Diana Ross: A Biography

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  Throughout the evening, Diana was at her best, singing full versions of songs she hadn’t performed in decades, such as “I Hear a Symphony,” “My World Is Empty Without You,” and “Love Child.” Her two Supremes—Lynda and Scherrie—were fetching and capable. Diana was adamant that the songs actually sound like the original recordings. At Motown in the 1960s, the arrangements of the performance versions of the hits didn’t even resemble the originals, so Diana’s vision was refreshing to anyone who still cared about the music. Standing ovations from a packed house of 9,000 followed almost every number during the two-hour show. When I turned around to see the crowd behind me, I couldn’t help but notice a giant teleprompter suspended above the sound booth with all of the song lyrics in a huge scrawl for easy reading from the stage … which seemed odd. Moreover, all of Diana’s stage patter was up there, too: “Thank you so much for coming. What a wonderful audience. I love you all.” That was even stranger but, apparently, not unique, as Barbra Streisand, on her recent tour, also had every lyric and line of dialogue on teleprompters. However, the audience was so enraptured by their star—Miss Ross—nothing else mattered. Diana was visibly relieved by the strong turnout and response. “I knew you would come out,” she told the crowd, her smile dazzling. “Some said you wouldn’t come. But I knew you would.”

  Recrimination

  Diana Ross was holding on to a secret during the Return to Love tour, something of which no one involved with the show was aware; she was simply not the type of woman to bare her soul to the people with whom she worked. However, what was going on in her life during the tour made this time in her life, no doubt, even more difficult for her: Arne’s girlfriend was pregnant. The baby was due in August. It’s not known specifically how Diana felt about this turn of events because she never discussed it, either publicly or with any of her friends. “It was something we all knew was happening, but didn’t feel free to talk to her about,” said one associate of hers. “I know that she turned to her daughters at this time. I also know this had to be hard on her, just another contributing factor to what was one of the most difficult periods of her life. I’ve often wondered if she might have dealt with the Mary Wilson situation differently if she hadn’t already been so upset.”

  Diana was dealing with other problems at this time that the public was unaware of and that might have helped explain things. For instance, she was still going through menopause and, as she confided to some friends, it remained a very difficult experience for her. She never gave specifics, but she was not really well for the entire tour—emotionally as well as physically. Part of her intention in taking on this new workload had been in order to focus on something in her life that wasn’t filled with sorrow. How ironic, then, that she ended up in the middle of, arguably, the most distressing situation of her entire career—and it just seemed to keep getting worse. She even found melancholy where she didn’t expect it. After one show, for instance, she heard Scherrie and Lynda laughing merrily in their dressing room about something. She popped her head into the room. “My Gosh, do you girls always get along like this?” she asked. Lynda responded, “Sure, of course we do! We’re great friends!” Diana seemed sad for a moment. “The girls and I never got along like this when we were together,” she said, obviously speaking of Mary, Florence and Cindy.

  Once the show got on the road, a new battle began for Diana Ross. No longer was she in a fight with Mary Wilson; rather, she was up against her promoters, SFX and TNA, who had become a problem in her life. The reviews in Philadelphia had all been raves with the Philadelphia Inquirer calling the show “a smashing success.” However, the promoters were not happy with the ticket sales for the rest of the twenty-eight dates. Definitely, some of the cities had weak advances, but part of the problem may have been the outrageous top ticket price of $250. It’s what they had intended to charge for a seat in a true Supremes reunion. For this show with this grouping, the ticket price should have been cut by half, or more. Tina Turner was on the road at the same time charging $85 for her top ticket. Still, the promoters felt that the show had the potential to at least break even if they could scale back its spectacular sets and lighting effects as well as some of the costs of a thirty-piece orchestra, ten-piece band and ten dancers. Diana was against it. Over dinner one night with the RTL (Return to Love) company, she asked how many people were now employed by the tour. She was told that it was ninety. “I just think it’s wonderful that we can give that many people jobs,” she said, “and I swear I’m not going to let anyone take those jobs away.”

  After a couple of weeks, Diana wasn’t so sure she would be able to keep her promise to the company. In Toronto on 4 July, after the group’s sound check, she called a meeting. Almost all ninety of the employees, including the two Supremes, sat around her Indian-style on the stage of the Air Canada Center.

  “They can probably hear me backstage,” Diana said, referring to the promoters. “But I don’t even care anymore. I just want you to know that I am trying to keep this show going for all of us. I don’t know how long I can hold on, though,” she added. She was on the verge of tears.

  “What’s the problem?” one of the two Supremes asked. “What can we do?”

  “I wish there was something someone could do, but there’s not,” Diana said sadly. “They want me to cut many of you from the tour,” she said, referring to the crew, “and I won’t do it. They want me to cut things down by half. But you all have worked too hard. I just won’t do it.”

