INTERVIEW

GOLDMINE: Carpenters: The Musical Legacy is a beautiful book. What makes this new book different from the others on the Carpenters?

Our mission was to shift the focus away from where it has been since Karen’s death in 1983, which has been Karen’s tragic death. In fact, Apple Music dubbed Carpenters as “the most tragic story in the history of pop,” and I beg to differ with that. I brought it up to Universal Music when I was working on the RPO album in marketing and publicity, and then brought that up to Richard, and he agreed. Chris (May) and I then approached Richard and said, let’s put the focus back on the music as much as we could. And that’s exactly what this book does. The reason that we continue to talk about Carpenters isn’t because Karen died. It’s because Karen and Richard left an incredibly strong as well as including in ’78.