Chapter Six
I was powerless to fix the Troubles, so I redirected my frustration into creating songs that I hoped would lift, educate, or entertain a listener. If I got it right, a song might do all three.
I wrote the songs for Colour of Your Dreams variously in California, Idaho, and New York and recorded them piecemeal in 1992 and 1993 with Rudy Guess at his studio in California. I released the album in 1993 in partnership with Hilton Rosenthal on a small independent label called Rhythm Safari. The 1994 Colour of Your Dreams Tour was memorialized in a video titled Carole King—In Concert.* In addition to the members of my band, In Concert featured Slash of Guns N’ Roses as my guest. My decision to pair musically with Slash was perplexing to many of my fans, but I was being true to my custom of expanding my repertoire to include musical styles with which I was relatively unfamiliar. I had been inspired to write “Hold Out for Love” by Slash’s guitar work on “Sweet Child O’ Mine.” When Slash came to Rudy’s studio to play on my song, the parts I had been imagining in my head came alive with his passion, energy, and the skill of a good musician who knew exactly what I wanted. When Slash performed live with me on “Hold Out for Love” on the Colour of Your Dreams Tour, I got a tremendous kick out of watching audiences’ skepticism turn to appreciation.
Why “Colour” with a “u?” For the same reason I still call a cell phone a “mobile” (rhymes with “no guile”). I had been in Ireland. When I travel I tend to pick up accents, customs, and spellings. The Irish spellings and names for certain things stayed with me long after I had returned to the United States. Another thing that stayed with me was the result of time I had spent with Irish filmmakers, notably Neil Jordan and Jim Sheridan. After my return to America, I was moved by a number of films to write songs for Colour of Your Dreams. A decision by the leading male character at the end of After Dark, My Sweet prompted me to write “Lay Down My Life.” The impassioned monologue delivered by Sean Penn as Terry Noonan in State of Grace led to “Just One Thing.” And I wrote “Wishful Thinking” after watching Let’s Get Lost, Bruce Weber’s documentary about jazz trumpeter Chet Baker. Filmed in 16-millimeter black-and-white, Weber’s stark documentary pulled no punches in showing Baker’s tragic deterioration from a charismatic, talented young man in the 1950s to a wasted junkie in the 1980s. As painful as I found the film, it put me in the right mood to write a song about the desire for something unattainable. In addition to being a song about romantic yearning, “Wishful Thinking” embodied my wish that Chet Baker’s personal history had not turned out as badly as it did.
I wrote and recorded “Now and Forever” at the request of Penny Marshall, who was directing a film called A League of Their Own about female baseball players in the 1940s. I had expected the biggest hurdle to be delivering something Penny liked. When I heard that she was going to use my song over the end-title credits, I was elated. And then I got the Call.
I picked up the phone with a cheery “Hello?” and heard a voice say, “Caaarole?”
I didn’t need caller ID (not yet in common use) to tell me who it was. If I’d had any doubt, I would have known for sure when I heard Penny say, “We have a prahhhblem.”
With Madonna starring in the movie, the problem was that Madonna’s contract required Penny to use one of her songs over the end-title credits. With Solomon-like wisdom, Penny put Madonna’s song over the end titles and shot a new sequence for the beginning of the film over which she used “Now and Forever.”
I took so much pleasure from learning to play, on guitar, a song from R.E.M.’s Out of Time album called “Losing My Religion” that I was moved to write, on guitar, the song “Colour of Your Dreams.” As at Burgdorf, composing on guitar helped me write more simply because I was limited to the chords I could play on that instrument. I was thrilled to have Rudy’s expertise to put across ideas I had imagined but couldn’t play. Knowing his abilities, I often wrote with what Rudy might play in mind. One of my favorite things to do when we were recording was to “play Rudy.” With the tape rolling, I communicated through body language where I wanted Rudy’s solo to go next. He never failed to understand and deliver the music I was hoping to hear, which he took to the next level by adding improvisations of his own.
And in “Friday’s Tie-Die Nightmare,” with phrasing reminiscent of that of Bob Dylan, I described a dream I’d had about the New York City subway.
It was not my first song about the subway.