Finding her voice

Carole King’s ‘Beautiful’ legacy

If you didn’t come of age in the 1960s, Carole King might seem just another slightly faded musical omnipresence, like her friends Paul Simon and James Taylor—always playing a benefit concert or goofing on “The Muppet Show.”

If you did, though, chances are good you feel King’s impact more than ever as you watch women speaking out in the entertainment industry, running for (and winning) public office, and marching together against many kinds of injustice.

Part history lesson, part nostalgia machine, and part message of grit and hope, “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical” bets there’s more to relate to in this iconic singer-songwriter than we might have thought. It’s what’s known as a jukebox musical, a collection of King’s hit tunes—like “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow,” “The Loco-Motion,” “You’ve Got a Friend,” and “(You Make Me Feel Like a) Natural Woman,”—woven together with the story of her life.

“Sometimes I’m like, ‘This is silly. This is a silly show. We’re just trying to bring back memories of people who remember these songs,’” said Chicago native Sarah Bockel, who plays King on the show’s current tour, coming to the Tulsa PAC via Celebrity Attractions Nov. 28–Dec. 3. “But then you actually look at Carole King’s life and think, wow, she’s actually amazing.

“With the current social climate, it’s interesting to see this woman fight for and get everything she wants.”

“Beautiful” begins and ends at Carnegie Hall, where King played a famous concert in 1971—her first-ever solo performance in front of a live audience, after more than a decade of writing smash hits for others with her creative and real-life partner Gerry Goffin.

Getting from Brooklyn, where she grew up, to that show at Carnegie Hall took more than practice (as the old joke goes).

King was famously reticent about performing. “I’m just a normal person,” she says in the musical. “Why would I be out there in front when I could be in the background songwriting? I’m not Diana Ross.”

A classically-trained musician who skipped two grades in school and had perfect pitch, King was already in college at 16—and pregnant by Goffin, whom she’d marry the next year. While still in high school she’d gotten off the train in Manhattan, walked into the Brill Building (the hit factory for pop radio at the time), and sold a song on the spot. A pioneer for successful women in the music industry, she went on to write more than 400 songs.

“In the show,” Bockel said, “we want to make it known that she may not be so confident in her personal life, she may be very self-effacing, but when it comes to her music and her work she knows what she’s doing. Something happens—she’s sure of herself and she’s not afraid.”

At home, there was plenty to be afraid of as King tried to balance her skyrocketing career with her imploding family life. Goffin sank into severe mental illness, drug abuse, and adultery.

“Nobody really knew what was wrong with him,” Bockel explained. “He ended up getting electroshock therapy and doing all these detrimental things.”

King left him in 1968 and moved to Los Angeles, where she met Taylor and Joni Mitchell and played keyboards on a B.B. King record.

Then, in 1971, she wrote Tapestry, the breakthrough solo album that launched the next phase of a career that’s included a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and a Kennedy Center Honor.  The album is raw and real, heralding the arrival of a new kind of woman who sang out with her own voice.

“The songs tell the story,” Bockel said. “That’s how the musical is constructed, covering her whole life and career. You see how these songs came about, how they relate to what was going on in the background—and then, naturally, you get to hear the songs.”

“There’s a lyric in the show’s final song,” she continued, “where she says: ‘I have often asked myself the reason for sadness / In a world where tears are just a lullaby / If there’s any answer, maybe love can end the madness / Maybe not, oh, but we can only try.’

“That’s always applicable. Carole lives her life in that way—by kindness and graciousness—so if anybody walks away from this show with anything, I hope it’s that we could all use a little more kindness.”

For ticket information, visit celebrityattractions.com