Diana Ross: A Biography

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  “We’ll always have communication,” she continued, speaking of Berry. “I don’t think there’s any reason not to. When you love somebody, you don’t stop loving that person because you no longer have a working relationship with him. If our love is as strong as it was said to be, then I’m sure we’ll always have a relationship. We’re too close. It’s family. Our children. My children. His family. I know Berry loves me,” she concluded to me, her voice quivering. “He can’t stop loving me in one day.”

  Of RCA, she said, “I want a company that will pay you exactly the amount of money for each album that they say they’re going to pay you. My deal with RCA is one in which they have to check everything with me. Everything.”

  So, what to make of Diana’s years at RCA? She recorded six albums from 1981 to 1988 with mixed results. She produced the first two, Why Do Fools Fall in Love and Silk Electric, both reasonably good, if not great, albums. “I don’t think that ever could have happened at Motown,” she told this author, “producing my own music.” Actually, she was credited with having done so on a couple of songs over the previous ten years, but it sounds like they were really produced by Motown staffers. She told me that she’d wanted Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards to produce the first album, but wasn’t able to close a deal with them—maybe because of the way they felt about her and Motown’s remix of the diana album. When she was unable to get Lionel Richie or Quincy Jones, she decided to produce the record herself. Stylistically, the first album sounded fresh, as if it really was by the artist herself. It produced two Top 10 singles, the title track and the rock-edged “Mirror, Mirror.”

  The second LP, though not as strong, had its moments including the Top 10 Grammy-nominated “Muscles” (written and produced by Michael Jackson). A third album, Ross, generated no Top 10 songs, and one odd single called “Pieces of Ice,” a techno-pop confection the meaning of which even she seemed to not understand when asked about it. Diana stated that she wasn’t very happy with the Ross album and put great effort into her next release. She indeed rebounded with Swept Away. The album went gold and produced another Top 10 single, the glorious “Missing You”—written and produced by Lionel Richie. Something about her performance on this song tugs at the heartstrings; it was written by Richie in memory of the late Marvin Gaye, who had recently been shot and killed by his own father. Darryl Hall (of Hall and Oates) produced the album’s title track, which was a number-one dance smash, and a duet with Julio Iglesias, “All of You,” made it three hit records from her fourth RCA effort. It seemed that things were looking up but with the next release her sales started to slip.

  Eaten Alive was probably the most cohesively themed collection during the RCA years in that it was, with the exception of the title track, produced by the ingenious Barry Gibb. However, on the album’s frantic signature song she, Gibb and producer Michael Jackson totally ignored Berry Gordy’s tried-and-true opinion about the importance of understandable, meaningful lyrics and how they relate to record sales. The lyrics to “Eaten Alive” were so strange and muffled that they barely made sense; the song failed on the pop charts. Another cut on the album, “Chain Reaction,” was fun to listen to because it was masterfully crafted in the tradition of vintage Supremes. It’s a memorable recording and still holds up today. Certainly, Diana never looked more exciting than she did in the video, in which she contrasted a re-creation of herself in black and white as a sixties star on a TV dance show like Hullabaloo with color footage in present-day Ross regalia. The song was number one in Britain for weeks on the Capital-EMI label, but in the United States there was far less interest—it peaked at number sixty-six! Ironically, Eaten Alive started a downward trend from which she would never really recover—and still hasn’t to this day—and this album came out in 1985!

  She followed it with the Red Hot Rhythm and Blues album, which, again, yielded no Top 10 records though a couple of really stunning vocal performances. It would be her final RCA effort.

