by David Ritz
“I think Aretha knew that her emotional survival depended on her keeping her distance from Detroit,” said Erma. “The situation was simply too heavy for her to take. In the first year or two that Daddy was in the coma, she was right to visit only occasionally. Anything else would have been too much. The emotional toll was enormous on all of us, but Aretha was the one who was in the midst of trying to keep her career alive. That took all her effort.”
“Carolyn, Erma, and I discussed Aretha all the time,” said Cecil, “and what we could do to keep her on an even keel. Since I was both her brother and manager, I had a special responsibility. No one wanted her to suffer another breakdown. And something like this could do it. She needed to keep on keeping on. That meant a new label and a new record. Carolyn was convinced the new record should deal with the real emotions she was facing. Carolyn argued that Ree’s biggest hits—like ‘Respect’ or ‘Chain of Fools’ or ‘Think’—came from real-life situations. She was singing about what was really happening. But I told Carolyn that Aretha didn’t want to sing what was really happening. During those moments when she was recording, she needed to forget about what was really happening and concentrate on the positive. She and Clive talked about a lighthearted pop record. Well, far as I was concerned, that’s just what the doctor ordered. A pop record would mean money—and at this point, money was just what Aretha needed.”
In April, the Franklins organized a benefit concert in Detroit to help pay C.L.’s medical bills. James Cleveland, Jesse Jackson, the Staple Singers, and Aretha herself appeared at Cobo Hall, where, according to Jet, $50,000 was raised.
That same spring, work began on her debut Arista album. In conjunction with Clive Davis, Aretha selected two producers. Ironically, both were from her past. Arif Mardin, a celebrated musician and arranger, was one of the trio that had produced the lion’s share of her Atlantic albums. Chuck Jackson was a member of the production team that had brought Natalie Cole to stardom. He was also the composer of that group of hit songs that were rejected by Aretha and later sung by Natalie.
“Aretha and Clive were very clear in that they wanted this record to have a certain sheen,” Arif told me. “They did not want the old Atlantic sound. They came to me with four songs. The one they liked most was ‘Come to Me,’ a big ballad that had the resonance of a movie theme. Aretha was very specific about the musicians. She read Billboard carefully and knew exactly who was hot and who wasn’t. Toto was extremely hot back then, and, at Aretha’s urging, I used three of their members—David Paich on piano, Jeff Porcaro on drums, and Steve Lukather on guitar. I employed a young David Foster to play synths. I borrowed bassist Louis Johnson from the Brothers Johnson, another hot group, and was only too happy to follow Aretha’s suggestions and hire the Sweet Inspirations plus her cousin Brenda Corbett. In addition to the ballad, I was asked to produce two covers—Otis Redding’s ‘Can’t Turn You Loose’ and the Doobie Brothers’ ‘What a Fool Believes’—and the slightly funky ‘Love Me Forever.’
“It was a great honor for me to participate. This was, after all, something of a new debut for Aretha. Knowing the extremely difficult circumstances surrounding her father, I tried to be especially sensitive to Aretha’s needs in the studio. In that regard, I must say that she was not in the least demanding. She was open to my ideas and the ideas of others. We were all on the same page. This was not to be a heavy-handed Aretha Franklin album. This was to be her introduction to the pop market that Clive had cultivated with such finesse. The songs needed to soar. The record needed to shine.”
“Aretha loved Arif’s light touch,” said Cecil, “and the fact that he’s the ultimate gentleman. Arif put her at ease. Chuck Jackson was also cool. He came in with a group of his songs. One of those—‘Together Again’—he cowrote with Aretha and Phil Perry. But it was ‘School Days,’ the song that Ree cowrote and coproduced with Chuck, that gave my sister the biggest kick. She’s nostalgic by nature, and this song—her answer to Stevie Wonder’s ‘I Wish’—took her back to the fifties, where, in her memory, life was all about simple fun.”
Aretha’s psychological pattern remained firmly in place: She avoided present trauma by idealizing her past. Her “School Days” is a walk in the park, an ode to an era that exists only in her imagination. The song celebrates the innocent fifties of “hoop skirts… petticoats… and fringe suede jackets.” The heartbreaks are edited out. There is no motherless childhood. There is no promiscuous father. There are no teen pregnancies.
