Little Girl Blue

by Randy L. Schmidt

  The rock press of the early 1970s in effect bullied the Carpenters, and because their music went against the grain of rock standards, they were often relegated to second-class status. Although they were not a rock band, more often than not they were reviewed by rock critics. “They were not rock,” explained journalist Rob Hoerburger in a 2008 documentary, “they were not jazz, they were not country, they were not classical, but they had facets of all of that in their music. When you put all of those facets together what you get is this really amazing pop gem.”

  According to Paul Williams, “The Carpenters were truly one of the first great alternative bands. ‘In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida’ was the huge #1 album shortly before ‘Close to You’ and ‘Begun’ were hits. I was so different from them, too. I was such a raging hippie. I was pretty much a part of the counterculture yet writing songs for Karen and Richard and a lot of other middle-of-the-road acts.” Williams was quite a sight on the A&M lot in those days. Often he wore tie-dyed shirts, round glasses, and work boots, with a black top hat resting atop his shoulder-length hair. Leaning on a railing outside an A&M office one afternoon, he noticed Bing Crosby waiting outside the studios for his driver to arrive. “He looked at me, said something, and pointed, like what is this world coming to?” Williams says. “He didn’t know who I was then. That was before I became known as an entertainer and Crosby recorded ‘We’ve Only Just Begun.’”

  Writing for Rolling Stone in 1971, Lester Bangs was the first of many who found more at fault with the Carpenters’ appearance than their brand of music. “I would say that they have the most disconcerting collective stage presence of any band I’ve ever seen,” he wrote of a concert in San Diego, California. “Besides being a motley crew, they are individually peculiar-looking. Here it becomes almost cruel to go on, but there is no getting around it, especially since most of the music was so bland and their demeanor so remarkable that you could spend the entire concert wondering at the latter without once getting bored. I found the band almost like tintypes of themselves. . . . I’ll never be able to hear ‘We’ve Only Just Begun’ without thinking, not of a sentimental autumn as I used to, but inevitably of that disgruntled collection of faces.” Bangs also mentioned their image: “The LP cover and promo pix showed ’em side by side, identical, interchangeable boy-girl faces grinning out at you with all the cheery innocence of some years-past dream of California youth. Almost like a better-scrubbed reincarnation of Sonny and Cher.”

  Bangs was right, at least as far as their image was concerned. An onslaught of eight-by-ten glossy photos and unimaginative album covers made Karen and Richard appear more conservative and square than they really were. For the Close to You album cover they were cheek to cheek in formal wear and positioned on a rock next to the ocean. It was a rush job and one that angered Richard. Even so, management did nothing. As simple and classy as their Tan Album was, the inside photo looked like every engagement portrait snapped in 1971. Next was A Song for You, which resembled a huge Valentine card. The Carpenters’ sophisticated musicianship deserved equally sophisticated packaging and promotion. In a 1993 interview, surprisingly, Herb Alpert claimed to have been pleased with the way the Carpenters were marketed by his company. “It’s not enough just to have a hit record,” he said. “It’s to be able to promote it properly and to merchandise it properly with good taste. I think the company did a wonderful job and continues to, because we try to reflect the dignity that they both had as artists.”

  Despite Alpert’s good intentions, early publicity attempts by the label backfired. A&M Records and their publicists succeeded only in frustrating Karen and Richard and creating a stigma for fans of their music, as detailed by journalist John Tobler in a 1974 article: “A number of people, myself included, could be seen stealing away surreptitiously into our favorite record shops and whispering our requirements to an astonished assistant, who probably thought we’d lost our minds. Shades of prohibition!” And Tom Smucker of the Village Voice called it “the worst case of consumer stage fright since I first bought rubbers years ago. What would the man behind the counter say when I walked up with my Carpenters record?”

  In an article written some twenty years after both Tobler’s and Smucker’s, Rob Hoerburger explained in a New York Times Magazine article the wide appeal of the Carpenters, despite the stigma: “When ‘We’ve Only Just Begun’ or ‘Rainy Days and Mondays’ came on the car radio, kids and parents would turn it up. . . . This was musical white bread, to be sure, but it was feeding masses of a biblical proportion.”

