Chapter Nine
The first really excellent thing happened when I resumed writing with Gerry in 1969. As much as I enjoyed writing with Toni, it felt good to write with Gerry again. I continued to write with Toni and also, separately, David Palmer.
Lou had moved Ode’s distribution and offices to A&M Records, of which the “A” was Herb Alpert and the “M” was Jerry Moss. Raise your hand if you can think of a trumpet player before or since Herb Alpert who was able to parlay a series of easy pop hits into an empire as hugely successful as A&M.
Herb and Jerry had purchased Charlie Chaplin’s former studio, at the corner of Sunset Boulevard and La Brea Avenue, and converted it into a compound of A&M offices. Conveniently located fifteen minutes from Laurel Canyon and ten minutes from Wallich’s Music City on Sunset and Vine, the former movie lot provided a casual, independent environment for Alpert, Moss, Adler, and the day-to-day employees who facilitated A&M’s creative and business endeavors. With a dress code ranging from casual to outrageous, an easygoing executive management style, comfortable recording studios with state-of-the-art equipment, and an assortment of low-lying buildings with glass-paned doors, large windows, and balconies with lots of plants, A&M offered my generation of fugitives from the East Coast gray-flannel fifties a congenial atmosphere conducive to creative thinking. While the executives, business people, album cover artists, recording engineers, and assistants prospered in the informal ambiance of A&M’s offices, the writers and artists whose music underwrote the operation were lionized.
With the City album in the cellar, Lou had invited me to his new office to propose that I record another album for Ode, this time as a solo artist.
“Look,” he said. “If an artist doesn’t record a song of yours that you really like, you can record it and release it on a Carole King album. That’ll get your song out there. Isn’t that what you want?”
Yes. It was.
Between Lou’s logic and the attraction of working at A&M, I agreed to strive for success as a solo recording artist. But then I developed a new boundary. I didn’t want to be a star.
Everyone around me thought I was out of my mind. I was being offered an opportunity for which so many people had been praying their whole life and all I could say was, “Please believe me. I don’t want to be a star.” My rationale was that I viewed success and stardom as two different things. Successful recording artists were played on the radio, were respected by the public, and had longevity. The songs they sang moved and inspired people. Stars were hounded and mobbed, their privacy was nonexistent, and they were under constant pressure to reach #1 and stay there.
Kootch and I had a recurring conversation about this. One day, while he was sitting on my living room couch holding a cup of strong black coffee, he expressed once again his strongly held opinion that I had what it took to be a star, and I should settle for nothing less.
“And you shouldn’t aspire to be just any star,” he said. “You should be the biggest star there is. You got what it takes to be number one!”
“But Danny, stars fall.”
“Yeah,” he said, setting his cup down on the hatch-cover coffee table. “But it’s pretty fuckin’ great to be at the top. The top is where you want to be!”
“I don’t want to be number one,” I said. “There’s no place to go but down. I’d rather be number five, or even number ten, and stick around longer.”
I didn’t realize I was expressing a guiding principle of my career. I was hoping for career longevity, and to my utter amazement and eternal gratitude I achieved it. And if that weren’t enough, one of my albums would actually reach #1 and stay there for a very long time. But Danny and I engaged in such conversations before Tapestry was released, when I had no way of knowing what my future held. I just wrote songs, worked hard, created each day’s blueprint from scratch, and hoped to high heaven that I was doing all the right things to give my daughters and myself a good life.
High heaven must have thought I was doing the right things, because in spite of intermittent relationship confusion, 1970 was humming along pretty smoothly. Louise and Sherry seemed to be flourishing, I was cowriting songs prolifically, and our household seemed almost normal considering the rapidly changing times. I was practicing yoga. And I was dating occasionally, though not with much enthusiasm.
Then the second really excellent thing happened. Charlie came over, told me he wanted to build a life with me, and asked me to marry him. Oh, joy!!! We began planning a wedding and reception to be held on September 6, 1970, in the front yard of what would once again be our house on Wonderland Avenue. Charlie, too, was Jewish, which made it easy for our respective families and us to agree that a rabbi would perform the ceremony. Though I was rebellious in other ways, major family occasions always seemed to bring me back to my roots. My attachment to Judaism was more about tradition than religion. I liked the chain of familiar rituals that had sustained generations before me, and I didn’t want to break it.
I was twenty-eight and Charlie was twenty-three the day we were married. My friend Stephanie made a simple white A-line wedding dress for me. It was ankle-length, with a scoop neck, long sleeves, and no lace. A garland of white flowers, woven by Joel O’Brien’s then wife, Connie, cascaded through my hair. We honored the custom of men covering their heads at Jewish services by providing yarmulkes. Though our friends were dressed in varying degrees of unconventional attire, the ceremony was traditional. Charlie wore tails and a top hat that added eight inches to his already six-foot-one height. I was five foot two in my bare feet.
Charlie was waiting with the rabbi in front of the chupah when I made my entrance. At eight and ten, Sherry and Louise were achingly beautiful as they accompanied me. They wore long-sleeved sky blue and mint green dresses that I had made to match their eyes. My making their dresses was a tribute to my Grandma Sarah and her sister, Lillie, who as new immigrants had contributed to the support of their families by working as seamstresses in their homes.
Louise and Sherry stood just behind me during the entire ceremony. Though I clearly heard the rabbi say, “I now pronounce you man and wife,” little Carol heard, “I now pronounce you a family.” Charlie broke the glass with a firm stomp of his heel, and then amid the chorus of friends saying “Mazeltov!” we sealed our vows with a kiss, for which Charlie had to bend way down while I stood on tiptoe. Then we stepped away from the chupah. Friends and family members crowded in with congratulatory hugs, kisses, and handshakes. Watching Louise and Sherry alternately running around happily with their friends and interacting comfortably with Charlie’s and my friends, it struck me that some of Charlie’s friends weren’t much older than my children.
How happy I was! And oh, how blissfully unaware I was that I would now have to balance the needs of a younger husband with those of two children who weren’t his biological offspring, and somehow fit my own needs into the picture.
The third really excellent thing that happened in 1970 was that I was reintroduced to James Taylor, and this time he was fully present.