Customer Reviews

Tapestry-Legacy Edition (2-CD)

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I'll admit -- I'm one of those people who feel that TAPESTRY is one of the greatest albums of all time. So my review of this new 2-CD edition is colored by that view.

TAPESTRY is one of only a handful of albums ever released that contains only total winners (in terms of songs). Many artists produce great albums, but there are always a couple of songs that I don't like as much as the others. Not so with TAPESTRY. Every song on the album deserves five stars.

This 2-CD set contains the complete original album, along with a second disc of previously-unreleased live recordings of (most of) the songs from the album. These live versions were chosen because they strip the songs down to their pure essence -- Carole at the keyboard and on vocals, with nothing else. This is a fantastic thing to have paired with the original album. Sound quality is excellent, performances are inspired and passionate.

The set loses a star, though, because it's just not as good as it COULD have been. TAPESTRY has already been issued in a remastered, expanded edition. (This version appears to be the same mastering as the previous one.) However, the first expanded edition included two bonus tracks (one a previously-unreleased studio track, the other a live recording), and neither of those bonus tracks were included in this new edition. So if you want to have a "complete" TAPESTRY, you have to own both versions of the album. To me, this smacks of record company greed -- let's see how many times we can get these suckers to buy the same album. Sony has done this same thing recently with Michael Jackson's THRILLER. And Elvis Costello fans know all about this sort of thing...

If you're a Carole King fan, you will definitely want this set. If you don't care about live versions of the songs, you can stick with the single-disc remastered version from a few years back. But if, like me, you're a die-hard aficionado, you'll have to have both. It's only shelf space!

When I first read that Sony was releasing yet another version of my all-time favorite album, "Tapestry," I moaned and groaned. I knew I would HAVE TO buy it yet again. Afterall, I've purchased the album (at least 3 times), the cassette, the 8 track, the MasterSound album, the 1987 CD, the gold-bit CD, and the 1999 remaster CD-- 9 copies of the basically the same album.

With this new 2008 "Legacy Edition," a 2nd disk containing all of the songs performed live in 1973 and 1976 was the latest "hook" to rack up more sales. I snuck out of work to purchase it -- my heart racing-- as if I were headed to purchase a brand new CD, rather than something that I've listened to so many times, it's become part of my very core. Packaging was indeed befitting a "deluxe" reissue, but, the most surprising thing I would discover is just how great most of the live tracks are: Ms. King's voice is at its strongest and some of these versions, most notably, "Way Over Yonder," are not only better than any prior version, but, they take on all-new power. While the recorded version of this song was always my least favorite (if such a thing could really ever be said) of the 12 tracks on the original, it's as if you are listening to a freshly written song hearing this latest impassioned liveversion. The same can be said of the versions of "You've Got a Friend" and "Will You Love Me Tomorrow?" -- Carole's singing and piano playing is perfect.

Perhaps the secret lies in the fact that Hank Cicalo, the master engineer of the original studio version of the album, was chosen by Lou Adler to record these live versions.

I don't know why Lou Adler opted not to release these live tracks earlier --inferior live versions of some of these songs appeared on her Carnegie Hall live CD (1996), but, these versions are ther real thing.

So until the next version of this classic album is release --perhaps in 2021 -- it's 50 th anniversary -- these live tracks will keep me satisfied.

Unlike the other two reviewers who have posted here so far, I do not own the 1999 remaster of "Tapestry", so I have no problems with this incarnation. I do own the "Natural Woman" 2-cd set, which contains the entire album, and the sound on this edition is far superior. There's a lot more depth and clarity. But the main reason for my buying this was to hear the second CD of live versions. It's really amazing to hear these songs accompanied by Carole's piano only. It makes you realize that when you have songs this strong melodically and lyrically, you don't need a lot of frills added. I have one minor complaint--they list four concerts that the songs were taken from, but they don't specify which songs are from which concerts. I was in attendance at the 1973 Central Park concert, so I'd be interested to know what songs were included from that classic show. But that's a minor quibble. This is a wonderful edition of a landmark moment in pop music, and at such a reasonable price, it's well worth the investment. Carole's soulful and heartfelt singing is always welcome to these ears. Hey Sony, how about releasing newly remastered versions of Carole's other albums? : )

Tapestry is, of course, one of the ten most important singer/songwriter albums ever released, no matter how you cut it. If you don't own it, you should, and this is a good package to buy.

