Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon–and the Journey of a Generation
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Product Description
A groundbreaking and irresistible biography of three of America’s most vital 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 vital women in well loved composition. Each woman is distinct. Carole King is the product of outer-municipality, 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 fantastic swath of American girls who came of age in the late 1960s. Their tales trace the arc of the now mythic sixties generation — female version — but in a bracingly point and deeply recalled way, far from cliché. 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 language in these pages for the first time, this alternating biography reads like a novel — except it’s all right, and the heroines are legendary 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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Written like a fanzine, or worse, article for VOGUE, this book is a sentimental and evocative walk down memory lane where vicarious validation via conspicuous consumption is the order of the day. And it gets it incorrect for the most part, especially in terms of musical legacy.
To start with, no one, and I mean no one, ever took Carly Simon seriously. That was composition for spoiled girls from West Chester County and Long Island, and absolutely no one else. I can’t feel their pain when their real estate loses value, and the fact that Simon was an heiress whose most salient assets were right up front immediately undercuts any weight she hoped to achieve. Apart from marrying another singer songwriter of secondary and transient influence, although one who endeared himself to more than one college girl of the 70’s, there is small of consequence to Simon’s professional career. Bedmates were never enough to land her on the same side of the artistic hemisphere as Mitchell, or for that matter King.
The book is reasonably passionate about King, and I’m pleased for King that she gets the props here, but, she too was essentailly a one or two hit marvel with small credibilty after Tapestry. Yes, that was a major record in its day, and King was permanently exactly what she alleged to be. To that extent, her integrity remains intact, and Tapestry will permanently be something more significant than a guilty pleasure. Her influence is likely to be most evidently seen in the likes of Ani DiFranco. Who else? Not really sure, but she and her daughter did have a nice jeans ad a few years back. There is a lot of paper in this book dedicated to King, and it is well worth the read. But when it is all said and done, King was a Brill Building writer, not unlike Neil Diamond. The legacy she leaves behind is one squarely framed in pop composition from NYC. It is of its time and of its place.
And that brings us to Mitchell. This is not the definitive tome on the Canadian artist. In fact, it falls far from that, and its failure to measure up to its theme is what finally casts this book in the fanzine cut-out pile. Mitchell was not like girls from NY zipcodes nor many additional US zipcodes. Her quintessential Canadian scenery is as vital to her work as it is for Gordon Lightfoot. To lump her into a generational time warp is as much a disservice to her art and to the complexities of her integrity as anything a record company did. Joni was different from everybody. In a very huge way. Her compositional skills, her chord construction, her compensation for the polio she suffered, her intimacies with CSN, her comaraderie with Young, her paintings and business decisions all reflect a part of a very complex artist who paid dearly for fame. Miles Davis understood her intuitively. Herbie Hancock as well. Pat Metheny and Jaco Pastorius were in awe of her prodigious mandate of her muse. Mitchell was no pop song writer. The tale of giving up and then reuniting with her daughter and grandchildren is well known by now, and while that brings Mitchell back down from Olympus for most of us, truth is this book never really gets to why Mitchell was so iconic. That study is still to be written. Maybe by Hancock.
For a book that purports to spotlight a few popstars to validate how and why the women of a certain period were “all that”, this fails. The leader might have been better served zeroing in on Raitt, Joplin, Polished, Aretha, Emmy Lou: they were far more influential to the composition world and far more influential culturally than either Simon or King. And my experioence with my friends is that there were far more women who felt a kinship with these additional artists.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
i have only read the exerpt in vanity honest magazine- bu it was probably the best article i have read in ages-it kept me up way beyond my bedtime. its fascinating to learn of the ins and outs of these women’s like lives and how they intersected with eachother.loved hearing about joni mitchell and her likes and what song was written for who-can’t wait to recieve my book and get the whole tale! if you like the composition of these women- you will like this book!
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
I sent this as a gift to a young woman of the appropriate generation who permanently adored the very girls like them. She was extremely disappointed and felt that the leader was not at all a girl like them and didn’t start to know either the composition or the entire generation.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
This biography lists Cat Steven’s song “Wild World” as “WIDE World.” Errors such as this in a book about musicians is indefensible.
Aside from that, the first half of this book is a pretty excellent read, although the leader subjects the reader to an exhaustive amount of footnotes, most of which are irrelevent. She did not interview Joni Mitchell or Carole King for this book which is truly a bring shame on; as a result, Carly Simon ends up being the most developed character in this study – unfortuately, she’s the least appealing of the three. Simply place, Carly Simon does not deserve the respect afforded King or Mitchell. Her songs are mediocre, at best, and are not regarded, in any circle that I know of, as having the intellectual weight or past signficance as the additional two. I question the leader’s choice to lump these three rather disparate artists together.
Most disappointing, is that once these women reach the age of 40, the book seems to peter out. Although the leader laments the treatment of female artists once they reach middle age, she neverhteless seems to dismiss them herself. They seem to fade into charity work and grandmotherhood which is unfair. My additional criticism is that too much focus is placed on the men with whom these women became linked; I doubt a book about male musicians would include exhaustive analysis of their wives and girlfriends. On a positive note, I did sense that the leader has a deep respect for the composition of Joni Mitchell which is evident in the lenghthy passages regarding her songs, her writing process, and the events of her life which shaped her art. This, alone, is worth the read.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
Loved the concept, insight, theme matter but the writing left so much to be desired. I also failed to appreciate the writer’s cultural references. This could have been a really wonderful book if it was written less like a technical paper. Felt like a mandatory book to be read in a Women’s Studies class…yikes.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5