After the show, when Nippy was still upset, I just held her and told her, “Baby, you’re going to be all right. Those people don’t know no better. If they knew better, they’d do better.”
The heckling hurt her, but in public she handled it pretty well, mostly ignoring it except for making a couple of statements. When one writer for Essence magazine asked her about the perception that she wasn’t black enough, her response was perfect. “What’s black?” she shot back. “I’ve been trying to figure this out since I’ve been in the business. I don’t know how to sing black—and I don’t know how to sing white, either. I know how to sing. Music is not a color to me. It’s an art.”
CHAPTER 10
Welcome Home Heroes
The 1989 Soul Train Awards show was significant for Nippy for more than just the booing. That was also the evening she met Bobby Brown.
I didn’t know much about Bobby before that night, although I had seen him perform. I knew he had a bad-boy reputation, but the first time I met him, he was absolutely respectful to me. And in the beginning, when I saw him and Nippy together, their relationship just seemed like one of those schoolboy, I’ll-carry-your-books-home kind of things. They seemed smitten, like high school sweethearts.
Over the years, Nippy’s name had been connected with a few different guys, and though she never really shared details with me, I always assumed that nothing was too serious, because she rarely talked about marriage or anything like that. Eddie Murphy, Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Randall Cunningham, and the handsome actor Blair Underwood all went out with her at one time or another. I’m not sure which of them were more than friends—Eddie says now that’s all he and Nippy were, though a lot of people don’t believe him. But I think it’s the truth.
Nippy and Eddie seemed to have a real connection. For one thing, Nippy was funny—she had grown up in a house where everybody was joking and laughing all the time, and she could cut up with the best of them. There were times when Nippy would have you laughing so hard you were crying, and I think Eddie appreciated that. One night, I saw them sitting together at a record listening party, surrounded by photographers. As the flashbulbs popped all around them, they just sat there laughing and talking to each other like they didn’t even notice. And I do know that Eddie once gave Nippy a gorgeous ring, though it wasn’t an engagement ring.
Now, Randall Cunningham—I believe he did want to marry her. He just loved Nippy to death. They had a few dates right around the time her debut album was released, and they saw each other a few more times after that. I liked Randall, and I don’t know what ever happened with them. Maybe she was so tied up with her music and he was so busy playing football that they just didn’t have time for a relationship. There really wasn’t anyone who just swept Nippy up—until Bobby came along.
One of the first things I realized about Bobby was how different he and Nippy were. I didn’t think he was a bad guy, but it was clear that he and Nippy had very different personalities, and his family life didn’t seem much like ours, either. And even back then, he couldn’t seem to stay out of trouble.
I’ll be honest—I tried to tell Nippy from the beginning that I didn’t think Bobby was good for her. We didn’t have a big confrontation about it, but I brought it up a few times, and I could tell that she didn’t appreciate hearing about my disapproval. She wanted to be with him, so I decided to let it go. After all, my sisters tried to tell me not to get together with John Houston, too—and you see how much I listened to that. Well, Nippy was the same way. She loved who she loved, and when she made up her mind that Bobby was the one for her, nobody could tell her any different.
Throughout most of 1990, Nippy was working on her third album, I’m Your Baby Tonight. Clive Davis had always been the one to choose the songs for her records, but this time around she wanted to have more of a say herself.
Nippy would be the first person to defend Clive and his choice of songs on those first two albums. She loved all the songs and didn’t feel like there was anything wrong with them. But at the same time, she had been hurt by those young black people booing and calling her “Whitey,” and by the black critics who accused her of turning her back on black audiences. Clive agreed with the slight change in direction, so, for I’m Your Baby Tonight, he and Nippy brought in Luther Vandross and the team of Babyface and L. A. Reid as producers, aiming for a more urban feel to the songs—a little R&B mixed in with the pop. When it came out, I’m Your Baby Tonight didn’t sell as well as the first two albums, but it did quiet some of Nippy’s critics, anyway. And of course, a Whitney Houston album that “didn’t sell as well” was still huge by anybody else’s standard, becoming the number-one R&B record of 1991 and selling eight million copies.
Two months after I’m Your Baby Tonight was released, in January 1991, Nippy was scheduled to perform “The Star-Spangled Banner” at the Super Bowl. This was a big honor, and she was excited to do it, but the week before the game, the organizers asked her to make a “safety tape,” which is an advance recording of the song. This was standard practice, an insurance in case Nippy lost her voice or something else happened with the broadcast. They also needed the tape because there was going to be a fighter jet flyover during the song and they needed to time the flyover to her hitting a particular spot in the song. But after she recorded the song and the people at the NFL heard it, they were not happy.
“Oh no,” they told us, “this is too jazzy. She needs to do it straighter.” Nippy hadn’t done the typical white-bread rendering that most performers did, and those conservative NFL folks just weren’t ready for that.
That was when John stepped up and told them, “No, this is the way Whitney is going to sing the song. If you want her to sing it, this is it.” He wouldn’t back down, and the NFL people finally agreed to let her sing the song her way.
