Carly Simon is classic rock?

[michael hagerty]

Yes, Wallace split the democratic vote. If he hadn't been there, Hubert Humphrey probably would've won and things might have been different. You have to wonder though, since Humphrey seemed to be such a nice guy, if he may have run into the same problems as Jimmy Carter, not being able to get things done because of a lack of cooperation from congress.

I think you have a point about The Carpenters. I don't remember anything about the photoshoot. It's conceivable that not enough people knew about it to affect their careers in a negative way. This doesn't change the way I feel about them. It's also possible that they didn't know anything about Watergate. It took awhile for the public to catch on after The Washington Post began to print the articles and The Post was an also-ran paper. The Washington Star was the main one before Watergate.

Semoochie:

Wallace may have been a Southern Democrat before he went independent, but very few people who voted for him would have voted for Humphrey had Wallace not been on the ballot. Nixon was perceived as the more "law and order" candidate (a loaded term) and Humphrey, as part of Johnson's administration, was seen as having responsibility for the Civil Rights Act, which was not popular among Wallace voters.

As for the Carpenters...as Tomas Estefan noted (which prompted the picture), there are a group of people who considered their appearing with Nixon in an election year an indication that they had conservative political views, and that cost them. It didn't kill their careers, but it was one more factor in an image problem they had.

You may have forgotten, but the Washington Post didn't go it alone on Watergate---the New York Times and other publications were working hard to catch up to Woodward and Bernstein, whose work went national in a hurry...syndicated in most other cities around the country.

Finally, the Washington Star was the number one daily in D.C.----until 1961, when the Post passed it in circulation. What Watergate did for the Washington Post was to elevate it to a national newspaper---a legitimate rival to the New York Times.

 

[michael hagerty]

What tanked the Carpenters' career wasn't a photo with Nixon in 1972 -- it was their 1977 "Passage" album. Richard didn't write any of the songs, Karen didn't play drums, and none of the singles from it reached the Top 30.

Kevtronics:

No one suggested the Nixon photo tanked the Carpenters' career---just that it didn't help with some people.

That said, though, they were in trouble well before "Passage".

After four top ten albums in a row (five if you count "Singles 1969-73"), 1975's "Horizon" peaked at #13. As far as singles from that album, "Please Mr. Postman" went to #1, but its chart life was over before the album was even released. "Only Yesterday" hit #4, but "Solitaire" only managed #17 (in fairness, seemingly everybody recorded "Solitaire" in that era, and it didn't hit for anyone).

The real trouble was 1976's "A Kind Of Hush" album, which stalled out at #33. The title track got to #12, "I Need To Be In Love" stalled at #25, and "Goofus" stiffed at #56.

Yes, "Passage" did worse, but so did everything from there on. Realistically, this was not an act that was going to have hits forever and you could see signs of decline as far back as 1974.

 

[CTListener]

The real trouble was 1976's "A Kind Of Hush" album, which stalled out at #33. The title track got to #12, "I Need To Be In Love" stalled at #25, and "Goofus" stiffed at #56.

The Carpenters did have a decent country hit a few years later, "Sweet Sweet Smile." I don't think it was ever sent to Top 40 or AC, had way too much steel guitar in it.

 

[michael hagerty]

The Carpenters did have a decent country hit a few years later, "Sweet Sweet Smile." I don't think it was ever sent to Top 40 or AC, had way too much steel guitar in it.

"Sweet Sweet Smile" was sent to Top 40 and AC. I played it at KOLO, Reno. It peaked at #44 on the Hot 100, #7 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart. I don't know if it charted Country or not.

 

[CTListener]

"Sweet Sweet Smile" was sent to Top 40 and AC. I played it at KOLO, Reno. It peaked at #44 on the Hot 100, #7 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart. I don't know if it charted Country or not.

No. 8 country. Co-written by Juice Newton and her frequent songwriting collaborator, Otha Young.

 

[michael hagerty]

No. 8 country. Co-written by Juice Newton and her frequent songwriting collaborator, Otha Young.

Thanks!

 

[TomásEstefan]

Semoochie:

Nixon's issues didn't begin with Watergate or even the war. He won in 1968 by a margin of 0.7% of the popular vote, so there was a significant chunk of the population unhappy with the result. In fact, because it was a three-way race with George Wallace getting 9.9 million votes, more people voted for a candidate other than Richard Nixon. He won election with 43.4% of the popular vote.

