She’s somewhere in her twenties. Traipsing downtown from Brooklyn to the Brill Building in Manhattan where she plunks out tunes on a battered old piano, some kid calling himself Neil Diamond in the room next door, little Carol Joan Klein from the neighborhood thinking she can be some sort of songwriter or something. What’s with the Carole King name? She is little Carol Klein. She’s working as a secretary. Husband Gerry is in pharmacy school. Here is this Carole King person writing a melody, leaving the music on the piano at home with a note to Gerry scrawled “See if you can come up with some lyrics for this one.” Gerry listens, then sits down to write:
“Tonight you’re mine completely
You give your love so sweetly.
Tonight, the light, of love is in your eyes.
But will you love me tomorrow?”
Then the song actually gets sold to the Shirelles. There is actual money from the song writing now. There is a limousine ride when news of that sale comes through. The young couple hops inside that car and never looks back. She is Carole King now.
But she’s not eighty two. Because I’m still 21, right? I’ve just come down from Wisconsin to live in Chicago. There were five of us renting the 2ndand 3rdfloor of the old building at Racine and Webster. I had a job. I was a teacher. Special Ed kids. They would make you crazy if you weren’t careful. Which is why it was good that we had rights to the roof of that building. Because sometimes in the summer, she and I would grab the sleeping bag and climb up through the glowing summer prayer of star lit city night. She and I, we’d go up on the roof. Dancing in the summer wind beneath the stars. Owning the world. Everything being possible.
We’d go “up on the roof.”
Like Carole King.