The day of the Super Bowl, I had hoped to be in the stadium, but I couldn’t make it to Tampa, as I had shattered my ankle and it wasn’t healing well. I had broken it in such a silly way—Luther Vandross had sent flowers to me at home, and as I was carrying them to my apartment I caught my heel between the elevator and the floor and went down hard. It was just one little accidental moment, but it would lead to surgery and pins and screws and years of pain.
And right then, it meant I couldn’t go see Nippy perform live at the Super Bowl. I had promised her I would be there, but I’d had to call and tell her it just wasn’t possible. “Don’t worry,” I told her. “You know what to do. And I’ll be watching you.”
I sat on my sofa at home and watched, and though I knew as well as anyone what Nippy could do, even I was amazed at that performance. In all the days of my life, I was never so proud as when I saw my baby up there, singing the national anthem with such power that the whole world could’ve probably heard it. The producers had wanted her to lip-synch it, but Nippy was like me—she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t keep time with a song unless she was really singing it, and at the Super Bowl, you could tell looking at her that she was singing the whole time. When she hit that final note, and then the jets flew overhead, I can’t imagine there was a dry eye in that stadium.
Afterward, Nippy called me and said, “Mommy, how was it? How did I do?”
I said, “Are you kidding me? You were fantastic, baby. If you never do anything else in your life, you did that like it was supposed to be done.”
I wasn’t the only one who felt that way. I heard later that after she sang, so many calls came into her office that the lines froze up. People flooded Arista with phone calls and messages, asking for a copy of the recording, so Arista and BMG decided to release it as a single. And to everyone’s surprise, it went right to the Top 20 on the charts. This was during the first Gulf War, so patriotic feeling was running high, and Nippy and her foundation, the Whitney Houston Foundation for Children, Arista, and BMG donated all their share of the proceeds—more than $1 million—to the American Red Cross Gulf Crisis Fund.
Nippy wanted to do her part to support the American troops fighting in Desert Storm, so she began talking about going to the Middle East to make an appearance there. She had her management team contact military authorities to discuss the logistics and scheduling; she was planning to launch a world tour in support of I’m Your Baby Tonight in London, so she’d have to do it before then.
The military officer on the call said, “Can we get off this phone? I want to call you back on a secure line.”
When he called back, he told Nippy’s management, “If I were you, I wouldn’t let her do it.” Asked why, he replied, “Because of the war. Whitney Houston is an American treasure, and the risk of having her kidnapped or killed while abroad is just too high.” Her manager tried to argue that Nippy always had security with her, but the officer interrupted to say, “You don’t have security like the president has. And even with the Secret Service protecting him, if someone wants to kill the president and is ready to die doing it, he can. So believe me, Ms. Houston does not have enough security to protect her if someone wants to get to her.”
At that point, Nippy’s team had to scramble and make some decisions. They consulted with more authorities in Washington, and again they were told, “Don’t let her go.” Someone went to Washington and talked with the authorities about the touring, and again, they were told, “She shouldn’t go. You can’t protect her.” That’s when they decided to postpone the European leg of her I’m Your Baby Tonight tour altogether.
A lot of folks who were involved in scheduling Nippy’s tour were disappointed, but I wasn’t. I felt a lot better when I heard she wasn’t going on either the tour or any visit to the Gulf just yet.
Ever since John had become CEO of Nippy Inc., he seemed like a new man. He looked better, seemed healthier, and carried himself with more assurance. In many ways, his role as CEO seemed to be the answer he’d been looking for after his heart attack, giving him the sense of purpose that had been missing for him. He had put together a great management team for Nippy, and he was happy wheeling and dealing with industry big shots. The dreams he’d had since way back when he was pushing to manage the Drinkard Singers were finally coming true.
Nippy Inc. had opened an office in Fort Lee, New Jersey, and John was there a lot of the time, so we didn’t see each other all that much. And I was busy, too, working with Nippy’s foundation, directing the New Hope choir, and doing my gigs in New York. I also was still doing background singing, on records such as Bette Midler’s Some People’s Lives and Luther Vandross’s The Power of Love. We didn’t see each other as often as we used to, but I hadn’t noticed any kind of change in the casual intimacy John and I had shared since we separated.
Sometime in the winter of 1991, though, John started keeping his distance from me. I had a strange feeling that something was going on. And one day in February, when I was in the hospital because of complications with my ankle, I found out that I was right.
John had filed for divorce.
I was floored—surprised, and sad, and angry. We had shared so many wonderful years as a couple, and as a family—I just couldn’t believe John would throw all that away. I knew he’d been seeing someone, but I honestly never thought he would actually divorce me. I just couldn’t imagine it.
I knew that our children had long harbored hope that he and I would get back together. And I had let myself believe that it was not only possible, but even probable. Most people still didn’t even realize we were separated—when we went on tour with Nippy, John and I shared a hotel room together, and we still spent some weekends together. For a while, at least, it had felt like we were dating again. I knew John better than anyone on this earth, and no one knew me better than he did.
