In 1979, the voice of the Carpenters went into the studio to record her first solo LP. Why didn’t it see the light of day during her lifetime?
With their rapturous harmonies, the Carpenters dominated the 70s’ airwaves, selling over 100 million records with hits like Close To You and Yesterday Once More. But by 1979, lead singer Karen was seeking a new direction… Biographer Lucy O’brien recounts her attempts to move out of the restrictive environment of the family band that had made her a star
In January 1979 Karen Carpenter was dismayed at a downturn in record sales. Though the Carpenters’ 1977 album, Passage, was home to their captivating opus Calling Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft, it was deemed patchy and, compared to the statuesque harmonies of early ballads, the band were chasing trends rather than creating their own timeless sound.
Also, her brother Richard was in rehab in Kansas, trying to beat Quaalude addiction, and that sent her into a restless panic. “I was anxious to go back to work,” she said. Even though she had her own mental health issues, struggling with long-term anorexia, Karen kept driving herself forward.
She decided to record her own album – as well as offering something new to the fans, Karen wanted recognition as a solo performer. She noted how best friend Olivia Newton-john had reinvented herself after Grease, making a dramatic transformation from soft country star to a vision in leather and skin-tight Spandex. This sparked Karen’s innate sense of competition – maybe she could explore a new direction?
Initially, there was support for the project at A&M; there was a feeling at the label that something else could be done with Karen’s magical voice. Her boss,
Herb Alpert, suggested Phil Ramone as producer, who in 1977 had produced Billy Joel’s Grammy-winning 52nd Street.
Karen assumed that Ramone would come to LA and record at A&M Studios with the usual session musicians, but Ramone’s working methods were different, with the emphasis on raw energy and live spontaneity. He persuaded her to travel to New York instead and change her approach. Though nervous about working separately from Richard, Karen agreed. “Doing something out of the family was important, a show of strength, of independence,” said Newton-john.
Just before she flew to New York, on 30 April, she telephoned Richard and started to cry. “I can’t do this without your support,” she admitted. Reluctantly, Richard told her to go ahead. “Just promise me one thing,” he said, “Don’t do disco.”
But when she arrived in New York to listen to demos with Ramone, Karen went straight for the dance tracks. At 29 years old, she wanted to make a record reflecting her autonomy and desires as a woman. She was tired of being marketed as asexual and square.
“Karen liked that sound – the 1970s disco era was an incredible time for women. It was that moment of realisation of our power and letting people know,
‘I’m here to stay and my voice needs to be heard’,” recalls Stephanie Spruill, who was to sing backing vocals on the Carpenters’ 1981 album Made In America and whose powerful soprano graces classic hits such as Donna Summer’s Hot Stuff and Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive.
Karen’s decision to cut free from the safe haven of LA showed a yearning to stretch herself as an artist, even though it was challenging. “I was scared to death… I basically knew one producer, one arranger, one studio, one record company and that was it,” she said.
In 1979, New York was smelly, dirty and crime-ridden, side streets piled high with rubbish and subway cars covered in graffiti. But it had a distinct musical identity.
DJ Larry Levan span an explosive dance mix every weekend at Paradise Garage, the Danceteria had just opened, playing new wave and British post-punk alongside funky freestyle, while drag performers stalked through the Pyramid Club in the East Village.
Rob Mounsey, a key arranger on Karen’s solo album, describes the New York sound as “chaotic and anarchic, more high-energy and less manicured than LA”. Phil Ramone chose Billy Joel’s backing band for Karen’s solo sessions, because he liked their full-tilt exuberance. Fired up with a brash energy, drummer Liberty Devitto, guitarist Russell Javors and bassist Doug Stegmeyer were Long Island natives who had played with Joel since the mid-70s.
Karen had come from a sheltered background, but she was willing to experiment and enjoyed the camaraderie of the studio. “We liked Karen a lot. She was extremely smart and a very good musician in her own right and appreciative of what everyone did,” recalls Mounsey. At first, though, she found the rock’n’roll swearing a little challenging.
“She came from a conservative southern California family and had trouble getting away from that good-girl attitude. The musicians could be a salty bunch of guys, using unprintable language, especially the F-bomb. Every time the F-word went by
Karen was sorta bothered. She talked about it, ‘Oh, that word, I don’t like that word!’ We respected her, so the guys tried to clean it up, but everyone thought that was funny.”
Devitto distinctly remembers “not being able to say what we’d normally say with Billy and the guys, but her sense of humour was so great”. One day it was Devitto’s birthday and Ramone brought in a cake from an erotic baker with a large icing penis. Devitto held the cake up to Karen. “You wanna piece?”
She gave a wry smile. “I don’t think I’ve ever been that close to one of those before!”
“That’s the kind of humour she had, she just fit right in with us,” laughs Devitto.
One of the biggest ‘what if’ questions around Karen’s solo work arises from the fact that Rod Temperton, a key songwriter on the album, offered her the songs Off The Wall and Rock With You. Much to Ramone’s dismay she decided to pass, and they ended up becoming big hits for Michael Jackson. Many now believe these tracks could have been the hits to spectacularly launch Karen’s solo career. Instead, she went for the subtler soul sound of Temperton tracks Lovelines and If We Try.
What’s striking about Karen’s solo album is how many songs reference sex – from the snappy rhythms of My Body Keeps Changing My Mind to the club pop of Remember When Lovin’ Took All Night. She was willing to express herself in a way that was at odds with the Carpenters’ audience, and with songs aimed at the gay dancefloor. “The Carpenters’ image was America’s favourite, very Disneyesque, but on this record she sounds mature, less guarded,” says Rob Mounsey. “She’s not a little girl anymore; she’s a woman.”
