by David Ritz
Still, there were extraordinarily happy moments for Aretha in the nineties. In a few years, the Democrats would be back in power, and invitations to the White House would be forthcoming. Unlike Ray Charles, who had unapologetically sung for Presidents Reagan and George H. Bush, Aretha, with her deep roots in the Democratic Party, declined such performances.
“At the start of the decade,” said her booking agent Dick Alen, “she was making anywhere from two to five million a year. She was still playing big theaters and could tour behind all her hits. The usual mix were, of course, all her Atlantic hits from the sixties and seventies and then her Arista hits—‘Freeway’ and ‘I Knew You Were Waiting’—from the eighties. She could have made three or four times that much had she flown. She wouldn’t play west of the Rockies. She didn’t want to drive that far, and a bus ride over the mountains made her uneasy. She continued to ignore her international markets—Europe, Asia, Latin America—where she could have earned a fortune. And of course, there were the ongoing cancellations, most of which went unexplained. Given all that, it’s a testimony to her staying power as an artist that she earned as much as she did.”
“In the early nineties she called me to discuss her new record,” said Arif Mardin. “I was always eager to work with Aretha and delighted to entertain whatever ideas she might have. We had a long and happy history together. I found her to be a positive person—the new album was always going to be her biggest—and I respected her determination to realize another top-ten hit. This time, though, I wasn’t sure she was on the right track. Her notion was to do all originals—an ‘Aretha Franklin sings Aretha Franklin.’ She sent me some songs, and several had some charm, but I’m afraid I didn’t hear any hits. In the most tactful terms possible, I told her what I knew Clive Davis had to be telling her—that it might be best to include songs by proven hit makers. There was silence on the other end of the phone. Then she thanked me for my time, and years passed before I heard from her again. Next year, when the album came out—the one with the unfortunate title What You See Is What You Sweat—I noted that Burt Bacharach had written and produced two of the songs; Pic Conley, a hot producer at that time, was responsible for another two; and of the ten or so Aretha originals she had sent me, only two were included. It was clear that Clive had prevailed.”
Clive also kept her on the charts, if just barely. One of the Bacharach songs, “Ever Changing Times,” with a shadow background vocal by Michael McDonald, crept into the top-twenty R&B listings. But neither it nor anything else on the album crossed over.
Oliver Leiber, who coproduced one of the tracks, “Mary Goes Round,” went to Detroit for the recording session.
“We were called in by Clive Davis,” said Oliver, “because my cowriter Elliot Wolff and I were the flavor of the month. We had both produced and written hits for Paula Abdul—Elliot did ‘Straight Up’ and ‘Cold Hearted’ and I did ‘The Way That You Love Me,’ ‘Forever Your Girl,’ and ‘Opposites Attract.’ So Elliot and I got together, turned out some demos, and sent them to Clive. My understanding was that he was basically telling Aretha what songs to sing. When he sent her our ‘Mary Goes Round,’ she had no objections, and, just like that, we were on our way. The other understanding, of course, was that working with Aretha meant doing so in her playground. Her playground was United Sound in Detroit, which was great because I knew that George Clinton had cut much of his Funkadelic stuff in that very studio. Elliot and I couldn’t have been any more excited.
“I wish I could say the same for Aretha. She wasn’t hostile but she certainly wasn’t warm. She lived up to her diva reputation—haughty and cold. From the get-go she made it plain that she was there to do a job and wanted it done quickly. As she blew through her vocals, a process that probably took a couple of hours, she chain-smoked Kool cigarettes. Even as she sang, smoke billowed out of her mouth. As far as the song itself went, her heart wasn’t in it. She seemed far more interested in the fried chicken that her assistant was cooking up in the kitchen. We got the notion that once that chicken was fried, our session was over. So we worked in a hurry.
“She had learned the melody and knew the groove and could certainly sing the thing down, but there were certain runs and little licks that were sung in the demo that both Elliot and I thought would add flair. Elliot made the suggestion in the mildest manner possible. ‘No, baby,’ she said, ‘it’s okay the way it is,’ and never bothered to try it our way. Her only suggestion—well, really her demand—was that we use her son Teddy on guitar. We plugged him in. He was fine, but what he played didn’t match the mood of the song and ultimately was not used.
