That's the consensus.
And, big surprise, it not actually true. 1978's Welcome Home and 1979's Touch The Sky weren't big sellers. So what, there's enough to cull from both which make for a solid album.
One example: How do you choose the best of the two and overlook "Venusian Diamond"? That 1978 track is unlike anything else she's ever recorded. Back in 1978, she explained in the liner notes, "VENUSIAN DIAMOND is a collaborative effort between Rick [Evers], [the band] Navarro, and me. We all appreciate the work of the Beatles, and like many people, we have harbored secret fantasies of being them. We took some of Rick's lyrics that he'd been saving for something very special and combined them with some new lyrics from me and Mark Hallman; we added every Beatle lick we could think of, along with our enormous love and respect for them; mostly we just had a good time."
She weighs in on all the songs in the liner notes but the one she writes the most of is "Venusian Diamond" which would seem to be a clear indication that she's pleased with the way it turned out which would seem to indicate if you're going to cull from the album, you grab this.
Then there appeared a serpent hanging
Like a thunder rope
He said, "Pull me" -- I did
And fell into the wrong end of a telescope
So I began to run
I knew not where I'd come
I could hear the Venusian Diamond and it gave me hope
It said "Shatter all your images
And I will be your own
Do it if you can
If you don't, you better leave it alone"
Selves
Selfish
Selfless
Self
Here's our track list for the strong album that can be created from the two alleged disgraces.
1) "Seeing Red"
2) "Everybody's Got The Spirit"
3) "Morning Sun"
4) "Venusian Diamond"
5) "Time Gone By"
6) "Crazy"
7) "Changes"
8) "Eagle"
9) "You Still Want Her"
10) "Sunbird"
11) "Dreamlike I Wander"
12) "Welcome Home"
The album above would build up to "Venusian Diamond" and then offer some steamy numbers before closing with the benediction of "Welcome Home."
In various ways, each track selected is an accomplishment -- apparently a minor one judging by how little praise the songs on the original two albums have received. "You Still Want Her" is one of Carole's best written songs of any period and she performs it perfectly with just the right delivery on lines like "But you've always thought your love for her could save her, And that's how you get taken in" and the chorus:
You can't believe you still want her
After all these years of knowing her so well
All the same you'd willingly consign yourself
To a life of hell
"Eagle" and "Seeing Red" can be seen as pieces similar to the songs on her Fantasy album which found her writing from other perspectives. In the case of the latter song, she's writing about the Native Americans and these are richly textured songs. "Seeing Red" can, in fact, stand as good poetry if stripped of its strong music.
"Eagle" can be seen as a song about Native Americans but it's quite a bit more than just that and goes to the tension between performer and audience. Throughout the first half of the seventies, her fans wanted another Tapestry. Carole, while with Ode, tried to deliver an approximation. She followed 'the formula' -- a blend of new songs with some she'd written a decade earlier with Gerry Goffin. Sticking with the formula meant the fans might be pleased (might be) and ensured that each new album would be graded against Tapestry. Tapestry was actually her second solo album of that formula. She'd do it two more times and then take a break with Fantasy. After that she was done with it for the decade but the critics didn't seem to notice and there was pressure for her to team up with Gerry Goffin which she did for her final Ode album. Carole then went her own way and Welcome Home and Touch The Sky were very personal albums where she was attempting to share emotions as she'd become famous for but emotions about new experiences she was having.
"Eagle" is a song that sings of her late husband Rick Evers as much as it does Native American culture. A song about Evers and a song about Carole King:
Through it all she tends her young ones
Doing what she can to help them grow
Maybe they will fly away before her
And her only choice is just to let them go
Eagle sees her sister
Living free up on the mountain top
So she doubles her effort
Till you think that she is bound to drop
But Eagle has the courage
You can tell that she's been felled before
She was born to soar
And she's gonna soar again
It was a very brave and personal statement from a woman recently widowed. And it sailed over the Boys Club as well as over the heads of fans that just wanted to hear "Smack Water Jack" for the twelfth million time.
Welcome Home and Touch The Sky are flawed albums, no question. But they're both also brave ones. Welcome Home was recorded in January of 1978 and released in May of the same year. In between, her husband Rick Evers died. The album captures the happiness and excitement the newly married Carole was feeling. Touch The Sky is an album whose key theme is longing and that's not surprising when you grasp that one year later, she left the mountain home she and Evers shared to go to Texas and record this album.
They're flawed albums, no question. But each contains moments of such sheer artistry and honesty that is really saying a great deal about how little the work of female musicians is valued in the rock era that no one's bothered to dig in and reconsider the work Carole was doing back then.
[Both albums can be purchased on CD at Amazon as foreign imports for over forty bucks a pop, here and here. Ourselves, we'll stick with C.I.'s vinyl until they're available for download.]