Post by Rick Henry on Mar 17, 2008 22:51:44 GMT -5
The following is an article written on Karen Carpenter which recently appeared in Marie Claire magazine.
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Life Story: Karen Carpenter
Feb 28 12:00am
Twenty-five years after her death from anorexia, Helen Gent charts the life of the singer whose wholesome image hid her inner demons.
Photo: Barry King/WireImage.com
They were the musical sensation of the world. During the '70s, Karen Carpenter's haunting vocals and her brother Richard's talented piano playing had seen them achieve hit after hit with their wholesome pop songs. They had topped the charts, made more money than they could have dreamt of and played to sell-out audiences all over the globe. But, in November 1973, Karen Carpenter wasn't thinking of any of that.
Staring at the television screen in horror, the 23 year old couldn't believe what she was seeing. A few days earlier, the siblings had appeared on a Bob Hope TV special and Karen was watching a tape of the show. But the perfectionist performer wasn't focusing on her singing or Richard's playing; instead, she was struck by how much weight she had put on. The once chubby teen had for years maintained her weight at 54kg, healthy for her height of 163cm, but the previous few months had seen her put on a few kilos and she was horrified. "She wasn't too heavy," remembers Richard, "but the weight was coming on her." Self-conscious and unhappy, Karen told her brother she intended to "do something about it" and embarked on what everyone around her thought was a "normal" diet.
But what neither Richard nor anyone else could have foreseen then was that within two years, Karen would be in the grip of anorexia nervosa, a disease that would ultimately rob her of her career and her life.
Karen was born on March 2, 1950, in New Haven, Connecticut, to Harold, who worked for a container corporation, and Agnes. A tomboy who loved playing ball games, from an early age she followed her music-mad, older brother, singing along to family records. Richard was a piano prodigy who was enrolled in lessons at Yale University by the age of 15. In 1963, the family moved to Downey, California, where Karen persuaded the school marching band to let her join, along with her brother, so as to be excused PE lessons. It was then Karen discovered her love for drums, getting her parents to buy her a kit.
The siblings quickly began performing, initially as the Richard Carpenter Trio with friend Wes Jacobs, then as jazz band Spectrum. Ostensibly a drummer, Karen stayed behind the drum kit in early incarnations, but as her voice grew in power and quality, she was soon enticed to the front of the stage.
The youngsters played regularly at local clubs and were approached by a few record companies, but nothing came of it. Eventually, Karen and Richard decided to go it alone and renamed themselves the Carpenters. It was 1968, the Vietnam War was escalating, and Richard had escaped the draft by studying at California State University in Long Beach. While there, he heard about a new national TV program, Your All American College Show, where bands competed for cash prizes. They were a smash hit and eventually came to the attention of the co-founder of A&M Records, trumpeter Herb Alpert. When he heard their tapes, he gave them the record contract they'd been dreaming of and after only their second single, "(They Long To Be) Close To You", they were stars. The single, written by A&M stablemate Burt Bacharach and released in 1970, sold more than three million copies worldwide, reached number one in the US and won Karen and Richard a Grammy. It was quickly followed by "We've Only Just Begun", which became the wedding song of a generation. The Carpenters had made it. Blaring out from radios, their pop-lite sound was a soothing antidote to the war, and they were inundated with fan mail. "Yours is the only music that my parents and I agree on," enthused one letter.
But music critics were less impressed with the "goody-two-shoes" brother-and-sister act who didn't drink, smoke or do drugs, and who looked "square" – Richard in his cashmere blazer, Karen in a polka-dot dress. "Because we came out in the middle of the hard rock thing, we didn't dress funny, we smiled, and we ended up with titles like 'Vitamin-swallowing, Colgate-smiling, bland Middle America,'" Karen recalled once. "The more successful we got, the more they attacked our image. They never touched our music. They'd say how ridiculous that somebody came to see the Carpenters in a tie!"
The sight of Karen sitting behind her drum kit didn't help their image. "Rarely do you see such a fetching brunette seat herself at the drums and flail away so perfectly," wrote one reviewer. "The gown had legs for ladylike drumming. And she wore a red ribbon in her hair. She was Miss Innocence personified."
But, as Alpert put it, Karen "didn't have that Judy Garland quality. She was a little bit withdrawn, a bit uncomfortable with herself at times, so I think she needed this barricade, this drum in front of her". Karen finally agreed to compromise, standing centrestage to sing slow songs then retreating to her comfort zone for up-tempo numbers like "Jambalaya".
By 1971, the pair were playing sell-out concerts from the Royal Albert Hall in London to the Hollywood Bowl in LA. But as their fame grew, unbeknown to her family, so did the seeds of Karen's discontent with her body.
She had been on diets before; in 1967, aged 17, she weighed 66kg, a little heavy for her height. Her doctor prescribed the Stillman Diet, which involved drinking eight glasses of water a day and taking vitamins. She stuck to it rigidly and dropped 11kg in six months, maintaining her new weight for the next six years. But, by August 1973, Karen began to notice she'd gained weight. Looking at photos of herself singing in Lake Tahoe, she was disgusted by her figure, so she hired a personal trainer who prescribed a high-carb diet and the use of a "hip cycle". Karen stepped up her exercise regimen, but was shocked to find herself bulking up with muscle, not slimming down, and, by the time she saw herself on TV three months later, the damage was done. She had to take drastic action.
