Troubadors (on American Masters)

When I was a young man, every woman that I met had a copy of Carole King's LP album "Tapestry" sitting on the floor next to her bed. The record was like Tampax or a brassiere -- some kind of attribute of femininity that seemed to have nothing to do with music. (I can't recall ever hearing anyone play that record.) Once upon a time, billions of Carole King records must have existed -- you can still find bins full of them -- and the American Masters documentary, "Troubadors," about Carole King and James Taylor has the merit of providing some information, albeit limited, about Ms. King. I had always wondered about her: who as she and where did she come from and, most of all, what happened to her? The documentary provides some information, but like most "American Masters" programs about subjects still alive, the project seems to have been thoroughly sanitized by its hero and heroine, libel and defamation lawyers have carefully scoured from the film anything really interesting, and, it seems, that Taylor and King have had the final edit on this hagiographic and authorized version of their lives. The movie, like the previous Jimi Hendrix documentary, contains some excellent concert footage and it is undeniably pleasant and nostalgic in a creepy sort of way to hear those old songs performed again -- much of this music was a soundtrack to my youth. But you don't really learn much of anything. Taylor, in particular, is uncommunicative -- from the film, you would never know that he suffered a severe motorcycle accident (broke both his hands and feet), has been treated for Depression with thorazine, and has two children by Carly Simon. Carole King is provided a more comprehensive biography but there are also curious gaps in the record: we learn that she worked for Tin Pan Alley in the Brill Building (presumably with Lou Reed) when she was sixteen, was a child bride at 18, and, after her incredible success, with "Tapestry" moved to Idaho. She is an attractive and gregarious figure in the film -- but her life story ends when she moved to Idaho, now thirty years ago, and re-commences only for a triumphal tour with James Taylor around 2007. There are lots of pictures of her but pictures, of course, don't tell the whole story -- or, really, even part of it. The documentary is constructed around a place called Doug Weston's "The Troubador," a gritty bar on Santa Monica boulevard that, apparently, fostered every major comedy act and musician originating in LA. Weston seems to have been a manic-depressive and there is some fascinating footage showing his antics, but here the libel lawyers have been hard at work, scrubbing the film of anything scandalous or interesting -- Weston always seems to be on the verge of cracking-up and the film implies he flamed out in the early seventies, so it's a surpose when a closing title tells us that he died in 1999. At the fringes of the film, we see figures like Joni Mitchell, Steve Martin, and Jackson Browne who are more interesting than Taylor and King. Most of the film plays like a promo for reissue of "Tapestry" and some of "Sweet Baby James'" albums. And the picture is curiously obtuse in some ways. We see some brief footage of Robert Christgau ranting about the moral and artistic bankruptcy of West Coast pop stars like James Taylor and Carole King. Christgau mentions Lester Bangs' famous essay "James Taylor Marked for Death" and the movie shows a momentary shot of Bangs, fat and wormy-looking, the very archetype of a basement-dweller in his mom's house. Someone defends James Taylor saying: "Who ever heard of Lester Bangs? He's forgotten now while the whole world loves James Taylor's music." Well, this is a half-truth: in my house, a copy of Lester Bang's essays and music reviews was read so many times that it fell apart and, now, exists only in forlorn fragments. Then, some LA session man adds insult to injury by saying: "Lester Bangs 'marked' James for death. He should have tried it. James could have taken Lester Bangs any day." This is the best moment of the documentary, invoking a knock-down-drag-out fight between the girlish and effete James Taylor and the fat Nyquil-addict Lester Bangs.