Karen Carpenter: the forgotten drummer.
Karen’s story is not new or unusual. After years of seeing amazing musicians — especially female ones — wasting in front of the public eyes, meeting tragic and soon (too soon) endings, we might feel a little desensitized by her history.
It’s not anyone’s fault, really. Karen died in 1985. She and her brother, Richard, made it big in the 1970s with songs considered “oldies” by my millennial generation and may be considered prehistoric by the new zoomers out there.
The first time I heard any Carpenters’ song was through the tribute album “If I Were a Carpenter.” I only found the album (released one year after my birth, in 1994) because some bands I enjoyed contributed to it — being more specific: Sonic Youth, 4 Non-Blondes, The Cranberries, and Babes in Toyland. At that time, I didn’t know the story of Karen, what she went through to prove her worth, how messy things got when, at the end of it all, she had to step up to a role that did not make her comfortable. Then, I never understood the tribute Sonic Youth made to Karen and why their version of Superstar made me oh, so sad.
Karen started her career as a musician by accompanying her brother (the prodigious pianist), Richard. They both formed the duo-band The Carpenters in 1969, she on drums and he on piano, alternating in vocals and collaborating on compositions. The Carpenters made it big in the soft pop rock sphere, appearing on Billboard 100 Hot with 3 number 1 hits and 12 top 10 hits. Althought, at the time, they were heavily criticized for being too square, as Richard recalls in this CBS interview.
Karen and Richard’s success was undoubtedly a result of their passion for music. They loved playing and creating. And Karen loved the drums over anything. We can see that in this short solo below:
Yes. Karen played and sang. And then she enters with a mad solo.
Karen started to get interested in drumming when she was just a schoolgirl of 16, in Downey Highschool, after trying out a bunch of other instruments. She was a trailblazer for that; a teacher didn’t want her to assume a position in percussion, and her parents did not expect much from her interest in the instrument (a typical response in the lives of female drummers, may I add), but she defied the norm. She, most famously, declared once:
I had no idea whether I could play them or not, but I wanted to and I was very determined. . . but the band director said “That’s not really normal.” Of course, all you have to tell me is that something’s not normal and I’ll go for it!!
She then started the development to become one of the greatest drummers of soft pop rock, first playing in a jazz trio with her brother and later composing the duo with him.
However, her drummer trajectory did not happen without clashes and struggles. Karen had a magnificent singing voice, managing to reach different scales and also impressing her peers by singing while playing drums. The “drummer who sang” was constantly pestered to leave her drum stool and assume a position on the front stage, behind the microphone.
We encounter here the everlasting determinism for women in the music industry.
It’s not uncommon to find women as singers. We can find references in these artists and performers from pop divas to frontwomen in rock bands. They often represent women’s behavior, work, and stance in the music industry, being influences for girls and women of all ages. Of course, being a singer and/or a performer is not a problem. The thing is: this should always be a choice.
Susan McClary wrote already in 1991 about how men dominate the music industry. Such fact resounds within music creation, production, and performance. In other words: men dictate the game's rules — and women often lose this match.
There have been many articles about how women in music suffer from a lack of representativity regarding more supportive and technical works such as producers or roadies. In the ‘BE THE CHANGE — Women making music’ report released in 2021, 401 female music creators shared their struggles. These include: lack of recognition on gender basis, harassment, sexualisation and objectification, bias, exclusion in various phases of the process of music-making, lack of safe spaces for working and being listened to. Many women also report a lack of liberty of choice when it comes to body exposure and creative decisions.
Such study illustrates a gruesome fact: it’s not easy to be a female music creator. And we can also trace these difficulties in the life of Karen to try and understand why she was convinced — or coerced — to stop playing the drums. Creating drum lines for songs is a type of music creation and requires a lot of inside studio work, which the younger Carpenter definitely did for many Carpenters’ songs. So we are left to wonder, was the studio a safe space for her creation as a drummer? Were the men working with her accepting of her drum knowledge?
The thing about being a female drummer
The drum kit is an instrument that few women stand out. Until today, it is hard work to find female drummers with the same level of notoriety as male ones — although we do have some references on the top of the hat like Sheila E., Patty Schemel, and Moe Tucker.
(At this point, I must add how Sheila E. presents Karen as an inspirational drummer to her, declaring more than once that she was one of her references growing up.)
In the 1970’s it was even harder to encounter female influences, and Karen, ultimately, stood alone. There were little to no established female names in the drumming business, which consolidated the instrument as a masculine one. It does not help that the music industry is a place where women have much difficulty to thrive.
As a consequence, female drummers today are still facing prejudices and have to prove themselves a lot more than men. To play it, one must really want to stretch barriers and defy the norms. Even if many drummers adimit the gender thing does not become an issue until they get professionalized, others, like Patty Schmel, chose to do it because it is not a girly thing to do (see her in this amazing life interview for Women of Rock History Project).
In the end, it is about choice: something that, unfortunately Karen did not had.
When reading Little Girl Blue, Karen Carpenter’s biography by Randy Schmidt, we grasp the idea of what caused her struggle with anorexia nervosa — that, ultimately, killed her —: the lack of control over her own life. In my reading, this also concerns the fact that she couldn’t play the drums of her own volition. Karen had her whole life controlled, first by her mother, later by her record, and she probably felt undermining pressure from these dynamics.
It is heartbreaking to think that we lost such a great reference for girls and women out there, such a great musician and drum player, because she couldn’t do what she wanted: play the drums.