The Carpenters photo above was taken August 1, 1972, during Nixon's re-election campaign and after the Watergate break-in. By that point, The Washington Post had been reporting on ties between the Watergate break-in and the Committee to Re-Elect the President for six weeks.

On the morning the photo was taken, the Post published a story directly linking money in one of the burglar's accounts to a check from the Nixon campaign.

The Carpenters returned to the White House and performed for Nixon on May 1, 1973---three months after the Senate committee began its investigations and two days after the Post broke the story that three top Nixon aides led the cover-up.

Not saying any of that was necessarily their fault, but despite the landslide election of 1972, a lot of people---especially young people---didn't like Nixon.

Nixon aside..I think the main reason that the Carpenters popularity fell was that it was understood that they apparently still supported the war in Vietnam...by then the tide had turned. The public American public was generally opposed. (Except for the so-called "silent majority"). Gore Vidal famously quipped that the "silent majority" is actually a term for the dead!

 

[TomásEstefan]

It depends on when the photo was taken. If it was before 1973, there was no Watergate scandal and the only other thing affecting us was that we were still in Vietnam. The vast majority voted for Nixon in '72 but most of us were too young to vote and the ones who weren't didn't make up a large enough constituency to make a difference! Nixon said he had a secret plan to end the war and apparently not doing so within his first four years wasn't enough incentive for voters to go with McGovern and it didn't help matters that the latter had problems with his original running mate.

McGovern said that he was 1000% behind running mate Tom Eagleton...and then a day later he was dumped, and eventually so was McGovern.

 

[michael hagerty]

Nixon aside..I think the main reason that the Carpenters popularity fell was that it was understood that they apparently still supported the war in Vietnam...by then the tide had turned. The public American public was generally opposed. (Except for the so-called "silent majority"). Gore Vidal famously quipped that the "silent majority" is actually a term for the dead!

Again, you started the conversation, and no one said appearing with Nixon caused their popularity to fall. They arguably were at their peak during that period. There were just people who weren't going to become fans because of that.

And, by the time the Carpenters' popularity was slipping, Vietnam was over.

There is also nothing I can find that indicates a position one way or another on the war, other than that Richard took a student deferment.

 

[michael hagerty]

McGovern said that he was 1000% behind running mate Tom Eagleton...and then a day later he was dumped, and eventually so was McGovern.

The time span between McGovern's "1000 percent" comment and Eagleton's withdrawing from the race (at McGovern's request) was seven days, not one (July 25-August 1).

 

[michael hagerty]

McGovern said that he was 1000% behind running mate Tom Eagleton...and then a day later he was dumped, and eventually so was McGovern.

One interesting fact I ran across in this: McGovern only got two million fewer votes in 1972 than Humphrey got in 1968 (29 million instead of 31 million).

Nixon got 14 million more than he did four years earlier, with likely all of the Wallace vote from 1968 (9.9 million) breaking his way, probably the 2 million defecting democrat votes, and a fraction of the 11 million 18, 19 and 20-year olds newly eligible to vote (most of whom did not).

 

[michael hagerty]

One interesting fact I ran across in this: McGovern only got two million fewer votes in 1972 than Humphrey got in 1968 (29 million instead of 31 million).

Nixon got 14 million more than he did four years earlier, with likely all of the Wallace vote from 1968 (9.9 million) breaking his way, probably the 2 million defecting democrat votes, and a fraction of the 11 million 18, 19 and 20-year olds newly eligible to vote (most of whom did not).

One other interesting fact: Nixon won the presidency in 1968 with three million fewer votes than he had when he lost to JFK in 1960.

 

[TomásEstefan]

The time span between McGovern's "1000 percent" comment and Eagleton's withdrawing from the race (at McGovern's request) was seven days, not one (July 25-August 1).

I meant that "figuratively".

 

[semoochie]

Semoochie:

Wallace may have been a Southern Democrat before he went independent, but very few people who voted for him would have voted for Humphrey had Wallace not been on the ballot. Nixon was perceived as the more "law and order" candidate (a loaded term) and Humphrey, as part of Johnson's administration, was seen as having responsibility for the Civil Rights Act, which was not popular among Wallace voters.

