The 2022 show Carole King wanted nothing to do with: “She’s a very private person”
In 2012, Carole King released her autobiography, titled A Natural Woman.
Spanning an incredible 484 pages, she began her story right from the very start of her Jewish upbringing in Brooklyn, and took the reader through to the triumphant success of becoming one of the world’s most beloved, rewarded, and prolific singer-songwriters; the epithet was basically made for King.
The excavation of her personal life began and ended with the novel. She was candid about most things, such as the details of her doomed partnership with Gerry Goffin, the arduous process of creating her chart-topping 1971 album, Tapestry, and the ins and outs of four marriages, as well as her experience of motherhood and activism. It’s a lot to serve up on a silver platter for the public, and the star only wanted to do it once. King was up close and personal in the book, so that in the rest of her life she could steer away from the limelight, like households on Halloween who prop the sweets up outside the front door so they don’t have to answer the door.
Within the book, King paints a rather dire picture of the industry, admitting that she and Goffin had to write “enough hit songs to cover our mortgage”, while she had to fund her own sessions to make Tapestry. The industry is driven by saving money, King shared with the reader, but it is also driven by making money, lots of it, and fast.
But when Broadway came knocking, the sweet bowl was empty, and the owner was furious at being disturbed. Beautiful: The Carole King Musical caused great stress for King, who rejected the idea of seeing her life fraudulently depicted on the stage, having already done that and more. Paul Blake, the producer of the 2022 musical, shared at the time that King “was very much against any show about her life”.
He added, “She just didn’t want it. She’s a very private person, and she just didn’t want it on the stage. She wrote a book, and that’s it. The publishers who owned the songs she wrote felt there was a show there, and they wanted me to just go ahead and make the show. I said, ‘But, you know, she’s not in favour of it’, but they said, ‘Just go ahead’.”
When the show finally hit the stage, King was a no-show. The star didn’t give her public endorsement of the musical for three months, and with each show, the cast fell deeper into a plausible sense of despondency, thinking that the whole affair was truly against the wishes of the only person who mattered.
However, King finally showed up at a show, alone and in disguise, wearing glasses and a wig, speaking to no one and remaining aloof, so much so that even her biggest fans didn’t recognise her in the crowd. Sometimes, seeing is believing, and by the end of the performance, King had changed her mind entirely.
Blake, who was there the night of her anonymous attendance, shared, “She just fell in love with it. I mean, nobody knew she was there. But she went onstage at the end, and everyone went nuts. The cast started crying. We had a photographer there, and when that went out in the world, it became a huge, huge hit. And she’s been a great ambassador for the show ever since.”
