Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon: And the Journey of a Generation

by Sheila Weller

Book Overview

A groundbreaking and irresistible biography of three of America's most important musical artists--Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon--charts their lives as women at a magical moment in time.... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0743491475
• ISBN13: 9780743491471
• Release Date: April 2008
• Publisher: Atria Books
• Length: 584 Pages
• Weight: 1.92 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.7" x 6.6" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

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. Michele Cozzens is the author of It's Not Your Mother's Bridge Club

A Book I Couldn't Put Down

I didn't live through the sixties (though I wish I had), so I wasn't sure how much I would like this book. But I always loved the three women it's about, so I figured I'd get it. Well, not only did I learn things about these women that I had never known and could not have imagined (Carole King living in the mountains, for one thing), but from all the atmosphere and reporting I felt I was right there with Carole, Joni and Carly, living their lives along with them as if I was the friend on the other end of the phone at night. And I felt I was immersed in the times. Now when people talk about the sixties, I know what they mean, because of this book. I bought it to take on a vacation, and I was just going to dip my toe into it before the vacation but really save it for the trip itself. Well, I ended up reading almost all of it before the vacation, because I just kept carrying it around in my briefcase and opening it up when I had a free few minutes here and there. I wish it was longer, so I could have something to read on the beach.

Not Necessarily the Girls You Think You See

I grew up with Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon. I played their songs on the piano and guitar and wanted to be like them. I envied them their poise, grace, and talent. After reading this book, though, my eyes have been opened to the painful lives these three women endured. To the public, their lives seemed magical. In private, their lives were sometimes hell. Carole King suffered the infidelities of her first husband, the indifference of her second husband, the severe drug addiction and death of her third husband, and bizarre anti-social behavior from her fourth husband. In between all this heartache, she had to prove herself in a man's world and sometimes minimize her abilities in an effort to shield her husbands from feeling inferior. Joni Mitchell spent so many years mourning the child she'd given up for adoption that her success didn't always seem to be enough. Joni did her fair share of lovin' 'em and leavin' 'em, but she had her heart broken many times and the episode with Jackson Browne is particularly enlightening because it's the only time she lost faith in herself. Her version of what happened between them confirms some of the other stories of abuse women have had at his hands. Joni's talent is so immense that she went beyond us with her later works. Joni continued to evolve while we remained static. Carly Simon has always been open about her phobias and this book doesn't sugar-coat them. A bit of the golden shine was taken from her marriage with James Taylor, though, after reading of their dysfunctional relationship fueled by his drug addiction. For example, James preferred to drive his mistress to the airport instead of being at his son's bedside during major surgery. The juxtaposition of the careers of Carole, Joni, and Carly with the advances in the women's movement and the resulting recognition in the workplace is interesting. The unfortunate aspect is that, while they enjoyed the advantages of coming up in the 60's and 70's, women are now having some of the privileges gradually taken away, bit by bit.

Excellent read

I have read only the Carole King and Carly Simon sections of the book at this point, a singer per night. With the section on Carly Simon, the book seems more a compendium of information that I have read or heard in other books or in interviews with Simon herself. She has been pretty open about her life. With Carole King's section, the reader will finally get a chance to see more than the gaurded persona that King to this day presents. She can be eloquent about the environment, relate the same stories about working in the Brill Building cubicles, or her fear of a bomb (herself) at her first Troubador act, but that is about all she has told in countless interviews over the last fifteen years with the release of City Streets. I was astounded at how troubled a life she has lead. Gerry Goffin, Rick Evers, and Rick Sorenson all took her down a different path of pain and depression, themes in her music she recently refused to acknowledge in a PBS interview (My music is about perservance..."You can do anything"). Only Charley Larkey comes off as being somewhat decent. I also do not agree with the writer's idea that Larkey was not a good musician. His bass playing was excellent and elemental in King's early records. Goffin comes off as a troubled, philandering, abusive, neglectful husband until Carole left him. He then became angry that she would have the nerve to do so. Luckily, without his lyrics, Carole wrote songs such as "Home Again," "So far away," and "You've Got a Friend;" and with Toni Stern, "It's too late." The section that is most disturbing is King's relationship with drug addict Rick Evers, a physically abusive sycophant, for whom Carole wrote "Golden Man." Weiler should have known that Carole started singing this in concerts in 1976 with the Thoroughbred tour but attibutes the song to Carole's fourth husband Rick Sorenson. Also in this book, are pages of Carole's ease with creating music, dealing with other musicians, and writing some of the most loved songs of the last fifty years, reflecting much more the pain and sorrow of her life than many of us could imagine. As my mother, a trained opera singer, said about Carole's music, "Even the happiest of her music has a thread of sadness." There's no wonder. If you're a Carole King fan, as I obviously am, the book is a great read.

Brain candy for boomer women (and the men who want to understand them)

525 pages about Carole King, Joni Mitchell and Carly Simon --- and this is my candidate for "beach book of 2008" for smart boomer women? I'm not kidding. It's that good. And that addictive. Just read the opening section about 14-year-old Carole Klein, sitting with her friend Camille Cacciatore as they leaf through the Brooklyn phone book in search of a name. Kick...Kiel...Klip. How about King? Yeah, King. And then it was off to Camille's house, where the choice was spaghetti-and-meatballs or peppers-and-onions. Anyone can use clips and rumor to write about the famous. Sheila Weller puts you in the room. Her methods are exhaustive journalism --- she's written six books, she's won prizes, she's the real deal --- and empathy. So the path from nowhere to immortality for King, Mitchell and Simon is an epic tale, and Weller's scope is vast --- to track "the journey of a generation." Only on the surface is this a book about music, and who makes it, and how, and why. The bigger subject, the better subject, is how women found their way in their professional and personal lives, 1960-now. So, for Weller, these stories are about "a course of self-discovery, change, and unhappy confrontation with the limits of change." Limits? Consider this: In 1960, H.W. Janson's "History of Art" --- the standard textbook --- cited 2,300 artists. How many were female? Not one. That's the culture these women were entering. Women as decorative armpieces. As silent helpers. Sexual objects. And uncomplaining victims. Each of these women fought that culture. Not because she wanted to --- simply out of biography and necessity. Joan Anderson gets polio as a kid, and her creativity is pushed inward. Carly Simon may be the daughter of one of the founders of Simon & Schuster, but in her case "privileged" refers mostly to her father, who banished his kids from his sight when he came home from work. Carol King writes hits with a kid in her lap. There's delicious dish in these pages. Sailing to New York on the U.S.S. United States, Sean Connery propositioning both Carly and her sister Lucy. [Lucy accepted his offer --- alone.] Carole meeting the Beatles. [They were thrilled.] Joni being spanked by her husband and, later, getting smacked around by Jackson Browne. Carly getting it on in cabs, under a bridge in Central Park, and, minutes after meeting James Taylor, in a bathroom. Everyone of import in the history of rock appears in these pages. Men come and go, most of them hideously inappropriate. And then there's the --- shall we say --- cross-pollination. Give James Taylor the sword of gold; he befriended King and did a lot more with Mitchell and Simon. Messy stuff, all of it, and revealing about the way relationships play out in the superstar set. My favorite moment: decades after "You're So Vain", Warren Beatty came up --- and on --- to Carly at the Carlyle Hotel. "What are you doing in town?" he asked. "Seeing my oncologist," said Carly, who was then afflicted with ca