About book Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon - And The Journey Of A Generation (2008)
I should begin this review by confessing some shocking ignorance. I am not in the right age group to be the prime demographic for this book. I was a young woman in the Big 80s and those times were vastly different from the heyday of Carole, Joni and Carly's music. The earth mothers had donned power suits and the free love had given way to a darker and more paranoid era sexually. The First Wave had already happened and women my age were told we could "have it all". Although we firmly believed this, not a few of us were daunted and even conflicted by the high expectations that we would "bring home the bacon and fry it up in the pan." This was the era of Superwoman.My musical memories of Carly Simon, Joni Mitchell and Carol King mainly take place in the car where their songs were featured in heavy FM rotation during my childhood. As the scalding pleather of the bench seat in the big floating mid 70s car scalded my terry cloth or polyester shorted bottom, I might hear Anticipation, Up on the Roof or You've Got a Friend...Frankly, it sounded like music for grownups who liked to talk about relationships a lot and I was not ready for that yet.And, by the time I was ready, I tended to gravitate toward male singers (preferably depressive and gay) when I wanted to wallow in relationship drama (It was the eighties, remember?) The consciousness raising righteous mamas of my early childhood would have probably shuddered to see me take refuge in Sinatra (the 80s were a big era for the Rat Pack retro that these women fought against so tenaciously) and gin when some guy kicked me to the curb rather than a sister who could relate to my pain. So how does an ignoramus who mainly remembers Carly for the song in the ketchup commercial and who, for years, confused Carole King with Carole Kane (Andy Kaufmann's ditzy wife Simka in Taxi) get to this book?It may be because my daughter has recently discovered Carly from her soundtrack work in some Winnie the Pooh movies. My preschooler really likes her songs! Or it might be my general interest in music history. It may be the pull of distant childhood memories as my own daughter is now the age I was in 1969/70. Or, it may be that these 3 women seem so cool...so real...and so interesting to me now that I am middle aged. This triumverate of female singers present a genuine face. It was still about the music and their very personal relationship to crafting songs. Compare this to someone like Madonna who must reinvent herself constantly on the external side.I have learned a gold-mine of information about the era and the impact Carole, Joni and Carly had. This is a highly detailed book and you practically need to take notes to keep all the inter-relationships between the cast of rock luminaries featured within. Between them, these three women knew everyone who was anyone in the music scene as it was exploding in the 1960s and 1970s. If your interest extends to a desire to "know all" you will not be disappointed.I won't suddenly relegate all my Morrissey and Bauhaus CDs to the scrap heap...I am what I am and the soundtrack to my life is on a different trajectory than someone who was 20 the year I was born. But, this book has prompted me to take a new listen to some vaguely remembered songs and, perhaps, appreciate them more this time around.
Stayed In Bed All Morning . . .. . . just to finish reading this book. It's a long one, especially when you devour each little word contained in the many footnotes, but worth every hour spent. Reading this thorough, well-researched, and respectful biography of three notorious singer-songwriters, Carole King, Joni Mitchell and Carly Simon, from their days as young, aspiring artists to current days as grandmothers, was like listening to their music for the first time again. I couldn't help but break out my vinyl, stored in a moving box in the attic. Sheila Weller clearly spent years gathering facts, information and quotes from those closest to these icons, (and in some cases from the women themselves), and braids the three stories together to paint a historical account of modern folk/rock/pop music. She doesn't merely regurgitate already published material from music reviews and Rolling Stone articles, but instead offers similarities and differences that made this reader appreciate the subjects as individuals as well as their contributions and reflections on the women's movement in general. A surprising ribbon running through this braid is James Taylor, who had profound yet differing relationships with all three. What also ultimately struck me about the book was how deeply interested I was at the beginning and how it merely passed the time toward the end. I think it's a direct reflection on the careers of these women: exciting, fresh, ultra-talented in the beginning. . .but in the end, it becomes a biography of ordinary--albeit ambitious--women who've led extraordinary lives while looking for love and fulfillment, and endured tremendous public scrutiny. One thing the critics in our society can't take from them is their recorded music--their true biographies--and I, for one, will listen to them sing for the rest of my life. Very well written, very well done and I certainly recommend this book to fans of these musicians (as well as James Taylor, and others like Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young), and to those interested in the music scene as it developed and evolved through the 1960s-1980s.
