the title-track, as well as "We've Only Just Begun" and even "A Song For You" and "Superstar" (...Whoops! THOSE are from "another album"!) just keep croppin' up!

...I also found another "Love Song", but that's by Lani and that group called Punch, whom "this duo" could otherwise have "stayed on the level of", had it not been for this...
BREAKTHROUGH!!!


Dave

 

[Dave]

I was very suprised at how this LP seemed to be emphasized on the last BBC Broadcast on Herb Alpert & The A&M Story... That episode, Part 3, of course, revolved around Herb & Jerry's discovery of Karen & Richard Carpenter and how the Burt Bacharach-written Title-Track by these two was such a hit... Of course, it was a treat to hear Burt's comments, as it was so uncanny of how to him that, that NEW version became such a runaway, Suprise Hit, when he first heard it, along with Herb's This Guy's In Love..., done two years earlier...

The instrumentation seemed so "better pronounced" through my computer's speaker via AOL; the piano, strings, woodwinds and even a HARPSICHORD...

--And there's even a HARP!! --Who Played It?! Is it Gayle Levant...??!!

--And the keyboards so expertly, professionally played by Richard, as opposed to a "studio guy"--just something that struck me so deeply hearing it "scoped out" like that...



Dave

 

[Mike Blakesley]

The real hero of the "Close to You" saga, to me, is Larry Levine. He's the one who had the courage to say to Herb, "Hey man, you sound terrible on that song." How many of us would have the guts to say that to our boss, especially when the boss is a guy who had made all the right moves up to that point?

If not for Larry, Herb probably would've released the single himself and it would've made #92 on the charts, and Richard and Karen might never have gotten hold of it.

 

[Dave]

Well, don't forget the Broadcast actually features "Herb's Version" of Close To You...

Those who don't yet know of his Lost Treasures CD must be wondering if that's him singing it and when it was done and how to get a hold of it; otherwise that's pushing one of "his 'latest' products", for sure!


Dave