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Mon 13 October 2025 18:00, UK
As free-thinking and open-minded as the 1960s were, there was undoubtedly one band making everybody else jealous: The Beatles.
As they were spearheading this new movement of popular culture, and providing a soundtrack for its disciples to lovingly dance to, a whole goddamn generation of budding musicians stood quietly in the shadows, snarling with envy. Because The Beatles seemingly had everything in that decade, chart success and artistic freedom all bundled into one, forging the sort of career and discography any musician worth their fucking salt would die for.
But, much to the relief of everyone else, at the turn of the decade, the band separated and gave everybody else a chance to experience the same success. Music as a collective took that opportunity with both hands and platformed artists like Marvin Gaye, Nick Drake and Carole King.
The latter artist delivered one of the decade’s finest showcases of songwriting in her 1971 album Tapestry. But six years prior, in 1965, when King was writing iconic songs like ‘(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman’ with her creative partner Gerry Goffin, she had made it onto John Lennon’s radar.
King recalls a story whereby her greatness was the source of conversational conflict, remembering, “I go over to where John is. He’s standing with two women, neither of whom was Cynthia. And he looks high; he looks like he’s totally stoned, whacked out of his mind. I go over to him, ‘Hi, John, I’m Carole King. I’m really glad to meet you.’ Honestly, I cannot remember what he said, but he was so rude. It was like a smack. I’m like, I’m getting out of here. I left. All those months or years, I had wondered, what was up with that?”
It was a clear example of never meeting your heroes for King, who left dejected that one of her chief inspirations was so overwhelmingly rude. But a few years later, she met Lennon once again through his wife and her friend Cynthia Lennon, and decided to try and rectify the social car crash that had happened previously.
“So here I am in the house with a very happy John. He tells us how happy he is. He’s so comfortable being a house husband. And he’s really happy. So there’s this big elephant in the room that nobody sees but me.” Finally, King sought to bring an end to this saga by outrightly calling the famous Beatle out.
“So I broached the subject: ‘John, do you remember meeting me at the Warwick Hotel?’ And he says, ‘Remind me.’ So I’m thinking he must not remember, he’s met how many people? I said, ‘Well, you were very rude to me, and I was just wondering, I mean, I was just curious, why? What was going on?’ And he says, ‘Do you really want to know?’ So I’m thinking, he does remember. He says, ‘You and Gerry were such great songwriters. I was intimidated.’”
The explanation served as an obscure pat on the back for King, who was inadvertently complimented through Lennon’s rudeness. However, at this point, she hadn’t even released her seminal album Tapestry, so if King had met Lennon for the first time in 1971, after that very release and in the wake of The Beatles’ break-up, there’s no knowing how he would have responded.
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