Carole King “didn’t want to be a solo artist” in her early years, her producer Lou Adler has told Uncut. As a successful publisher, Adler had serviced King and her husband Gerry Goffin’s demos through much of the ‘60s, and later produced her Tapestry album. Adler was confident that she c...
Carole King “didn’t want to be a solo artist” in her early years, her producer Lou Adler has told Uncut.
As a successful publisher, Adler had serviced King and her husband Gerry Goffin’s demos through much of the ‘60s, and later produced her Tapestry album.
Adler was confident that she could have been a solo artist and set about signing her to Ode record label in the late 1960s – but King insisted that she would only sign as part of a band (The City, featuring Danny Kortchmar, Charley Larkey and drummer Jim Gordon). “She wanted to record but she didn’t want to be a solo artist.” He said.
According to Adler, this trepidation stemmed from the fact that King had bad stage fright – she had a minor hit single in 1962 with the Goffin-King song “It Might As Well Rain Until September”, but didn’t enjoy even the relatively small amount of exposure it brought.
He said: “She was shy and she didn’t want to go on the road and perform. So she put herself in the middle of this group. That was her cover so to speak.”
Even in the group, she was known to shy away from and even cancel gigs – that is until James Taylor invited her to accompany him on stage and she found a way into being a performer.
Read the full story about the making of King’s Tapestry album in the July issue of Uncut, in UK shops now.
Carole King is performing at British Summer Time Hyde Park on 3 July.
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