Carole King in the Canyon: The Weaving of Tapestry
Barney Hoskyns, 'Hotel California' (Fourth Estate), 2005
UNLIKE MOST of her Brill Building contemporaries, Carole King was keen to keep pace with the changing times. Having scored as an artist in her own right – with 1962's 'It Might As Well Rain Until September' – she emerged from the backroom shadows to form a rock band, the City, with Danny "Kootch" Kortchmar on lead guitar and her second husband, Charlie Larkey, on bass. But the label that signed the City was not an East Coast label: it was Ode, a new indie launched in Los Angeles by Lou Adler.
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