  There was a round of applause along with the hope that she would be able to keep the show on the road. Diana also indicated, but privately, that she felt she was being pressured by the same promoters to sign an exclusive deal with them. She had heard that Clear Channel, the huge media conglomerate, was in negotiations to purchase TNA and SFX, and that she was being touted as one of TNA’s assets. In other words, a signed exclusivity deal with her would make the sale more attractive. She was having trouble confirming that such a deal was being orchestrated but she definitely sensed that she was being strong-armed to sign with TNA and SFX, and she didn’t want to do it. The pressure of backstage politics, along with the tumult of her personal life and issues with her health had become more than she could take. Backstage, at one stop before the group went on, she was having a conversation with the two Supremes when, without warning, she just burst into tears. “I can’t take it anymore,” she said, crying. “It’s all just too much for me.”

  On 6 July, the RTL tour made its way to Madison Square Garden in New York. To this writer’s eyes, the house looked completely sold out. The show was as strong as it had been in Philadelphia; Diana now even gave Scherrie and Lynda each a solo number. Every time the group walked out in new, stunning costumes, the photographers down front went to work, angling their best shots and snapping away. As Diana posed, preened and pouted, she never looked better, younger, more relaxed or self-confident. Again, there were many standing ovations, the audience uncritical and adoring.

  The next day, the show was supposed to play Jones Beach in Wantagh, New York. It wasn’t to be, though. That morning, the company waited in the bus for more than an hour before being told to go back to the hotel. There, they were informed that TNA and SFX had decided to cancel the remainder of the tour. Diana couldn’t believe it; they had only performed eleven of the twenty-eight dates. She offered to forfeit her payment for some of the dates in order to keep the show going, but was turned down. That night, she hosted an impromptu barbecue at her home in Connecticut for the entire crew, including, of course, the two Supremes, to apologize for the cancellation. When everyone showed up, she was wearing a handwritten sign around her neck: “I’m So Sorry.”

  “There’s such a backlash against her and she’s terribly hurt,” Scherrie Payne told Susan Whitall of the Detroit News. “All that she’s accomplished in life and in history as a black woman from Detroit, she just doesn’t deserve this. She feels as if her integrity has been attacked and the name of the Supremes has been tarnished. She d
oesn’t need this at this time in her life.”

  Scherrie makes a good point. Say what you will about her, Diana’s voice really is the sound of a generation, maybe two generations, of music. It was also practically emblematic of the Motown Sound. The songs she sang are classic records—and not just one or two or even a few of them but, rather, dozens of them. Arguably, she’s not got the respect, historically, that she deserves, and the Return to Love tour might have afforded her an opportunity to remind the public of her significance. But she’s as much to blame as Mary, if one looks at it objectively. After all, who is the more powerful person in terms of influence in the marketplace and in her ability to make things happen? Diana, obviously. If she really wanted Mary on this tour, would anything have been able to stop her? Has anything ever stopped her from doing something that she really wanted to do in her career—with the exception of her ill-fated Josephine Baker movie? Could she not have called Mary to discuss the matter? There’s little doubt that if Mary had felt that she’d received respect and acknowledgment from Diana she would have done the tour, and probably for the first offer of $2 million. Diana probably could have saved herself the other $2 million she offered just by taking Mary out to a nice lunch for a hundred bucks. For Diana’s legacy to not have been fully acknowledged by such a high-profile tour simply because she didn’t want to sit down with her former singing partner and discuss things seems like such a shame.

  The day after that barbecue, the present author flew back to Los Angeles with Scherrie and Lynda. Both were deeply disappointed, especially since the Madison Square Garden concert had been sold out and it appeared as if positive word of mouth was finally having a good effect. That night at the Garden, after the group had finished its finale, “I Will Survive,” they took long deep swooping bows to a standing ovation. Smiling broadly, Diana tilted her head back and extended her arms out to her devoted fans. A sea of confetti and streamers rained over the cheering throng as she joined hands with Scherrie and Lynda. The three then raised their arms in triumph, the applause washing over them in waves. In that moment it truly did appear that Diana would survive the public humiliation and emotional upheaval of this beleaguered tour. After all, for years she had been bouncing back after disappointments. Nothing had ever been able to overcome her, dampen her spirit or cause her to doubt herself to the point of not being able to take the next step in her life and career. “It’s not how many times you get knocked down, but how many times you get back up,” her former manager Shelly Berger had said of her. “And Diana Ross always, always, always gets back up.”

  This time, however, Diana’s enduring spirit would finally meet its match. She had been attempting to escape the unhappiness of her personal life by focusing on her career, hoping this tour would wrench her from the grasp of deep sadness. And it had failed. Likely, in her mind, she had just played the one card she had kept up her sleeve for years. She had believed that the public would rally around the memory of what she had meant to them so very long ago, despite any controversy over who would and would not be sharing her stage. However, it now seemed that the public and Arne were in agreement: both were feeling less than enthralled with the superstar—and that lack of interest had to cut Diana Ross like a knife.

  Promises made and broken

  It was May 2002. Looking self-assured in a long, slender, leopard-print sheath, Diana Ross strolled gracefully into a New York hotel room, ready for work. At fifty-eight, she still cut a striking presence, her complexion flawless, her star smile intact. Her brown eyes, always her most spectacular feature, were still large and expressive, but now seemed tremendously sad. Straight black hair framed a familiar face that now seemed, somehow, different. She looked heavier, maybe bloated. It was difficult to pinpoint, but something definitely was not right about the way she appeared on this day.