Karen was equally uncompromising in her career, working relentlessly to capitalise on the success of singles like "Rainy Days And Mondays" and "Goodbye To Love". Devoted to Richard and to singing, she demanded 100 per cent from everyone, including herself. "There isn't anything I wouldn't do for him to give him the perfection that we both want," she once confided.
The close siblings moved in together in the early '70s. Only five minutes from their parents' home, Karen's mother and father were alarmed at how little she was eating. At family gatherings, she would pick at salads, and in restaurants most of her tiny portion would go uneaten as she moved it around her plate. As the weight dropped off, she swapped her prim, high-necked gowns for low-cut satin dresses, with her new look bringing marriage proposals from male fans. But, by 1975, her gaunt physique drew gasps of horror from audiences. "Her skin was literally hanging off her bones," remembers her friend Debbie Vaiuso. "It was like hugging a lampshade."
That spring, Karen's weight plummeted to 41kg; she was too ill to go on tour, and was forced to spend six weeks at home recuperating. The following year, she moved into her own apartment near Beverly Hills with a doorbell that chimed "We've Only Just Begun". A lover of stuffed toys, her home was cram-med with fluffy animals she'd been sent by fans, and in every room there were signs of Mickey Mouse memorabilia. Close friends like Olivia Newton-John recall that whenever they visited, the fridge was always empty.
Also missing from Karen's life was someone to share it with. Months of touring left little time for romance, and when she met someone the relationship never lasted. "She wanted a wedding, a family and a white picket fence around her house. And she wanted everything to be Disneyland," explains her manager Jerry Weintraub. On dates, she'd tell boyfriends she had already eaten, or pushed food around her plate before hiding it in her handbag. When a designer was drafted in to vamp up her outfits for the Carpenters' televised variety shows, Richard was horrified. "She was so d**ned thin with some of those new outfits that you could see her pelvis," he reveals. But despite being weak with malnutrition, Karen was determined to perform. "I gotta sing," she would say. "I love that crowd."
Ironically, it was Richard who cracked first. Addicted to sleeping pills, in early 1979, he checked into a treatment centre in Kansas. While he was dealing with his drug dependence, Karen reluctantly agreed to be admitted to hospital, where she was fed intravenously for several weeks to gain weight. In May, she felt well enough to fly to New York to record a solo album with producer Phil Ramone. Staying with him and his wife, Karen Ichiuji, the couple realised the seriousness of their guest's condition when they found their home littered with laxatives and found her passed out on the kitchen floor one night. Already in a fragile state, when Karen's solo album failed to get the green light from her record company, it was a bitter blow to her self-esteem.
Back in California and still reeling from her failed album, things began to look up for Karen when she met Tom Burris, a 39-year-old divorcee and real estate developer, in June 1980. Two months later, on August 31, they married in a glitzy ceremony at the Beverly Hills Hotel, followed by a honeymoon in Bora Bora. She seemed content, setting up home with her new husband and talking about having babies, but according to Ray Coleman, author of The Carpenters: The Untold Story, during a family get-together in November the following year, Tom stormed down from Karen's bedroom and told everyone "you can keep her".
In January 1982, with her marriage over and the latest Carpenters' single, "Touch Me When We're Dancing", failing to reach the top 10, Karen moved to New York to consult a psychotherapist. During her daily sessions, she admitted to taking thyroid medication, which increased her heart rate to burn more kilojoules, as well as 90 laxatives a day. Karen Ichiuji, who stayed in the hotel with her friend to support her during her therapy, discovered laxatives hidden in pillowcases, behind wardrobes and stuffed in the singer's shoes.
That April, Karen returned home for a few weeks to record what would be her last song, "Now", but back in New York, the singer's health deteriorated rapidly. Down to 36kg, she was experiencing dizzy spells and a racing heart, and when she woke up one day to find she could barely walk, she was rushed to hospital. She was there for eight weeks, again being fed intravenously until she gained around 14kg and was well enough to leave in November. She flew home to California and seemed glad to be back, catching up with friends and shopping, but her frantic pace was another ruse to burn kilojoules – according to her therapist, while in New York she'd bought at least 30 pairs of trainers. Her family was heartened to see her "well" and positive about the future. She told her friend Dionne Warwick, "I've got a lot of living to do."
But it was not to be and, on February 4, 1983, Karen collapsed at her parents' home and died of a heart attack. She was 32. "When Mum told me she had collapsed, I thought she was overreacting," admits Richard. "I remember thinking, 'Well, this should be just enough to teach her a lesson about how serious this anorexic thing can be.' I hoped it would jolt her into reality. When I saw the ambulance and the police outside the door, I was shocked. She was dead already."
Her funeral was held four days later at Downey United Methodist Church and Karen, dressed in a pink suit, lay in an open casket. Around 1000 mourners attended, including singers Olivia Newton-John, Petula Clark and Dionne Warwick. According to Ray Coleman, Karen's estranged husband, Tom, took off his wedding band and threw it in the coffin at a viewing of her body the day before.
Karen's death put the then little known condition of anorexia into the public eye; her family started a memorial foundation to raise money and awareness about eating disorders. Twenty-five years on, her voice is as haunting today as it was in the '70s. She was a woman who searched for perfection and yearned for love. But both would elude her. So how prophetic, then, that one of the melodies that best sums up her life was written by her brother:
I'll say goodbye to love
No-one ever cared if I should live or die.
Time and time again the chance for
Love has passed me by...