  LIVING AT home with her parents and spending a significant amount of time on tour, Karen had little time to devote to romantic relationships. Since her only real interaction with men came in the form of friendships with band members and roadies, it was inevitable that she would eventually meet and fall for someone within the Carpenters’ entourage. She was linked to Carpenters guitarist Gary Sims in the early days and later drummer Jim Anthony, but these were what Frenda Franklin recalls as “lightweight relationships,” dismissing them as mere puppy love. “They weren’t anything Karen wasn’t in control of,” she says.

  Karen dated Alan Osmond for a brief spell, but the Osmonds and the Carpenters were in such demand during that period that the two rarely spent enough time together for a serious relationship to ensue. “She really liked Alan,” recalls Franklin. “That was kind of sad because Mrs. Osmond would not allow it. . . . Everything was controlled by these powerful families, and trust me, the Carpenters were little leaguers next to the Osmonds. And they had the big Mormon church in back of them.”

  Karen downplayed the relationship with Alan in 1974 when she explained to the Los Angeles Times, “Contrary to what they write, Alan and I are not married. We’ve seen each other maybe five times. How can you date someone when you finish work at 3:00 A.M.? If you go to a lounge or coffee shop people stare. So you end up sitting in cars and talking for hours.”

  Karen expressed to Frank Bonito and other close friends her frustration with finding love and trying to build a relationship on the road. “It’s not unusual for people in that kind of situation to have romances with the people they’re working with,” Bonito says. “They live a very bizarre, confined life because they are constantly traveling. Who do you meet? Even if you wanted to date someone, who do you see?”

  In a 1981 BBC radio interview, Karen elaborated: “At one point, there were thirty-two of us on the road. It’s a big bunch. You tend to travel in the same circles with the same people, meet the same people, and hang out with the same people. Even when you come home you never really meet anybody new. Being the only girl, outside of my hairdresser, it’s not easy having thirty brothers on the road. Everybody, including management, is extremely protective. You get to the point where you don’t want to go outside the hotel room because it’s more difficult. You really don’t meet anybody.”

  In 1973 Karen grew fond of another member of their entourage. Texan David Alley was close to her age and assigned to the Carpenters’ tour by his employer, Showco, a Dallas-based sound equipment outfit. As a high school junior, Alley had been first chair trumpeter in the Texas All-State Band and went on to march with the Mustang Band while attending Southern Methodist University. On tour with the Carpenters, Sherwin Bash mentioned to Alley that Karen liked him. He was stunned by the news and wasted no time in asking her on a date. In no time at all he fell madly in love with Karen, and the two began spending a great deal of time together outside of rehearsals, sound checks, and shows.

  “David was always a very, very nice fellow and a real gentleman,” remembers Evelyn Wallace. “I had a feeling that Karen was really quite fond of him and he of her, but there was Richard in between. I think they knew that if they started dating or showed their fondness for each other that David would be gone. Karen didn’t want him gone, and David didn’t want to be gone from Karen either, so he didn’t give her that much attention whenever he was at the house since Richard was always there.”

  Although Karen enjoyed David�
�s company and felt comfortable when they were together, she did not see a future with him and seemed to distance herself at times. “Karen liked to be entertained,” Maria Galeazzi recalls. “David was very serious, almost sourpusslike. He wasn’t a fun guy. I am not saying he wasn’t a nice guy, he just wasn’t a barrel of laughs, by any means.”

  Also working against Alley’s chances with Karen was the fact that he was dependent upon his job with the Carpenters. Karen was essentially his boss, in some respects. In fact, she and Richard hired David to manage Morsound, their own sound equipment company formed in 1974. One of Karen’s crucial requirements in a potential husband was that he be independently wealthy and not reliant on her income. According to Galeazzi, Karen felt she needed her man to be of a certain status. “The person had to be somebody way up there,” she explains. “Her standards were high. Some regular dude was just not going to do. I am not saying that David was a regular dude. He was successful in his own right, but she would have admired somebody that was talented in music and good looking and all that. And I think even that wouldn’t have done.” As Karen told the Los Angeles Times that same year, “It’s no good when the chick is bigger than the guy.”