But if you're one of the umpteen million of us with at least one copy somewhere in your collection, the question is whether the newly-released material on the Tapestry Live bonus CD makes it worth repurchasing.

Even before CD sales began their stunning decline, record labels were eager to sell us beloved albums over and over again, adding snippets of rare, unreleased or live material seemingly every few years in a new iteration. If the added material were significant in quality and/or amount, it was worth it; more often, not. Some of Carole's reissues have been well worthwhile (The Ode Collection box set, the rare The City album); others less so (the '95 Tapestry re-release with 2 added tracks).

Long-time Carole King fans know of remarkable and interesting performances that, while preserved, have emerged from her vault only slowly and sporadically. One of her remarkable '71 duets at Carnegie Hall with James Taylor emerged on the Ode Collection in '93, but the full show didn't see the light of day until '98 - and remains the single finest Carole release to date. By contrast, none the other brass-laden '73 Fantasy tour tracks have emerged since "Believe in Humanity" on the Ode Collection in `93.

"Tapestry Live" opts to use only solo piano versions of the album's songs. Some of these are excellent, especially "Way Over Yonder," and the title track. And the absence of other musicians preserves the intimate, personal quality of the original album. It does at times resemble an unblemished, superb songwriter's demo tape. Carole is in great voice, and characteristic command of her piano. This alone makes Tapestry Live a worthwhile CD for true fans.

But if I set out to compile Carole's best live Tapestry recordings, most would come from other sources. It is hard to imagine a better Tapestry-era performance than the previously-released 1971 Carnegie Hall show. Perhaps one or two other performances from her '71 BBC-TV concert that is occasionally re-aired ("Way Over Yonder" with Abigail Hanness). Though Tapestry Live features a fine version of "Beautiful," both the violin-laden one from Carnegie Hall '71 and the slow, jazzy version from her '94 live CD are even better.

Another complaint is simply that the disc could have easily included more unreleased material. Tapestry live clocks in at only 38 minutes. It uses only performances of the 11 (out of 12) original album songs, recorded in the years following Tapestry's release. It might have included other solo performances of Tapestry-era songs and concert mainstays (e.g., Song of Long Ago, After All This Time, Child of Mine). Carole's '76 tour (used here in part) also featured some great performances of Tapestry-like Thoroughbred material like "So Many Ways" and "Only Love is Real," not to mention a great "Up on the Roof" with Waddy Wachtel on acoustic guitar. For that matter, the disc might even have allowed Carole to finish the song she is plainly segueing into after the CD abruptly cuts her off at the end of "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow."

The only Tapestry song that Tapestry Live omits is "Where You Lead." Producer Lou Adler explains the omission by noting that Carole did not perform the song live at the time. Carole herself noted (during her wonderful '05-'06 Living Room Tour shows) that she stopped performing the song soon after recording it because she grew uncomfortable with the notion of women following their men around. She didn't perform it for 30 years, and resumed only after tweaking the lyric in the late 90's to serve as a TV show's theme song.

Fair enough. But if you had told me that the tone of a Tapestry song bothered its author enough to embargo it for 30 years, I would have guessed a different title. How about Smackwater Jack? A lighthearted rocker about a frustrated guy who "shot down the congregation," only to be hanged on the spot by local law enforcement (with whom the song seems to take even greater issue than with Jack himself). I admire Carole a lot, but Smackwater Jack's theme bothers me more than yet another song about someone wishing to follow their true love to the ends of the earth.

