The one project Carole King said she would never finish: “I cannot watch”
For Carole King, every one of her songs were about more than music for an assembly line.
Despite writing tunes as if it was second nature, hearing records like Tapestry is raw proof that no one else sings a tune quite like the one who wrote it, and even when working against the all-time greats like Aretha Franklin, she always managed to find a way to make her songs her own every single time. It’s easy to be proud of it after the fact, but King remembered certain pieces of her career that were too hard for her to finish.
Granted, it’s not like King didn’t know how to divorce herself from the kind of songs she was writing. It’s the nature of the beast to have other people sing her songs when working with her husband, Gerry Goffin, but even when making the best material that they could have hoped for back in the day, there was always going to be pieces of songs that had traces of her DNA laced throughout them. And when you think about it, a lot of it has to do with the way that Goffin wrote.
While most people associate the songwriting duo with someone like John Lennon and Paul McCartney today, Goffin and King had a lot more in common with the likes of Elton John and Bernie Taupin. Both of them were masters at their craft, but every now and again Goffin could write that single line that could cut through someone’s heart without really trying.
I mean, think of a song like ‘Will You Love Me Tomorrow’. That’s far from the most complicated song in the world. Everyone has had trepidation wondering if this latest flame is actually going to be with them forever, but in only a few words, Goffin managed to put the listener in the room with the protagonist, almost like watching a romance novel play out in real time as King’s voice soars above everything.
A lot of that may have been coming from a genuine place, but given how their marriage dissolved, the fallout wasn’t going to be pretty. King knew that she needed to move on, but judging by the tales of suspected infidelity that are shown in the Broadway show Beautiful: The Carole King Musical it’s not like there weren’t some mixed feelings about her leaving. Even when watching the show, King realised that the performers may have had the facts right a little bit too well.
We’ll never know what life was like behind the scenes with them, but King said that the Broadway show was too much for her to take, saying, “I went out into the ante-room and I said, ‘I’ve gotta get some air. I can’t stay for the second act.’ I cannot watch the second act ’cause I knew. I will never go see it. I can’t watch the second act.” But don’t let that be a knock against what the story is supposed to be.
If anything, the fact that it hit so close to home is a testament to what the show was supposed to be. King’s life was far from perfect in many respects, and while there was nothing that was as troubling as living through it, the fact that she was able to look at her past in the face that one time is at least commendable for someone going through that kind of hardship.
Any other musician in King’s shoes would have probably never wanted to see the show for as long as they lived, but the pain that you feel about seeing your life onstage doesn’t have to be all bad. If anything, it’s a reminder that you’re still human, and no matter how much that heart hurts by the end, that’s only because it’s beating for all the right reasons.
