Little Girl Blue (15 page)

A review for
Make Your Own Kind of Music
in
TV Guide
detailed the gimmick that plagued the series: “
Each number is introduced
by the labored use of a letter of the alphabet. Twenty-six cringes a week. Did they have in mind a
Sesame Street
for adults? Possibly. But no adult over the age of nine will be either entertained or amused. . . . The musicians on this show are genuinely talented. Why didn't they leave them alone?” Another review, this one in the
Village Voice
, denounced the series's producers and detailed their mistakes, “
like dressing Karen Carpenter
in fashions only a little less sickeningly sweet than those worn by Trisha Nixon. By the second or third show it was beginning to look like a disaster area. The Carpenters, who are both gifted and likeable, deserve something better.”

Despite the benefits of new friendships and professional associations, in addition to heavy publicity for their new LP, the duo's first encounter with television left them discouraged with the medium. It would be another five years before they agreed to host another television show. Interviewed for FM100 some years later, Karen recalled the NBC endeavor as a mistake, saying they were “
violently mishandled
. Our TV exposure was disastrous. We realized it immediately, and we shied away from television.”

A
T JUST
five feet, four inches tall, Karen Carpenter was barely visible on stage when surrounded by her battery of drums. “The audience was rising out of their seats to see where this voice was coming from,” recalls Evelyn Wallace. “There was no one out front so they were asking, ‘Where is that beautiful voice coming from?'”

By 1971, Karen's drum kit had grown to include four melodic toms. “They were built on rollers, and you could roll them right into your four-piece or five-piece kit,” explains Hal Blaine, who, along with drum tech Rick Faucher, designed the set Karen used in concert. Howie Oliver of Pro Drum in Hollywood built the kit for her after she saw Blaine's setup. “
There are only three kits
like mine in the world,” she explained in a 1974 piece for
Melody Maker
. “The other two belong to Ringo and Hal Blaine.”

Blaine's original set was designed in a way that the sound of each drum decayed with its pitch “bending” slightly at the end. “It started out with me using my timbales as tom-toms and tuning them down,” Blaine explains. “I loved that sound, and eventually I wanted an octave of them. I put together this drum set that everybody called the Hal Blaine monster because it was humongous. I knew nothing about design patents in those days, but I was a Ludwig drummer so I sent them all the dimensions. I was sure they'd call it the Hal Blaine set—like the Gene Krupa and the Buddy Rich, but they called it the Octa-Plus. Now that's
a fine name, but Ludwig didn't even mention me. They did send me a thank-you letter.”

One of Karen's worst nightmares began to unfold during the summer of 1971, one that had been mounting since the Carpenters' earliest concert engagements. “
There is no balance
, no center of attention,” wrote Lester Bangs, reviewing an appearance in San Diego for
Rolling Stone
. “Here are six people on a stage singing and playing various instruments, and your eye just keeps shifting from one to another without ever finding a nexus to focus on.”

True, the in-person Carpenters were a disjointed group and in need of a focal point. The obvious solution was to bring the group's musical focus out from isolation and into the spotlight. “
Hire a drummer
,” wrote one music critic in Omaha, Nebraska. “Why stick a lovely girl with a tremendous voice behind a set of traps and have her pump highhat cymbals and shoot an occasional rim shot when by rights she should be out front moving to the music while she sings?”

Taking cues from the critics, Richard and the Carpenters' management decided Karen's drums were in the way and ultimately disconnecting her from the audience. “You can't sing like that and hide behind a drum set,” manager Ed Leffler told her.

Leffler and Sherwin Bash agreed Karen could be showcased more effectively at center stage. “
Richard and I tried desperately
to get her away from the drums,” Bash recalled. “She was very reluctant. The drums were kind of a security blanket for her. This was a chubby young lady who could hide some of that chubbiness behind all of these drums. She was kind of a tomboy, and the drums were traditionally a male instrument. She was kind of asserting herself in a certain way. The girl vocalist out front was a role that she wanted to achieve, but she was insecure about getting out there. She wasn't sure she was slim enough, svelte enough, pretty enough, or any of those things.”

In early 1971 Karen responded to suggestions that she should abandon her drums for a solo microphone in the spotlight. “
A lot of people think
that since I'm the lead singer I should be fronting the group,” she said. “I disagree because I think we've got enough chick singers fronting groups. I think that as long as I can play, I want to play.”

According to fellow drummer Frankie Chavez, “There weren't that many girls playing in the forefront at the time. It was a very unique thing that a girl could play
and
sing at the same time and do it well on both accounts. It wasn't a smokescreen, she could actually play!”

Richard avoided confronting Karen on several occasions, but their setup posed additional challenges when it came to the medium of television. It was difficult for camera angles, and much attention was needed in order to effectively present Karen and her drum kit for each sequence. During the filming of
Make Your Own Kind of Music
it was recommended that she stand to sing some selections. “Oh, no, no, no, no, no,” she told them. “I'm the drummer here.” But the directors were looking for variety in the sequences and felt watching someone sing from behind the drums was odd and would get old after a few numbers.

“Karen wasn't as concerned that people would be able to see her,” explains Evelyn Wallace. “It was that she was absolutely in love with those drums, and she just didn't want to leave them. But she finally gave in. The poor kid didn't know what to do.” Having been the group's only drummer, Karen had played exclusively for the first two years of live Carpenters performances. It is no wonder she lacked confidence to step into the spotlight and was reluctant to embrace the role of “star” of the group. Richard had long been the musical prodigy, and she was his tagalong. “Karen was really an
accident
,” explains Frenda Franklin. “I don't think the family really understood her talent. Nobody got it. Nobody thought she was a good singer. Nobody nurtured her singing. To them she was backup.”

