Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon--And the Journey of a Generation by Sheila Weller Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon--And the Journey of a Generation
Book Review: BRILLIANT IDEA, RIVETING BOOK!
Summary: 5 Stars
Everything you've ever wanted to know about three of the most fascinating women of our times. Sheila Weller has reinvented women's history with this juicy, riveting look inside the lives of the stars of our youth and beyond. I loved reading about Carole, Joni, and Carly -- what drove them then, what keeps them excited, why they became the galvanizing people they are. And I thought Sheila Weller's writing style and insights were brilliant. This is not only a page-turner full of the best kind of celebrity gossip; it's an important book about women's place in our cultural world.Book Review: It didn't have a good beat and I couldn't really dance to it
Summary: 2 Stars
I have never seen writing quite like this. Others have mentioned the mile-long sentences, the paranthetical digressions that rip apart sentences and paragraphs on almost every page and the general herky-jerky nature of the narrative. All true. But what really got to me were the author's strange use of strange new adverbs ("pioneeringly," "karmically," "welcomely," etc.) and the overuse of hyphenated composite adjectives. Surprisedly, I began keeping a list of these in-contemprary-American-English-unfound expressions. For some this might seem like nit-picking, but I don't think I've ever read a book in which the writing itself intruded so much on my experience of reading. By the time I was reading about "mountain-life-idled Carol," I was beginning to feel like "Weller-writing-addled" Daniel!
But it wasn't just the writing. Others have pointed out the excessive attention paid to who was sleeping with whom, and the fact that the author did not interview two of the main subjects of the book. The latter really is a problem and at times the book reads like a series of short biographies of people you have never heard of who had some passing acquaintance with one of the three subjects. In general, there is a lot of irrelevant information and I thought the author had an unfortunate tendency to name-drop. For example, in a book about these three women, you would expect to see attention paid to James Taylor. But why do we need to know that some other girlfriend of Taylor later went on to date Woody Allen and other celebrities? Who cares? Likewise, it seems like everyone mentioned in the book who went to Harvard - no matter how fleeting the reference or how irrelevant to the context - is identified as "Harvard educated." Now, I know there is a class and priviledge argument being made about Carly Simon, but who cares if the bass player who intruduced Carol King to some musician or other went to Harvard? You have the feeling that the first questions in every interview were: "What celebrities have you slept with?" and "Did you go to an Ivy League school?"
More fundamentally, though, the premise of the book is a little forced. The women are very different artists. Joni Mitchell was never a Top 40 hit-maker like Carly Simon and early-70's Carol King. When those two women were riding high on the charts, Mitchell was already artsy counter-culture by comparison. And the author does very little to explore her significance in popular music, relying instead on period reviews and cliches about Mitchell's career. A more interesting group of subjects would perhaps have been Laura Nyro, Mitchell and Rickie Lee Jones. But then the whole sex-partner overlap story would have been out the window.
For readers born after 1980, the book might make some interesting connections between pop music and wider cultural history. Otherwise, though, the cultural history here is pretty superficial. The 50s folk scene was dominated by men. Well, sure. The sexual revolution was a mixed blessing for women. Yep, read about that too.
Still, I read the book from beginning to end and was never seriously tempted to put it down. (If I hadn't been reading it on my Kindle, though, I would have thrown it across the room a few times!) Once I decided to take absolutely everything in it with a grain of salt, I just let it happen. My main interest was in Joni Mitchell and I think the treatment of her work was probably the weakest in the book. But I found the discussion of Carol King's environmental activism in Idaho surprising and quite interesting.
So, I cannot recommend that you not read it, but you should go into it with your eyes open.
Book Review: A Cultural Document of Music for the Ages
Summary: 5 Stars
Sheila Weller creates an insightful look at three individually talented singer-songwriters and their lives as they attain increased cultural signifigance. As a 38-year old male, I found it a very interesting look back at a lot of the cultural attitudes in the 1970s. It's not that it was the Dark Ages but there were plenty of boggy undersides to the groovy chic of the time. As some of those my age can attest, I didn't grow up in a household where these three singers were considered Most Relevant by my 20-ish Mom. Sure, we had Laura Nyro, Nancy Wilson, Streisand, Melba Moore and Dionne Warwick, but Carly Simon was an FM radio staple. You almost didn't need to buy her singles, they were that ubiqitous and welcomed. Carole King was the domain of your slightly older sisters or teenaged aunts, penning their initials into 45s of Carole King's 'It's Too Late'- the universal lament crossing any age lines. Joni Mitchell, until 'Court and Spark' (in my house, anyway), was someone you found in your local library, intrigued by her album covers (there's Joni as...a Black man!? Hmm. Let's listen to this!). Perhaps the very interior mastery of their work, especially Mitchell's, made them less a communal indulgence from time to time. You didn't get to sit in a room while your sister wrote in her diary with 'Blue' on the stereo. Wasn't happening!
