Karen Carpenter
Karen Carpenter

THE REVIEW

I feel like I’m disappearing, getting smaller everyday / But when I open my mouth to sing, I’m bigger in every way (Sonic Youth – Tunic (song for Karen))

Take 1

By saying "all unhappy families are unhappy in their own way," you make a good impression and quote good old Lev (always a good quote), and besides, one can safely assume that it will be unlikely to find anyone who might have a reason to object. But, you see, you have to take the quote in its entirety and in one gulp, like medicine, and so that "happy families are all alike," which is not just there as a corollary or rhetorical complement, you can't forget to add it! Sure, it doesn't seem so pointed, sure it might even seem comforting as a statement.

It seems.

But, you see, happy families really are all alike: they all emanate the same stench of lies, they are all pale imitations of the same imposture, the same false hetero-structured model.

"I light the fire, you put the flowers in the vase I bought for you today. The windows are illuminated by the sun's rays passing through them like burning gems, just for us."

All alike. In New York as in Barcelona, in Varese as in Montevideo or in Downey, a suburb of Los Angeles, where the Carpenters had moved from New Haven in Connecticut.

All alike.

In that neat and tidy little house in Downey, the ironed shirts are neatly tucked away in their drawers, the apple pie is in the oven, there's the scent of geraniums coming from the garden, and there's a blond, well-fed American lad playing the piano; you'd expect - at any moment - the entrance of any Fonzarelli to crack a smile; but the blond mama's boy isn't Ritchie Cunningham, it's Richard Carpenter, the scion of Harold and Agnes. Richard is seventeen and has been playing that piano since childhood, sure he doesn't have the "Hungarian Rhapsodies" or "Gymnopédies" in his repertoire, but Agnes has decided that this wannabe golden-haired lad is a talent that has to bloom, a promise of Music, that that piano will take them far, and at home, everyone knows that if Agnes has decided something, that thing will be done.

So Harold stays out of the way, and Karen, the younger, sweet, short, and just a bit chubby sister, gets busy: she studies, smiles, looks after the "genius" big brother, tap dances, collects Disney gadgets, becomes a baseball expert (to talk about it with her father), decides that she too will play an instrument (first the glockenspiel, then she discovers the drums and, hell, she becomes immediately brilliant!), listens to the music that Richard and Agnes like. Sure, Harold thinks the drums aren't quite right for a healthy American Christian girl who will soon have to find a husband and start producing children, but Agnes has said it's fine - for now! - and Harold knows, by now, that it's not wise to contradict Agnes.

Karen keeps herself busy, commits, and smiles. She has learned to stay in the background and always smile. She does a lot of things and everything she does, she does well, even too well, always! But no one seems to notice.

(Mom, look at me!

Mom, look at me!

Look at me, mom...)

Take 2

It took some groundwork: the "Richard Carpenter Trio," the "Spectrum," and finally just the "Carpenters." First the parish festivals (the Carpenters are active members of the Methodist Church), then concerts, small appearances on radio and television and finally, A&M puts them under contract for the first record. "Offering" (later reissued as "Ticket To Ride"), however, no one pays attention to it. In fact, the record is what it is: a handful of washed-up songs and some cover songs, but the most serious thing is that for Richard, the "genius" of the house, it is not enough to play piano and keyboards, compose and arrange the pieces, and have a say on production and mixing, no! Our hero also insists on singing, while Karen, well hidden behind her drums, is limited to the chorus and little more.

Then two things happen: the first is that they meet Burt Bacharach who, for some reason, takes a liking to them and decides to give them an old song of his, a "minor" hit found in some drawer; the second is that it is decided to have that song sung by Karen.

"(They Long To Be) Close To You," sung by Richard Chamberlain in '63 as the B-side of "Blue Guitar," no one remembered it, nor did the subsequent version recorded by Dionne Warwick (not exactly a nobody!) leave much of a mark. Yet, in the hands of the Carpenters, that piece makes a splash: it scales the charts worldwide and stays there for a long time (eleven weeks in the States alone) and it certainly isn't due to Richard's arrangement! It's only her that makes it unforgettable: Karen.

The voice of that petite and shy girl extends, naturally and effortlessly, over three octaves without ever straining, weakening, cracking, or giving the impression of being at the limit; but - above all - what is supernatural about it is its crystal-clear and perfect intonation. No vocalizations, flourishes, tricks, or virtuosity; Karen sings with a "normalcy" that leaves one astonished. And you sense there is an unresolved mystery in that normality, that in the smile and shy gaze of that woman, perhaps not very beautiful, there's a chasm that you cannot help but be attracted to.

