THE hair still bounces on her shoulder in a folly of thick curls her smile is broad, her impossibly blue. Her approach is direct and engaging and her musician's hands are strong, drenched as they are in an assortment of ill matched rings, including a Claddagh. But if you think she's going to bat her eyelids and tell a sweet story about that ring, you'll be waiting.
You're so accessible," I gushed.
"Oh no I'm not," she countered.
For privacy is clearly a priority for the long term celebrity and it is a need Carole King recognised a long time ago. "Work has always been a part of my life, not my whole life, and that's how I've survived." Twenty five years after the massive success of Tapestry, 35 years after her first big hit, she continues to change hats at an inspiring rate, appearing in a musical on Broadway, writing soundtracks heading a band, recording, jamming.
"I value life, I love learning new things and that, if anything, would he my advice for young artists. Value life. It's not as easy as it sounds. In all the arts, that old question is still being asked. Do you really have to be mad to be a good artist? I try to live a life that is not mad...
Many artists of her generation were less fortunate. People seek creativity through drugs. It's a struggle. You have to continue that struggle. It's endless." She lost a number of contemporaries along the way, including her third husband who died in 1978. She gave up grand scale touring a long time ago, initially to raise her children, and for a time chose a life far away from the canyons of New York and LA on her ranch in Idaho. These days, New York is once again her base, she says, although she'll be in Ireland through to at least September.
Her most recent performance in Dublin came during an impromptu, star studded encore at Bob Dylan's concert at the Point last year. She bopped over her keyboard in a Muppet like frenzy, clearly enjoying herself along with Van Morrison and Elvis Costello. "I just loved doing Dylan material." Minutes later, she fell off the back of the dark, elevated stage and broke her wrist and thumb. Every pianist's nightmare. "No, no, Bob didn't push me," she jokes. "You can forget all those stories She's fully mended. "Next time I'll bring a flashlight."
Her first encounter with a Dublin audience, however, was during a flash tour in 1982. "It was wonderful. There are different kinds of audiences. A lot of the time you walk out on stage, and you are confronted by people with their arms folded across their chests, daring you to prove yourself. Like they're saying OK, show me what you can do. In Dublin it was entirely different. There was a kind of willingness, and it's still there. People will you to have a good time, to make it work. It's great."
She came to Ireland for a break after her 1994 Broadway debut as the lead in Blood Brothers. "It was such an emotionally demanding role. I had absolutely nothing left. No spark. Then it happened in three words. I saw Riverdance."
Paul McGuinness showed her the video of the Eurovision video and asked if she would be interested in seeing The Show. She clearly caught the chill up the spine as it rattled through the crowd that night and recovered her spark on the spot. Bill and Denise Whelan soon became friends and she would love to work with Bill at some stage. "The will is there . .. but not the time." Meanwhile she describes Riverdance as Whelan's Tapestry, as music destined to connect generations and signal a particular time.
So how did all this lead her to join Red Kettle's production of Brighton Beach memoirs, a play by Neil Simon with Peter Sheridan directing? Through the other woman in the Park, apparently. "I met Peter at a party in the American ambassador's residence and he made a perfect offer, an offer I couldn't refuse."
Acting was her original discipline. She is a graduate of that extraordinary school cum-pressure cooker of Fame fame, the High School for the Performing Arts in Manhattan. Her diverse talents from theatre to musicianship, to writing and performing were clearly encouraged by that early training.
Her professionalism seems immediately instinctive and assured. "I was raised to think I could do anything," she says, a considerable benefit for any woman heading into the music industry in the early 1960s. Acting is different from writing and performing. When I write, I'm using my own voice acting allows me to take on someone else's well, in my way. Each nourishes the other."
She plays a Jewish mother named Kate in Brighton Beach. Coming from Brooklyn as she does, the role shouldn't be too difficult for her but for the rest of the cast?
"The play has a very universal theme. It's about finding your identity within a family and that's a universal experience, whether it's Jewish, Catholic, whatever. We all have to go through it and we all have a lot in common including the guilt."
AT this stage during the press conference Alan King (no relation!) a young Dublin actor who has worked extensively with Passion Machine among others, is asked whether he was intimidated by the prospect of working with a legend such as Carole King?
"Well, I knew that she could write songs," he answered promptly, "but could she act? I wondered."
Their rapport, borne out by reels of laughter, suggested that yes, indeed she can. On this occasion, just don't expect her to sing.