The risque lyrics sent out shock waves when halfway through the sessions Karen went to LA for a short visit and came back saying that her mother Agnes was horrified by the demos, particularly sexually suggestive lines in the song Still In Love With You. Russell Javors saw this as a sign that the sessions were working. “I was so proud her mother hated my lyrics!”
Even though Karen stayed chirpy during the recording sessions, it was clear there was underlying frustration – something that was conveyed in habitual behaviour. Ramone’s brotherin-law, Doug Ichiuji, visited the studio and noticed that Karen always had drumsticks. “She played them all the time. She’d be talking to Phil in the sound room and hitting the sticks on the table. I think it was a stress reliever.”
Karen’s incessant drumming hinted at a nervousness about the project, as there was a lot riding on the album. When lead arranger Bob James joined the sessions, Ramone warned in advance that his role was to be “a kind of substitute Richard”. James was not in his comfort zone. “I loved the challenge that Phil was putting in front of me, with a firmly established superstar talent. It was a very big deal and flattering to be asked,” he says. “But what could I possibly come up with? There was so much history and baggage. I knew we were setting out to do something that the Carpenters’ fans didn’t necessarily want.” A towering influence in jazz and fusion music, James is one of the most sampled players in hip-hop, with fragments from his songs Nautilus and Take Me To The Mardi
Gras used as breakbeats by everyone from RUN-D.M.C. to Slick Rick.
James had worked with jazz greats like Sarah Vaughan and he was at first optimistic. “Karen had the jazz feel, no question.” But then she seemed a little overawed and conversation was minimal. Her mother’s underwhelming response to early material had triggered Karen’s nerves. “She was struggling, her health wasn’t great, and the sessions were kinda awkward,” says James. He describes it as a fishing trip deal. “You don’t know what you’re looking for, so you try stuff and throw in a line. You might try a polka or a waltz, to see what bites.”
James got the impression that Richard had a silent psychological hold over the process. “Even though people perceived Karen as having the ultimate talent, the voice that people fell in love with, she yearned for more control over her art.”
By the time Karen completed her album early in 1980, the mood was jubilant. Ramone invited Javors along to the listening party in
“She played them all the time. She’d be talking to Phil in the sound room and hitting the sticks on the table. I think it was a stress reliever”
A&R Studios, where the album was played to Senior VP of A&M Derek Green, who had flown over from London specially for the occasion. Even though Ramone claimed later that the New York playback elicited a positive reaction, with Champagne corks popping, Javors remembers it differently, picking up on strange tension.
“It was like an oil painting in there. It was brutal,” he says. What about the Champagne popping? “All I know is, it was very tense. Somebody from A&M [Green] was sitting there stony-faced, not responding. Usually you’ll hear, ‘Oh, that’s great,’ but there was nothing like that. You could just see the air go out of the room. My feeling was, it was already dead, the decision was already made.”
Shortly after that Ramone and Karen flew to LA to play the album to Richard, Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss. The response there was even worse. Tracks were met with indifference and Moss asserted there was no hit song. Even though the sales team were poised, a catalogue number had been assigned and Karen had invested $400,000 of her own money into the project, A&M cancelled the album. Karen was deeply hurt at this rejection.
She had made a female soul album, her first compelling statement as a solo artist. Listening to the record 40 years later, what comes through is Karen’s own fresh, funky aesthetic. She sings in a higher register with an upbeat, intimate approach, a conscious departure from the lush overload of songs like Solitaire or This Masquerade. This is an album of nimble, sophisticated soul; classy and smart like Teena Marie’s Lady T or Patrice Rushen’s Pizzazz.
Unfortunately, A&M executives could not get past the freight of the Carpenters’ success and couldn’t take a risk. Its release would have strengthened Karen’s career as a solo performer and given the Carpenters a whole new audience. “It was bitter-sweet,” says Javors. “I felt bad for Karen, because she put her heart and soul into this. And her money. So, to have her opinions and desires squashed was very hard to watch.”
It is clear that Karen was at the start of a new phase, but once the album was shelved, she lacked the stamina to fight for her solo career. Devitto became aware of Karen’s struggle with anorexia when they finished recording and were doing overdubs. “Karen didn’t drink. She didn’t eat, either. I remember hugging her and feeling nothing but a sack of bones. I hate to say it that way because she was so beautiful.”
Devitto recalls that time with sadness. “I didn’t know anything about anorexia, but someone explained to me what was going on with her.
Being Italian, from an Italian family, you eat all the time. Just the concept of somebody eating and then getting rid of it was like, What? Are you from Rome? Romans used to do that to eat some more. The concept of anorexia was so foreign to me. I was like, Why? Why would you do that?”
Even though her health was deteriorating, Karen knew how to conserve enough energy to sing well in the studio. Resolutely professional during recording, she went to great lengths to keep her private anguish secret.
A&M then coaxed Karen back into the studio with Richard (for 1981’s Made In America), as if the solo outing had just been an embarrassing mistake. Karen’s ex-lover Tom Bahler, a good friend of Ramone’s, considers her solo record to be a pivotal point. “She could have done a number of records with Phil. I think she was beginning to free herself. But she was not free – she had one foot in the Carpenters and one foot in the new Karen Carpenter,” he says. Because she was a drummer she could sing with rhythmical drive and “kick booty”, whereas Richard was a classically trained pianist and “more of a ballad guy. Maybe he wasn’t crazy about her record because it was so different”.
It would have taken Karen great strength to resist her family and stand her ground as a solo artist. Bahler believes that Karen needed to rebel against the Carpenters’ juggernaut, that she had many possibilities available to her. “But I think in that family, she was swimming upstream. No… she was swimming up the waterfall.”
Karen died of complications from anorexia at the age of 32. At the behest of fans, her selftitled album was finally released in 1996, 13 years after her death. The record has become an important part of her legacy as a vibrant, iconic artist.
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