In the Living Room With Carole King

In the Living Room With Carole King: A Response to A Natural Woman

As with an album I really like, sometimes it takes me a while to absorb fully a book that keeps me engaged. I received Carole King’s memoir, A Natural Woman, as a gift this past Christmas. For the past six months, I’ve been at her side while she told me all about her music and who she is. At least, it felt that way, as her book reads much like a conversation – relatively chronological, but unbound by time in the way it segues through anecdotes, themes, people, and story.

For fans of Carole King’s music, the book offers commentary on the historical context, personal relationships, and inspirations behind the songs they’ve come to know so well. For others, it acts an introduction to those things or gives them a path for exploring the sides of Carole’s music they might not have known so well or overlooked. For me, it was a bit of both, as I can only know second hand what things stirred underneath the famous Tapestry album of 1971, which I’d only known at a musical level when I started the book.

Music, and really any sort of art, is a way for someone who creates to speak to their audience. Even so, when we read a book, or listen to an album, or analyze a piece of art, we are at the mercy of our own consciousness – our own thoughts and perceptions in response to what we are taking in. Carole echoes this at the end of her memoir, when she describes the applause of her audience during the Living Room Tour performance that acts as the book ends for her story. Despite the problems she describes in the opening chapter, the show goes on:

The welcoming roar engulfs me. I wave to the audience, take a deep, appreciative bow, and remind myself that their applause isn’t only for me. They’re clapping for significant events in their own lives that have little to do with me - falling in love, marching for peace, dancing at friends’ weddings, serving in Vietnam or the Peace Corps, losing a parent, conceiving a child, going through a difficult divorce - passages for which my songs happen to be the soundtrack.

A memoir like this one allows us to put away these experiences, and let the artist do the talking. It’s something her book does well. Hearing the music she’d created from her point-of-view, seeing her painting of late 20th century and modern America, and glimpsing into the stories of her family, friends and contemporaries gave me the opportunity to really sit back and listen to Carole, an educational and humbling experience.

And at the end of the book, I am clapping right along with her audience of the Living Room Tour. But instead, my applause has everything to do with her.

#bookreview #CaroleKing #music