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| Gerry Goffin: the poet laureate of teenage pop | Gerry Goffin: the poet laureate of teenage pop |
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| Gerry Goffin, a trainee chemist who became the poet laureate of teenage pop, specialised in coming up with a great opening line to grab the audience’s attention. Plenty of people will remember the first time they heard “Tonight you’re mine completely/ You give your love so sweetly,” from Will You Love Me Tomorrow, or “Looking out on the morning rain/ I used to feel so uninspired," from (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman. But he didn’t stop there. | Gerry Goffin, a trainee chemist who became the poet laureate of teenage pop, specialised in coming up with a great opening line to grab the audience’s attention. Plenty of people will remember the first time they heard “Tonight you’re mine completely/ You give your love so sweetly,” from Will You Love Me Tomorrow, or “Looking out on the morning rain/ I used to feel so uninspired," from (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman. But he didn’t stop there. |
| Buried a little deeper in those wonderful songs are the lines that really touched his young listeners’ hearts. The words to the bridge, or middle section, of that first Shirelles hit from 1960 were almost like poetry: “Tonight with words unspoken/ You say that I’m the only one/ But will my heart be broken/ When the night meets the morning sun?” And when Goffin presented Aretha Franklin with the second verse of A Natural Woman – “When my soul was in the Lost and Found, you came along to claim it” – he gave countless ordinary lovers a way to express their deepest feelings. | Buried a little deeper in those wonderful songs are the lines that really touched his young listeners’ hearts. The words to the bridge, or middle section, of that first Shirelles hit from 1960 were almost like poetry: “Tonight with words unspoken/ You say that I’m the only one/ But will my heart be broken/ When the night meets the morning sun?” And when Goffin presented Aretha Franklin with the second verse of A Natural Woman – “When my soul was in the Lost and Found, you came along to claim it” – he gave countless ordinary lovers a way to express their deepest feelings. |
| Misleadingly, they are often called “Carole King songs”. She wrote the tunes, and later on she would sing them when, after Goffin and King divorced, she embarked on a hugely successful solo career. But whenever King sang her own, gentler versions of the Chiffons’ One Fine Day or the Drifters’ Up on the Roof, she was still singing Goffin’s words. They were written by the man she had met when she was 17 and he was 20, and with whom she had two daughters while they lived in an apartment in the Queens housing project LeFrak City – and with whom she travelled to work in Manhattan every day at their cubicle in the offices of Aldon Music at 1650 Broadway, where they pumped out hit after hit after hit. | Misleadingly, they are often called “Carole King songs”. She wrote the tunes, and later on she would sing them when, after Goffin and King divorced, she embarked on a hugely successful solo career. But whenever King sang her own, gentler versions of the Chiffons’ One Fine Day or the Drifters’ Up on the Roof, she was still singing Goffin’s words. They were written by the man she had met when she was 17 and he was 20, and with whom she had two daughters while they lived in an apartment in the Queens housing project LeFrak City – and with whom she travelled to work in Manhattan every day at their cubicle in the offices of Aldon Music at 1650 Broadway, where they pumped out hit after hit after hit. |
| Goffin’s lyrics were so vivid and their potency so enduring that they were sometimes even borrowed for the titles of films: Some Kind of Wonderful for Howard Deutch’s 1987 high-school romance, for example, or One Fine Day for the Michael Hoffman's 1995 adult romcom, starring Michelle Pfeiffer and George Clooney. | Goffin’s lyrics were so vivid and their potency so enduring that they were sometimes even borrowed for the titles of films: Some Kind of Wonderful for Howard Deutch’s 1987 high-school romance, for example, or One Fine Day for the Michael Hoffman's 1995 adult romcom, starring Michelle Pfeiffer and George Clooney. |
| Other phrases remain lodged in the collective memory: “It might as well rain until September”; “Everybody’s doing a brand-new dance now”; “Girls grow up faster than boys do”; and “I think I’m goin’ back/ to the things I learned so well in my youth.” The title of his most controversial song, the Crystals’ He Hit Me (And It Felt Like a Kiss), appears, without attribution, in a lyric on Lana Del Rey’s new album. | |
| Goffin’s talent was not just confined to his partnership with King. Even in the mid-60s, when they were at their most successful and prolific, he could work with other composers to come up with jewels that glitter more brightly with the passing years. With his friend Russ Titelman he wrote I Never Dreamed, recorded by the Cookies, and What Am I Gonna Do With You (Hey Baby), best known in its versions by the Chiffons and Lesley Gore but most perfectly (if obscurely) realised in 1967 by the Inspirations. Sublime examples of New York girl-group music, both of them are much cherished by collectors. | Goffin’s talent was not just confined to his partnership with King. Even in the mid-60s, when they were at their most successful and prolific, he could work with other composers to come up with jewels that glitter more brightly with the passing years. With his friend Russ Titelman he wrote I Never Dreamed, recorded by the Cookies, and What Am I Gonna Do With You (Hey Baby), best known in its versions by the Chiffons and Lesley Gore but most perfectly (if obscurely) realised in 1967 by the Inspirations. Sublime examples of New York girl-group music, both of them are much cherished by collectors. |
| He was a useful producer, too. Freddie Scott’s version of Hey Girl, which he supervised in 1963, remains a classic of uptown soul, with the kind of sound that eluded the many British groups who covered the songs of Goffin and King. The originals – whether Chains by the Cookies, Earl-Jean’s I’m Into Somethin’ Good or Maxine Brown’s Oh No Not My Baby – invariably stand the test of time better than versions by the Beatles, Herman’s Hermits and Manfred Mann. | He was a useful producer, too. Freddie Scott’s version of Hey Girl, which he supervised in 1963, remains a classic of uptown soul, with the kind of sound that eluded the many British groups who covered the songs of Goffin and King. The originals – whether Chains by the Cookies, Earl-Jean’s I’m Into Somethin’ Good or Maxine Brown’s Oh No Not My Baby – invariably stand the test of time better than versions by the Beatles, Herman’s Hermits and Manfred Mann. |
| Those who accept the conventional wisdom that nothing happened in pop music between Elvis and the Beatles should listen to these marvellous records – and to the outpouring of memories of a man who did the best thing a pop songwriter can do: made listeners feel they are not alone with their emotions. | Those who accept the conventional wisdom that nothing happened in pop music between Elvis and the Beatles should listen to these marvellous records – and to the outpouring of memories of a man who did the best thing a pop songwriter can do: made listeners feel they are not alone with their emotions. |
| • Richard Williams blogs about music at thebluemoment.com. | • Richard Williams blogs about music at thebluemoment.com. |