Carole King

Carole King's 1971 Ode Records masterpiece, Tapestry, endures as an artistic benchmark, a cornerstone of '70s pop, an industry phenomenon, and – most of all – as an album that must be listened to over and over again, not only for its hit single sides ("It's Too Late" b/w "I Feel the Earth Move," "So Far Away" b/w "Smackwater Jack") and definitive standards ("Will You Love Me Tomorrow?" "(You Make Me Feel Like a) Natural Woman," "You've Got A Friend") but simply for its evocative grasp of a long-ago moment forever caught in amber. Original album producer and Ode Records founder Lou Adler, who served as King’s de facto manager for those years, was also her West Coast music publishing rep for nearly a decade prior to Tapestry – no one was closer to Carole King’s music, except Carole King herself. He knew the power of her meticulously crafted piano & vocal demo recordings, going back to the Brill Building era. Adler always sensed that King’s solo moments in concert (before and/or after the band joined her onstage) came closest to capturing the spirit of her demos, especially the Tapestry demos. The humble roots of Tapestry are those very demos that Carole King would share with Lou Adler at the Ode office in the A&M Records lot on LaBrea Avenue – a “college campus” of a music community, he fondly remembers, remodeled from the studio once headed by Charlie Chaplin. For those who have lived and loved the album down the years, from LP to 8-track to cassette to its half-dozen different CD configurations, this Legacy Edition finally offers a chance to experience Carole King’s vision in its original “unplugged” brilliance – winter, spring, summer or fall. “Within her piano,” Adler sums up, “you could hear a string part, you might hear another background part. When I took those demos around, like to Snuff Garrett at Liberty Records who was cutting Bobby Vee at the time, I couldn’t get them back. They liked the demo as a record. So when I started thinking about the production of Tapestry, that demo sound – don’t go too wide, make sure Carole is in the middle, you can visualize her sitting behind the piano – made it much more personal. The demos had a lot to do with that.” TAPESTRY: LEGACY EDITION finally realizes Adler’s decades-long dream concept, as it marries a newly remastered version of the classic 12-song album with a second CD containing previously unreleased live piano-voice concert versions of songs from the album (in the same order) recorded in 1973 (Boston; Columbia, Maryland; and New York’s Central Park), and 1976 (San Francisco Opera House). The two-CD package, the latest addition to the deluxe Legacy Edition Series, will arrive in stores April 15th on Epic/Ode/Legacy, a division of SONY BMG MUSIC ENTER­TAIN­MENT.