Ms. Weller weaves a thorough, respectful narrative of the three musicians and isn't too heavy-handed in placing them in the cultural context of their time. The book is an excellent example, especially to writers, of how powerful the written word is, especially when a lyric, song or sentence can express sentiment that becomes globally received and appreciated. The book will clearly steer you to your own memories of classic songs and where you may have been at the time. It made me remember being in Union City in California when "You're So Vain" came on the radio in the family car as we took in a stormy blue sky and thinking that Carly's song would open the heavens. It was that powerful to me at a very young age. It's flashpoint moments like that which make the book an extra-sensory look back in cultural history. Music was more of an integrated landscape then and if a song went to #1 on "the charts" then it was a part of the national zeitgeist, even if for a week. The supposed and real decadence of musicians then, as now, never really translated beyond their origins in Los Angeles or New York. For one, who else could afford it? It wasn't practical for the consumer. Still, a lot of misadventure and lost years can be supported by wealth, but for most of the country the decadence translated to towns in different ways of open-mindedness, cocktail parties with a different soundtrack (and more drinks) and a more decadent sexual assertion with music its ubiquitous background.
The current lives of these three singular women is certainly not a let-down and it's a testament to their individual endurance that they were able to stay culturally and emotionally viable. It's disappointing to see that many of their men let them down and took them through what their stardom, on the surface, would never seem to leave room for. Weller underlines throughout the book the breaking of sexual and social taboos that women advanced in this country. As a parent of a single mother, I sure remember my Mom, post-divorce, in the late 70s going into 'the city' to make a wage beyond the suburban rate; how her style changed more to her expression and how she single-handedly raised her kids. Millions of women, not just a selct few cultural icons, pushed through the real-life gains and advances that eradicated some of the danger/economic peril of being considered constrained minorities. As for the often-louche lovers of the women in this book, many are now deceased, or liquor-bloated semblances of their former shining selves or parodies, still hovering over the younger gliteratti of today. Time waits for no one, so if you find someone and the love is mutual, don't fu** it up! Carole comes across as a grounded woman who supported her core group of friends/musicians enough to embark, on her own terms, the relationships she chose, whether disastrous or not....and hadn't she earned those attempts? Carly Simon made a marriage to a heroin addict work for 9 years, which is like 30 years in real-time when you don't know that love can't replace a blood-and-bone addiction. Joni Mitchell, aggregating the finest points of disappointment and romantic fancy, is still a formidable woman and musician. I found this book extremely honest, even just the lyrics alone speak for their writers thoughts and imagination. I wish enduring happiness for all of them.
At one point in the book, the early 80s, when Joni, Carol and Joni are all close to or past their 40th birthday, Weller notes that with the change of musical icons and chart-burners, they all become aware that music, especially rock/popular music, is for the young. True, true. But don't the young always go back to the past and what isn't exactly right-this-minute? Just like I found my way at 13 years old to The Doors, The Mamas and The Papas, Jefferson Airplane and Hendrix, long after their 'hit' status, I still bought their albums and claimed my own memories to the songs, as people have done decades before and since. Mitchell, Taylor and King will always have their music rediscovered and listened to for the first time and for that they will always be relevant.
Book Review: I loved their stories
Summary: 4 Stars
This book made me proud to have grown up exactly when I did. Its a superbly detailed story of three fabulous women whose music really was the sound track of some of the best years ever. Their bumpy and passionate love lives were something so many of us can identify with. I've been watching Carly Simon videos on her web site and elsewhere since I finished the book. I knew it had to end sometime but I really didn't want to say goodbye to these talented, fab women!Book Review: The Soundtrack of My Life!
Summary: 5 Stars
I can't begin to write how much I'm enjoying this book...it's as if the author wrote it just for me! Joni Mitchell is my favorite female artist (James Taylor being my favorite male)--and I have many albums of Carly Simon and a few of Carole King's as well. Reading this book is like reading a soundtrack of my life! At every twist and turn I find out how incestuous the music business is, and how interrelated and connected my favorite musicians are. While the bulk of the book deals with Joni, Carly and Carole, you'll learn tidbits and interesting facts about many other musicians/actors/celebs as well: James Taylor, Crosby Stills Nash & Young, Jackson Browne, Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson...the list goes on and on.
The beginning was a bit dry (about their childhoods), but once the women start performing in the music business "katie bar the door!" There are fascinating revelations on nearly EVERY page. Reading the book has made me go back and listen to nearly each and every song by all three artists with a new appreciation and understanding. Brilliant!