You’ve Got A Friend: The Carole King Story
The frenzied whirligig of the 1960s had left a heck of a hangover when in 1971 along came an album that promised to deliver some much-needed warmth and wisdom, if the cover of a beautiful, sharp-eyed young woman sitting back on a windowsill was anything to go by. The record was Carole King’s Tapestry, and sure enough the tracks within more than delivered: I Feel The Earth Move, So Far Away, It’s Too Late… every one an instant, ineradicable classic. Yet the seeming overnight star was already a hardened veteran of the music industry, and this winning, if sometimes cheesy, documentary profile (You’ve Got A Friend: The Carole King Story, BBC Four, Friday, 9pm) comes into its own most in detailing King’s earlier years as the born and bred New Yorker Carol Klein. She’d written her first No1, Will You Love Me Tomorrow, aged just 18, sung by The Shirelles. With first husband Gerry Goffin the hits just kept on coming: The Loco-Motion, Up On The Roof, A Natural Woman, most of them cranked out in about 20 minutes in those more modest and less bombastic days.
With her marriage break-up came the move to California, where she embarked on a solo career. Soon her voice was coming out through record speakers and was as ubiquitous as the scent of the era’s joss sticks. Other pop artists have greater range but none match her for raw, heartfelt honesty, and when King sings, the solitary listener can truly believe they’ve got a friend.
NOT TO BE MISSED
D-Day 70: The Heroes Return, BBC1, Friday, 9.15am In ceremonies of this momentous anniversary, veterans, Royal Family members and statesmen remember those who fought, and the many who lost their lives.
The Summer Exhibiti on: BBC Arts At The Royal Academy, BBC2, Sat, 7pm
View works by amateur and emerging artists, and what goes on in the culling to select the hanging.
Born In The Wild, Channel 4, Sunday, 8pm
This week, the Inside Nature’s Giants team watch as an elephant calf takes its first steps.