Vale Gerry Goffin, a Songwriting King.

A weekly column by Inside Songwriting contributor, Michael J Roberts.

The world lost one of the true masters of song last week, Gerry Goffin, a writer synonymous with the golden age of ‘60’s Brill Building pop. One half of the iconic song writing husband and wife team Goffin and King, Gerry succumbed to natural causes (appropriate for the man who wrote the lyrics for A Natural Woman) at age 75, leaving behind a rich legacy of enduring pop classics. While many of the writers associated with the Brill Building were blown away by the British Invasion in 1964, due to the increasing demand for groups to write their own material in order to be thought relevant, Goffin and King survived for some time, Gerry getting into production and Carole carving out her own solo performing career.

“I’d like to know that your love, is love I can be sure of.
So tell me now, and I won’t ask again, will you still love me tomorrow”

Is there any more potently simple couplet in the history of the pop song than this snippet from the couple’s breakthrough 1961 hit Will You Love Me Tomorrow, a number one hit for The Shirelles? Goffin could play to the teenage angst end of the pop music market but also attain a level of effortless sophistication, and he managed to do it time and again. Incredibly, the pair were working day jobs when that song hit the charts, as a chemist and secretary respectively and it was not until the song hit number one on the charts that they made the decision to become full time writers.

Little Eva, Big Hit

The young couple had a small child and famously wrote their babysitter a song, a young woman with a big voice who released The Loco-motion under the name Little Eva, it became another smash hit, cashing in on the dance craze fads of the era. It became a hit all over again in the late ‘80s when Aussie soap star Kylie Minogue released her Stock, Aitken and Waterman produced version in the UK, it’s feel good, uncomplicated invocation to fun the perfect antidote to the gloom of Thatcherite England.

Goffin and King wrote a stream of fine songs for other groups between 1961 and 1967, amongst them One Fine Day for the Chiffons, Chains for The Cookies, Oh, No Not My Baby for Maxine Brown and the immortal Up On The Roof for The Drifters, surely one of the finest pieces of modern urban poetry.

“When this old world starts getting me down
And people are just too much for me to face (Up on the roof)
I climb way up to the top of the stairs
And all my cares just drift right into space (Up on the roof)
On the roof, it’s peaceful as can be
And there, the world below can’t bother me.”

Goffin and King enjoyed a great take up from the British acts as Herman’s Hermits turned I’m Into Something Good into chart gold, The Animals rocked out with Don’t Bring Me Down and Dusty Springfield followed with Goin’ Back. American bands got into the act during the folk rock era as The Byrds covered Wasn’t Born To Follow before even The Monkees, pretty much the last gasp of Brill Building built acts, had a hit with Pleasant Valley Sunday, Gerry’s politically hip nod to the counterculture and it’s dismissive attitude to suburbia.

Grace Of My Heart

Gerry had a huge appetite for life, causing a rift with Carole by fathering a child with one of the singers from The Cookies. The pair stayed together for a while but fractured again after Gerry embraced the hippie ethos of the counterculture era and consumed LSD and mescaline in heroic amounts, to the point he needed psychiatric care, eventually being treated with Electro Shock Therapy. Alison Anders made a fine film in the ‘90s that incorporated some of the real life episodes in Goffin and King’s life with her sweet tribute to the music of the time, Grace Of My Heart, well worth checking out for an insight into a classic songwriting era. See movie review here: Grace Of My Heart – Filmycks Review

After the break up of their marriage Gerry and Carole went in separate musical directions and Gerry enjoyed some success in collaboration with other writers, notably Barry Goldberg, and their collaboration It’s Not The Spotlight is one of Goffin’s lyrical high points, an exquisite example of Gerry’s poetic gifts.

“If I ever feel the light again shining down on me,
I don’t have to tell you what a welcome it will be.
I felt the light before but I let it slip away,
but I still keep on believing that it’ll come back some day.

It’s not the spotlight, it’s not the candle light,
it’s not the street lights of some old street of dreams.
It ain’t the moonlight, not even the sunlight,
but I’ve seen it shining in your eyes and you know what I mean.”

Gerry showed he was still capable of a producing an iconic song with a late era hit for Whitney Huston, the beautifully constructed Saving All My Love For You, some 25 years after his first hit.

Liverpool Fans

Goffin enjoyed no greater affirmation of his status than having the hottest team of all time, Lennon and McCartney sing his praises and request a meeting with Goffin and King during their first US visit. John Lennon and Paul McCartney devoured American pop music in the early ‘60s, keenly focusing on the names of the song writers and included no less than five Goffin and King songs in their pre-fame stage act. Ironically the British Invasion they headed would provide the impetus that destroyed many of Goffin and King’s contemporaries, but the pair paid Gerry and Carole the greatest compliment when Lennon admitted that his and Paul’s early ambition was to be the new Goffin and King.

Gerry Goffin left a life well lived, a chemist who worked with the peculiar alchemy of words and an urban poet of the first order who’s deft command of language and appetite for life left behind a body of songs second to none, go and listen to a few and say a quiet thank you.

Musycks

Stay tuned for news on Michael’s forthcoming brilliant book

“Becoming A Great Songwriter”

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