Allyn Ferguson, who worked with Karen on the set of the television series, says her poise and self-assurance took a dive when she was singing center stage without her drums. “Her confidence was sitting behind those drums,” he says. “It was a part of her, and she was a damn good drummer. When she was not behind the drums her confidence and her security just disappeared. She didn't seem to care much for her own singing. When she had to do a solo out front she was very uncomfortable and showed no confidence. She didn't know whether she was any good or not. She was not a stand-up singer in any way because she didn't believe in herself that way.” For
Make Your Own Kind of Music
Karen lip-synched the musical numbers without even a prop microphone. With her hands free she made awkward attempts at gestures of emphasis and emotion.

With the television series in postproduction, the Carpenters took a brief hiatus and drove the family's Continental Mark III cross-country to visit family and friends on the East Coast in Baltimore and New Haven. It was during this drive that Richard finally spelled out to Karen the need for her to leave the drums. “You've got to get up,” he said.

“
I said to Richard
, ‘Oh, no you don't,'” she recalled. “It hurt me that I had to get up and be up front. I didn't want to give up my playing. Singing was an accident. Singing seriously came long after the drums.” The two finally reached a compromise in which Karen agreed to step out front to sing ballads like “For All We Know” and “Superstar.” In return, she could remain at the drums to play on the more up-tempo, rhythmic numbers like “Mr. Guder.” Before leaving New Haven, Richard hired the band's new drummer, longtime friend Jim Squeglia, whom he had once played alongside in a band called the Scepters during high school. Touring with the Carpenters, Squeglia would take on the stage name of Jim Anthony, his first and middle names.

Appearing on
The Mike Douglas Show
the following month, Karen announced her plans. “
In the middle of
our in-person show I'm going to go out front and do some tunes,” she said. “I'm never going to give up playing, no way. . . . I love it. I wouldn't be doing it if I didn't. People think it's a gimmick. I don't care what they think; it's not a gimmick. It's my instrument.”

Out front, Karen was unsure of herself, to say the least. She was rigid, uncomfortable, and incapable of disguising her fears. “
Petrified
,” she recalled in 1976 of her initial reaction to the switch. “You have no idea. The fear! There was nothing to hold onto, nothing to hide behind. My drums, by this time, I had so many of them all you could see were my bangs. You couldn't see the mouth, you couldn't see the hands, you couldn't see anything. We're out on the road and we're doing all the hits and the dummy is buried behind a full set of drums.”

Frankie Chavez feels certain that it was torture for Karen to have been removed from her drum kit. “That broke her heart when she
couldn't do both from behind the kit and had to go out front,” he says. “It's different being out front. I've done both, and being out front it's as if your tether has been cut. There's a certain joy you get from playing the kit that you'd miss if you were asked to not do it anymore.”

“
I didn't know
what to do,” Karen later explained. “My mouth still worked well, but I didn't know what to do with my hands or whether to walk or stand still or sit down or what the heck to do. Before, everything was working. It was a cinch to play and sing and have a good time. But when I got out there, until I got comfortable with that, I just kind of planted myself and didn't really do anything.”

With each successive tour, Karen's role as the group's drummer lessened as new drummer Jim Anthony took over on more and more songs. “
I understood her reluctance
,” said Sherwin Bash, “but the moment we were finally able to get her out there it was all part of history. She loved being out front. She was basically the master of ceremonies for every show. She was the one that people watched. Richard never had the charisma to keep the audience's attention. It didn't matter. Even when he was speaking you didn't take your eyes off Karen.”

W
ATCHING TELEVISION
late one night in the fall of 1971, Richard came across a 1940 movie called
Rhythm on the River
, in which Bing Crosby played the ghostwriter for a washed-up songwriter named Oliver Courtney. Courtney's most famous song, “Goodbye to Love,” was mentioned throughout the film but never heard. Richard was immediately taken with the title and imagined an opening line of it as a potential song: “I'll say goodbye to love / No one ever cared if I should live or die.” At that point his lyric stopped.

Handing the song idea over to John Bettis, Richard and the group set off on a brief European tour. Writing of the song continued little by little with the choral ending written in London and additional work being done once they reached Berlin. “
Richard didn't have
the melody completely finished,” Bettis recalled. “He had a verse or two but didn't quite know how he was going to form it. It's an odd melody with very long phrases. The song was tricky because of the phrasing.”

Returning to the States with Bettis's contributions, Richard sat down with “Goodbye to Love” and came up with a novel idea. In constructing the arrangement he imagined the unlikely sound of a melodic fuzz guitar solo. Jack Daugherty suggested they bring in an established session guitarist and recommended Louie Shelton or Dean Parks, but Richard was relying on Daugherty less and less by this time and chose to contact a young member of Instant Joy, a band that backed Mark Lindsay's opening act for several Carpenters concerts. Karen phoned guitarist Tony Peluso, explained the project, and asked him to meet her and Richard at A&M's studio B.

Peluso was tall and thin. His hair was long and unkempt, halfway down his back. It seemed a mismatch at first. Even he was apprehensive and unsure the combination would work effectively. He could not read music but was a quick study, and when Richard gave him a chord sheet with instructions to play the melody on the first couple of bars and then improvise, the recording was complete in only two takes. The result was one of the first known uses of a fuzz tone guitar solo on a ballad. “
When I got the record
I actually cried the first time I heard it,” John Bettis recalled. “I had never heard an electric guitar sound like that and have very few times since. Tony had a certain almost cello-sounding guitar growl that worked against that wonderful melancholia of that song. The way it growls at you, especially at the end, is unbelievable. It may be my favorite single I've ever had with anybody.”