She could have been a disco diva. While recording her – ultimately shelved – solo album in the late 70s, Karen Carpenter turned down two tracks, still in rough sketch form, offered to her by songwriter Rod Temperton. Off The Wall and Rock With You then went on to play a significant role in making Michael Jackson a global superstar.
It’s perhaps the most surprising revelation in Schmidt’s thorough and affectionate biography of a singer who’s been constantly undervalued by the music industry. Yes, The Carpenters were guilty of some of the most syrupy MOR crimes imaginable, but they also delivered a few songs of enormous grace and eloquence; think We’ve Only Just Begun, or their renditions of Leon Russell material (Superstar, A Song For You, This Masquerade).
Less surprisingly, the tragedy of Karen’s anorexia figures prominently, and her constant refusal to accept that she was ill is heartbreaking. Her controlling mother Agnes doesn’t come across too well, forever favouring big brother Richard and using every emotional blackmail trick in the book to keep her multi-millionaire children from moving out of the family home. It all adds up to an all too real soap opera life, punctuated with more good tunes than you might remember.
