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| Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon---And the Journey of a Generation | 
 enlarge | Author: Sheila Weller
Publisher: Tantor Media
Category: Book
List Price: $34.99
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Avg. Customer Rating:  119 reviews
Sales Rank: 1636225
Format: Audiobook, Cd
Media: MP3 CD
Edition: MP3 CD Unabridged
Number Of Items: 2
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.1
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5.3 x 0.6
ISBN: 1400156491
Dewey Decimal Number: 782.421640922
EAN: 9781400156498
ASIN: 1400156491
Publication Date: April 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand new Book, ALL days Low Price !
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| Customer Reviews:
 Great Subject, terrible book April 30, 2008
14 out of 22 found this review helpful
I bought this book because I'm a woman of this generation of artists. Joni Mitchell and Carole King defined my life from age 18 to 30, and maybe even after that. Carly Simon is kind of a lesser talent, and a much lesser influence, on women my age, I think.
The author is a very poor writer, and whoever edited this book needs to be bounced. It reads like "Entertainment Tonight", and it is very often difficult to follow a sentence from beginning to end without scratching your head and trying to figure out what is being said.
I'm not sorry I bought the book, as the fascinating information on the subjects is worth it, but be prepared for a difficult read to get to the good stuff.
 Not Necessarily the Girls You Think You See April 17, 2008
11 out of 13 found this review helpful
I grew up with Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon. I played their songs on the piano and guitar and wanted to be like them. I envied them their poise, grace, and talent. After reading this book, though, my eyes have been opened to the painful lives these three women endured. To the public, their lives seemed magical. In private, their lives were sometimes hell.
Carole King suffered the infidelities of her first husband, the indifference of her second husband, the severe drug addiction and death of her third husband, and bizarre anti-social behavior from her fourth husband. In between all this heartache, she had to prove herself in a man's world and sometimes minimize her abilities in an effort to shield her husbands from feeling inferior.
Joni Mitchell spent so many years mourning the child she'd given up for adoption that her success didn't always seem to be enough. Joni did her fair share of lovin' 'em and leavin' 'em, but she had her heart broken many times and the episode with Jackson Browne is particularly enlightening because it's the only time she lost faith in herself. Her version of what happened between them confirms some of the other stories of abuse women have had at his hands. Joni's talent is so immense that she went beyond us with her later works. Joni continued to evolve while we remained static.
Carly Simon has always been open about her phobias and this book doesn't sugar-coat them. A bit of the golden shine was taken from her marriage with James Taylor, though, after reading of their dysfunctional relationship fueled by his drug addiction. For example, James preferred to drive his mistress to the airport instead of being at his son's bedside during major surgery.
The juxtaposition of the careers of Carole, Joni, and Carly with the advances in the women's movement and the resulting recognition in the workplace is interesting. The unfortunate aspect is that, while they enjoyed the advantages of coming up in the 60's and 70's, women are now having some of the privileges gradually taken away, bit by bit.
Lame Sentimentality from select NY zip codes April 29, 2008
11 out of 32 found this review helpful
Written like a fanzine, or worse, article for VOGUE, this book is a sentimental and nostalgic walk down memory lane where vicarious validation via conspicuous consumption is the order of the day. And it gets it wrong for the most part, especially in terms of musical legacy.
To begin with, no one, and I mean no one, ever took Carly Simon seriously. That was music for spoiled girls from West Chester County and Long Island, and absolutely no one else. I can't feel their pain when their real estate loses value, and the fact that Simon was an heiress whose most salient assets were right up front immediately undercuts any weight she hoped to achieve. Apart from marrying another singer songwriter of secondary and ephemeral influence, although one who endeared himself to more than one college girl of the 70's, there is little of consequence to Simon's professional career. Bedmates were never enough to land her on the same side of the artistic hemisphere as Mitchell, or for that matter King.
The book is quite passionate about King, and I'm happy for King that she gets the props here, but, she too was essentailly a one or two hit wonder with little credibilty after Tapestry. Yes, that was a major record in its day, and King was always exactly what she purported to be. To that extent, her integrity remains intact, and Tapestry will always be something more significant than a guilty pleasure. Her influence is likely to be most evidently seen in the likes of Ani DiFranco. Who else? Not really sure, but she and her daughter did have a nice jeans ad a few years back. There is a lot of paper in this book dedicated to King, and it is well worth the read. But when it is all said and done, King was a Brill Building writer, not unlike Neil Diamond. The legacy she leaves behind is one squarely framed in pop music from NYC. It is of its time and of its place.
