At the height of their success in the 1970s — when they sold millions of records and toured the world — the Carpenters were thought to epitomize the safest, most pasteurized aspects of mainstream American pop. But time has been extremely kind to the music of the Downey, California sibling duo of Richard and Karen Carpenter.
After Karen’s tragic death at age 32 in 1983, the long process of reevaluating their legacy began. By the late ‘90s, the group’s discography — in particular the four luminous albums released between 1969 and 1972 — was finally recognized for what it was: a collection of exquisitely arranged songs anchored on the warm, analogue sonics of the time, Richard’s jazzy piano and psych-pop harpsichord, Karen’s incredibly fluid drumming and the duo’s haunting, almost otherworldly vocal harmonies.
Sure enough, some of the Carpenters’ biggest hits like "Top of the World" and "Sing" were goofy. But their most somber and introspective moments — the melancholy "A Song For You," the existential "Road Ode" — reveal a bittersweet depth, a soulful gravitas matched only by such pop giants as the Beatles, the Beach Boys and the Bee Gees.
Now 78, Richard Carpenter has kept busy preserving the band’s legacy by releasing the occasional collection of demos, outtakes and remixes. The latest release, Christmas Once More, is a remastered anthology culled from the duo’s catalog of holiday songs.
Sitting in the sumptuous living room of his home in Thousand Oaks — complete with a grand piano by the window — Richard Carpenter talked to GRAMMY.com about his work selecting material for the Carpenters, the pressures of success, and the reason why he chose not to develop a sustained career as a solo artist.
I’m always struck by your uncanny talent for selecting the perfect songs to record with Karen.
It didn’t take long for me to realize that I was the band’s A&R man, in addition to being the writer, arranger, and singing the songs with Karen. She was 19, and I was about 22. I was just a kid from a middle class neighborhood who had this innate ability to listen to a song and say that with the proper arrangement, it could be a hit.
I heard a couple of those tracks on the Top 40 radio stations, driving to and from school. "Hurting Each Other" was a good example. It got limited airplay with Ruby & the Romantics, but wasn’t a hit until we recorded it with a different arrangement.
Was your family musical when you were growing up?
We had absorbed a lot of music, because Dad loved everything with the exception of pure country. We had a basement, because we were on the East coast, and that’s where he set up the sound system. When he was home, we listened together to Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky. Karen wasn’t interested in that stuff. She had a natural feel for your prototypical pop song.
"(They Long To Be) Close To You" became your first No. 1 single in 1970, and the Carpenters sound was fully formed by then. Did developing that sonic identity take a lot of effort?
It came naturally to me. Our first single, "Ticket to Ride," had climbed to No. 54 in the charts and then just lingered there. I ran into Herb Alpert in the A&M lot, and he said that he had a lead sheet for me that could become a hit with the right arrangement. I’ve always believed that arrangers are the unsung heroes in this business.
The lead sheet that he gave me read "Close To You" by Bacharach and David, copyright 1963. It was just one staff with the lyrics and some basic chord changes. Herb had tried it himself, but it didn’t work out.
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I went to the A&M soundstage, started playing the Wurlitzer EP [piano], and that’s when I came up with the slow shuffle in the intro. The sheet ended with a final "close to you," and I thought that it needed something else. I arranged a four-part harmony, which was actually 12, because we overdubbed the voices. I’m not a lead singer, but I’m a hell of a background singer. [Laughs.]
I think the ending is one of the most alluring sections in that track. We started recording in Studio C, which was very small, and even though the red light was on, people in the hallway kept opening the door and saying, "we’ve never heard anything like this." When it came out, we went from being next to nobody to an overnight success.
Was it overwhelming?
You want to talk about your life changing? It was just incredible. We were expected to follow it up, but we didn’t have an A&R man, because I was the A&R man. So I had a lot of work to do. Find the backup players, rehearse the songs. We were getting offers from Paris and Japan, The Sands in Las Vegas, and different television shows.
Karen had one of the most gorgeous voices in the history of popular music. She is many people’s favorite vocalist, including myself. What was it like, listening to her rehearsing and performing every day?
Well, I was behind a lot of it, because first and foremost, Karen wanted to play the drums. She was very good at it, especially playing with brushes. "This Masquerade," "Flat Baroque," that’s all Karen.
By the time she was 16, the more I listened to Karen, the more I knew that her voice had potential. So I asked her to sing a couple of my songs, even though my lyrics were awful [Laughs.]
What was it about her voice that impressed you the most?
Her breath control was beyond belief. Later we’d run into singers at awards ceremonies, and they’d ask her: "do you have four lungs, by any chance?" Because she could take a breath and just keep going. "Goodbye To Love" has that opening line and she would go through the whole phrase, which is really tough. And it’s not like a choral director took her aside and told her to pronounce the "t" a little more. She did everything naturally. No singing lessons.
I still can’t believe that she both sings and plays the drums on that exuberant "Bacharach/David Medley" from the 1971 Carpenters album...
Initially, that medley was about 15 minutes long. But we made so many television appearances with it, that it got shorter and shorter. In the end, it was the same amount of songs, but played too fast, and way too short.
When Karen recorded some of the most sophisticated songs like "Road Ode," did she have to do several takes?
A lot of times, she got it right on the first take. Occasionally she would have trouble with a particular phrase — the melody, or the words. There’s a moment in "Top of the World" where she sings "there is only one wish on my mind," and she was having a hell of a time with that.
We carried a Sony 5550 portable recorder, and every night we’d tape the entire show in those big auditoriums. I have all those tapes downstairs. They all sound the same, because it was a good group, it was all locked in, and Karen never missed.
There’s never been anybody like her, and there never will. She can go from "Rainy Days and Mondays" to "Please Mr. Postman" and make them both sound like that’s the way she’s feeling at that particular time.
After Karen passed, and you had a number of years to process the immensity of that loss, did you ever think about forming a new band and carrying on making more records?
No. Before I had Karen to work with, and that was that. Whatever I did wouldn’t have been as good without her.
Right now there’s a girl in England called Harriet, and she’s quite popular in that section of the world. The opening track of her new album is "Yesterday Once More." Some mutual friends told me, "you ought to have a listen," and I did. She does sing it straight, at a time when nobody wants to do anything straight. She is in tune, and it doesn’t sound like she was autotuned, but there’s the magic ingredient, you know. The thing.
Every day that goes by, it upsets me even more. I’m an old man, I just turned 78 and cannot believe it. But I keep thinking of all those years that we could have been putting new music together.