Three iconic albums recorded at the same studio at the same time
In the history of popular music, there are several places in time that people would pay top dollar to visit if time machines existed. Woodstock would be a pretty favourable place among many music fans, with iconic performances by Jimi Hendrix, Carlos Santana and The Who among the 1969 festival’s bejewelled lineup.
Indeed, historical festivals are a good way to go if you’re looking for a variety of performances. But what about the studio? As we discovered in Peter Jackson’s The Beatles: Get Back, there is something rather extraordinary about seeing our favourite artists in the intimate studio setting. The late 1960s sessions, during which The Beatles recorded material for Abbey Road and Let It Be, brought some cracking music, interpersonal insight and plenty of drama.
If I could, I would love to return to the spring of 1967 and pay Abbey Road Studios a visit. Here, I would have the chance to pop in and see The Beatles laying the tracks for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, which contains one of the finest songs ever recorded, ‘A Day In The Life’. As an added bonus, just down the corridor in another suite, the up-and-coming psych-rock band Pink Floyd were busy recording their seminal debut album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.
That double whammy is sure to pique the interest of any budding rock fanatic. However, for folk and soft rock fans out there, I have a rare triple whammy. In January 1971, Carole King stepped into A&M Studios in Hollywood to record her seminal second album, Tapestry. As her record producer, Lou Alder, recalled in an episode of the PBS documentary series American Masters: “The Carpenters were in Studio A; Joni Mitchell doing Blue in Studio C; Carole was here [in Studio B].”
Throughout the 1960s, King was already a successful songwriter, penning hits for big names like The Shirelles and Aretha Franklin alongside her then-husband Gerry Goffin. However, as the decade wound to a close, she sought eminence in her own right, setting herself the task of writing and recording a consummate pop album.
The album was known for its minimalist production approach. Alder was intensely aware of the common downfall of over-production and wanted to maintain the listener’s focus on King’s emotional and momentous vocal and piano work. At the time, James Taylor was in a relationship with Mitchell and paid King frequent visits.
The legendary singer-songwriter had the pleasure of overseeing the creation of three classic 1970s albums and contributed guitar tracks to Blue and Tapestry. “The first thing you knew about it was, here’s this incredible material, and people heard it and said, ‘Yeah, that’s for me.’ It was like a first-pitch home run,” Taylor told the Los Angeles Times of Tapestry in 2021. “Of course, that wasn’t true. It came after a decade of work.”
When Tapestry hit the shelves in February 1971, it rose to number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and remained in the top spot for five weeks. Joni Mitchell’s fourth studio album, Blue, arrived in June, receiving universal acclaim and rising to a respectable number 15 in the US. Meanwhile, The Carpenters’ third album, Carpenters, peaked at number two following a May release.