But ultimately, I guess I didn’t know him as well as I’d thought. I had always believed we had an unspoken understanding that, even if we lived apart, we would remain husband and wife—we would still always be the Houston family. When I received those divorce papers, though, that was the end of that. Laid up in the hospital, shocked at this new turn of events, I felt sad and angry. And of course, when I looked back, I finally realized that the new air of confidence John was exuding wasn’t just about his work. It was at least partly about the fact that he had gotten involved with a woman much younger than he was.
Gary, Michael, and Nippy were just as shocked as I was. But the boys wouldn’t take my side, and although it hurt, I couldn’t really blame them. After all, the whole time they were growing up, John was always there for them. While I was out working and touring, trying to bring home enough money to pay the bills, he was at home being Mr. Mom. John was the one who took care of their scrapes and problems, and I was the disciplinarian who was so often away. It was no wonder they couldn’t bring themselves to put blame on him.
Now, Nippy was another story. She was angry. Bae later told me she was there when Nippy found out the news, and that Nippy called John right then and told him, “If you divorce my mother, you divorce me.”
Nippy must have been upset to say that, because she adored her father, and while I was comforted to know my daughter was taking up for me, I also knew that John was doing a good job as CEO of Nippy’s company and that she needed him. Nippy clearly knew that, too, because John stayed in his position. Ultimately, Nippy didn’t pick sides between us—she was torn and didn’t know what to do, but then again none of us did. Frustrated as I was, deep down I didn’t really want Nippy to stay mad at her father. No matter how angry or disappointed I was, it didn’t make any sense to drive a wedge between John and my children, though I admit that sometimes I would have liked to.
Still, I was so hurt. John and I were friends who had shared some wonderful and difficult times. Our arrangement following our separation might have been unspoken, but it had gone on for so long that I felt I had every right to be upset. In my anger, I decided I wouldn’t make it easy for him to divorce me. I responded to his divorce papers with a lawyer, and over the next year, I did everything I could to slow the process down. John wasn’t going to get away without a fight.
Now that Nippy wasn’t going to the Middle East with the president, she wanted to find another way to support the fighting forces there. For a while, HBO had been begging Nippy to do a special, but she had always said no, since there wasn’t any real reason to stage another concert in addition to the ones she did on her tours. That’s when John had the idea for Nippy to do an HBO television special for the troops.
The result was the Welcome Home Heroes concert, which was scheduled for March 31, 1991—Easter Sunday. By the end of that February, a cease-fire had been declared in the Gulf War, so the concert was planned as a tribute for troops returning from the Middle East, with Nippy doing a live performance in a huge hangar at the naval air station in Norfolk, Virginia. It would also be Nippy’s first solo televised concert.
That morning, there was a sunrise service on the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, a giant aircraft carrier docked at the base. I was invited to sing at the service, but there was only one problem. I was still in a wheelchair because of my ankle, and that big old ship didn’t have any kind of elevator on it. I don’t like the water, and I had never been that close to a navy ship before, so I didn’t realize just how high up a carrier deck was.
“How am I supposed to get up there?” I asked. “Don’t worry,” a handsome young marine told me. “We’ll take care of you.”
And they did, too. Four young men just picked up my wheelchair and carried me up more flights of stairs than you can imagine. The stairs were on the outside of the carrier, and I was so scared—we just kept going higher and higher, all I could do was try not to look down. But they didn’t even break a sweat, and when we finally got to the top, they just put me down so gently, like it was nothing. I don’t remember what I sang at that service, but I can tell you that whatever it was, it was a song of thanksgiving for me that day.
That evening, I went to the concert in the h
angar, and everybody there had to go through metal detectors and security. It was a long day for me—performing at the break of day, getting carried up and down the side of that ship in my wheelchair, and then going through all that tight security just to get into the hangar. But it was worth it; crippled and all, I got to see my baby sing. As I was wheeled in, I looked around at the hangar and all those military people, and I said, “All this, just for my baby girl.” My little girl from Newark, New Jersey.
Of course, Nippy was sensational, at her absolute best onstage that night. Wearing a blue flight suit with her name on it that the aviators had given to her, she opened with “The Star-Spangled Banner”—and everybody in that hangar just about went crazy. Only Marines and sailors who had served in the Gulf were invited to the show, and a bunch of them were trying to give her the hats from their dress uniforms. Nippy sang about a dozen songs, ending with a gorgeous rendition of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” while John and I sat side by side, the proud parents watching our incredible daughter. In the years after, she often said that the Welcome Home Heroes show and visiting the troops were among the greatest experiences of her career.
The concert was televised live and broadcast by satellite to our troops who were still in the Middle East. Nippy had also performed a show the night before, as a safety for the live broadcast. But as it turned out, the safety wasn’t necessary. The live event was overpowering, and HBO even unscrambled their signal so more people could see the show. And just as she had done with her proceeds from the national anthem single, Nippy donated the proceeds from the video sales of the HBO special to the Red Cross.
Remembering Whitney: My Story of Love, Loss, and the Night the Music Stopped Page 12
