Even if you don’t think you know the music of Carole King, Caroline Patterson is pretty sure that you do.
“You do, even if you don’t know that you do,” Patterson said in an interview Tuesday. She plays King in the Wagon Wheel Center for the Arts’ production of the jukebox musical “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical.”
“We were just talking about how shocked we were how much she wrote. Even if you don’t know her as a solo artist, you know the songs that she’s written, you just didn’t know she wrote them,” Patterson said. “And so, if you want to jam out to some ’60s and ’70s tunes that are so, so famous and were No. 1 on Billboard for so long, you should come out and see this show.”
Caleb McArthur, who plays King’s first husband Gerry Goffin in the show, agreed, saying, “Definitely. If you’re looking for a nostalgia trip, if you grew up in that ’60s-’70s era, you’re going to know at least three songs. They were just writing headliners at that time.”
He said the theater company for “Beautiful” is also phenomenal.
“It’s a really talented cast and there’s like super fun dance numbers that accompany a lot of the big hits. It’s a really interesting story going through the lives of Gerry and Carole ... it’s a good piece of work,” McArthur stated.
For anyone who might not know who King is, Patterson said, “She’s a songwriter in the ’60s and then went on to produce her own solo album in the ’70s. And the show spans from the ages of like 16 to 28ish and her life with Gerry, who is her partner in writing. She’s a composer and he was her lyricist, and they were also married, and then kind of - as their marriage kind of dissolved - she went on to produce her own solo album, both composing and writing the lyrics as well.”
King’s biggest album was her second studio album, “Tapestry,” released on Feb. 10, 1971, by Ode Records and produced by Lou Adler. It includes the songs “It’s Too Late,” “I Feel the Earth Move” and “You’ve Got A Friend,” among others.
As for who Goffin is, McArthur said, “He was Carole’s first husband and ... they were the songwriting duo pretty much from the mid-’60s to ’70s. And, yeah, he’s a tortured poet. He’s misunderstood, but he definitely has some issues, which they touch on in the show. He lived a tortured life for sure.”
On what made King and Goffin work well together, Patterson said, “Carole started out as writing both music and lyrics, and the producer that she began to work with - Donnie Kirshner - in the mid-’60s was saying that she needed to work on her lyrics, and she was pretty young. And then she met Gerry in college and they kind of had this mutual sarcasm and similar outlook on life and similar artistry and they just kind of found each other, and also found each other romantically. I think that’s what kind of made them work, was their (similarities).”
McArthur said King as a composer was able to write very simplistically but it was very addictive music. “The music she wrote, you just fall into it. I read a quote somewhere that the way that Gerry’s lyrics were described was that they were very simple but they could explain a lot of twentysomethings were going through in this ’60s-’70s era of this rebellion. He wouldn’t overcomplicate but still be really vulnerable with his lyrics and really show the emotional side of it all,” he stated.
If there’s one song that’s the best example of that, McArthur referenced “Up on the Roof.”
“It’s about him lamenting of just getting away from the hustle and bustle of the noise, especially as the show takes place in New York City,” he said. “And, also, I love ‘Some Kind of Wonderful.’ I think that ‘Will You Love Me Tomorrow’ was rare at that time to have lyrics, specifically, and also music, be so raw and so vulnerable.”
Patterson said, “It’s kind of ironic how much it plays into their own relationship because their theme of ‘Will You Love Me Tomorrow’ kind of comes back throughout the show as they struggle with their marital issues.”
A lot of the show touches on how the music of the 1960s was very repetitive and dance focused or just the same lyrics repeated over and over, she said. “Gerry was still very simplistic, but I think there was a little bit more intention, and he was also coming from like a playwright’s perspective, so maybe a little bit more intellectual,” Patterson continued.
She grew up listening to music from artists like King, James Taylor and “especially the stuff that later was in ‘Tapestry’ that really makes me quite emotional. I’ve been connecting with our music director, Thomas Hall, just because I kind of tend to break down a little bit in the later songs of the second act just because they remind me so much of my own family, especially ‘You’ve Got A Friend’ is one of my favorites.”
Patterson said singing King’s music in the show feels really special to her because it already resonates with her.
“I also love ‘Tapestry,’ I grew up on that so in act two where ‘Tapestry’ more comes into play - because that’s how it goes, chronologically - I just kind of get to sit and watch, which is amazing. It’s so lovely to watch Caroline bring that to life,” McArthur added.
He said he was familiar with some of the songs in the jukebox musical like “Take Good Care of My Baby,” but it was really cool to find out how many hits that King and Goffin wrote, as well as songwriters Barry Mann and Cynthia Well, whose lives are also told in “Beautiful.”
“And that was really cool, too, to find out how many (they wrote) like ‘You Lost that Loving Feeling’ and ‘On Broadway.’ That was also just really neat to find out, just like this song factory of a quartet,” McArthur said.
He said King and Goffin and Mann and Well were friends but also competitive with each other.
“They were kind of competing in Donnie Kirshner’s office to get the number one hit out and get it to The Shirelles or get it out to The Drifters and try to get their song to number one, but they also - through that competitiveness - it’s like any sort of friends competing. They had a blast together, and it’s like when they were young, and they had a drive,” McArthur said.
Patterson said, “And for all the moments they were very competitive, I think there’s also a lot of moments where they’re very supportive of each other; and I also think it’s nice where you have this story of a marriage that is maybe not doing so hot, and you have this other marriage between Cynthia and Barry that’s kind of thriving and how they’re learning to trust each other.”
Mann and Well went on to write music like “Make Your Own Kind of Music” and others that many people are familiar with, but that are not covered in this show because it focuses on the 1960s-70s.
“I’m happy that they have a spot in this show,” Patterson said.
Without that quartet of songwriters, McArthur thinks that the music of today would be different.
“Especially in act two as we get more into seeing how the musical landscape starts to shift, because in the ’60s it still is this ‘there are the songwriters and then those songwriters give their songs to music groups.’ But then there’s this kind of shift in where - like how Carole becomes the pioneer of it - where she’s writing her music for her,” he said. “I think it’s a very niche kind of time period with these songwriters specifically like writing for specific groups and then that being transformed, but I feel like Carole, especially, was like kind of a pioneer in singer-songwriter sort of style, which is pretty much a lot like today.”
“Beautiful: The Carole King Musical” is at the Wagon Wheel Center for the Arts Aug. 1-10. Tickets are available at the box office, by phone or on the website at wagonwheelcenter.org.