Gerry Goffin, who has died aged 75, was one of the most prolific pop lyricists of the 1960s and 1970s, co-writing with his first wife and songwriting partner Carole King more than 50 hits, including Will You Love Me Tomorrow; the soul classic (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman; the wistful Up on the Roof; and the dance number The Loco-Motion.
In Britain, Goffin and King retaliated against the British pop invasion of America by scoring their first No 1 hit with I’m Into Something Good, Herman’s Hermits’ debut single in 1964. But Goffin confessed that the onslaught of the Beatles had left him feeling dwarfed and inadequate; meanwhile, he never understated the “big difference between being a pop lyricist and a poet [like] Bob Dylan”.
Considered one of the defining voices of his generation, Goffin himself came to take a jaded view of his own talent — “Am I going to have to write this s**t until I’m 32?” — yet, his early lyrics transcended those of almost all his rivals and encompassed a wide range of emotions.
His work extended from bland chart cliches and jokey send-ups of his own trade in Tin Pan Alley — notably Who Put the Bomp (In the Bomp Bomp Bomp Bomp) in 1961 — to poignant ballads of authentic eloquence with lyrics that were natural, direct, self-aware and affecting. But perhaps Goffin’s greatest gift was to find words that expressed what many young people were feeling but were unable to articulate.
In his first No 1 hit, Will You Love Me Tomorrow, recorded in 1961 by the all-black girl group the Shirelles, and co-written with King, he wrought lines that were both daring for the time (the surrender of teenage virginity) and genuinely touching: Tonight with words unspoken/You swear that I’m the only one/But will my heart be broken/When the night meets the morning sun?
There were undercurrents of sadness too in Goffin’s song Up on the Roof, which opens with a downbeat thought that would have occurred to few pop writers: When 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. Freighted with imagery (At night the stars put on a show for free is perhaps the most arresting line), it became a Top 10 hit in the United States for the Drifters in 1962 and a UK hit for Kenny Lynch the following year.
Marriage on the rocks
Goffin’s marriage to King eventually failed because of tensions between them, not least because (unlike her) he was neither a musician nor a singer. Matters were made worse by Goffin’s chronic stammer, his infidelities and, from the mid-1960s, his increasing drug use.
After his divorce in 1968, Goffin earned an Academy Award nomination with Michael Masser for the theme for Diana Ross (Do You Know Where You’re Going To?) to the 1975 film Mahogany. Another collaboration with Masser, Savin’ All My Love for You, was a worldwide hit and a British No 1 for Whitney Houston in 1985.
Goffin recognised the limitations of the pop genre, especially as the era of the two-and-a-half minute single waned in the late 1960s. He disdained his 1962 song, Go Away Little Girl, originally written for Bobby Vee, as “some great American work of literature” which took half an hour to write and “should have died in the closet, but it didn’t”. Much later, a collaboration with the composer Burt Bacharach failed because Bacharach could not tolerate Goffin’s cocaine habit.
“I’ve given up trying to be a great lyricist,” Goffin observed. “I’m just trying to be an adequate one.”
The son of a salesman, Gerald Goffin was born on February 11, 1939, in New York, moving from Brooklyn to Queens after his parents divorced when he was five. As a boy, he listened to hits by Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen on the radio and started writing lyrics of his own. After graduating from Brooklyn Technical High School, he enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve, but resigned after a year to study chemistry at Queens College.
Whirlwind courtship
While working as an assistant chemist there, he met King, who steered him from Broadway musicals towards rock and roll. As Carole Klein, she had conducted a teenage romance with the young Neil Sedaka, who had celebrated the relationship with his hit Oh! Carol.
Goffin and King married after a whirlwind courtship in 1959, and while holding down day jobs, spent their evenings writing songs; they had their first hit when he was 20, she only 17. When the Shirelles’ recording of Will You Love Me Tomorrow reached the top of the US charts in January 1961, Don Kirshner, co-founder with Al Nevins of the Aldon song publishing empire, drove King in a limousine to the chemical plant where Goffin worked testing polymers and epoxies and told him he was now a full-time songwriter.
Later that year, they had a second No 1 with Bobby Vee’s Take Good Care Of My Baby. More hits followed, including Up on the Roof (1962) for the Drifters; Chains, which was covered by the Beatles on their first album, released the following year; and One Fine Day for the Chiffons, also in 1963.
Goffin collaborated with Barry Mann on the 1961 hit Who Put the Bomp (In the Bomp Bomp Bomp Bomp), and with King co-wrote The Loco-Motion, which became a hit for their one-time babysitter Eva Boyd, billed as Little Eva, the following year.
When Kirshner formed Dimension Records in 1962, he asked Goffin and King to write and produce for the new label. An early success, It Might As Well Rain Until September, was recorded by King and charted at No 3 in Britain in 1963. Goffin also collaborated with Jack Keller on several hits for the Everly Brothers, as well as on Run To Him, a No 2 for Bobby Vee in America which peaked at No 6 in Britain in 1961.
In 1967, Goffin had two Top 10 entries with (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman for Aretha Franklin, co-written with Jerry Wexler, and, with King, Pleasant Valley Sunday, a No 3 in America for the Monkees and No 11 in Britain.
Overshadowed
Having divorced King in 1968, Goffin found himself largely overshadowed by his ex-wife, who found success as a recording artist in her own right, notably with her bestselling solo album Tapestry in 1971.
Their love affair became the subject of Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, currently playing on Broadway. Goffin, portrayed in the show as a womaniser and mentally unstable, attended the opening night in January; King, who avoided seeing it for months because it stirred up sad memories, finally sat through it in April.
Latterly, Goffin seemed embarrassed by his early triumphs as a wordsmith: “I keep thinking that God is going to get on my a** any minute because this isn’t a fit occupation for a man. It really isn’t, but it’s better than working.”
Goffin and King were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1987 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame three years later. Goffin is survived by his second wife, Michele, whom he married in 1995, and five children. Goffin died on June 19, 2014.
