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Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon--And the Journey of a Generation By Sheila Weller ( Atria )
Release Date: 2008-04-08
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Product Description
A groundbreaking and irresistible biography of three of America's most important musical artists -- Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon -- charts their lives as women at a magical moment in time. Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon remain among the most enduring and important women in popular music. Each woman is distinct. Carole King is the product of outer-borough, middle-class New York City; Joni Mitchell is a granddaughter of Canadian farmers; and Carly Simon is a child of the Manhattan intellectual upper crust. They collectively represent, in their lives and their songs, a great swath of American girls who came of age in the late 1960s. Their stories trace the arc of the now mythic sixties generation -- female version -- but in a bracingly specific and deeply recalled way, far from cliché. The history of the women of that generation has never been written -- until now, through their resonant lives and emblematic songs. Filled with the voices of many dozens of these women's intimates, who are speaking in these pages for the first time, this alternating biography reads like a novel -- except it's all true, and the heroines are famous and beloved. Sheila Weller captures the character of each woman and gives a balanced portrayal enriched by a wealth of new information. Girls Like Us is an epic treatment of midcentury women who dared to break tradition and become what none had been before them -- confessors in song, rock superstars, and adventurers of heart and soul.
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 Great Insight ( sheilz2 )
I loved the contrasting early lives of the "girls" and the overlap of music business characters in their later years. The author clearly did an amazing amount of research and included many heretofore hidden details from "that world". I found the book easy to follow, in fact I really liked the contrast between the girls with each chapter change.The details and footnotes were congruent to the background of each of the performers. Plus, I loved knowing who and what the songs were about.This book was a gift for my husband and before he opened it I did a quick preview and was instantly caught up in the interwoven stories and proceeded to read it before he even had a chance to look at it. I thoroughly enjoyed it and give it often as a gift.
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 OY! ( mothacrf )
I wanted to like this book. Really I did. I looked forward to sinking into it, but instead it sunk me. Ambitious to a fault, the author seems to have lost her way and tried to find it by writing in a rabid, chaotic, obsessive style, that no editor should have allowed. Clearly someone was awed by the subjects Carol King and Joni Mitchell. I don't understand how Carly Simon got rated with these two as she's not in their league. Also, I don't like books written against the wishes of the subject. Both Carol King and Joni Mitchell did not want it. So what we have here is a pushy, paparazzi- style, name dropping author who shoves her way into, and all over the lives of people, regardless of their wishes, and then makes lots and lots of assumptions and judgements on the lives of these women, drawing all sorts of conclusions, that go this way and that, in a machine gun style that made me think the author was under the influence, not of an editor, but of substances I shan't name here.
I think I read her book about OJ, or perhaps it was the one about Amy Fisher. As a writer of those sorts of books, I can understand her wanting to up her game. However, she's so unabashedly arrogant, unable to focus, and self-referential that this book ends up being more about the authors psyche than the three women whose lives she smothers with ill-gotten details. Also, it's obvious that the men who wrote those great reviews are her friends, as no one who actually spent the time to read this book, could write that stuff. So, while it's good to know Ms Weller has loyal friends, don't believe them.
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Soundtrack of our lives ( jillshtu )
Girls Like Us purports to be a biography of three groundbreaking women of the sixties -- Carole King, Joni Mitchell and Carly Simon -- but it goes far beyond its mission; in fact, it's an in-depth look at the generation of songwriting and songs that defined an era in time.
Written in alternating chapters, the chapters on Carly Simon are by far the most polished. So I found it interesting that in reading the acknowledgements at the end, only Carly actively supported the project and worked directly with the author. In my mind, it shows.
Many of the revelations are fascinating: Graham Nash wrote "Our House" based on his cohabitation with Joni; Anticipation was written by Carly as she anxiously awaited Cat Stevens to show up; "Natural Woman" was written after a suggestion to the team of Carole King - Gerry Goffin, her first husband.
But even more interesting is a look at the times when intimacy was elusive and sex was easy; these women married often, had many lovers, and went through multiple transformations in their search for self, all the while finding true intimacy and real companionship to be difficult. Each, in her own way, had a difficult upbringing and each went through her own series of neuroses. Much more importantly, each woman had to fight hard to break tradition and become her own person at a time when women were seen as appendages to men and were judged harshly when they deviated from the norm.
These women were trailblazers -- imperfect, yes, and even sometimes unlikeable, but definitely willing to stand up for a strong sense of self. While the book sometimes becomes mired in specifics and the tone becomes uneven, it is still a worthwhile look at a bygone era that seems as if it were just yesterday.
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Fabulous
First things first. Sheila Weller is a pro. If the national media had done the same kind of quality reporting and research on stories of national importance as Sheila devoted to this wonderful history of three pivotal figures of the music of our time, who knows whether history could have been different.
She has devoted these considerable talents to the three stories of musicians who each in her own way helped to shape the music of the 1970s -- Carole King from Brooklyn, Joni Mitchell from Saskatchewan and Carly Simon from Manhattan. They were all different, but all contributed, sometimes in multiple ways, particularly King who transformed herself from Brill Building pop writer for hire to the L.A. Earth Mother who scored with Tapestry.
I first listened to the music years ago, and quite frankly had forgotten much of it. It was only when I started converting my vinyl to digital that I got interested again and began to read some of the books about the music and the time period.
Weller truly brings a sense of the times and of the challenges each woman faced. She combines a really gossipy account of each of the subjects with a serious appreciation for the music and of their eras. (Obviously I write this as a man. Women will probably have a better, and deeper appreciation.)
If I had one gripe, it's that even at 500 pages, I would have liked to see someone else included. As great as Carole, Joni and Carly were, I would have put Linda Ronstadt in, probably instead of Carly. For my money, Linda's voice was, and remains, the best of the three. She wasn't the songwriter the others were, but she was also in the middle of the Laurel Canyon scene. Perhaps Weller can write about her some day.
This book is a great contribution to the understanding of some of my favorite music. In fact, it helped change a little piece of my life. I went back and listened to Tapestry and heard a song I'd forgotten about amid all the hits -- a nice bouncy little piece called, "Beautiful." Now, first thing when I get in the car to go to work, I put on that song. It's a great way to start the day, and I probably wouldn't have done it without first reading Weller's book. That's a contribution in itself I'll always appreciate.
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Loved the idea for the book...but felt like reading a term paper ( rruss17308 )
Loved the concept, insight, subject matter but the writing left so much to be desired. I also failed to appreciate the writer's cultural references. This could have been a really wonderful book if it was written less like a technical paper. Felt like a mandatory book to be read in a Women's Studies class...yikes.
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