“At the end of the day, the chicken was cooked and so were we. Even though we were listed as producers, we really only produced the instrumental track. We didn’t produce her vocals; we were merely there to record her vocals. I’m not sure anyone really produces an Aretha vocal. She has a strong notion of what she will and will not sing—and God help the poor soul who tries to convince her otherwise. We certainly felt the honor of working with the great Aretha Franklin. But she remained a distant character, an imperious queen.”
In the winter of 1990, press reports about the Mahalia Jackson fiasco began to appear. A Jet headline read “New York Magistrate Rules Aretha Should Pay $230,000 for Backing Out on Play.” Producer Ashton Spring was quoted as saying that “the show had been scheduled to open in Cleveland in July 1984, but never got off the ground because Ms. Franklin failed to appear at rehearsals for the musical.”
That summer, Aretha did not fail to appear at a program in Detroit honoring Nelson Mandela, who had been released from his South African prison in February.
Aretha stayed home for the remainder of the summer, with the exception of a notable concert at New York’s Radio City Music Hall.
In the New York Times, Jon Pareles wrote, “Ms. Franklin managed a few sublime, cascading vocal phrases… But saddled with schlock ballads and gussied up with an unnecessary orchestra—does ‘Respect’ really need violins?—she remains as frustrating as she is matchless.” He wrote that “Ever Changing Times” sounded like “a Whitney Houston reject.” Sitting in that cavernous auditorium, I had the opposite reaction. I leaped to my feet at the end of her stirring rendition of the song, one of the best of Bacharach and Carole Bayer Sager’s collaborations.
That same summer of 1990 marked a major tragedy for American music. On August 13, during a freak windstorm, Curtis Mayfield was struck by a light tower at an outdoor concert at Wingate Field in Brooklyn, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down.
“Aretha and I were close to Curtis—all the Franklins were—and the news was just awful,” said Erma. “For some time, he and Aretha had been talking about doing a new record together. When you think of Aretha’s greatest producers, only two of them were singers—Luther and Curtis. That’s why I think the material she sang under the auspices of those two artists has such a special flavor. I was hoping that Curtis, in spite of the terrible blow, might be able to sing again. It took several years, but my hope came true, and he and my sister did work together again.”
The new year began on a happy note. In January 1991, Wayne State University, in Detroit, gave Aretha an honorary doctorate degree.
“Not having graduated high school, this was a tremendous day for her,” said Erma. “Because Carolyn, Cecil, and I all had higher educations, Aretha suffered with a bit of a complex. She was just as smart as the rest of us, and she was always an avid reader and astute student of the cultural and political scene. She had no reason to feel intellectually inferior, but quitting school in your teens does something to your attitude. I think she was always trying to compensate for feeling less-than. That’s why this degree from Wayne State was right on time. It gave her confidence a boost.”
In March, Reverend James Cleveland died in Los Angeles. He was fifty-nine. Aretha did not make it to his funeral at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles but released a statement that said, “He had the single greatest influence on gospel music
to this date… James was my earliest musical influence and musical mentor in my formative years.”
Two weeks later, she sang at the Detroit funeral of Anthony Riggs, who was murdered after returning home from the Persian Gulf War.
“My sister was always engaged in acts of kindness and charity that went unreported,” said Erma. “She and I would be watching the late news. There’d be a story about a woman who lost her home in a fire, and the next thing you know, Aretha was on the phone to the news station getting the woman’s number. The next day she’d send her a check for thirty thousand dollars.”
In June, she was back in her father’s church singing at the funeral of David Ruffin, dead at fifty. She spoke of David with the same admiration with which she spoke of Sam Cooke, Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, Levi Stubbs, and Dennis Edwards, placing him in the highest category of soul singer.
“This was a lonely period for Aretha,” said Ruth Bowen. “Mentors and friends were dying all around her. Romantically, she and Willie Wilkerson were always off and on, but more off than on. She was definitely on the prowl for a man, something of a lifelong preoccupation of Aretha’s. Unlike other women, though, Aretha didn’t have to worry about letting the world know that she was in the market for a new man. All she had to do was call Jet, and they put the announcement on the cover.”
