{"id":16132,"date":"2014-06-20T16:48:38","date_gmt":"2014-06-20T08:48:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=16132"},"modified":"2014-06-20T15:51:05","modified_gmt":"2014-06-20T07:51:05","slug":"lyricist-gerry-goffin-carole-kings-ex-husband-and-prolific-writing-partner-dies-at-75","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2014\/06\/20\/lyricist-gerry-goffin-carole-kings-ex-husband-and-prolific-writing-partner-dies-at-75\/","title":{"rendered":"Lyricist Gerry Goffin, Carole King\u2019s ex husband and prolific writing partner, dies at 75"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"In<\/a>
In 1958, a 16-year-old Carole King met Gerry Goffin at Queens College. The two became a couple and would spend their evenings writing songs together. Photo from bouldercool.com.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

NEW YORK\u2014Gerry Goffin, a prolific and multi-dimensional lyricist who with his then-wife and songwriting partner Carole King wrote such hits as \u201cWill You Love Me Tomorrow,\u201d \u201c(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman,\u201d \u201cUp on the Roof\u201d and \u201cThe Loco-Motion,\u201d died early Thursday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 75.<\/p>\n

His wife, Michelle Goffin, confirmed his death.<\/p>\n

Goffin, who married King in 1959, penned more than 50 top 40 hits, including \u201cPleasant Valley Sunday\u201d for the Monkees, \u201cSome Kind of Wonderful\u201d for the Drifters and \u201cTake Good Care of My Baby\u201d by Bobby Vee. Goffin was able to pen jokey lyrics or achingly sad ones, and he did it for solo artists and multiple voices.<\/p>\n

Louise Goffin, one of his daughters, said her dad \u201cwore his heart on his sleeve, and I am deeply blessed to have had a father who could so easily make the world laugh and cry with just a spiral notebook and a pen.\u201d<\/p>\n

King and Goffin divorced in 1968, but Goffin kept writing hits, including \u201cSavin\u2019 All My Love for You\u201d for Whitney Houston. Goffin and King were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1987 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame three years later.<\/p>\n

King said in a statement that Goffin was her \u201cfirst love\u201d and had a \u201cprofound impact\u201d on her life.<\/p>\n

\u201cGerry was a good man with a dynamic force, whose words and creative influence will resonate for generations to come,\u201d King said. \u201cHis words expressed what so many people were feeling but didn\u2019t know how to say.\u201d<\/p>\n

Goffin\u2019s lyrics could veer from romantic to defiant to silly. In \u201cWill You Love Me Tomorrow,\u201d he touchingly wrote, \u201cTonight with words unspoken\/You say that I\u2019m the only one\/But will my heart be broken?\/When the night meets the morning sun?\u201d<\/p>\n

But there was an undercurrent of sadness in his song \u201cUp on the Roof,\u201d where the lyrics go: \u201cWhen this old world starts getting me down\/and people are just too much for me to face\/I climb way up to the top of the stairs\/and all my cares just drift right into space.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Goffin-King love affair is the subject of the Tony Award-nominated musical \u201cBeautiful: The Carole King Musical\u201d on Broadway. King, while backing the project and with one of their daughters acting as a producer, had avoided seeing it for months because it dredged up sad memories. She finally sat through it in April.<\/p>\n

The musical shows the two composing their songs\u2014and competing against the formidable rival team of Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil\u2014at Aldon Music, the Brill Building publishing company in Manhattan that also employed Neil Sedaka, Howard Greenfield and Carole Bayer Sager.<\/p>\n

The show ends just as King is enjoying fame for her groundbreaking solo album \u201cTapestry.\u201d Though it also alleges Goffin\u2019s womanizing and mental instability were causes of the breakup, he happily attended the opening of the musical. A spokeswoman for the show said the cast would dedicate Thursday night\u2019s performance to Goffin.<\/p>\n

After his divorce from King, Goffin garnered an Academy Award nomination with Michael Masser for the theme to the 1975 film \u201cMahogany\u201d for Diana Ross. He also earned a Golden Globe nomination for \u201cSo Sad the Song\u201d in 1977 from the film \u201cPipe Dreams.\u201d<\/p>\n

Goffin was born in Brooklyn in 1939 and was working as an assistant chemist when he met King at Queens College.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was interested in writing rock \u2018n\u2019 roll, and I was interested in writing this Broadway play,\u201d Goffin told Vanity Fair in 2001. \u201cSo we had an agreement where she would write (music) to the play if I would write (lyrics) to some of her rock \u2018n\u2019 roll melodies. And eventually it came to be a boy-and-girl relationship. Eventually I began to lose heart in my play, and we stuck to writing rock \u2018n\u2019 roll.\u201d<\/p>\n

A whirlwind romance led to a marriage and their first hit, when she was only 17 and he was 20, \u201cWill You Love Me Tomorrow\u201d for the Shirelles, which a pregnant King helped write while suffering morning sickness.<\/p>\n

Both quit their day jobs to focus on music, and other songs followed, including \u201cUp on the Roof\u201d for the Drifters, \u201cOne Fine Day\u201d for the Chiffons and \u201cChains,\u201d which was later covered by the Beatles. Goffin also collaborated with Mann on the hit \u201cWho Put the Bomp (In the Bomp Bomp Bomp Bomp).\u201d King and Goffin wrote \u201cThe Loco-Motion,\u201d which eventually was sung by their one-time baby sitter Little Eva.<\/p>\n

Goffin continued co-writing songs, including \u201cI\u2019ve Got to Use My Imagination\u201d recorded by Gladys Knight and the Pips, and \u201cIt\u2019s Not the Spotlight,\u201d recorded by Rod Stewart. In the 1980s and \u201890s, he co-wrote \u201cTonight I Celebrate My Love,\u201d a duet recorded by Peabo Bryson and Roberta Flack, \u201cMiss You Like Crazy\u201d sung by Natalie Cole\u201d and the Whitney Houston mega-hit \u201cSavin\u2019 All My Love for You.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGerry was one of the greatest lyricists of all time and my true soul brother. I was privileged to have had him in my personal and professional life,\u201d said pianist and composer Barry Goldberg, who wrote many later songs with Goffin.<\/p>\n

Goffin is survived by his five children and his wife.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK\u2014Gerry Goffin, a prolific and multi-dimensional lyricist who with his then-wife and songwriting partner Carole King wrote such hits …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":16134,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[106],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-hollywood","mauthors-mark-kennedy","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16132\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}