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The biggest problem I had with this book was with the way Weller organized the book. Instead of giving us the entire Joni story or the entire Carly story, she gave us what Carly, Joni and Carole were each doing during a span of years. I understand why she did this; as readers, we were supposed to see the parallels between these women. But instead of seeing the parallels, I was just confused and annoyed. It was nearly impossible to keep track of who all these people were and what significance they had and all I really wanted to do was read all about one woman, not bounce back and forth. It seems to me that rock biographies are always difficult to read. There are a ton of people and places to keep track of and sometimes what seems like an interesting subject can get bogged down in those details. Girls Like Us sometimes has that problem but by in large, the amount of interesting details in the lives of these three women keep the book compelling.
—Katie K
Interest level for this book will depend on your age and personal recollections of events and music discussed. Joni, Carole, and Carly are almost a full generation ahead of me, but their music was the soundtrack for my childhood beginning around age nine or ten. Much of the info in the book went right past me, as I had no associations on which to pin it, but it's easy enough to scan past that stuff.The subtitle, "the journey of a generation," is important if you want to know what this book is like. Of course, it revolves around the lives of these three fine and talented ladies, but there's so much more here. Sheila Weller has an unbridled enthusiasm for all things related to this era of social upheaval and change. She can't bear to leave out any exciting tidbits she's discovered about the people, politics, war, women's rights, arts, and spiritual searching of the '60s and '70s. This results in many footnotes and parenthetical remarks. Sometimes hard to follow, but a lot of the tidbits are interesting and help to flesh out the scene in which Joni and Carly and Carole were making their personal journeys.Weller dishes on lots of other celebrities in both the New York and L.A. arena including Graham Nash, Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson, Bob Dylan, and Jackie O. And of course, James Taylor, who had intimate relationships with all three of these ladies.It's clear that the author put her whole heart and soul into producing this book. It's stunning to look at the interview and research information at the back of the book. She tells how, when she would get discouraged with the project, her husband reminded her, "You're writing social history." I think that's an accurate description of this big fat triple biography. Right on, Sheila! Far out! Groovy!
—Jeanette "Astute Crabbist"
Joint bio (mostly alternating chapters, covering their whole lives chronologically) of 3 singers of about the same vintage. Some stuff I've heard a million times (Warren Beatty inspired "You're So Vain"; James Taylor was a heroin addict......), some with which I was unfamiliar (Carole King and approximately her fourth husband had a long-running legal battle with Idaho neighbors about their wish to close off a private road that previous owners had let everyone use; "Anticipation" was about a date with Cat Stevens; Joni Mitchell stayed mad at Jackson Browne for decades after their relationship ended and wrote "Coyote" after a brief affair with Sam Shepard). Mostly a very bad book, especially relative to the eventfulness of their lives. In particular......1. The social history hook is an awkward fit, mostly relying on the occasional "comes at a time when...." graft. After 10 pages or so of who slept with whom after saying what at a party, there will be a paragraph along the lines of "And Joni's fifth album was released at a time when more and more Americans were getting divorced", and then back to how many drugs David Crosby was using.....2. Odd and frequent use of footnotes -- unless you think your book will remain in print 500 years, there is no need to explain what a "baby boomer" is, for example. Other footnotes could easily have been integrated into text, or just omitted; the author seems to have included every fact uncovered in her research (the drummer for these sessions was X, whose stepbrother was later hospitalized with schizophrenia........) without reference to whether it actually advances the main narrative.3. Absurdly long sentences in which she tries to smuggle in more ideas or qualifiers via prolific hyphenation (in her ladies-of-the-canyon long dress, she spoke severely to the never-trusted I'm-just-a-vagabond guitarist with a kind of no-secrets-between-old-friends knowingness.......). Whoever edited this book should return the paycheck.4. Not a real music critic. She dutifully lists every album and some song titles from it, along with its Billboard chart rating and maybe a quote from a review, but does not seem to have any independent insight into rock or folk music.
—David
