The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
The persona of Karen Carpenter
Thirty-four years after Karen Carpenter’s unexpected death, the “many Karens” remains a subject to her fans.
Thirty-four years after Karen Carpenter’s sudden and unexpected death at 32, the “many Karens” remains a subject that fascinates her fans, including Joel Samberg.
But because Samberg is a published writer as well as a Carpenters fan, he undertook many interviews and extensive research into her life and personality.
The result of what he calls “my quest” was a book, “Some Kind of Lonely Clown: The Music, Memory and Melancholy Lives of Karen Carpenter” (Bear Manor Media). The “lonely clown” in the title came from a line in the Carpenters’ hit “Rainy Days and Mondays.”
Samberg, who lives in Avon and was raised on Long Island, is careful to acknowledge this is not a biography. Indeed, it checks in at only 134 pages.
“It is an assessment, a reflection and an appreciation,” he told me in an email.
In the book’s introduction, Samberg said one of the reasons he wrote it was “I wanted to prove — for those who stubbornly refuse to believe it and would never bother to wonder why — that the Carpenters are still enormously popular today, particularly Karen.”
Since his book is not nearly as thorough as Randy Schmidt’s 2010 biography “Little Girl Blue: The Life of Karen Carpenter,” Samberg did not poke around much in New Haven, where Karen and her older brother, Richard Carpenter, spent their early years.
“The family left there 53 years ago,” he told me. “It’s likely there’s nothing there that has any attachment at all to Karen and Richard.”
Their childhood home is on Hall Street, off Townsend Avenue in the East Shore neighborhood. I took a drive over there last week and eyeballed the modest, two-story house in the middle of a suburban-looking block.
During one of his book’s few references to New Haven, Samberg wrote: “In the oddest of ironies, there are two cities, both in the U.S., where unabashed references to the Carpenters’ legacy would seem most appropriate and yet are curiously in short supply.”
He added that despite the Carpenters’ “monumental popularity” in their heyday, “public heritage is practically non-existent in New Haven, where Richard and Karen lived until they were teenagers, and in Downey, CA., where the family relocated in 1963.”
Samberg quoted Lucia Paolella, the former principal of Nathan Hale School, where Karen and Richard were students: “They left New Haven with talent but not with fame.” That’s why she thinks there is so little commemoration of their time here.
“Someone told me that once there was a plaque in Karen’s honor here at the school, before we relocated,” Paolella told Samberg. “But I haven’t been able to find it.”
Can anybody out there work on that? It might be sitting in somebody’s attic. Maybe a new one should be created and displayed. After all, it’s been done for the Five Satins nearby at St. Bernadette Church, where they recorded “In the Still of the Night.”
When I asked Samberg what he learned during his research, he emailed this: “Even before I began the book, I believed that Karen Carpenter had a singular, enduring persona that few people can match. When I was done, I was more convinced than ever. She had a mesmerizing effect on everyone who met her, so much so that several key people I contacted simply refused to talk about her. That’s how raw their feelings still were, even 30 years later.”
Samberg added, “The theme of ‘many Karens,’ which I introduce in chapter one, was paramount in getting me started on my journey.” He said that theme “is the impression I walked away with after listening to dozens of interviews, watching hundreds of videos, gazing at thousands of photos and absorbing the Carpenters’ varied catalog.”
But Samberg said it might be a good thing he didn’t get “too psychological” in the book because “who knows who would have come after me?” This was a reference to the “emotional fanatics” he encountered during his work on the book.
“They have a sense of ownership to Karen’s life and legacy,” he said in an email. “Some vociferously quarreled with my personal opinions. Others tried to put blockades in my way in terms of the quotes, stories and images I wanted to use. There was even a guy who warned me that I had better not give the book the name I gave it because there might be certain forces out there who would come after me for my insolence.”
Samberg said this hasn’t happened.
Who were all these “many Karens”? Samberg listed some of them in his book’s introduction: “We are already familiar with the gifted singer and consummate recording artist but we must not forget the love-starved romantic, the trusting prey, the obedient daughter, the conflicted sister, the awkward performer, the unpredictable jester, the modest millionaire, the optimistic dreamer, the wannabe mother, the emotional wreck, the fleeting liar, the giddy clown, the generous friend. Nor must we overlook the ailing anorexic and doomed icon.” (Her anorexia nervosa led to her death.)
Samberg wrote that as he explored the Carpenters’ history, he realized “Karen was an extremely troubled soul, that she may have had serious inherent issues that were only made more difficult by having to deal with a stern and emotionally detached mother, an ambitious and harddriven brother and the effects of being thrust under a global spotlight at just 20 years of age.”
Samberg’s book includes parts of what Schmidt reported in detail in his book, such as Karen’s tomboy love of playing softball as a kid and the decision by her parents, Harold and Agnes Carpenter, to move the family to California to improve Richard’s chances of building a career as an arranger and composer. Samberg said Karen’s mom put Richard on “a higher pedestal” while down-playing Karen’s talents.
The Samberg book has plenty of interesting nuggets of information. (My favorite nugget in Schmidt’s book: Karen was a New Haven Register paper girl, delivering it daily on a regular route.)
Here are some of the nuggets in Samberg’s book:
• When Karen was a kid, she said that when she grew up she wanted to be a commercial artist, an airline stewardess or a nurse.
• Paul McCartney said she had “the best female voice in the world: melodic, tuneful and distinctive.”
• Even Dee Snider of the heavy metal band Twisted Sister admitted: “When you were alone in the car by yourself and one of those catchy Carpenters tunes came on, you’d find you’re singing along.”
• The Carpenters’ first hit, “(They Long to Be) Close to You,” which debuted in June 1970, was followed only about a month later by “We’ve Only Just Begun.” It had been the theme song for a bank commercial.
• Although Samberg said she “craved love and romance but never had much luck finding and keeping it,” she dated Mark Harmon, Tony Danza, John Davidson (who was then married), Steve Martin and Barry Manilow.
• Elvis Presley tried, unsuccessfully, to entice Karen and Petula Clark to engage in a “sexual threesome.”
Samberg included a bit of material on Karen’s unsatisfying marriage to real estate developer Tom Burris. It seems he failed to tell her about his pre-engagement vasectomy and had money problems.
“Bittersweet was the soundtrack of her life,” Samberg wrote.