Agnes and Richard, reluctantly, have to accept the fact: it's Karen the golden goose, it's her, and not mom's blonde stick, the winning card. The two probably feel a bit sore about it, but counting money is a good way to get over it. However, the highest price, once again, is paid by Karen: now she must say goodbye to the drums, her great passion, and take center stage, her greatest fear.

(Mom, Richard, I didn't want to. It wasn't my fault!

Now everyone's looking at me.

And I just want to disappear.)

Take 3

The Carpenters have hit it big: at the dawn of the '70s, mama Agnes' offspring line up an impressive string of successes, and the two seem unstoppable at least until 1976.

Gold and platinum records, all their singles consistently soar to the top of the charts, grandiose tours constantly sold out, and popular television shows. The Carpenters, with their clean image, with all that rhetoric of good feelings and healthy traditional values, are the darlings of a WASP and conservative audience that, in those years, the entertainment industry seemed to snub. Big mistake! That is a paying and loyal audience; to this day, it is estimated that the Carpenters have sold a staggering over 100 million records!

We've all seen this famous photograph: it's August 1, 1972, the Carpenters are invited to the White House by President Nixon, who poses, smiling with the two next-door superstar siblings. It's the best celebration of that idea of a healthy, cautious, patriotic, and Christian America that doesn't recognize itself in that libertarian, long-haired youth who are not fond of soap and pretty melodies that seemed so in vogue.

But that image is just another lie: those three folks smiling in favor of the camera are three castaways who are drowning.

(Mom, why are they all looking at me?

I don't like it

I don't want to)

Take 4

Nixon, just a year later, will be swept away by the Watergate affair; Karen and Richard, however, will stay afloat a little longer.

The two siblings are constantly on tour or going around promoting their records when they're not in the recording studio; they practically have no private life, are constantly under the control of mama Agnes and the stardom's spotlight, they'll manage to have an apartment of their own only almost at thirty years old. Everything is and must be neat, clean, virginal, and uncorrupted; there are no squabbles, crushes, flings, fights, lies in that perfect harmony that no one seems able to crack.

"The house, the church, behaving and well-behaved, bell that rings, the night that comes. Christian decorum, Christian decorum, Christian decorum..."

Everything is under control: Richard manages to have a fling with one of the hairdressers of his entourage who is immediately dismissed, Karen seems (some whisper) to have had a few brief and insignificant flings with a couple of members of their staff, but no one really knows anything. Everything is under control, all the dust is well-hidden under the rugs.

But at a certain point, that stuff without jolts and ripples starts to get boring, and the audience starts looking elsewhere. Make no mistake: their records continue to sell very well, and the shows always attract the public, but there is a sense of slowdown, a decline in interest, the beginning of a downturn. But above all, Richard and Karen have grown up this "Happy Days" family image starts to emit a bad smell.

In January of 1979, Richard, completely drugged and in a semi-comatose state, falls down a flight of stairs before a show, is hurriedly taken to the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas, to officially cure a serious Quaalude addiction, and at that point, he says enough and decides to stop at least for a year.

And so, Karen, will travel alone the last stretch of her personal descent into hell.

(You aren’t never going anywhere

You aren’t never going anywhere

I can still hear momma say: “honey don’t let it go to your head”)

Take 5

When did Karen start to control her weight? And when did that control become maniacal?

At thirteen, Karen was one meter and sixty-three centimeters tall and weighed 66 kilos, by 1975 she had reached 41 kilos. The youngest of the Carpenter family never liked herself but you get used to it; hidden behind that enormous Ludwig drum kit, she felt protected and at ease: she was a drummer and didn't want to be anything else. Then it turned out that her greatest talent (among the incredibly many she had) was singing and everything changed: thrown in front of the crowd, cloaked in ridiculously kitschy stage costumes, she found herself forced to come to terms with her image. Her life becomes a hell of laxatives, pills of all kinds, self-induced vomiting, obsessive exercise, and refusal of food. Those around her didn't understand what was happening, Agnes and Richard pushed her to eat and live a healthier life, but Karen smiled and denied and promised and, then, secretly started again.

But damn, Karen was a star of the first magnitude! Rich, famous, and envied. What on earth was she missing?

