How the Brill Building became the hit factory of the 1960s – Rolling Stone

November 1960: Pop classics on ten floors-the Brill Building, hit factory of the 1960s

When Gerry Goffin in the drugstore, in which he worked during the day, did the end of work and entered his little office in Manhattan, something was waiting for him. “Carole had left me a melody on our little recorder,” he says of his ex-wife Carole King, with whom he also wrote songs. “I played her off. And I immediately remembered a text. “

The song, “Will You Love Me Tomorrow”, was “different from the stuff we normally delivered,” says Goffin. “It sounded like a standard.” Goffin and King worked for Don Kirshner and Al Nevins at the time. Owners of the music publisher Aldon Music and key figures of the “Brill Building Sound”, who ruled the pop charts in the early 1960s. The Brill Building was near Times Square, 1619 Broadway, New York. And was literally a hit factory.

The ten -story building housed more than 160 companies, all of which had to do with music. Songwriter, publisher, label, studios and radioopromoters. You could write a song. Sell ​​it to a publisher. Record a demo. And find a record company without having to cross more than a few corridors. Goffin and King worked together with the other prominent songwriter teams Neil Sedaka/Howard Greenfield, Barry Mann/Cynthia Weil and Jeff Barry/Ellie Greenwich a few houses further at Aldon.

“We didn’t like it at all, it sounded like kitschy country & Western”

Each team had a windowless Kabuff with a piano. “There was huge competition,” says King. “Don gave us orders. ‘The Shirelles are looking for a successor for’ Tonight’s The Night ‘. If you couldn’t think of anything, another grabbed the job. ” …

Kirshner played this demo on “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” Luther Dixon. The producer of the Shirelles who brought it to the group. “We didn’t like it at all. It sounded like kitschy Country & Western, ”says Beverly Lee from the Shirelles. “But Luther forced us to sing it, and when the strings were added, we fell in love with the song.” Six weeks after the publication in November 1960, the song reached the top of the charts, started the Girlgroup boom and made Goffin and King top dogs of the talent pool in the Brill Building. The two then wrote many hits afterwards, but for Goffin the first success was the most beautiful: “Carole and Don drove in front of the building in a limousine. Carole wagged with a $ 10,000 check and screamed: ‘Do you know what? You never need to work again! ‘”