The disc's liner notes are sparse, and don't even indicate which performance came from which show and venue. And the "new essay" is nice, but considerably less informative than even this review (ahem).

Fan can cite bigger gaps in Carole's catalog than the one that Tapestry Live addresses. We still await the release of the vaunted (and vaulted) audio and video from Carole's '73 Central Park show before 250,000 people. And nothing did more to peak interest in Tapestry-era material that Carole's shows last November with James Taylor and the original Tapestry studio band to celebrate the L.A. Troubador club's 50th anniversary, all which were recorded as well. Hopefully her next archival release will delight fans even more by addressing these omissions.

Happy listening! - Ken

This landmark album from the 70's is one that my older sister owned and played endlessly, using seemingly to tap into an innermost emotional well that only teen-aged girls seem to possess. I just remember that I thought every single song was great and how personal "Tapestry" sounded to my young ears. Now, almost 40 years later, that weird jumble of teen hormones having long dissipated and my sister well into adulthood, I cam listen to Carole King with an experienced heart and mind, and it holds up as a classic from the era.

"Tapestry" was one of the first albums of the singer/songwriter era that held together as an entity, and now rings pure as a dozen songs that meld into a seamless whole. King had already honed her skills as an ace commercial songwriter with husband Gerry Goffin, and this was her coming out party. As such, the twelve songs on "Tapestry" run the gamut of the confessional "It's Too Late" to the committal "You've Got a Friend" to emancipation ("Natural Woman"). It's a testament to the staying power of "Tapestry" that half of this album became hits for Carole and others (especially James Taylor's classic version of "Friend"), and the others are almost instantly recognizable.

It was that identifiable quality that raised "Tapestry" and, by association, King as a solo artist. It also opened doors for the likes of Carly Simon, Joan Armatrading and Taylor. The second disc of this set includes 11 of the album's songs recorded on various tours (missing is "Where You Lead"), with just King alone at the piano. It makes this double set a keeper for those of us that have let "Tapestry" slip from our grasp over the years.

Carol King is brilliant. The live versions are excellent and in the same sequence as the popular album, adding a degree of predictability to the non-produced live versions. The performances are - at times - a bit tentative in an innocent way, and give a genuine impression of an up and coming superstar who has launched a promising career but still has big things to come. It presents a refreshing view that makes her music more "real" than the pasturized version we're all familiar with. I highly recommend it to anyone who grew up "in the era." You will not be disappointed.

What a wonderful CD! The LIVE version is Carole King playing piano without all the other instrumentals you will hear on the studio version.
I hesitated initially because of the price, I have had Tapestry beginning with the album, 8-track, cassette tape and CD but it would be a mistake not to make the purchase. I have this 2 set cd on my ZEN and I LOVE it!!!

At the time of this album's 1971 release, Carole King had long since proven herself one of America's greatest pop songwriters, but she had yet to be fully recognized as a performer. It wasn't for a lack of trying. Early in her career she'd released a few singles from her perch at the legendary Brill Building, including the minor hit "It Might As Well Rain Until September." She'd also produced a smattering of titles for the Dimension and Tomorrow labels in the mid-60s, an album with the group The City in 1969, and her solo debut, Writer, in 1970. The latter held many charms, but found King singing her way past rock `n' roll backings or fitting herself into country rock. Writer's variety is broader than the piano-centered productions of Tapestry, but neither the upbeat numbers nor the placid ballads of King's debut proved the expressive jazz-tinged singer-songwriter vehicles of this sophomore breakthrough.

Presciently, Writer's closing cover of "Up on the Roof" did point the way to Tapestry, taking what had been a signature 1962 performance by The Drifters and rearranging its Latin beat and swirling strings into an introspective piano ballad. It's the same magic King performed in transforming the searching adolescence of the Shirelles' "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" into the thoughtful worry-wonder of a woman on the brink of thirty. The feats are all the more impressive for the lyrics having been written when King was barely twenty-years-old herself, writing for commercial acceptance on AM radio rather than pure self expression. Here, as throughout Tapestry, King's piano is the instrumental focus, allowing her to emote through her voice and fingers in parallel.

