Tapestry: The Songs of Carole King

It’s a few minutes before 8 at the Enmore and the enthusiastic crowd is strikingly different to normal, not so young, not so eager to get tanked up at the well-stocked bar. All shapes and sizes, they’ve come to see original Young Talent Timer (when she was 14) Debra Byrne perform, with Vika Bull, the magical songs from Tapestry, Carole King’s 1971 enduring pop album.

Scattered whoops accompany the two divas onstage to join a 5-piece band (‘The Brills’) and these grow in the course of the evening into a solid bond between the singers and the audience. Debra, blonde and sipping water from a discreet decanter, is the star; Vika, proudly Tongan with a huge flower in her mass of hair, brings power and control with every song she delivers.

They share the Tapestry feast, song by song, and we are left with the wonder of these 46-year-old pieces of pop culture. Insistent, emotional, full of secret sorrow, they appeared collectively on the Billboard 200 for no less than three years.

The contrast between the two divas is striking. Byrne makes the most of songs like So Far Away, but Bull hits home effortlessly and full-on with ‘Home Again’ and ‘A Natural Woman’.

There’s not enough Tapestry tracks to fill the evening, so they range far and wide through the King Songbook, including her teenage efforts in partnership with first (of four!) husband Gerry Goffin. It Might As Well Rain Until Forever and

Loco-Motion stand out.

On the same day as the Enmore Concert, the Sydney Morning Herald broke the news that Esther Hannaford is to play the lead in BEAUTIFUL: The Carole King Musical which opens at the Lyric Theatre in September. It seems the heart-achingly beautiful songs of Carole King – honest and yearning - will run for a few more years yet.

Frank Hatherley