  A big problem at RCA for Diana was most certainly a consequence of her years of feeling disempowered at Motown, and that was that she now sought control over every aspect of her career, not just the recordings. Packaging, sequencing of songs, order of releases, advertising campaigns, videos—all of it was now in her purview and, really, she had little experience of any of it other than watching others do it for her at Motown. Sometimes she was not easy to work with at RCA. In her quest to prove herself, she often overcompensated, and could be impatient with company executives. Although Diana had hired Howard Marks of Glickman-Marks Management in New York to manage her, she was actually doing much of it on her own. At the end of 1981, Diana, now thirty-seven, decided it was time for total independence. Therefore, she severed her ties with Glickman-Marks and officially started her own management firm, RTC Management Corporation. (RTC were the initials of her three children, Rhonda, Tracee and Chudney.)

  In hindsight, Diana was—is—a great recording artist, but not necessarily a great entertainment manager. While one can’t blame her for trying, the entire time she was with RCA most of her aficionados were wishing she was still at Motown. Many of the recordings were worthwhile, but they were just missing … something. Michael Masser, one of the best of her Motown producers, put it best when trying to explain his work with her, and what he says could be the missing ingredient during the RCA years: “We were capturing her voice, that elusive quality that makes her Diana, that sound, that something she brings back to a song. It’s something you feel in her music …” Unfortunately, that ineffable quality was absent from a lot of her RCA music, especially on the songs—like “Muscles”—on which she sounded muffled, echoed and indistinguishable. Also, she would find that personal friendships actually did have some importance in her business. When problems arose at RCA—which was often—no one really cared about them, or her. In time, she would complain about the lack of personal interest in her career from her record label so, in that respect, she had swung 180 degrees from her days at Motown.

  When I interviewed her in 1981, she expressed extreme disappointment that ABC News was not able to get Berry or Suzanne DePasse or, basically, anyone at all from Motown to speak about her for an October 20/20 report promoting her first RCA album. “Nobody would do it,” she said. “I was just sort of shocked that no one from Motown would go on the air and say anything about me.” It was as if it had suddenly really hit her that they were angry at her, or at least ambivalent about her. Also, in their defense, she really wanted little to do with them, unless she needed them to speak on her behalf in press interviews. In that same interview I mentioned that Motown was planning to issue some material by her that had previously gone unreleased, possibly to capitalize on her RCA success. She seemed baffled. “Well, I know Berry would never hurt me in any way, so I’m not going to worry about it,” she said finally. When the article was published, I sent a copy of it to Gordy’s office. Shortly thereafter, I heard that he had cancelled the release of the Motown album, which was to be called Revelations. In the end, it seemed that he didn’t want to do anything to dilute the impact of her RCA recordings, no matter how upset he was with her.

  Leaving Motown when she did might not have been the best thing for Diana’s recording career, but it was most certainly the genius move of a lifetime for her. In fact, when she told Nancy Leviska that she wanted to “strike when the iron is hot,” she was very prescient in the observation. She left Motown at a high point—four huge hits in a row: “Upside Down,” “I’m Coming Out,” “It’s My Turn” and “Endless Love.” She had never been so hot and, as it would happen, she would never be that hot again. She was well worth the $20 million she got from RCA when she got it, and she put it to good use to set herself up for life. Walking away from Berry and company was a brave and gutsy thing for her to do and, to hear her tell it, she would never regret it.

  After banking the millions from RCA, she bought a ten-acre baronial estate in Greenwich, Connecticut, from tobacco heiress Nancy Reynolds for a little over $1 million
. She had her sights set on an estate in Bel Air, but at the last moment she decided, no, she wanted to get as far away from Los Angeles (and Berry?) as possible, and move to Connecticut. To ensure that she would have no neighbors, she also bought a few acres of adjoining land. The estate includes a lovely large Normandy-style chateau with an expansive spiral staircase from the basement to the third floor. The home boasts fine antique woodwork with eighteenth-century wood paneling in the living room. There are parquet floors in many of the rooms, which are all tastefully decorated with antique furnishings and paintings. An enormous organ room can be found on the ground floor and a flash of whimsy in the basement—her own bowling alley!*