In fact, the August 19 cover story on Aretha declared that “Aretha Franklin, who says she’s ripe for romance, is wealthy, willing and waiting for Mr. Right who won’t ‘take me for granted.’ ‘I love men,’ she said, stressing she is interested in only one relationship at a time. ‘The kind of men I am talking about don’t have to come from the entertainment world. They don’t have to be celebrities, either. They just have to be men who are not intimidated by my success. I engage in girl talk with other celebrated women and they all agree that the intimidating factor keeps men from making romantic overtures.’ ”
Aretha went on to explicate the lyrics from a song she wrote for her upcoming album, What You See Is What You Sweat, called “You Can’t Take Me for Granted.”
“It’s a personal testimony, a song I wrote with someone in mind, a six foot bronze brother with multi-charms—but no names, please. The lyric is saying ‘Your picture’s in my locket but I’m not in your back pocket.’ So, yes, there’s definitely a story there.”
It’s not a story, though, that Aretha has ever shared with her public.
“There’s only one real story about Aretha and men after she and Glynn divorced, and that’s Willie Wilkerson,” said Ruth Bowen. “Willie proved to be a good and loyal friend to the lady. He became the escort she could count on. All her other fantasy love affairs never amounted to anything.”
“Because Willie’s a secure guy,” said Erma, “he didn’t mind if Aretha went off on her side trips. He didn’t care what she said in the press. It wasn’t that Aretha was his only lady friend. But because I believe he truly loves her and didn’t have an image to maintain, he allowed her to give the public whatever impression she wanted to give. He couldn’t have cared less, and I’m not sure the public cared either. They certainly didn’t care as much as Aretha thought they did.”
The public didn’t seem to care much for What You See Is What You Sweat—it was her weakest-selling album for Arista. Even her duet with Luther Vandross, “Doctor’s Orders,” their final collaboration, failed to make a dent in the marketplace.
“By then I had lost track of all the times Aretha had promised never to speak to me again,” said Luther. “She was always imagining insults that I had inflicted on her. If I came to perform in Detroit, she would demand tickets for twenty-four of her best friends, and if I provided twelve, I was suddenly in the doghouse. It was a draining friendship, to say the least. In the end, though, I couldn’t stay mad at Aretha because she is, after all, Aretha. So when she asked for another ‘Jump to It’–style jam, ‘Doctor’s Orders’ was what I came up with. It isn’t among the favorite things I’ve done. I consider it trifling. And of course it wasn’t helped by the fact that Aretha refused to leave Detroit to let me produce her vocal where I wanted to produce it—in a studio in LA or New York, where I could do the best job. Her voice was beginning to show signs of age. All voices fray. Recording older voices requires extra-special care. With Aretha, though, that care can’t be applied because she won’t recognize that there’s been even the slightest bit of deterioration.”
In 1991, the careers of Aretha and Luther were moving in different directions. His latest album, Power of Love, maintained his bestselling status, while Aretha hadn’t enjoyed a number-one hit since she had recorded with George Michael, five years before.
When she played Radio City again in September, New York Times critic Stephen Holden wrote, “The singer has long aspired to a Las Vegas style of showmanship that seriously undermines what she does best, which is to perform unadorned, gospel-flavored pop with the passion and spontaneity of a church singer. Echoes of that passion invariably find their way onto her records, even a scattershot concoction like her newest album, ‘What You See Is What You Sweat.’ ”
Ever mindful of maintaining a high public profile, in November Aretha appeared on the TV sitcom Murphy Brown, looking considerably heavier than she did in the photos accompanying her current album. At the piano, she sang “Natural Woman” while Candice Bergen sang the background parts.
Aretha’s tradition of throwing herself birthday parties continued in March 1992, when she turned fifty. In a Detroit hotel ballroom, the Duke Ellington Orchestra, led by Duke’s son Mercer, entertained. Among the two hundred guests were members of the Detroit Pistons, several local broadcasters, and her brother Vaughn.
