Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon--And the Journey of a Generation | 
 enlarge | Author: Sheila Weller
Publisher: Atria
Category: Book
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Rating:  96 reviews
Sales Rank: 2270
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 592
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.9
Dimensions (in): 9.7 x 6.2 x 2
ISBN: 0743491475
Dewey Decimal Number: 782.421640922
EAN: 9780743491471
Publication Date: April 8, 2008
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Product Description
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. Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon remain among the most enduring and important women in popular music. Each woman is distinct. Carole King is the product of outer-borough, middle-class New York City; Joni Mitchell is a granddaughter of Canadian farmers; and Carly Simon is a child of the Manhattan intellectual upper crust. They collectively represent, in their lives and their songs, a great swath of American girls who came of age in the late 1960s. Their stories trace the arc of the now mythic sixties generation -- female version -- but in a bracingly specific and deeply recalled way, far from cliche. The history of the women of that generation has never been written -- until now, through their resonant lives and emblematic songs. Filled with the voices of many dozens of these women's intimates, who are speaking in these pages for the first time, this alternating biography reads like a novel -- except it's all true, and the heroines are famous and beloved. Sheila Weller captures the character of each woman and gives a balanced portrayal enriched by a wealth of new information. Girls Like Us is an epic treatment of midcentury women who dared to break tradition and become what none had been before them -- confessors in song, rock superstars, and adventurers of heart and soul.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 91 more reviews...
 Brain candy for boomer women (and the men who want to understand them) April 8, 2008
Jesse Kornbluth (New York)
136 out of 139 found this review helpful
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 cancer. Guess Warren's reaction.
They're grandmothers now. Hard to believe. I still want to see them as they were --- young and shiny, the future rich in possibility. This book charts the price they paid, the pain and the foolishness. It's a splendid chance for women of a certain age --- and the men who love them --- to look back and grid their own lives over these years.
Which makes for a terrific beach book.
Excellent read April 9, 2008
James Peyton (columbia, sc United States)
44 out of 48 found this review helpful
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.
Worth it for the footnotes alone July 13, 2008
MJS (New York, United States)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
As a gossip-fest, good time this book would rate 7 stars for the footnotes alone. Three singer-songwriter coming of age in the 60s and 70s, each trying to figure out what it means to be an independent female artist in a world where all the old rules are gone; this material is gold. Their career struggles, love lives, success and failures are all detailed here.
And what details! See nearly every significant male musician of the early 70s fall at Joni Mitchell's feet. Watch Carole King go from dutiful 60s wife to California hippie to Idaho back-to-nature recluse. Observe Carly Simon try to establish herself as a serious songwriter while struggling to hang on to her marriage to James Taylor.
Weller clearly believes these women's lives say alot about the lives of their generation. That's a tougher sell for me, especially when Weller seems unwilling to question whether "sexual freedom" really was freedom for these women or just a different way to be exploited. The choices they faced - career or motherhood, equal partners or supportive wive, etc - still ring true.
What keeps this book a 5 and not a 7 though is Weller's creeping bias. By the middle of the book her disapproval of Joni Mitchell is as obvious as her impassioned defense of Jackson Browne is inexplicable. I couldn't help feeling that Weller would have given, say, Bob Dylan a pass for the behavior she tut-tuts over in Mitchell. Then there's Carly Simon. Perhaps because Simon is the only subject who cooperated or perhaps because Weller identifies with her, Carly Simon gets a pass on numerous occasions for things you just know Mitchell would get globbbered for. Stopping by the table where your recently separated husband, his new girlfriend and his best friend are having dinner only to ask the best friend out on a date? It's a "sign of the times." No, dear, it's seriously bad taste. Being hurt because someone suggests that Joni Mitchell wouldn't appear on her album cover in lingerie and boots? Poor sensitive, insecure Carly. How about getting in touch with reality? Whether Joni would or wouldn't appear in lingerie and boots, you can bet she'd own her decision to do it. Weller so treats Simon with kid gloves that bad reviews get relegated to the footnotes.
Which brings me back to the footnotes. I've read entire books which are less interesting than a single footnote in this book. Weller did her research and if you're wondering what happened to a minor character, just hop on the footnotes and you'll get their life story. You'll also get a few magical mystery tours like the one that starts with disco music empowering gays and ends with Jann Wenner and his partner Matt Nye throwing themselves a baby shower.
This book is great summer reading but like me, you may find yourself sympathesizing with the concert reviewer who notes "Carly Simon has been getting on my nerves for years."
Kindle Notes: On the Kindle version you can easily access the footnotes without skipping a beat on the main text. There are no photos in the Kindle version.
Stayed In Bed All Morning . . . June 17, 2008
Michele Cozzens (Cloud 8)
7 out of 9 found this review helpful
. . . 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
Absolute Perfection April 24, 2008
Linda B (Green Brook, NJ)
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
I first heard about Girls Like Us from Dennis Elsas, a DJ on WFUV radio in New York, and quickly read the Vanity Fair excerpt. I was afraid it would read like a Kitty Kelley biography, but--thankfully--I was wrong. I usually borrow most of my books from the library (sorry, Amazon), but I pre-ordered Girls and counted the days until its arrival. I've wanted to take off from work to read it. Like other reviewers have said, this is a read you won't want to put down.
Girls Like Us is a thoroughly researched book about three women who were catalysts of change during a pivotal era in our nation's history. Women--and men--who lived through the 60s and early 70s will love the walk down memory lane and, a la Sex in the City where women discuss which character they're most like, women will decide whether they're a Carol, a Joni (as I am), or a Carly. Sheila Weller really earned her royalties here--plenty of juicy gossip about all three women. But more importantly, Weller gets into the artists' music, the story behind many of the songs (who knew?!), the musicians who played with them, an insider's view of the music industry. The book is worth the price just for the extensive Bibliography and Discography.
I just told a friend today that Girls Like Us should be required reading for college women's history courses. If you know a woman who missed coming of age during this wonderful era, show them what they missed and gift them with a copy of Girls Like Us. Before your settle into your favorite spot with your new book, go down to the basement or up to the attic, dust off your copy of Tapestry, Blue, and Anticipation, and sing along with the girls like you.
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