  Although it took her some time to sell the house on Maple—eventually to TV producer Jim Burrows—she didn’t want to stay there when she went back to Los Angeles on business. Instead, she would check into the Beverly Hills Hotel under the pseudonym Doris Brewster. Though her furnishings were moved from the Maple Drive home, all of her gowns remained, many in her bedroom and the rest outside in a storage locker near the pool. One day, Diana sent an assistant to the home to retrieve something for her. When the employee heard a sound coming from the master bedroom, she went to investigate. She found, standing before her in the bedroom, a drag queen resplendent in a glittering Galanos-designed gown and one of Miss Ross’s fright wigs. “My dear!” he said, appropriating Diana’s voice and demeanor. “Don’t you know to knock before you enter a room?” The assistant ran from the room and called the police. Until the police arrived, the fake Miss Ross and the assistant admired the real Miss Ross’s “faaaabulous gowns” in the wardrobe. The intruder was then arrested. Apparently, as they later learned, a thunderstorm had knocked out the security system and he had been able to enter through a downstairs window. From that time on, Diana had one of her employees, John Mackey, live at the house in order to protect it, and also because having the home occupied lowered her insurance premiums while she lived in Connecticut.

  As well as the Greenwich estate, Howard Marks suggested to Diana a number of sensible real estate investments with the RCA money and, according to someone who is familiar with her finances, she still generates many millions a year from those investments alone. “She bought an interest in a diamond mine in South Africa that did very well for her,” says a source. “She also became an investor in four oil locations in Texas and Louisiana that did well, and property in Texas, as well, for cattle farming. She bought a house in Las Vegas, in an exclusive area called Rancho Bel Air. Then, she did a leaseback with more than one of the big hotels there, the terms of which were that whenever big stars were in town they could lease her home.”

  She learned a tough lesson, though, right after she left Motown. It had to happen. She’d been so taken care of at Motown, once she was on her own it seemed inevitable that she would have some trouble. “I got ripped off!” she would explain. “I was getting ripped off left and right. People were taking my money. And that’s when I realized I’d better figure out what the hell was going on.” She told me in my January 1982 interview with her that one of her accountants had stolen nearly $250,000 from her the previous year. “I was shocked,” she said. “And then I began realizing that I was so vulnerable to people taking advantage of me because here I was, Diana Ross, so straight and honest and just knowing that everyone was the same way. A lot of people aren’t, as I learned.” At this time, Diana began taking business classes. “I need to know about developmental deals,” she told me, “contracts and everything else. I have two classes a week.”

  Eventually, her education and investments paid off—she was never ripped off again. By the early 1980s, she was making as much as $220,000 a night for one concert. After twenty-one years of hard work, she needed and certainly deserved a big payday in her life. One thing was certain … finally, she had her own money.

  Michael Browne, her personal assistant in the 1980s, recalled being with her in Aspen in April of 1981 when she pulled from her purse what she said was her first personal checkbook. “I took her to the grocery store and she was pushing her cart along and people were falling like bowling pins all around her,” he said. “In that moment, I thought, this lady is such a paradox. On one hand, she can be so demanding of her employees and definitely not a woman I would consider to be a ‘people person.’ On the other, she’s totally comfortable with all eyes on her in a supermarket in Aspen.”

  Anyway, she got to the counter and the guy at the register, about seventeen, was so nervous to be in her presence his fingers kept hitting all the wrong keys. “You know, maybe you need to find another line of work,” she said, laughing. The total came to about thirty bucks and she started writing out a check. On the check, it just said in big bold letters: DIANA ROSS. She told me, “This is the first checking account I have ever had that’s not all tied up in my business with Motown.” So what does that mean? I asked her. She joked, “It means I can buy these vegetables and Berry Gordy won’t know a thing about it.” She laughed. “Imagine that,” she said, “more than twenty years in the record business and somethin’ like twenty gold records and I can finally buy my own goddamn tomatoes—and no one can tell me not to buy ’em.” She handed the guy the check and stood there waiting for him to process it. “Don’t you want my ID or somethin’?” she asked. He nervously said, “No, ma’am. I know who you are.” By that time a crowd had gathered around with their mouths wide open. She looked surprised for a second. Then she said, “Okay. Well, thank you all so much,” as if she were onstage. And off we went. “What shall we buy now?” she asked me as we left the store.

