Meaning of 'Tapestry' by Carole King

Question

The song tapestry is rather mysterious and I am wondering if there is any explanation out there as to what it means. All those references to a mysterious man in some strange clothes...her 'tapestry is unravelling..'. What is the whole song about and what are the individual references? Any ideas?

Answer 1

My life has been a tapestry of rich and royal hue

An everlasting vision of the everchanging view

A wondrous woven magic in bits of blue and gold

A tapestry to feel and see, impossible to hold

Once amid the soft silver sadness in the sky

There came a man of fortune, a drifter passing by

He wore a torn and tattered cloth around his leathered hide

And a coat of many colors, yellow-green on either side

He moved with some uncertainty, as if he didn't know

Just what he was there for, or where he ought to go

Once he reached for something golden hanging from a tree

And his hand come down empty

Soon within my tapestry along the rutted road

He sat down on a river rock and turned into a toad

It seemed that he had fallen into someone's wicked spell

And I wept to see him suffer, though I didn't know him well

As I watched in sorrow, there suddenly appeared

A figure gray and ghostly beneath a flowing beard

In times of deepest darkness, I've seen him dressed in black

Now my tapestry's unraveling; he's come to take me back

He's come to take me back

I've always thought it had religious conatations.

The reference to the coat of many colors.

A traveling man.

He moved with some uncertainty, as if he didn't know

Just what he was there for, or where he ought to go.

I always thought that was a reference to possibly Jesus.

Or maybe it could just be the loss of innocence.

Or the passing of time and age.

Once he reached for something golden hanging from a tree

And his hand come down empty

Like the grasping for dreams and coming up empty handed.

It's like she was watching someone living, confused, loosing their dreams.... and eventually growing old.

The old gray man....old age, death, God......coming back for HER too.

Either way......it begins as something young, happy, & colorful, full of promise..........but it ends the same for the man and eventually for her.

I guess it's like Stairway to Heaven. Carely smoked a lot of pot back then, it was the 70s, you know.