As for the Carpenters...as Tomas Estefan noted (which prompted the picture), there are a group of people who considered their appearing with Nixon in an election year an indication that they had conservative political views, and that cost them. It didn't kill their careers, but it was one more factor in an image problem they had.

You may have forgotten, but the Washington Post didn't go it alone on Watergate---the New York Times and other publications were working hard to catch up to Woodward and Bernstein, whose work went national in a hurry...syndicated in most other cities around the country.

Finally, the Washington Star was the number one daily in D.C.----until 1961, when the Post passed it in circulation. What Watergate did for the Washington Post was to elevate it to a national newspaper---a legitimate rival to the New York Times.

Thank you, I was misinformed about The Washington Star. It isn't that I expected The Carpenters to have hits forever. They had their time. I just didn't expect everything to fall apart after the fact.

 

[CTListener]

Thank you, I was misinformed about The Washington Star. It isn't that I expected The Carpenters to have hits forever. They had their time. I just didn't expect everything to fall apart after the fact.

Happens to a lot of acts in all genres. Hit after hit after hit, then one stiff and it's all over. The Turtles after "You Showed Me," Don Williams after "Lord Have Mercy on a Country Boy." Sometimes the performer changes direction (Turtles), sometimes the genre changes direction (Williams), sometimes the performer(s) just run out of musical ideas and the public gets tired of hearing essentially the same song (Al Green, at least on the pop charts). The result is the same.

 

[michael hagerty]

Thank you, I was misinformed about The Washington Star. It isn't that I expected The Carpenters to have hits forever. They had their time. I just didn't expect everything to fall apart after the fact.

CTListener's analysis is spot-on.

At the time the Carpenters first hit, a three-year run of hits was about as good as it got, unless you were the Beatles or the Stones.

Elton John got seven before the first dry spell, I think Three Dog Night got five. Realistically, The Beach Boys only had four or five before it boiled down to fans, morphed into something completely different ("Surf's Up", "Holland") and finally surrendered to becoming a nostalgia act ("Endless Summer").

The Carpenters got six. And they continued to sell and continued to have fans. Had it not been for Karen's death, they'd probably have done about as well as the Osmond and Manilow have done between the 80s and here---which is not bad at all. Chart hits few to zero, but a fan base solid enough to support either touring or Vegas residencies.

 

[Mediafrog+]

I think Three Dog Night got five.

Three Dog Night has long been an interesting case. They had an absolutely astonishing run of hits from 1969 to 1974, but it seems the group has fallen into complete obscurity. They still get some play on genuine oldies stations, but their profile is almost nonexistent compared to many other acts from that era.

 

[CTListener]

CTListener's analysis is spot-on.

At the time the Carpenters first hit, a three-year run of hits was about as good as it got, unless you were the Beatles or the Stones.

Both of which were bands with plenty of commercially viable musical ideas. Those who remember the British Invasion will recall that the Dave Clark Five were often mentioned in the same breath, and had similar early success, but the hits pretty much stopped coming by 1966, a decline halted only momentarily by their remake of "You Got What It Takes" in 1967. The DC5 just didn't have what it takes, evidently.

 

[Mediafrog+]

Those who remember the British Invasion will recall that the Dave Clark Five were often mentioned in the same breath, and had similar early success, but the hits pretty much stopped coming by 1966, a decline halted only momentarily by their remake of "You Got What It Takes" in 1967. The DC5 just didn't have what it takes, evidently.

The Dave Clark Five were considered “second in line” in the British Invasion and as I recall got a lot of criticism as they were perceived as a Beatles ripoff. In reality their style was pretty much in line with everything else that was coming out of the U.K. at the time. Other groups had longer success as their music evolved, something not apparent with DC5.

 

[Harvey_Dogg]

Actually I was music director of a high powered station in a major market that played progressive rock in the mid through late 1970's And, there are almost no groups mentioned in this thread that would have been allowed on the air with the exception of the Beatles and Stones.

In the 1990's, I owned a classic rock radio station in a major market. The listeners would be in revolt if you played Carly Simon there.
And, I would suspect you did not have a clue about classic rock.

Also my wife was once a popular classic rock DJ. So, I asked her if Carly Simon was classic rock? The answer was a quick no. I am now wondering if anyone else here has any experience on a classic rock radio station or even likes classic rock?