The friendliest concert ever held
An evening with Carole King
Sometimes I wonder if I’m ever gonna make it home again. It’s so far and out of sight — Home Again
It was a perfect day. On July 3, 2016, Carole King performed perhaps the greatest album of all time in its entirety at the British Summer Time Festival in London’s Hyde Park. Tapestry, released in February 1971, spent five weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100, before winning four Grammy Awards including Album of the Year, Song of the Year (for ‘You’ve Got a Friend’) and Record of the Year (for ‘It’s Too Late’).
Tapestry went on to sell more than 15 million copies and in 2023 it ranked 25th in Rolling Stone’s list of the ‘500 Greatest Albums of All Time’, nestled snugly between Patti Smith’s ‘Horses’ and The Beatles’ ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’. King’s achievement was more than artistic — she led the way for female singer-songwriters for a generation and more.
I always wanted a real home, with flowers on the windowsill. But if you want to live in New York City, honey, you know I will — Where You Lead
On reflection, 2016 was the year things started to feel amiss. The concert took place just days after the UK had voted to leave the European Union, and a few months before the first election of Donald Trump. Throw in the rise of Jeremy Corbyn and it was also the year I began noticing just how important my Judaism was becoming to other people. But on that day, the sun shone and the shadows stretched impossibly into the distance, as tall as the day was long.
I’m not normally one for concerts. It’s not just the snaking queues and logistical inevitability of your favourite song playing just as you leave for the toilets. Rather, there’s something about the communal aspect offends my senses. The press of bodies, the trailing elbows, the off-key singalongs. Nothing against crowds, of course. Lots of my friends form crowds. Indeed, all manner of experiences — movie theatres, nightclubs, football stadiums — are elevated by the addition of total strangers. But I like to maintain the fiction that my favourite artists sing their songs only for me. For King, an exception had to be made.
It would be so fine to see your face at my door — So Far Away
The older I get, the more I have reluctantly begun to believe in tribes. And King, born Carol Joan Klein, is part of mine. Born to Jewish parents in New York in 1942, she looks and sounds like half my aunts. The enunciation, the warmth emanating from behind the eyes, the sense that there is nothing left to prove. Would I like to meet her? It would be a thrill. Do I need to? Not really. I’ve sat down for tuna fish on rye and nursed diner coffee with her a million times before.