“Aretha and I became much closer after Cecil died,” said Vaughn, Aretha’s older half brother. “I’d come to Detroit for certain parties and was always grateful to be included. Aretha might get blue sometimes, but these social occasions never failed to perk her up. She also began calling me to help her arrange her travel and keep her business affairs in order. The calls became more frequent in the nineties when she was having some problems with the IRS. I had retired from a long military career in 1974, when I was forty. Afterwards I had lived in the South, where I worked for the postal service. When Aretha asked me to help her I was already in my sixties and contemplating a calm retirement. Show business held no appeal for me. At the same time, because of the great love I had for the mother that Aretha and I shared, I saw my duty. Because I’m basically a trained soldier used to regimentation, it wasn’t easy. The soldier’s life is about discipline. The artist’s life is about mood. Mood determines whether you’re going to play a concert or cancel it. Mood determines whether you’re going to stick to your recording schedule or ignore it. This was a new world for me, with new rules. I had to learn to bend with the breeze and go with the flow. This was not my style, and for many years I found myself in an uncomfortable position. I found it unpleasant to be put in a position where I had to apologize for Aretha’s mercurial moods. The money part was also not easily understood. My sister made a great deal but always needed a great deal more. I understood her relationship to money when I noticed that when she left her dressing room for the stage, she always took her purse with her. That purse stayed with her onstage for as long as she sang. She carried the cash to pay those who worked for her. I tried to get her to do this by check so she could have a receipt. But there were no receipts. She paid cash on the barrelhead.”
“Nearly every Aretha gig that I booked,” said Dick Alen of the William Morris Agency, “required that of her total fee, she had to have twenty-five thousand in cash before she went onstage. That was the money she used to make her payroll. She deducted no taxes and made no records. I’d beg her to implement some system of documentation, but she refused. I knew that eventually there’d be hell to pay from the IRS.”
“For all the money complications,” said Vaughn, “her mood changed the minute that Bill Clinton came on the scene. It was more than the fact that, like us, he was a Democrat. He was
also a music man, a saxophonist himself, and someone who loved rhythm and blues. Aretha figured she’d be hearing from him in no time. And she did. She worked for [his campaign], and once he was elected, he never forgot her. He put her back on that throne. He helped keep her in the newspapers. He gave her the props she deserved.”
In the summer of 1992, fifty-year-old Aretha Franklin sang the national anthem at the Democratic National Convention that nominated Bill Clinton. That same summer, while her Arista album sales sagged, Amazing Grace, cut on Atlantic twenty-one years earlier, was certified double platinum.
“I remember calling her with that wonderful news,” said Jerry Wexler. “I knew that she was increasingly having a hard time selling records and that piece of news would warm her heart. Of course she was happy. We reminisced for a while and I was feeling good vibes coming my way. That gave me the courage to suggest that maybe we should go back in the studio and cut a classic album, either all blues or all jazz, something for the ages. That suggestion killed our conversation. ‘Oh, no,’ she said, ‘Clive has Babyface and L. A. Reid writing for me. You know who they are, don’t you, Jerry?’ Of course I knew. They’d just done Whitney’s ‘I’m Your Baby Tonight.’ But when, in the most diplomatic way possible, I asked Aretha whether she thought their material might be a bit young for her, she took great offense. That set off another long period of silence when, in her view, I became persona non grata.”
That summer she traveled to New York to perform at the Friars Club roast of Clive Davis at the Waldorf Astoria. Among the performers were Dionne Warwick, Kenny G, and Barry Manilow. Aretha insisted that she go last. Then came the shocker: She came out wearing a tutu and started twirling about with a troupe from the City Center Ballet Company.
“When she told me what she was going to do,” said Ruth Bowen, “I couldn’t believe it. I wanted to tell her that she’d look ridiculous—and she did. But it was another one of those times when Aretha’s sense of reality was off. In her mind, she looked graceful and demure. But to the world, she looked like a dancing hippo. And the thing that killed me most was her reasoning for doing it. She said it was out of respect for Clive!”