The result of the record is similarly superficial. The soul does not cut deep. Mardin and Jackson are efficient producers, but the material is thin.
“The hope,” said Arif, “was that her cover of ‘Can’t Turn You Loose’ would do for her career at Arista what ‘Respect,’ her earlier Otis Redding cover, did for her career at Atlantic—kick it off in high gear. Ultimately, her vocal won a Grammy, but the single never approached the kind of success she experienced with ‘Respect.’ Today it is largely forgotten.”
Robert Palmer reviewed the Arista album, called simply Aretha, for the October 24 issue of the New York Times: “There should be a way for her to make contemporary music without having to keep her wonderful voice under wraps, but she hasn’t found it yet. One wonders if she’s looking.”
The issue of Aretha’s outrageous costuming always popped up in the press. Billboard’s Jean Williams wrote, “Does Aretha Franklin need a new costumer? Appearing on ‘The Tonight Show’ recently, Franklin was outfitted in a tight, clinging costume designed for a lithe singer like Diana Ross rather than a lady of ample proportions like Franklin.”
During her slender days, Aretha was understandably eager to show off skin. Interestingly, though, this penchant didn’t change when she gained weight. Defiantly, she continued to wear outfits that did nothing to hide her curves, no matter how extravagant the curves became. She would adorn herself with bodice-busting fashion items of questionable taste for decades to come.
Whenever her taste was questioned, Aretha was quick to tell the press that she studied fashion as closely as she did the music charts. She followed the latest trends and knew exactly what was appropriate for her body type and what was not. Any criticism came from people who were merely jealous.
“When it comes to her outfits,” said Carolyn, “Ree is no one you want to criticize. She’s super-sensitive. Yes, I think she can be over the top, and yes, I think some of her stuff is tacky. But I also think there’s a method to her madness. Her wild stage outfits bring her even more attention. They get her press. They keep her in the magazines. Crazy-ass clothes are part of her strategy for staying in the public eye. You may not like what she’s wearing, but you’ll notice what she has on. The first rule of a long-lasting diva like Aretha is always You will not ignore me.”
“At the start of the eighties,” said Cecil, “there was an upsurge in her career. The move to Arista worked. The critics might not have loved the album, but the public knew that she was back. The Arista team was hell-bent on making the record a hit. Clive was in the Aretha business for the long haul. The first single, Chuck Jackson’s ‘United Together,’ got to number three on the R-and-B charts and stayed for months. When Blues Brothers came out, Ree got raves. Everyone was talking about how she threw down. Then came the trip to London and the Netherlands.”
“In the early Arista days, I thought I’d get back with Aretha,” said Ruth Bowen. “She called several times to ask about whether I could find her lucrative dates. I knew she needed money for her father’s medical bills. The new label was pushing the record hard and I had several hotels in Vegas ready to book her. Next thing I learn is that she’s signed with ICM. Cecil called and said they were booking her. Why?”
“ICM came to her with dates for concerts in London,” said Cecil. “The London dates had Ree remembering the fight she had with Ruth over British promoter Jeffrey Kruger. That’s when she made up her mind to cut off Ruth again and go with ICM. She liked the idea of being repped by an international talent agency.
”
“The thing with Aretha is that you’re in on Monday and out on Tuesday,” said Ruth. “I understood that. So when I heard I’d been fired before I was rehired, I just kinda chuckled. I knew she’d be back.”
In November, the month that Ronald Reagan was elected president, Aretha played a command performance for Queen Elizabeth and the royal family at the London Palladium, with Sammy Davis Jr. introducing her. Two days later, she moved to the Royal Victoria Hall for three more concerts.
“Glynn was on that trip where we also played for Queen Beatrice of the Netherlands,” said Cecil. “Aretha was in a great mood ’cause, before we got there, she’d finally taken off weight.”
Jet reported that she had been losing fifteen pounds a month: “Aretha said she plans to write a book about her weight loss. She has dropped several dress sizes to slip into a Jean Louis creation made from three layers of black and white chiffon with silver and white beads and rhinestones.”
In January 1981, Ebony reported that her Arista contract was worth nine million dollars.