  Grappling with the past

  “I wondered what was wrong with me, my friends all fall so easily.” It was a line sung by Diana Ross in her 1976 record “I Thought It Took a Little Time (but Today I Fell in Love).” Like many of her songs, the message seemed to apply to her true life. Indeed, she did find it difficult to make friends over the years, especially with her Motown colleagues. By the beginning of 1983, she had still not been able to come to terms with much of her history with the people at Motown, including Berry

  Two years earlier, in 1981, a show had opened on Broadway that hit more than a few emotional buttons for Diana where her past was concerned. It was called Dreamgirls, the story of three talented young girls from Chicago who become a popular singing act called first the Dreamettes and then the Dreams. The man who owns the company that records their songs has an affair with the group’s lead singer, Deena Jones. After firing an overweight and argumentative member of the act, the boss makes Deena the focus of the show, thereby elevating her to stardom. The group is then rechristened Deena Jones and the Dreams, much to the dismay of the other girls. Deena, who is given preferential treatment because of her talent as well as her relationship with the boss, eventually leaves the act for a solo career. She then stars in a motion picture about the life of a legendary entertainer. It didn’t take much imagination to figure out that Dreamgirls was the story of Diana Ross and the Supremes. The late Michael Bennett (A Chorus Line), who directed the show, once admitted that he not only was a Supremes fan, he actually attended the final performance of Diana Ross and the Supremes in Las Vegas in 1970. He also danced behind them on some of their Hullabaloo performances.

  The Deena Jones character was a sixties Diana Ross clone in every visual, clichéd way: flailing arms, thick eye makeup, heavy-duty wigs and a mouthful of sparkling teeth. Sheryl Lee Ralph, who played Deena Jones, did a masterful job with the portrayal. She admitted, “I did deny it over and over again whenever anyone asked if it was true that the character I played was Diana. And it was all a big lie, because it really was Diana I was playing and trying to look like and sound like.”

  In 1982, the faux Diana finally had a chance to meet the real Diana at the Russian Tea Room, a once-fashionable restaurant next to Carnegie Hall in New York. Sheryl was at a payphone when Diana swept by. “Oh, excuse me, Miss Ross,” she said politely. “I just wanted to introduce myself. My name is Sheryl Lee—”

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bsp; “Ralph,” Diana said, cutting her off. “I know you. You’re from that show.” With that, Diana rushed by her.

  Diana decided not to see the show, saying, “I don’t want to validate it in that way.” From what she had heard, she decided that the show was a gross distortion of the facts surrounding her relationship to the Supremes and to Berry. “I don’t want people to walk away thinking it’s the truth,” she told Stephen Holden of the New York Times, “because I don’t think they know what the truth is.” Of course, Diana’s words against Dreamgirls only served to focus even more attention on it. In contrast, Mary Wilson attended many performances of the play, thoroughly enjoyed it, and often told the press she thought it was wonderful. Would anyone have expected any different from her? Of course she was going to disagree with Diana.

  “Damn it,” Diana exclaimed to writer Gerri Hershey, “this is serious for me,” she said of the story of her life, “and it hurts me if it’s turned to ice cream. There’s pain there, and there are wonderful things. Why, it’s like in my song ‘Mirror, Mirror,’ where I said, ‘You turned my life into a paperback novel.’ If only there was some way I can make sure that my children understand from my point of view what it’s all about—my relationship with Berry, especially.” In her article, Hershey wrote, “Real tears began to bead up on her mascaraed lower lashes.”