  Frenda Franklin concurs. “In the very beginning she had a huge crush on my husband, Eddie,” she says. “You see, Karen had a propensity to fall in love with people that could change her life in big ways. She certainly had a giant crush on Herbie. She was like a little starstruck girl. These guys were not only handsome, they were powerful, they dressed great, they smelled great, and they were wealthy. She saw it as a way out, definitely. No question about it, it was freedom. But David Alley wasn’t enough.”

  8

  MOVING OUT

  “HAROLD AND Karen were both sweethearts,” remembers Evelyn Wallace. “Richard, on the other hand, was just like his mother. They could be bitchy. They were bitchy, even to each other once in a while. Yet Richard was still her baby.”

  One such exchange between Agnes and Richard occurred in Acapulco, Mexico, where the Carpenters were invited to perform two twenty-minute shows on consecutive Saturdays for the IBM Corporation’s Gold Key Club, June 2–9, 1973. Outside of the performance times, the group was free to enjoy the beautiful secluded villa provided for them at Las Brisas overlooking the Bay of Acapulco. Sharing the spacious house with Karen was boyfriend David Alley. Maria Galeazzi accompanied Richard, while manager Sherwin Bash and his wife, Bobby, also stayed at the villa. Agnes and Harold were invited to Acapulco as well but were upset to learn they had been booked into the nearby Princess Hotel with the IBM executives. With their love interests on the trip, Karen and Richard sought some semblance of privacy, but this did not sit well with Agnes, who felt she and Harold were deliberately excluded. “Why are we in the hotel while the strangers are in the house?” she demanded.

  “I’m not ten years old anymore!” Richard shouted back. The other houseguests looked on as the two bellowed back and forth. Once each had said their piece, everyone did their best to relax and enjoy the luxurious accommodations. They took great advantage of the private swimming pool and made several trips to Pie de la Cuesta, a long, narrow strip of beach north of Las Brisas.

  By the time the group returned from Mexico, it was apparent to Agnes that Richard was in love with Maria, but their relationship threatened the family’s living situation. Agnes had succeeded in keeping Richard at home with her for twenty-seven years and was not about to lose him to her hairdresser. From a parental standpoint, Galeazzi now recognizes Agnes’s desire to be protective of her children, although not to the point of suffocation. “She didn’t want anybody taking advantage of them,” Galeazzi says. “I can understand that. If I had been their mother I would have been a junkyard dog, too. But I wasn’t just a girl that came along and hooked up with him because he was Richard Carpenter. I was just a nice Italian girl who happened to be working for them, and we got together. It wasn’t like I was a groupie and fell into his bed or anything.” Regardless, Agnes made it her mission to excommunicate Galeazzi from the Carpenter clan, and Karen became the medium. “You fire her,” Agnes insisted.

  “Mom, she does my hair the best of anyone I’ve ever been to,” Karen explained. “And she doesn’t do just my hair, she cuts Richard’s hair and the guys’, too. She does our fingernails, and she always presses our costumes before we go on stage. We didn’t expect her to do all that!”

  “You can find someone else,” Agnes said. “You get rid of her!”

  Evelyn Wallace recalls this episode in the kitchen at Newville and how devastated Karen was to be given these orders. “If I heard the words ‘you get rid of her’ once, I must have heard them a hundred times,” she says. “Karen was so nice. I think her mother weakened her.”

  The months that followed were very tense for Galeazzi. She made every effort to do her job and tend to Karen’s needs, but she also wanted to spend her free time alone with Richard. The two enjoyed racing his Ferrari at Riverside, but Karen did her best to monopolize Maria’s time with girls-only outings such as shopping trips to Beverly Hills or visits to their favorite needlepoint store. “I was always like her little shadow and supposed to be there for her twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week,” she recalls. “It’s not like I wasn’t doing my job. When I got together with Richard I became even more conscientious about it because I didn’t want to screw up.”

  At Agnes’s urging, Karen became more demanding and impatient, and Galeazzi began to sense something was brewing. Alone time for her and Richard was scarce. “If we went anywhere it was the three of us,” she says. “Every place we went it was like Karen and Richard and I, and it got old for me, let me tell you. Even the hotel rooms were always Richard’s room, Karen’s room, and then my room. Most of the time they’d make sure there was a door that opened up from mine into hers so that I was always there ready to assist her.”