“An exaggeration,” said Ruth Bowen. “If Aretha got a contract for four million, she’d tell the press it was worth eight million. Back in the day, if I got her twenty-five thousand for a date, she’d have me tell Jet she was getting fifty thousand.”
“Aretha wasn’t wrong to worry about going out of style,” said Cecil. “The music business is all about current style—who’s got it and who’s lost it. I remember how upset Ree got over the Steely Dan hit ‘Hey, Nineteen.’ It was all over the radio. I liked it. I thought Steely Dan had a great jazz/soul groove going, but I didn’t pay that much attention to the lyrics. Aretha did. She pointed out that it was a story about the singer’s hookup with a younger chick who’s nineteen. The cat sings, ‘Hey, Nineteen, that’s ’Retha Franklin… she don’t remember the Queen of Soul.’ Then he says something about how the soul singers are having a hard time. Ree didn’t like hearing that. She wanted to sue the writer. ‘Sue for what?’ I asked. ‘Sue for libel. He’s defaming me. He’s saying I’m old hat.’ I had to calm her down and convince her that no lawyer was gonna take a case like that. Plus it would bring even more attention to the lyrics. But that’s how sensitive she was. She didn’t want to be reminded of the fact that she hadn’t enjoyed a big pop hit since the early seventies.”
That winter, Aretha revved up her live show, the usual combination of unintentional camp and brilliant singing.
Robert Palmer, in his New York Times February 27 review of her City Center concert, described her “unerring instinct for picking the most inappropriate material and for sabotaging the pacing of her sets with gimmicky, utterly banal stage routines.” Still, he noted, “during ‘Amazing Grace,’ her closing number, she sang so movingly that she began to cry.”
The same week Aretha sang at City Center, the Grammy Awards ceremony was televised from Radio City Music Hall. She had been nominated in the best R&B female vocal category for “Can’t Turn You Loose,” and she was asked to sing the number at the telecast. A win would end a six-year dry spell. From 1967 until 1975, the year her streak was broken by Natalie Cole, Aretha had won eight straight Grammys in the category.
“It was a crazy night,” Cecil remembered. “We started out at Radio City, where she crushed ‘Can’t Turn You Loose.’ Her live performance was better than the record. Aretha was a little worried because Diana Ross was nominated in the same category for her ‘Upside Down.’ She wanted to beat Diana in the worst way. She wanted back in the Grammy game. So she wasn’t happy when, to everyone’s surprise, Stephanie Mills won for ‘Never Knew Love Like This Before.’ Losing to Stephanie, though, was a lot better than losing to Diana.”
Predictions were for Barbra Streisand and Barry Gibb’s “Guilty” to rule the Grammys, but the night’s big winner was Christopher Cross and his “Sailing.”
“From Radio City we jumped into the limo to head over for her gig at City Center,” Cecil remembered. “There wasn’t a second to spare, so when the limo driver kept turning down the wrong streets and got us caught up in a traffic jam, Aretha lost it. She screamed so loud I thought there’d be nothing left for the stage. I calmed her down but she was really frazzled. She made it in time, the concert was great, and then it was time for this huge party Clive Davis was giving to honor Aretha’s comeback. You know how much Clive likes throwing parties—well, this was the party of the year with every music and movie star in the city waiting on Ree’s arrival. The press coverage was going to be tremendous.
“I know damn well that I’d told her that the party was in a swanky private club on the top floor of a skyscraper. But when we got there, she claimed I hadn’t warned her. This was when Aretha’s fear of heights was building. ‘I’m right next to you, sis,’ I said. ‘I’ve got you.’ Well, we made it up to the tenth floor. But then we had to walk over to another elevator bank that would take us to the fiftieth floor, where the party was happening.
“ ‘Oh, no, we’re not,’ Ree said when she learned we had forty more stories to go. My pleas did no good. She turned right around and went back down. Yes, sir, that was the night the honored guest decided to skip the honor. Next day she apologized to Clive, but not before she told him that if he wanted to give her another party to make sure it was low down—like in a basement. Turned out, though, that Clive’s next party was in his penthouse apartment up on Park Avenue, and, as you can imagine, Aretha wasn’t about to get on the elevator and go up that high.”
