CAROLE KING

The making of a pop icon.

Journalist Eisner contributes to Yale’s Jewish Lives series with a biography of songwriter, performer, and environmental and political activist Carole King (b. 1942). Raised in working-class, Jewish Brooklyn, Carol Joan Klein expressed interest in music as young girl: She began playing piano at the age of 4, went to Broadway shows with her mother, and appeared on television at age 8 in The Children’s Hour, then on Ted Mack’s Original Amateur Hour. In high school, she organized a four-person doo-wop group. When she landed her own contract, she added an “e” to her name to distinguish her from another Carol Klein in high school. A precocious student, she entered Queens College in 1958 at 16, and before she was 18, she was pregnant and married to fellow student Gerry Goffin, who became her long-standing lyricist. Their breakthrough occurred when they wrote “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” for the Shirelles; their fame peaked with “Natural Woman,” for Aretha Franklin. The couple had two daughters, but the marriage unraveled as a result of Goffin’s drug use and adultery; he was eventually diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Eisner examines King’s dubious romantic choices (her third husband was an addict who abused her for years) and her retreat to remote Idaho, where, with the man who became her fourth husband, she lived in a remote one-room cabin and home-schooled her two youngest children. A winner of four Grammy Awards for her 1971 album Tapestry, she was twice inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Famously averse to celebrity, King nevertheless sat for interviews during her career; these, King’s memoir, and a thorough knowledge of King’s musical output inform Eisner’s sensitive investigation.

Portrait of a complex artist.