In 1994, a group of alternative bands -- Sonic Youth, Redd Kross, Shonen Knife, 4 Non Blondes, and the Cranberries, among others -- released a tribute album of Carpenters covers titled If I Were a Carpenter.
From Rolling Stone’s review of that album:
The Carpenters’ masterpiece – and the tribute's standout track – is “Superstar,” the haunting portrayal of a fan's unrequited love for a pop star.“Your guitar/It sounds so sweet and clear/But you're not really here/It's just the radio,” Karen sings with a longing that makes this media-filtered romance sound that much more disaffected.On their eerie rendition, Sonic Youth take the estrangement a step further with distorted feedback, synth effects and disembodied vocals that sound like a radio transmission from a distant alien world trying desperately to make contact.
Karen’s extraordinary contralto, which could communicate wrenching emotional nakedness with impeccable clarity and purity, is probably the main source of the Carpenters’ mystique.And the conspicuous absence of her voice on the tribute album's songs eloquently expresses the tragedy of her loss.But while her voice is missed, many cuts on the tribute owe so much to the originals that they vindicate Richard’s undervalued arranging skills.
Here’s Sonic Youth’s cover of “Superstar,” which isn't sung by Kim Gordon but by her then-husband, Thurston Moore.Giving the lead vocal to a male rather than female singer transforms it from a tale of a female fan's unrequited love for a male rock star to something that feels more like a song about a celebrity stalker:
Back in the seventies, my friends and I thought that the music of the Carpenters was about as square as music could be. (Using the word “square” probably makes me about as square as a blogger can be.)
It’s been decades since I listened to an entire Carpenters record on the radio. I usually change stations immediately when I hear the opening notes of “Close to You” or ‘We’ve Only Just Begun” or “Rainy Days and Mondays.”
Richard Carpenter with his little sister, Karen
But for some reason, I didn’t do that when “Superstar” came on the Sirius XM ’70s on 7 channel about a week ago.
* * * * *
Legendary college basketball coach John Wooden once said, “It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.”
Or maybe it was longtime Baltimore Orioles manager Earl Weaver who said that. (Or maybe it was President Harry Truman.)
Whoever said it first, it’s true. I thought I knew that all the Carpenters’ hits were too sappy and sentimental to bear. But I learned some things the night I listened to “Superstar”:
First, Karen Carpenter is a great singer.
Second, Richard Carpenter is a great arranger.
And third, the Carpenters’ “Superstar” is a perfect pop record.
I’ve listened to it about a hundred times in the last week, and I’m not even beginning to tire of it.
* * * * *
“Superstar” is about a groupie who has had an affair – perhaps just a one-night stand – with a touring rock guitarist. Every time she hears his song on the radio, she remembers the night they met and wonders why he never came back to see her. But he’s moved on for good – you have to wonder if he even remembers her.
It’s a nice little song, but I don’t think either the music or the lyrics are anything special. Apparently Karen Carpenter felt the same way in 1971 when her brother Richard told her about hearing Bette Midler perform “Superstar” on the Tonight Show – or perhaps the song’s lyrics were too explicitly sexual for Karen’s tastes.
Richard changed “I can hardly wait to SLEEP with you again” to “I can hardly wait to BE with you again,” and Karen agreed to give “Superstar” a try.
She recorded a “scratch” vocal track – which is a recording of the lead vocal that’s intended to serve as a reference point for studio musicians to follow when their accompanying instrumental tracks are recorded.
The Carpenters
After the instrumental tracks are recorded, the singer usually returns to the studio to record a final lead vocal track. But Richard thought that Karen’s first take was so perfect that he decided to keep it rather than having her do it over.
He then backed Karen’s flawless vocal track with a inspired instrumental arrangement – which should come as no surprise given Richard’s talents as an arranger. (Music professionals certainly recognized his talent as an arranger: Carpenter was nominated for the “Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocals” Grammy no fewer than five times between 1970 and 1977.)
Music professor Kevin J. Holm-Hudson published a detailed analysis of the Carpenters’ recording of “Superstar” in 2002 in the journal of the Society for Music Theory. You can click here to read that journal article.
One of Holm-Hudson’s many insightful comments on Richard Carpenter’s “Superstar” arrangement is how the verses and choruses differ. The minor-key verses feature “classical” instruments – a harp, an oboe, French horns, and strings – that are often associated with melancholy or grief.
The major-key choruses, which are louder and more rhythmically assertive, use instrumentation that is more typical popular music genres – the drums are more prominent, and tambourines and Tijuana Brass-style trumpets are added to the mix.
You can click here to read an analysis of Richard’s arrangement of “Superstar” by Daniel Levitin, a cognitive neuroscientist who also has engineered and produced records.
Levitin appreciates just how important the arrangement of a song can be:
No one could think more of Karen than I do, but you can have the best singer on the planet and the best song, but if you don't have the right arrangement for that song and singer, the singer's going nowhere and neither is the song. The arrangement is everything that makes a hit record.
He’s right. “Superstar” proves that.