Three days after the Grammys, Aretha appeared on Saturday Night Live singing the same Arif Mardin chart of “Can’t Turn You Loose.”
“Then it was back to California for rest and relaxation,” said Cecil. “That New York situation wore her out. She needed the comfort of family life.”
“I’m not sure how much comfort life with Glynn was giving her at that point,” said Erma, who visited her sister in Encino. “Ree loves to cook, but she was spending so much time in the kitchen that weight had become a problem again. She said she wanted time off from her career but she’s never been able to leave her career. She was deep into her new record, picking songs and producers. Her first Arista album hadn’t been the blockbuster she had hoped for, so, in her mind, this second one had to do it.
“And then she was torn up because of Daddy. Daddy had made no progress. He was still in a coma. Aretha felt that if she were with him in Detroit, maybe it would make a difference. Maybe he’d respond to her. So she flew back with me for a few weeks. Her presence didn’t make any difference—at least, none that we or his doctors could detect. Through all this I sensed that her first priority was not her marriage. I saw Glynn moving deeper into his acting and his family, and Aretha moving deeper into her career and our family.”
In the May issue of Ebony, though, when Aretha, along with a group of black women that included Lena Horne and Roberta Flack, was asked to rank the top ten most exciting black men, she “emphatically insisted that to her there is only one exciting man: her husband, actor Glynn Turman. No prodding or pleading or threats could get the ‘queen of soul’ to expand her list. ‘Put him down 10 times!!’ she demanded. ‘He is my boyfriend, my husband, my big brother, my protector and sometimes even my little boy. I look at him from time to time and I can’t believe he’s really mine. Now that’s exciting.’ ”
“What did Shakespeare say?” asked Ruth Bowen. “ ‘Methinks the lady doth protest too much.’ That’s Sister Aretha. She always wants the world to think that not only is everything hunky-dory but everything is absolutely totally glorious. She couldn’t be richer, she couldn’t be happier, she couldn’t be living a more satisfying life. Aretha gets up every day and starts creating her own reality. Because she is who she is—a queen—she can call in that reality to the press. And they’ll usually buy it. At the same time, she’s trying to sell herself that reality. But, believe me, honey, her reality ain’t real. Far as a relationship goes, the real of the matter is that any man with a serious career of his own is gonna have a hard time with S
ister Ree. Because she’s career fixated, he’s gonna have to take a backseat. And a strong man and seriously gifted actor like Glynn Turman is not about to take a backseat. I didn’t care what she was telling Ebony about her happy home life, I knew it was just a matter of time—especially during those early Arista days when she was desperate for a hit. Nothing was going to interfere with her getting back on track.”
26. BACK ON TRACK
When Aretha called to say she wanted me to coproduce her second Arista album, of course I was pleased,” said Arif Mardin, “but my first question was, ‘Who’s the other producer?’ Her answer came quickly. ‘Me,’ she said. When she was in the studio, she was focused. But there were several trips to Detroit to see about her dad that understandably had her distracted. As it turned out, she actually only coproduced two of the songs that she had written—neither of which was especially strong—‘Kind of Man’ and ‘Whole Lot of Me.’ She also coproduced and wrote the rhythm arrangement for ‘Truth and Honesty,’ a snappy little ditty by Burt Bacharach, Carole Bayer Sager, and Peter Allen.
“Like many artists who have written hits, Aretha was convinced that she could write another ‘Dr. Feelgood,’ ‘Think,’ or ‘Spirit in the Dark,’ ” Arif told me. “She was proud of her compositions, and, even if I had tried, I could have never dissuaded her from including them on her record. Clive Davis is a true diplomat, though, and rather than discourage her songwriting, he urged her to collaborate. That’s how she got together with Sam Dees and George Benson, a hot artist at the time. George had just won a Grammy for ‘Give Me the Night,’ written by Rod Temperton, who had enjoyed great success with Michael Jackson on Off the Wall. Sam, George, and Aretha wrote ‘Love All the Hurt Away,’ which became the title of the record and an R-and-B hit. She was certain it’d cross over and become a pop hit, but it never got higher than number thirty-six.
