 List Price: $27.95
Lowest Price: $17.18 
Product Description:
A groundbreaking and irresistible biography of three of America's most important musical artists -- Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon -- charts their lives as women at a magical moment in time. Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon remain among the most enduring and important women in popular music. Each woman is distinct. Carole King is the product of outer-borough, middle-class New York City; Joni Mitchell is a granddaughter of Canadian farmers; and Carly Simon is a child of the Manhattan intellectual upper crust. They collectively represent, in their lives and their songs, a great swath of American girls who came of age in the late 1960s. Their stories trace the arc of the now mythic sixties generation -- female version -- but in a bracingly specific and deeply recalled way, far from cliché. The history of the women of that generation has never been written -- until now, through their resonant lives and emblematic songs. Filled with the voices of many dozens of these women's intimates, who are speaking in these pages for the first time, this alternating biography reads like a novel -- except it's all true, and the heroines are famous and beloved. Sheila Weller captures the character of each woman and gives a balanced portrayal enriched by a wealth of new information. Girls Like Us is an epic treatment of midcentury women who dared to break tradition and become what none had been before them -- confessors in song, rock superstars, and adventurers of heart and soul. Customer Reviews: Rating: 
Date: 2008-07-08
Three Ladies, One Voice
Girls Like Us is piece of pop music history about three women who greatly influenced music and whose influence can still be felt today. Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon are three giants of pop music and each of these leading ladies had her own unique singing style and her own unique songs. Carole King was a prominent song writer long before she made it on her own. Her songs usually centered around love, loss, and coming of age. Carly's songs were more mainstream with a more updated 1970's style. Joni's songs were folk rock oriented and deeper, with lyrics that were often more complex. No matter which of these three ladies' music you prefer, it is easy to see how they all contributed to popular music and popular culture in their own unique way.
Girls Like Us contains all sorts of interesting trivia facts about Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon and I found my knowledge tested at several levels. While I knew, for example, that Carole King scored huge commercial success with the album Tapestry and its number one single, It's Too Late, I did not realize she had already achieved such a great deal of success as a songwriter for other musical acts. Along with her husband at the time, Gerry Goffin, this prolific songwriting team composed such memorable tunes as The Loco- motion, Up on the Roof, Go Away Little Girl, and One Fine Day among many others. I always thought I knew quite a bit about music trivia, but I did not know that Carole's influence and prolific songwriting was this diverse. I also did not know that Joni Mitchell wrote the Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young classic "Woodstock". These and other trivial facts are just waiting to be discovered in the page of Girls Like Us.
Besides the music, there was one other very important part of these women's lives: Their many lovers. Many men have crossed paths with Carole, Carly, and Joni over the years and Girls Like Us offers many anecdotes of these men and their influence on the music of these female musicians. In some instances, the men in their lives were other musicians, like James Taylor and Jackson Browne. In other instances, the men are relative unknowns like Rick Evers and Larry Klein. But even the lesser- known individuals had a profound impact on the life and music of these women and the songs they helped to influence are all important components of Girls Like Us and they receive plenty of coverage.
This book includes quite a bit of research and I like the way it includes footnotes at the bottom of many of the book's pages so that readers can read the footnotes without having to turn to one of the appendices. The book includes a succinct level of detail, considering it is written about three different women. But if I had to voice one complaint, it would be the author's tendency to get too wordy and too creative. Some like this style of writing, but it can be overdone. Often, the book could have offered a sensible sentence in only fifteen or so words but instead stretches the sentence into double its original length by adding more adjectives or other words to make the sentence sound more interesting. Some people like this approach but I feel it makes a book longer than it should be without offering anything new and noteworthy.
This book offers a musical history lesson and it manages to inter- weave the lives of these three ladies into one volume. Each of these women was significant in her own way, and each has left a lasting impression on popular music that will likely withstand the test of time. A separate book could easily have been written on each of these rock and roll icons. But they are all musical spokespeople for their generation and they all share certain traits in common. Not only did these women sometimes share the same men, they also shared a common interest in music as an art form and as the voice of a frustrated generation. It all makes for some very good reading when you're feeling a little nostalgic and want to hark back to the musical days of the 1960's and 1970's.
Rating: 
Date: 2008-07-07
What Great Girls
My mom knew about these singers and loved them so I bought it for her for Mothers Day. Needless to say, she couldn't get enough of it and started reminding me of all the times she played this songs for me. She said I'm not sure that you'll get it, but why don't you try, and I did. The sentences are long and there are avenues that wander into places that maybe only someone older would understand (but great learning experience) but I was hooked. I feel that these women came off as heroines in a novel, or characters in a movie. They had their crosses to bear, there big ups and low downs, but they always sang their way out of it and that in itself was inspiring. My friend and I are making a list of the whose whos, the people the songs are about. As my mother would say, Who knew? Now because of this beautiful book, we do know. Rating: 
Date: 2008-07-06
overwritten
Despite the fascinating subject matter, the author has has succumbed to self indulgence. It is a combination of her personal cliched analysis of women's sexual liberation and a wikipedia type entry of a litany of names. In doing this the narrative, the basic story telling suffers. Rating:
Date: 2008-07-06
Could not put this down
I love these three women but I never expected to find a book that told stories about them that I never heard before. There was such compassion and energy in this book, every time I finished one chapter and moved on to the next one it was like finishing an episode of a (good) tv show and wanting it to be next week already so you could learn what happened next. I always vaguely assumed that these women had to contend with the restrictions of the times but I never knew the details and how each of them took such risks. By the end of the book I felt I knew them and, of course, I took out my old CDs and records, of Anticipation and Blue and Tapestry, and listened to them with new meaning. I'm going to read this book again and then give it to a friend I love. Rating: 
Date: 2008-07-06
Where was the Editor?
I was so excited to hear about this book, however, after slogging through 91 pages, I am giving up. I am sure there are gems of information somewhere in here but I am unwilling to look any further. It's as if someone published the first draft with no editing . . . ever. I find myself laughing outloud at the sentence structure and the length of those sentences; having to backtrack and re-read a passage to get the meaning. It is hard to know sometimes when Ms. Weller is talking about which singer, although having a different typeset for each individual is helpful, if a bit of an affectation. Save your money and wait until it comes out in video form; at least then there will be lots of pictures and music to go with the information. |
