Rock & Roll Heaven: Karen Carpenter

Karen Carpenter at the White House in 1972
(Photo: Robert L. Knudsen via Wiki Commons)

On February 4th, 1983, one of the most beautiful voices in the history of modern popular music was silenced forever when Karen Carpenter was rushed to a California hospital and pronounced dead. She was only a month shy of her 33rd birthday. The cause of death was heart failure brought on by a long term battle with anorexia.

Back in November of 2008, I began what was to be a series of articles called "Rock and Roll Heaven" that would examine the controversial deaths and lives of artists in the modern music world. At that time the series began with articles on Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, Michael Hutchence, and Jim Morrison. This examination of Karen Carpenter continues that series.

Karen and her brother Richard were born and raised in Connecticut, but their parents moved out to California in 1963. Richard became a piano prodigy, but Karen was more of a tomboy into sports and showed little interest in music as a young girl. On entering high school she joined the school band, and from that developed an interest in playing the drums.

Karen fell in love with the drums and became an outstanding drummer. She joined up with Richard and a friend named Wes Jacobs, and the three became 'The Richard Carpenter Trio', playing mostly jazz at local clubs. They also played with a band known as 'Spectrum' and recorded numerous demos, but they had little recording success throughout the mid-1960's.

Karen and Richard finally were signed to a recording contract by A&M Records in 1969, and then in 1970 released their second album and first big smash titled 'Close to You'. The album and the two hugely popular singles "(They Long to Be) Close to You" and "We've Only Just Begun" proved to be hits, the songs becoming modern masterpieces.

Rock & Roll Heaven, or Gone to Hell?

This past week I've brought you a series of mini-bios on rock stars who died young: 60's & 70's hippie icons Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and Jim Morrison; 80's MTV generation star Michael Hutchence; 90's grunge-rock star Kurt Cobain.

Each of these young people died at those youthful stages of their lives thanks to conditions largely brought on by themselves: illicit drug use, excessive alcohol abuse, sexual promiscuity.

In general, they were killed by their full immersion into the 'sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll' lifestyle.

There really is not a lot of redeeming value, but there are plenty of valuable lessons to be learned. They all seemed to have some similarities in background including unusual or unstable family situations as youngsters.

Most were the loner, artistic types whose outwardly extroverted lifestyles belied a depressed introverted reality only made worse by their substance abuse. They simply couldn't manage to face life squarely.

Many didn't become parents themselves, never found the joy that raising a child and caring for something deeply outside your own self brings. They never grew up. And they often left a trail of death and destruction in their wakes.

Rock & Roll Heaven: Jim Morrison

How many times have you heard the old adage 'These things happen in threes' concerning the deaths of famous people?

In July of 1971, while the youth of America in general and the rock world in particular were still reeling from the dual deaths of Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix just months earlier, the third domino fell.

Jim Morrison, the electrifying lead singer of the rock band 'The Doors', snorted some heroin, climbed into a bathtub, and died there of an overdose of the drug. He was just 27 years old. Is that age of death getting to sound like a broken record?

Morrison was born in Florida in 1943 to a U.S. Navy officer and his wife. His father, George Morrison, fought in the Pacific theatre of World War II, was intimately involved in the 'Gulf of Tonkin' incident during the Vietnam War, and became the youngest Admiral in the history of the Navy. He is still alive today, about to turn 90 years old this coming January, nearly four decades after his son's death.

As a small child, the Morrison family moved to New Mexico, and he became fascinated by many of the customs and the culture of the Native Americans in the area. At only four years of age, young Jim was out in the desert for a drive with his family when they witnessed the aftermath of a horrific auto accident that resulted in death and injuries to members of a Native American family.

He would later go on to say that it was the pivotal incident in his life, one that he would repeatedly make reference to and draw upon images of in his songs. The move to New Mexico was just one of a number of family moves in his childhood that included California, Virginia, and Florida stops due to his father's military duties.

Rock & Roll Heaven ?

"If there's a rock-n-roll heaven, you know they got a hell of a band" are the famous lyrics from a song that was itself called "Rock and Roll Heaven" released as a comeback reunion hit by the 60's duo The Righteous Brothers.

 In 1974, the song rose to #3 on the U.S. charts, talking in its lyrics about the untimely deaths of a number of rock, soul, and pop music stars.

The song perfectly leads into a special series that I will be doing here at the blog next week called 'Rock and Roll Heaven'.

Each day from Monday through Saturday, barring some incredibly major world news event, I will do a mini-bio on some of the legendary rock stars over the years who have died young. I will explore how they died, how they lived, their contributions to music, their home lives, etc.

For diehard fans of particular stars, it may be old ground. But for many, it will be a nostalgic trip back in time, and not just to the psychedelic 60's and turbulent 70's, but also to the 80's and 90's and beyond. And hopefully for everyone, I will mix in enough lessons to be learned from those lives.

There will be good, bad, and ugly, and there will be criticism of legends. The following is the schedule: Janis Joplin (Monday), Jimi Hendrix (Tuesday), Kurt Cobain (Wednesday), Michael Hutchence (Thursday), Jim Morrison (Friday) - and then there will be a wrap-up piece.

If it goes well, and folks want to see a few more, I will consider it as an ongoing feature into the future. So stay tuned here each day next week to find out whether they have a hell of a rock band in heaven, or whether simply these burned-out stars went straight to hell.

NOTE: all entries in this series into the future can be viewed by simply clicking on the 'Rock and Roll Heaven' link at the bottom of each article in the series