* * * * *
Here’s the Carpenters’ recording of “Superstar,” which was released in 1971 on the Carpenters album:
I don’t think I’ve ever heard a purer and more unaffected lead vocal from a female artist. Karen’s singing on “Superstar” is truly extraordinary.
At the very end of the song – after Karen sings her last note – Richard has one final surprise for us. The strings play one more chord, and then another. The last chord in particular is so soft that you may have never noticed it before, but it is as unexpected and sublime a final chord as I have ever heard.
It will probably come as no great surprise to you that when Bette Midler was a Honolulu high school student, she was voted “Most Talkative” her sophomore year and “Most Dramatic” her senior year.
Midler moved to New York City when she was 20, appeared in some Broadway and off-Broadway plays, then began to sing regularly at a gay bathhouse. Her accompanist was Barry Manilow, who produced her very successful first album – The Divine Miss M – in 1972.
Bette was still a relative unknown when she sang “Superstar” during an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson the year before her album was released. Richard Carpenter was inspired by her performance to start work on an arrangement of the song for the Carpenters.
Karen Carpenter wasn’t a fan of “Superstar,” but Richard eventually persuaded her to record it. The result was a single that went all the way to #2 on the Billboard “Hot 100.” (Rod Stewart’s “Maggie May” kept “Superstar” from reaching #1.)
* * * * *
Bette Midler told jokes that belittled Karen Carpenter in her live act in the early seventies. Years later, she apologized publicly for her mean-spirited gags.
The Carpenters and Midler in 1974
From a 1990 article in the Syracuse Herald Journal:
Bette Midler says she doesn’t know why she was so mean to Karen Carpenter in her old stage revue. “I regret making all those Karen Carpenter anorexia jokes,” says Midler, whose stage act used to brim with put-downs and nasty one-liners. “I cannot tell you how much I apologize. From the bottom of my soul, I apologize to her and her family. Harry (her husband) and I have a house in Orange County, and every time we drive by the area where Karen lived, I think about her. She had tremendous talent, and I was a jerk for saying those things. I was young and stupid and crazy and thought I was doing profound and enduring stuff. But I wasn’t – I was adding to the ugliness in the world.”
Bette’s apology was a little late: Karen died in 1983 (she was 32) from heart failure, which was triggered by her severe anorexia nervosa. But better late than never, I suppose.
* * * * *
I couldn’t find a recording of Midler’s Tonight Show performance of “Superstar” on YouTube or elsewhere. I’m guessing that it was similar to the recording of the song she released on The Divine Miss M a year later – which is infinitely inferior to the cover of the song by the Carpenters:
Any groupie would have been thrilled if she had hooked up with as many famous musicians as Rita Coolidge did back in the sixties and seventies.
Of course, Coolidge wasn’t a groupie. She was as accomplished a performer as the many musicians with whom she was romantically involved, and it appears she was the chasee more often than she was the chaser.
Leon Russell was smitten enough by Coolidge to write “Delta Lady” about her.
Onetime boyfriend Jim Gordon – he was the drummer on the Derek and the Dominos album (among others) – once hit her hard enough to knock her out. To add insult to injury, he stole the tune for the “Layla” piano coda from her. (Gordon stabbed his mother to death in 1983, and is still confined in a California psychiatric prison.)
Rita Coolidge
Some believe Rita's decision to dump Stephen Stills and hook up with Graham Nash was the main reason Crosby Stills Nash & Young broke up in 1970.
Later that year, Coolidge met Kris Kristofferson while waiting to board a flight out of LAX. She was flying to Memphis, while Kristofferson was going on to Nashville – but he decided to debark when she did rather than say goodbye. They eventually got married.
One of the best things about the 1973 Sam Peckinpah movie, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, was a bedroom scene featuring the newlyweds.
* * * * *
Rita Coolidge got her start as a recording artist when she was discovered singing in Memphis by Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett. She moved to Los Angeles, and sang backing vocals on several of their albums.
She also sang on records by Leon Russell, Joe Cocker, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Dave Mason, and many others before going on to have a successful solo career.
Coolidge has claimed that she came up with the idea for “Superstar (Groupie)” after seeing the adulation that Eric Clapton’s fans had for him when he toured as part of Delaney & Bonnie and Friends.
* * * * *
Joe Cocker and Leon Russell
When Leon Russell was tasked with putting together a band to accompany Joe Cocker on his famous “Mad Dogs and Englishmen” tour in 1970, he called on a number of his pals from Delaney & Bonnie and Friends, including Carl Radle (bass), Bobby Keys (sax), Jim Gordon and Jim Keltner (drums), and Rita Coolidge.
The set list for that tour included “Superstar,” which Coolidge sang. Her performance of the song on the live Mad Dogs and Englishmen album is fine, but I don’t think it’s any better than Bonnie Bramlett’s original studio version.
The most notable aspect of the Mad Dogs version of “Superstar” is Leon Russell’s piano accompaniment. But while Leon tickles the ivories as only Leon could do, his playing is way too show-offy for such a quiet and intimate song. (He plays as if he thinks he’s the soloist, not the accompanist.)
Here’s Rita Coolidge’s cover of “Superstar” from the Mad Dogs and Englishmen album:
Posts