And that brings us to Mitchell. This is not the definitive tome on the Canadian artist. In fact, it falls far from that, and its failure to measure up to its subject is what finally casts this book in the fanzine cut-out pile. Mitchell was not like girls from NY zipcodes nor many other US zipcodes. Her quintessential Canadian nature is as integral to her work as it is for Gordon Lightfoot. To lump her into a generational time warp is as much a disservice to her art and to the complexities of her integrity as anything a record company did. Joni was different from everybody. In a very big way. Her compositional skills, her chord construction, her compensation for the polio she suffered, her intimacies with CSN, her comaraderie with Young, her paintings and business decisions all reflect a part of a very complex artist who paid dearly for fame. Miles Davis understood her intuitively. Herbie Hancock as well. Pat Metheny and Jaco Pastorius were in awe of her prodigious command of her muse. Mitchell was no pop song writer. The story of giving up and then reuniting with her daughter and grandchildren is well known by now, and while that brings Mitchell back down from Olympus for most of us, truth is this book never really gets to why Mitchell was so iconic. That study is still to be written. Maybe by Hancock.
For a book that purports to spotlight a few popstars to validate how and why the women of a certain period were "all that", this fails. The author might have been better served zeroing in on Raitt, Joplin, Slick, Aretha, Emmy Lou: they were far more influential to the music world and far more influential culturally than either Simon or King. And my experioence with my friends is that there were far more women who felt a kinship with these other artists.
 It's The Economy April 22, 2008
9 out of 34 found this review helpful
"Girls Like Us," a new triple-headed biography of Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon, by New York Times bestselling author Sheila Weller, weighs in at 530 pages, plus pictures, plus notes, and what an effort it must represent. Weller, an experienced journalist who specializes in popular culture, has clearly dug deep, and interviewed many, in limning the lives of these three significant female figures in the music of the latter 20th century. And, from first word to last, she has a thesis: that their music changed lives, particularly women's. Nor can there be any doubt that this trio of artists lived and worked through the great contemporaneous feminist movement. And, by the way, that they're now all grandmothers!
Carole King was born Carol Klein in Brooklyn, in spring, 1942 (I, too, was born in Brooklyn: however, she's a few months younger than me.) By the age of 18 she was already a songwriting married woman and mother, and success came early. She and her husband at the time, Gerry Goffin, were based in New York's Brill Building, famed home of most popular songwriters for a decade or two. In the late 1950's, early 1960's, the pair penned some of nascent rock and roll's earliest, biggest hits. "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow," for the Shirelles; "He's So Fine," for the Chiffons; one of the greatest of New York songs, "Up on the Roof," for the Drifters. Also, "The Loco-Motion," "Something Tells Me I'm into Something Good," a bouncy hit I've always liked, for the English group, Herman's Hermits; even "You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman," surely a natural wonder, for Aretha Franklin; and "He Hit Me and It Felt Like a Kiss," a song I've always hated, for the Cookies. Then King moved on, became a Los Angeles lady of the canyon, Laurel, I think --and in the early 1970's released "Tapestry," a monster, greatly-influential album that broke many sales records. Me, I fell in love with rock and roll, as introduced by Allan Freed on New York radio, early, at about age 12, with "Life Could Be a Dream," and I have many - most--of these early hits, as done by the original groups, in my collection. I always particularly loved girl group sounds; Weller identifies the Shirelles and the Chantels as the earliest successful girl groups, and I have both their records. But I don't have a single Carole King record per se, and not only don't I own "Tapestry," I've never even heard it. Was living in the United Kingdom at the time of its release, and whereas they speak English over there, and the record sold very well, it didn't interest me: too reductionist for my taste.