Love had also arrived! His name is Thomas Burris, an impressive blonde smiling figure who, as it was known, had made money through real estate investments. The marriage is set up within a few months: Karen is tired of being a star, she wants to be a wife and, above all, a mother. She is an old-fashioned, fiercely conservative woman: a woman's place is behind the man's back, she is convinced!

The truth, however, comes out just a few days before the wedding.

Thomas is a bluff, the money isn't there and he is aiming for Karen's to pay off the debts that are stifling him but, far worse, he doesn't think about having children, he already has one from a previous marriage and that's enough, and, to be safe, he has even undergone a vasectomy and, anyway, spending his nights with "that bundle of bones" (as he precisely says) he doesn't intend to. Karen decides to call everything off, but Agnes won't have it: the guests are already arriving, the press has been discussing it for days, the scandal must be avoided... "You made your bed, and now you have to lie in it," she precisely says to her.

And Karen lowers her head.

(Yes, mom

I'm as you want me to be, mom

I'm as you all want)

Take 6

Karen's "ghost" album.

The music. Karen only has music left, and, for the first time in her life, sweet and submissive Karen will do her own thing: she will record a solo album; finally, she will have something that is only hers.

She will have to implore, stamp, and beg. Agnes, Richard, A&M executives, no one is willing to give her credit; to everyone, it's just the whim of a spoiled, bored star who risks breaking the toy that can still work, of drying the lemon that can still be squeezed.

It's the musicians who believe in her: Quincy Jones, Billy Joel with his group, Bob James, Steve Gadd, Peter Cetera, Airto Moreira, and many others who will play on that album, and then Phil Ramone, who decides to produce it. Karen pays for the album herself: 400 of the 500 thousand dollars of the final bill are hers. And so "Karen Carpenter" emerges against all odds in January of 1980.

Richard, aware that his sister wouldn't give up, had kindly warned her not to stray from the straight and narrow, not to do headstrong things and stay within the confines of their style and brand: clean and reassuring songs with appropriate lyrics and, above all, NO disco music!

And Karen will make a rhythmic and danceable album with even "suggestive" and finally adult lyrics. Of course, nothing "excessive," because we're still talking about a Carpenter, but Phil Ramone had told her: "your audience is growing, grow with them" and Karen had done just that. I repeat: nothing earth-shattering, "Karen Carpenter" sounds like one of those albums that will make the fortune of a Celine Dion or a Mariah Carey just a few years later.

Yet, that little album is a subdued scream, a rebellion born defeated, a "Take a Little Piece of My Heart" whispered with the whimper of a martyr, a Janis Joplin who can't and doesn't know how to scream, an immeasurable talent burned by the poison of conformity. An album that can touch your heart and become a little obsession.

Clearly, for Richard, Agnes, and those at A&M, that stuff is "unpublishable," that album "is not to be done," Karen had her fun, but now it's time to get back to business. Big brother is back on his feet, healed, and attention needs to focus on the new album and getting back to racing. So those tapes end up where they logically should end up: in a drawer until further notice.

And Karen lowers her head.

(Take another little piece of my heart

Break another little bit of my heart

Have another little piece of my heart: you know you got it)

Take 7

Karen has given in on everything, she has even decided to get treatment and is gaining weight. On one thing she hasn't given in: Thomas Burris has to go, Karen wants a divorce, and Agnes must accept it this time.

Everything starts again as before, the sun shines on the happy land of Carpenterland, everything is clean and neat and smells like violets, the new album is almost ready and soon all of their fans will be able to embrace them at concerts again. Everything as before. I don't know what Richard puts in his body or where he goes to placate his demons, but I know that Karen has begun swallowing almost a dozen laxatives a day and as many thyroid stimulants, and has also discovered a syrup, ipecac, sold at the pharmacy as an over-the-counter product without needing a prescription, which induces vomiting. But it poisons the heart.

In January 1983, Karen appears in public smiling and talks about her future plans. On February 1, Karen and Richard have dinner to talk about the new album and the tour. Then Karen goes to her parents' house. On the morning of February 4, Karen is not seen, she's late for breakfast, maybe she's still sleeping, yet it's an important morning; Agnes looks for her and finally finds her: what's left of Karen is collapsed on the floor in her walk-in closet.

That morning she was supposed to sign the final divorce papers from Burris. What would have been her only victory.

(Mom, can you see me now?

Mom, can you see me now?

Mom, do you see me, now?)