The funky opener, "I Feel the Earth Move," finds King's vocals equally at home up-tempo. Her emancipated expression is breathtaking, and a bluesy piano solo enhances the euphoric freedom. Such openly emotional writing would be cloying in less talented hands, but King was not only an expert wordsmith, but a definitive interpreter of her own material. Her gospel-tinged version of "You've Got a Friend" is heavier than James Taylor's contemporaneous single, amplifying both the pain and relief of the song's lyrics, and the closing take of "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" is stripped of Aretha Franklin's arrangement and supported instead by King's piano playing and an overdubbed backing vocal. The spare instrumentation brings this closer to a songwriter's demo, but King's performance finds a dedication to the lyrics that reclaims her stake in the song.

In addition to re-imagined versions of earlier songs, King composed intimate new works of relationships being strained ("So Far Way") and broken ("It's Too Late"), loneliness ("Home Again"), salvation ("Way Over Yonder") and faithfulness ("Where You Lead"). It's only with "Smackwater Jack" and the album's title track that King took to more fictional abandon. The sum total of Tapestry swept the 1971 Grammys, netting King awards for Album of the and Pop Vocal Performance, as well as Record of the Year ( "It's Too Late") and Song of the Year ("You've Got a Friend"). The album launched "It's Too Late" to the top of the charts, and followed with "So Far Away" as a top twenty. Both singles' B-sides, "I Feel the Earth Move" and "Smackwater Jack," got their share of airplay, with the album peaking at #1 at the start of a six-year stay on the charts.

Legacy's two-CD reissue features the original album on disc one, and a second disc of live takes recorded at various locations in 1973 and 1976. The eleven tracks of disc two repeat the Tapestry song list, save "Where You Lead," whose lyrics King had deemed servile, and left off her set list. Over the years, this material was performed in a variety of musical settings, but Legacy has selected arrangements featuring only voice and piano. There's not much distance between Lou Adler's lean arrangements for the original album and these solo takes, but removing the intermediation of studio recording pushes King even closer to her songs. She adds an occasional inflection to her melodies, but what really sets these performances apart is the communication with her audience. The songs are transformed from interior expressions of a songwriter to vehicles for sharing emotions and responses.

King really digs into her songs on stage, bringing the sleeper "Beautiful" fully to life and adding extra passion to "Way Over Yonder." As on the original album her "covers" of songs made into hits by others reveal new emotional layers. "You've Got a Friend" spurs King to vocal exclamation, and "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" is sung with a declarative force that's in startling contrast to its intimate lyric. Even more so than on the studio versions you get a hear King's singing and playing as natural expressions. Running the live tracks in the same order as the album suggests just how carefully the album was sequenced; but what isn't shown here is how these songs fit into King's larger live set. It's also interesting to note that none of these tracks were selected from tours that promoted Tapestry itself; they're all from subsequent album tours.

Those who purchased earlier versions of Tapestry will enjoy the new light shed by the live tracks; they can be purchased individually from on-line download services. Those picking up their first Tapestry CD may also want to reach back to the 1999 reissue for the bonus track "Out in the Cold," likewise available as a download. This latter track is reputed to be a Tapestry outtake, though its provenance remains disputed. Legacy's deluxe gatefold digipack includes new liner notes by Harvey Kubernick, period photos from the recording sessions, and song-by-song lyrics and instrumental credits. This is a superb reintroduction of one of the 1970s most endearing and enduring albums. [©2008 hyperbolium dot com]

Best car listening CD ever made; I wore out my tape, had to find new!

I had this album when vinyl was the thing. I played it all the time and drove my family crazy listening to it. It is one of her best and always makes me go back to the hippie 60's when I listen to it.