Richard and Karen Carpenter were, arguably, the most popular
and influential North American pop music act of the early part of the 1970’s,
placing a remarkable 15 top 40 singles in the first half of the decade and
holding a ubiquitous presence in popular culture during that timeframe, with constant touring,
television specials, guest appearances, and even shout-outs on The Brady Bunch! Seriously. The
one-and-only Marsha Brady name-checked the Carpenters in the Davy Jones episode.
Rock critics, on the other hand, while conceding raw talent and admitting
fondness for Karen’s unmistakable vocals and Richard’s composing and arranging, universally hounded the duo throughout
their meteoric success. And the reason? Carpenters were, simply put, not cool. After all, they were a nerdy brother-sister act from suburban
Downey, California, and in the early-1970’s, Rolling Stone magazine cast them out of the “cool kids club.”
Rock-and-Roll Hall of Fame-er, Linda Rondstadt,
recently noted with dismay how Rolling Stone magazine widely determined “rock cred” and peddled a
“cooler-than-thou” posture in the industry:
That
was sort of the attitude of wanting to get with the hipper side. But I never
bought into that. It was so competitive and all about looking down at other
people and trying to trip them up and make them look bad…Rolling Stone magazine
really encouraged that attitude. It was kind of Puritanism, and I never liked
it.
Carpenters’ 1975 album, Horizon,
a departure from their early 1970’s, trend-setting style, was thought to be the
album that would finally bring credibility to the duo, the anticipation of which ironically placed them
on the coveted cover of Rolling Stone in
the summer of 1974. In
the winter of 1974, the duo released the first single from that album, the bubbly, and, in hindsight, throwaway remake of the Marvelette’s 1961
#1 hit, “Please Mr. Postman,” which itself hit the #1 spot in January of 1975,
setting the stage for the coming-of-age for the pop duo. The follow-up single,
“Only Yesterday,” was released in March of that year, reaching an anticipated
#4 in late May (and serving as the duo’s last top 10 single in the
U.S.). And while the Horizon album
was released the next month, due to label delays
and possible over-confidence, the next single, “Solitaire,” wasn’t released until
July and only reached #17. The Horizon album only reached #13 on the album charts, signaling the beginning of the long-term downward
spiral of the duo that plagued the siblings for the remainder of Karen’s short life.
Richard and Karen rebounded by dutifully (if not mechanically), returning to the
studio that winter to record their follow-up, the paint-by-numbers approach of
an album, A Kind Of Hush. The title
tune was a cover of Herman’s Hermits 1967 top five hit, and Carpenters’ version
eked to #12 on the pop charts, further indicating a drop in the duo’s
popularity, being the first lead single from a Carpenters album to fall short
of the Top 5 since the group's debut, while the #33
chart peak of the A Kind of Hush
album was their first Top 20 album shortfall also since their debut. The subsequent singles from that album, “I Need ToBe In Love,” and “Goofus,” both fell short of expectations in the summer of
1976, peaking at #25 and #56, respectively.
All of this set the stage for their next album, Passage, of which Richard recalls,
I
was hardly surprised then, when I heard from (A&M label boss) Jerry Moss,
relating his concern about relatively lackluster sales by A&M’s biggest
worldwide record sellers…us. As an
owner’s eyes fall on the manager when a fine baseball team doesn’t perform as
expected, so the eyes of the record company fall on the producer when a
successful artist’s record sales falter. This, by the by, is the way it should be, so I was perfectly willing to
let someone else take over my role; it would be a lot less work for me and, as
previously mentioned (Carpenter was battling addiction to Quaaludes at the
time), I was not 100% myself. The problem
was, not one major producer would sign on; radio was not quite as friendly at
that time to our type of sound and to be honest, my track record on the whole
was a tough act to follow. Accordingly, I remained producer, but I did try to
approach this new project from a different angle, hence my selection of songs
for this album made Passage a bit of a departure from our previous recordings.
“A bit of a departure” is putting it mildly. This album, to
my ear, is a pull-out-all-the-stops, shotgun approach to record making and smacked
of desperation and audience pandering. The duo, per Richard’s above recollection,
was desperate for a MEGA hit record and made an album designed to appeal to
everyone, and in doing so, made an album that appealed to relatively few at the
time (but was not altogether unsuccessful, as singles “All You Get From Love Is
A Love Song” and “Calling Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft” both scraped the surface
of the Top 40 in 1977 as well as the surprise Country Top 10 hit, “Sweet, Sweet
Smile," the following Spring).
I’ll discuss the Passage album, here, song by song:
I’ll discuss the Passage album, here, song by song:
B’Wana She No Home: This jazz-fusion opener, while
featuring a fun, funky, stylistic vocal departure for Karen, was a
cringe-worthy, privileged slice of oblivious racism, where the narrator barks
at her paid, brown-skinned help, “Got to learn these words, and I know you
will, or I'll send you right back to Guayaquil,” and “I want you to speak the
English right; I want you to smile and be polite…” Ugh. Gawdawful. Of the
hundreds of funky songs out there at that time, why’d they have to pick that one?
I Just Fall In Love Again: If released in May, 1978,
this old-fashioned love song would have pre-dated Anne Murray’s #12 hit by one
year and would have easily gone as high on the Billboard chart, if not higher. A&M
Records decided not to release it as a single, because it was considered too
long for Top 40 radio stations to play at the time (it was just over 4 minutes).
Instead, it remained a forgotten album track. Fun fact: Carpenters also
recorded another would-be hit, “Trying To Get The Feeling Again,” in 1975,
during their Horizon recording
sessions, but they shelved the track, not seeing its hit potential, only to
have Barry Manilow’s version peak at #10 the following year.