  Diana, along with daughters—Rhonda, thirty, Tracee, twenty-nine and Chudney, twenty-seven—and sons Ross, fourteen, and Evan, thirteen, were to be interviewed by Barbara Walters for a program celebrating show-business mothers.

  During the interview Diana’s children paid tribute to her mothering skills, speaking of how much they loved and appreciated her. However, their words seemed to wash right over Diana. A weary look had settled onto her face as soon as the proceedings began. She sighed deeply on several occasions. As the interview continued and the compliments from her children flowed, she dissolved into tears several times. Something was definitely not right with her. The show was a celebration of the upcoming Mother’s Day holiday, and in her mother’s honor Rhonda sang an a capella number to her which she had written called “You’re My Song.” It was an incredibly poignant moment. “Someone should have told you, you’re God’s child,” Rhonda sang, looking deep into her mother’s sad eyes, as if accessing the insecurity buried not very deeply. “Someone should have told you, you’re my song.” Even Barbara Walters cried.

  Two weeks later, on 21 May 2002, Diana entered Promises, a rehabilitation center in Malibu, for treatment for what was reported to be an addiction to alcohol and maybe even prescription drugs. Much of the entertainment community—not to mention her fan base—was stunned by the admission. After all, she was a woman long thought of as strong and self-reliant. Years earlier, in June 1976 after Florence Ballard died, Diana was quoted by Lynn Van Matre of the Chicago Tribune Magazine as having said, “Florence was always on a totally negative trip. She wanted to be a victim. Maybe I should have slapped her face a few times, tried to knock some sense into her. She was one of those people you wanted to grab and shake and yell, ‘Get your [expletive] life together.’”

  That statement from Diana is really the only thing she’s ever said about Florence publicly that seemed to come from the heart, even if it did seem a little harsh. Certainly, back in the 1970s, she was living a different experience and was sometimes not tolerant of other people’s problems. Back then, she was the kind of woman who believed that, if a person worked hard enough, he or she could overcome any difficulties in life. Therefore, she would sometimes become impatient when confronted with a person like Florence, someone who couldn’t face her demons and didn’t know what to do about them. Some in Florence’s family were still hurt by Diana’s lack of sensitivity in this regard, especially those who believed that Diana probably had problems of her own and wasn’t as strong as she’d portrayed herself as having been over the years.

  The notions of addiction and weakness in character hit even closer to home for Diana in the 1990s with Chico’s and T-Boy’s personal problems. Both experiences gave her the insight that it’s not always just as simple as making up one’s mind to be successful in life. Sometimes, obstacles aren’t so easy to overcome. However, that said, her specific situation was very different from Florence’s, Chico’s and certainly T-Boy’s, but the same in one important way: her life was spinning out of control and she probably didn’t know what to do about it.

  Unlike her brothers, Diana Ross never did street drugs. She may have had the greatest temptation to do so just by virtue of her line of work as an entertainer during the 1960s and 1970s, but she was too career-driven and determined to allow herself to fall victim to an obvious trap. She also had children, and by the 1980s was too devoted to them to be anything less than always available.

  Apparently, though, drinking was another story. Yes, she liked a little cognac in her coffee right before walking onto a stage. She did enjoy her Pouilly Fuissé wine after the show when she was greeting guests in her dressing room. And she would definitely have a few snifters of brandy when recording. She was, like perhaps most adults, a “social drinker.” If she was drinking too much, she must have been pretty discreet about it because no person who has ever been interviewed about her has ever actually seen her inebriated. Her going into Promises was a surprise to many people.

  Compounding matters for Diana, she really did not bounce back after the failed Supremes tour almost two years earlier. There had been an occasional concert—she performed at a tribute concert for President Bi
ll Clinton and Hillary Clinton a month after the tour ended—but there was nothing else very major. No tours—one was planned but then cancelled. No records. She was getting older, her career wasn’t what it had once been. Her children were terribly concerned about her and one of them reportedly suggested that she enter the treatment center in Malibu known for its success and, moreover, its discretion.

  If she was going to enter Promises, it would only be after a tough sell. Diana had always been careful about her public image, but at this particular time she was feeling especially vulnerable. She is said to have resisted as long as she could, but she found it heartbreaking to see her children so concerned for her. She had always wanted them to be happy. It’s not hard to believe that her decision to enter Promises was based, in large part, on her love for her children and her interest in saving them from continued worry.

  While this author is aware of many of the specifics of Ross’s visit to Promises, the core of the program itself is built upon a foundation of confidentiality. Therefore, I will not go into great detail about the revelations made while she was there. Suffice it to say that she was emotionally distant with other guests when she first arrived, and in the thirty days she was there became what another patient lovingly called a “mother hen” to the other patients.

  While she had begun to clean up her act at Promises, at least chemically, it seemed that Diana had made her program about others. In the third week of June, while still at the facility, she and a few new friends went shopping in Malibu during a so-called day outing. She was dressed in a simple white blouse with flowered pajama-like pants, white sneakers and with a blue sweater wrapped around her waist. Reading glasses dangled from a chain around her neck and she wore large aviator-like sunglasses in her hair.