Do you remember that line from Carole King’s song? “My life has been a tapestry of rich and royal hue…” It rings so true, through every day of my life. I can hardly believe it’s been fifty-five years since the Tapestry album was released. Fifty-five years of growing and changing, sorrow and rejoicing, learning and sometimes, well, not.
I remember the day my cousin Pattie (better known as Pattilu back then) and I set out from our house to purchase the album. Our two families had merged to live together for a while after my mother’s passing. I was fourteen years old. So was Pattie. Our birthdays are only a month apart, almost to the day. Determined teens that we were, we didn’t care how many miles we had to trek. Ends up, it was only 1.1 miles. Who knew, back then? We weren’t driving yet. I know now, though, because I just looked it up. Jeez, it seemed so much longer.
I’ll have to ask Pattie about this next bit, because I believe she remembers it better for some reason, but even so, I’m fairly certain we bought our albums at a music store in the shopping center. Or perhaps it was the Grants department store, although it seemed a smaller place than that. If not a music store or the department store, it would have had to be the drug store. I have a vague recollection of being duly impressed by the selection of music, however, so likely the drug store it was not. Then again, who knows? So much was different back then. And honestly, I guess it doesn’t really matter. The point was that we were now proud owners of the album.
Tapestry was my very first album ever, and I saved up for a while to buy it. I had 45s prior to the momentous purchase. (Remember those? Smaller diameter than a dessert plate and a little plastic thingy you inserted into the middle so the 45-rpm record would remain centered on the record player spindle? Why on earth didn’t they just make them with small holes like the full-sized albums, I wonder now. Anyone know? Give us a hint in the comments.) The first 45 I bought was a song I’d heard many times on the radio. Two songs, really, A side and B side. Chicago was the band. The second 45 I owned was by The Who. All these years later, I might be wrong. It’s been a long, long, freaking time, after all. As if you couldn’t tell by my mention of 45s. Yeah.
I had a little record player. The kind you could close like a suitcase. Portable, so you might carry it over to your best friend’s house along with your latest musical acquisitions. The players also possessed adjustable speeds: 33, 45, 78. Which was good, because I had a few of the latter, as well. I’d pretty much outgrown them by that time. They were mostly children’s music and storytelling, although my parents still had some along with the newer 33-rpm albums. Music that they enjoyed and some of which might be in my attic now.
I know. I’m really aging myself.
After admiring the cover (I loved Carole King’s whole look–still do–and the cat was icing on the cake) we put that record on the turntable and life changed. Oh, did it change. Forever.
It had changed for me, of course, with my mother’s passing. But at that point, I didn’t–I couldn’t–see past that monumental alteration in my existence to anything else. Yet, every song on the album spoke to me in ways that resonated not only with my younger self but down through the years, through all the changes in my life and in me. Tapestry was the beginning of growing up for real. Of recognizing how much more existed out in the world even after loss, and maybe because of it.
I no longer have the album, which is okay, as I have nothing to play it on. I do possess a CD, however, and whenever I need a gentle yet vital anthem to get me through life, through further changes, through hopes and troubles, I play it. Always softly, quietly. Tapestry’s songs are not really a blasting sort of collection. (I leave that to when I put on Led Zeppelin or Genesis or The Who…)
At any rate, just wanted to share. Thank you, Carole (can I call you that, lol?) for your talent, your insight, your contributions to the musical community including far beyond your own albums, and for Tapestry. The start of my love of your music and the road to adulthood. Bless you.
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robin maderich - write-brained scribbler and crafter-on-the-loose 
Of course I remember it — though I have to gently correct you on the distance, because as I recall it was *at least* 5 miles, one way. Possibly more. We were determined, and we were *tired*, and it was absolutely worth every step.
And when you say “we” had an album — that is so generous of you. The truth is, I didn’t even own a record player. Before Tapestry, my musical world was mostly love ballads drifting out of the radio — songs about women waiting, wanting, longing for someone to love them back. That was the landscape I thought music lived in.
And then Carole King happened.
Tapestry was the first time I heard a woman’s voice that wasn’t asking for someone’s attention — it was claiming her own life, her own feelings, her own ground. Without quite knowing it at the time, she started me on a journey of understanding that women were so much more than the object of someone’s affection or desire. That was a revelation at fourteen, and it has only deepened with time.
All these years later, I can still sing every word of every song on that album. My favorites have shifted with the seasons of my life — some years it was one track that carried me, other years another — but the whole of it has never left me.
Thank you, Carole (if she can call you that, so can I) — for giving us both the soundtrack to our lives. And thank you, Robin, for being the cousin who dragged me on that epic trek and so many more (remember our escape from Trap Pond). Best miles I never quite remember walking.
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Beautifull said, cuz! You know how much I love you. 🙂
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