On The Balcony Of The Casa Rosada / Don’t Cry For Me
Argentina: It takes over three minutes to get to Karen’s remarkable, higher-register vocal
on this orchestral tune from Evita,
but Carpenter’s performance on this track is, by my ear, the definitive version
of this well-known song, which has been covered by, officially, and as of 2015,
everybody. I’m glad they recorded it.
Sweet, Sweet Smile: The third and final single
release from Passage, this Juice Newton
tune (“Queen Of Hearts,” “Break It To Me Gently,” “Love’s Been A Little Bit
Hard On Me”) was intended for Newton, herself, to record, but first went to
Carpenters when Newton's manager played the demo for Karen, who brought it to
Richard, who noted, "I liked it immediately...now there's one that, to me,
should have done better than it did…I think if someone else had done it at that
time, it would have been a bigger hit." Not that the song was a complete
flop, falling just short of the American Top 40 at #44 and giving the duo their
sole Country hit, rising as high as #8 on the Country chart and as high as #7
on the Billboard Easy Listening chart.
Two Sides: Another country-flavored tune, this particular track was a bit of a departure for the duo, as the background vocals
on the verses feature a Karen duet (as opposed to their stacked vocals),
something the duo initially tried on their previous album, A Kind Of Hush, with album tracks and fan favorites, “You” and “I
Have You.” I suspect this song might have been a hit on the Country charts in
the winter of 1977 or the spring of 1978 had it been released as a single.
Man Smart, Woman Smarter: Originally a calypso tune
harkening back to the 1930’s, the duo’s funky little head-scratcher of a recording
whistles, wheezes, jerks, pops, and burps (Literally. There’s an audible burp
in there; I’m not kidding.). And after many years of wondering, “why this
song?” I think I’ve recently landed on what might have been going on: the duo, always weary of their saccharine image (which, in hindsight, turned-out to be fairly spot-on), started pushing back (hard) against the
“goody four shoes,” “Pepsodent Twins” image on which the rock press overly focused on, especially
as more and more Top 40 stations ignored their “unhip” love songs. It was the mid-Seventies,
after all, and the specter of Disco was rising with New Wave close behind. The
Clash and The Sex Pistols released their debut albums that year, Elvis died in
August, and fly-by-night acts like The Captain & Tennille had stolen the
Carpenters’ pop crown two years previous by performing similarly silly
(“Muscrat Love”) and/or irreverent songs (“Love Will Keep Us Together”).
I suspect songs like “Man Smart, Woman Smarter” (and
“Goofus,” and “B’Wana She No Home,” and “Calling Occupants Of Interplanetary
Craft”) were a strategic career move to show a less stodgy, more playful image.
Bad call. And when it didn’t work (and after a stint in rehab for Richard and a shelved solo album from Karen), the siblings reverted back to formula on their follow-up album, 1981’s Made In America, and while it boasted their final top 20 hit, “Touch Me When We’re Dancing (#16), the album failed to find an audience, and subsequent singles only scraped the bottom of the Hot 100. Maybe the duo had run their hit-making cycle and (had Karen lived) were destined to spend the remainder of the 1980’s in no-hit, adult contemporary hell, only to reemerge in the 1990’s as an oldies act with a flukey hit single or two from a movie or an unexpected duet with Bryan Adams or Gloria Estafan. Who knows? Maybe they were onto something and could have had an unexpected and extended hit-making shelf life had they stuck with recording goofy songs like this one:
Calling Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft (The Recognized
Anthem Of World Contact Day): Released as the second single to Passage, Carpenters’ version of “Occupants”
climbed to #32 and was first released by Canadian rock group, Klaatu. John
Woloschuk, one of the song's writers, noted the idea for this track came from
an actual event: in the early 1950’s, the "International Flying Saucer
Bureau" sent a bulletin to all its members asking them to participate in
"World Contact Day," where, at a certain date and time, members would
collectively send out, telepathically, a message to nearby visitors in space.
The message began with, "Calling occupants of interplanetary craft…"
And a groovy, silly, space-age song was born. The duo have
often noted that their song was well underway well before the “space craze” of
the later part of the 1970’s, recalling taking a break from recording the song
to watch Star Wars the week it was
released. I was 6 years old hearing this song when my sister played it for
my siblings and me on her wood-grained stereo. Tony Peluso’s reprised, “All Hit
Radi-ooooo!” DJ bit from the Now &
Then album was hilarious to us at the time, especially the “aliens” monotone,
robotic voices and the mimicked, “ba-by” that bled into the first few seconds
of the song. It was a laugh riot. Who could ever think these two wacky kids
from Downey were nerdy?
The framed artwork for this album hangs in my office today;
it’s probably their best album cover (in a career of poorly-conceived album
artwork). But beyond being the least-known Carpenters album of the 1970’s and
their first album since their 1969 debut not to make the Top 40, what most
intrigues me about Passage is not the calculated approach to
getting a hit record, nor the daring-to-questionable song choices, but it’s brevity, at only eight songs. Were they so
burned out and second-guessing by then that they couldn’t add two more songs to
make ten? Probably.
To wit, a tender, unreleased track from the Passage sessions, “You’re TheOne,” an exquisitely performed ballad (and a potential 1977 top 40 hit) that finally
surfaced on the 1988 CBS made-for-TV Carpenters movie, reiterated the
questionable artistic choices the duo was making at that time, further exposing
the fact that, in 1977, all was not well in Carpentersville. With “You’re The
One” being brushed aside, one has to wonder what other lost gems might remain
in the vaults? The relative failure of this album led the duo limping through the
sessions for their unexpectedly triumphant (and essential) Christmas album the
following year, and after that, a career free-fall from which they never
recovered.