  Things came to a head one evening as the three prepared to go out on the town. As always, Galeazzi stopped by Newville to do Karen’s hair and makeup. When she finished, Galeazzi excused herself to return to her apartment. There she would get herself ready for the outing, but Karen stopped her. “No. Bring your stuff and get ready here,” she said.

  “It’s just easier for me to go two miles away and get ready and then come back,” Galeazzi explained.

  Karen felt challenged and quickly turned to Richard. “You see? This is not working,” she told him. “This is just not working!”

  Next, Karen presented Galeazzi with an iniquitous ultimatum: forget about Richard and go back out on the road as her stylist or remain a couple and resign her position. But Galeazzi refused to conform to either suggestion. “Well, I can do both,” Galeazzi replied, shocked at the nerve of Karen’s challenge. “I don’t understand why I have to make this choice. Be with him and, what, twiddle my thumbs and do needlepoint? If I go on the road, I am going to watch Richard dating other girls. I don’t think I could stand that.”

  Richard visited Maria at her apartment, where the two sat at the edge of her bed and discussed Karen’s demands. Both in tears, they agreed the relationship must come to an end. “He had to do what he had to do,” Galeazzi recalls. “He made it understood that it was not in his power or in his best interest. I would have never pushed it, and that’s why I left. I could have chosen one or the other, but I didn’t because it would have been difficult for all three of us. I couldn’t see myself just being his girlfriend either, so that’s how it came to an end.” Galeazzi returned to her job at the Magic Mirror in Downey, weighing in at a skeletal eighty-six pounds due to stress. “I lost so much weight because I was so nervous about it all.”

  Replacing Galeazzi was Sandy Holland. According to Evelyn Wallace, Karen spelled out her expectations in no uncertain terms, instructing the new employee to keep her distance and stay out of her brother’s bed. “If Richard wants his hair cut, cut it. But whatever you do, don’t play around with him!”

  TO THE outside world, Agnes Carpenter was an overprotective mot
her to both her children, but it was apparent to those within the Carpenter enclave that she played favorites. Evelyn Wallace recalls that when speaking of the two, Agnes always made reference to Richard before Karen. “From the time Karen was little, everything was ‘Richard, Richard, Richard.’ It was always ‘Richard and Karen’ and ‘if it wasn’t for Richard, there wouldn’t be a Karen,’ so to speak. He was more important to Agnes than Karen.”

  According to Wallace, Karen was well aware of her second-place ranking in the home and perhaps even felt it was justified. Agnes’s adoration for her firstborn—to the point of idolization, according to some—was emulated and even proliferated by Karen. “She thought Richard was God,” Frenda Franklin recalls, “just like her mother thought he was God.” Tangible proof of Karen’s adulation of her brother remains today in a poignant needlepoint message she crafted for him: THERE IS NO K.C. WITHOUT R.C.

  As Frenda explains, Agnes’ inability to nurture and nourish her daughter with affection, as she did Richard, led to Karen’s own inability to love herself. “[Karen’s] relationship with her mother was so stilted that it caused such a great hurt inside her,” Franklin says. Of Agnes she laments, “I wanted her to be different with Karen. She just couldn’t love her. It was not possible. I think in her own crazy way she did love her, but not like she loved Richard. If your own parent doesn’t love you, you’re going to walk around with a giant hole that’s not ever going to get filled.”

  In a 1973 concert review that criticized Richard’s long hairstyle, a University of Montana columnist wrote, “Whereas Richard may not appear to be every father’s favorite son, Karen is the kind of girl every mother could love.” This casual remark takes on a most ironic twist when paired with Sherwin Bash’s observations of the real mother-daughter relationship he witnessed within the Carpenter family: “I’m sure in her own way Agnes loved Karen, but it wasn’t something she was able to express,” he recalled. “I think eventually that was one of the most serious problems that Karen had. . . . Over the years, Karen Carpenter became beloved in the world as a very special artist, a very special voice, who reminded everybody of the daughter they wished they had. In her own home she never was told or maybe never even felt that existed from her own parents, especially her mother.”