Joni Mitchell was born Roberta Joan Anderson, of Nordic background, on the vast Canadian prairie. She, like King, felt herself stardom-bound, from a young age, this time as a folksinger. She was, helpfully, a beautiful blonde, and she achieved stardom as a folksinger/songwriter, in the early 60's. This was the greatest era for folk music of the 20th century, when Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Judy Collins, among others, were bursting into stardom. Mitchell wrote "Clouds," and "The Circle Game" early, also relocated to LA and became a "Lady of the Canyon." She continued to write; deeply personal songs at first, then, in the 70's, less so. She, too, was too reductionist for my taste; I bought my first Joni Mitchell record just a year or two ago.
Carly Simon is somewhat younger than Weller's other two subjects: she was born into a wealthy, intellectual, influential Manhattan family: her Jewish father was a partner in important publishing company Simon & Schuster. Simon is, of course, one long-legged, well-educated, classy girl; she married James Taylor, another folkie star, in the 1970's and had several big hits, "Anticipation;" and the feminist favorites "I Always Thought That's the Way It Should Be;" "You're So Vain." Will I surprise you by saying I have none of her records? Too reductionist?
Weller has amassed a wealth of detail about her three subjects, and there's primo gossip to be found here. Simon became close friends with Jackie Kennedy Onassis; we're told that American aristocrat Onassis didn't mind using a Porto-San with the hoi polloi when necessary. From our reading, we must conclude that James Taylor was a boy who really got around. Weller tells us he had a thing with Joni Mitchell, and mentions that he also hung with Carole King. But it sure feels as if all three women fell in love every Tuesday; and ultimately, I wearied of tracking three sets of friends, lovers, husbands, and session musicians.
However, my biggest problem with Weller's book is with its thesis: that these three women's songs actually changed women's lives. I grant you, they were resonant to many women, including me, who lived through it all, and some have lasted into the 21st century. But really, "Amazing Grace" is an amazingly beautiful abolitionist song that has long outlived slavery, and is still being sung. Did it kill slavery? Nope. Damage it, sure. The beautiful "We Shall Overcome;" was any song more central to the 1960's anti-segregation movement? Still being sung. But did it end segregation all by itself? And consider the "Marseillaise," French national anthem arising out of their revolution: beautiful, stirring, still being sung. But did it create that revolution? Be that as it may, at one point, Weller quotes a music business figure as saying that "it was a matter of people being guided by your music, and using it for the soundtrack of their lives." Certainly, I can agree with this more limited claim. But as to explaining what made the 60's and the woman's movement what they were?
First, you had the Vietnam War. Then, development of a low-dosage anti-pregnancy pill that many women could, and did, take: for the first time in human history they could plan their lives and careers just as men could. Furthermore, during the 1960's, three major American corporations metastasized, creating thousands of their own jobs, and hundreds of thousands of support jobs elsewhere: Xerox, Internal Business Machines, and Minnesota Mining and Manufacture. For the first time in history, most girls could, and did, get jobs - and those who couldn't sold candles to their employed sisters. As James Carville so memorably put it during Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign: "It's the economy, stupid."
Absolute Perfection April 24, 2008
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
I first heard about Girls Like Us from Dennis Elsas, a DJ on WFUV radio in New York, and quickly read the Vanity Fair excerpt. I was afraid it would read like a Kitty Kelley biography, but--thankfully--I was wrong. I usually borrow most of my books from the library (sorry, Amazon), but I pre-ordered Girls and counted the days until its arrival. I've wanted to take off from work to read it. Like other reviewers have said, this is a read you won't want to put down.
Girls Like Us is a thoroughly researched book about three women who were catalysts of change during a pivotal era in our nation's history. Women--and men--who lived through the 60s and early 70s will love the walk down memory lane and, a la Sex in the City where women discuss which character they're most like, women will decide whether they're a Carol, a Joni (as I am), or a Carly. Sheila Weller really earned her royalties here--plenty of juicy gossip about all three women. But more importantly, Weller gets into the artists' music, the story behind many of the songs (who knew?!), the musicians who played with them, an insider's view of the music industry. The book is worth the price just for the extensive Bibliography and Discography.
I just told a friend today that Girls Like Us should be required reading for college women's history courses. If you know a woman who missed coming of age during this wonderful era, show them what they missed and gift them with a copy of Girls Like Us. Before your settle into your favorite spot with your new book, go down to the basement or up to the attic, dust off your copy of Tapestry, Blue, and Anticipation, and sing along with the girls like you.
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