 Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni
Mitchell, Carly Simon—And the Journey of a Generation
Sheila Weller (2008)
They
paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
With a pink hotel, a boutique
And a swinging hot spot
Don’t
it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got
Till it’s gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
I remember listening to my mom’s albums
as a kid. A product of the 50s and 60s, she had amassed a sizable
collection of artists that included The Beatles, Carole King, and the folk
rock singer songwriter whose lyrics appear above, Joni Mitchell. She
showed me how to adjust her record player to accommodate the 45s almost as
soon as I could walk and I would lie there for hours, letting the music
wash over me. But I am a second generation fan. The early great female
artists forever altered the expectations and aspirations of my mother’s
generation, and left my generation with options that felt like more than
possibilities, more like guarantees.
Just last month, the culmination of Sheila
Weller’s years of research into the lives of arguably the three most
influential female artists was published; Girls Like Us is a dense,
absorbing, and fact-filled narrative that intertwines the stories of
Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon. Each woman’s career was
made when the stars aligned her talent with hard work, unbelievable
ambition, and just the right amount of connections. Together, they made
history.
When
woven together, the strands of their three separate lives, identities, and
songs tell the rich composite story of women born middle-class in the
early to middle 1940s and coming of age in the middle to late 1960s.
Weller’s words ring true; these women spoke to and for a generation.
They coursed along the winding, glamorous, but, as Carole had put it,
definitely “rutted” road of the prime of their lives. And in the
process—because, yes, songs are like tattoos—they would write, in
music, a history of how that life really was, for them and so many girls
like them.
Weller’s research into the general
development of rock and roll music is especially helpful to understand the
enormity of these women’s words. Like most girls, they were raised to be
the objects of songs, not the creators. As they began to explore how women
felt about all sorts of taboo topics, people took notice.
At the beginning of her career, Carole King
and her then-partner sat down and together composed a song that reflected
women’s growing acceptance of their role in sex. Their blend of honest
lyrics and strings “blew away” the Shirelles. Weller perfectly
juxtaposes the moment of the song’s release with that of the birth
control pill: a song that reflected
a concept so new—a young single woman’s declaration of herself as
emotionally and sexually independent and responsible person—that it
didn’t have a name, was the song America was singing. That song was,
“Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?” The
words tell us the singer is a cut-to-the-chase person, who, despite her
vulnerability, possesses restraint—she’s not demanding reassurance
[...] It’s “So tell me now,” implying, I’ll take it from here; the
burden is now on me. Because it reflected them so effortlessly, Gerry
says, ‘We just thought it was another song.’ Far from it. The song
was groundbreaking, and it indirectly led to the birth of the woman who
created the singer-songwriter genre, Joni Mitchell.
One aspect of Weller’s writing that makes
the book so enjoyable is the way she intersperses tiny details about the
women’s lives that somehow capture the essence of their experiences. One
night Joni looked up at the stars and began reciting poetry for [her
friend]. ‘It wasn’t the coolest thing to do, back then and there [in
their small town in Canada] to be writing or reciting poetry. But Joni
looked at the sky, which on the prairie is so expansive—it goes on for
miles. There’s a sense that you can get out, that you can go anywhere. I
viewed Joni as a tortured rebel; her drinking, a reaction to the fact that
she was way too smart for this little-minded town she was in.’
Mitchell’s experiences as a young, single
pregnant woman in the city, when coupled with her heritage of
musically-inclined tortured souls, was no match for the music industry.
She shined as bright as those prairie stars.
Unlike these two rebels, Carly Simon was
born into a family that already possessed a certain eccentric, yet
sophisticated quality. In her
twenties Carly would personify a fusion of traits and
inclinations—classiness with sexual voracity; almost soft-porn-like
self-display and conscious motherhood; tidy privilege plus ragged
longing—that had previously been thought dichotomous but which, during
the sparks-flying juncture of second-wave feminism with the sexual
revolution, were suddenly seen as powerful, real, and acceptable for
middle-class women. Simon would carry the torch of the sensual,
sexual, talented, and strong women for a generation.
I really can’t do Weller’s work justice
here. The biography reads like a narrative with multiple threads creating
a cat’s cradle of experiences that educates, entertains, and
convincingly postulates the importance of these three lives. A few decades
later still found their words touching another young girl, on the verge of
her own independence. These are lives worth examining, and with Weller as
a guide, readers will not be disappointed.
Rebecca
James divides her time between Pennsylvania where she teaches high school
and completes her graduate studies and Delaware where she reads and
relaxes. She may be reached at james.rebeccaa@gmail.com.
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