Aretha Franklin (35 page)

The Queen of Soul in Manhattan, July 21, 2011. Even after the downturn in her health in the past year, Aretha put on a radiant face as she appeared on several television programs to promote her 2011 album,
A Woman Falling Out of Love
. She also resumed singing in concert that summer.
(Photo: Derek Storm)

A
lthough Aretha's
Jump to It
album had done wonders to revive her career, her acknowledged comeback disc was 1985's brilliant
Who's Zoomin' Who?
It not only brought her back to the forefront of the record-buying marketplace, but it served as the vehicle that blasted her into the million-selling Platinum galaxy. Scoring an album with sales in excess of a million copies is a distinction that even her biggest-selling LPs at Atlantic Records had never attained.

In the interim, however, between 1983's
Get It Right
and the crossover brilliance of
Who's Zoomin' Who?
, Aretha was to encounter several setbacks and false starts. Lawsuits, canceled engagements, and death of her father put a temporary halt to her immediate career plans.

After the completion of
Get it Right
, Aretha sued Arista Records for breach of contract. The suit claimed that Arista had violated her agreement with them allegedly failing to credit her royalty account for the combined sales of 600,000 copies of her albums
Aretha
(1980) and
Love All the Hurt Away
. She also claimed that the record company had made charges against her recording fund account, as opposed to drawing money out of her royalty account. The suit further alleged that Arista had contracted Luther Vandross to produce their two albums together “for substantial cash advances and royalties,” without Aretha's express consent.

According to Barbara Shelley, “She asked to have the books reviewed, which is not unusual. That's done periodically. I don't know exactly why she did it. I don't know if it was to stall for a record, or because she really needed the money. She had asked for a loan or an advance, and they [Arista] turned her down. As a result, she placed this action.”

In retrospect, Clive Davis says of the incident, “I think that she had been verbally told one thing by some advisor of hers, and it never amounted to an actual lawsuit, or maybe it is just a paper filed. I don't know. She and I never talked about it. I never got involved.”

Ever since her film debut in
The Blues Brothers
in 1980, Aretha had been toying with the idea of further acting assignments. There had been talk of a
Blues Brothers II
being filmed. John Belushi had gone so far as to ask Aretha to appear in the sequel, but his untimely death by drug overdose in 1982 had ended the possibility of that. “I'd like to do at least five more roles,” she told
Women's Wear Daily
. “I'm not an actress, but I can do a good part. I think I can excel in a good part.”

In early 1984 a stage role presented itself that was too perfect to turn down. Aretha agreed to accept the title role in a Broadway show called
Sing, Mahalia, Sing
, about Mahalia Jackson, and she began to prepare to bring to life the role of Jackson, who had been an inspiration to her when she was growing up.

“She and my dad were great friends, and she would come over to the house when she was in town,” Aretha reminisced admiringly when the play was announced. “Of course, she would come to my father's church, and he would not let her get out without singing. [She was] an absolutely great lady, a devout Christian, who was warm and had a great sense of humor.”

Aretha studied Mahalia's recordings, and spent time talking to several of the gospel legend's friends to gain insight. The production schedule called for three weeks of rehearsals in New York City, beginning on May 2, 1984. Performances were booked, and a full itinerary of dates was announced. The show's run would encompass the entire summer of 1984 and include engagements at the Palace in Columbus, Ohio; the State Theater in Cleveland, Ohio; Aire Crown in Chicago, Illinois; The Masonic Temple in Detroit, Michigan; and City Center in New York City. The
dates were scheduled so that Aretha wouldn't ever be any farther than a twelve-hour drive away from Detroit, where her father remained in a coma.

Another reason all of her
Sing, Mahalia, Sing
dates had to be close enough to reach by car from Detroit was that she had suddenly developed an extreme fear of flying. Her latest and most dreaded phobia began that year on a midnight plane from Georgia. It seems that on a flight from Atlanta to Detroit late one night, the aircraft she was riding in encountered some extreme turbulence. As Aretha describes it, the plane “did one of those dipsy-doodles.” According to her, “I was on one of those little numbers where, if the man across the aisle breathed too loud, you could hear that—the plane was so tiny. I guess after twenty-two, twenty-three years of flying, I can have a bad flight—and I did!”

When the time came to begin rehearsals in New York, she reportedly got as far as the Detroit Metropolitan Airport and got cold feet. She never made it to Manhattan to start work on the play, so the project was aborted before it began. The show's producer, Aston Springer, sued Aretha for breach of contract for suddenly dropping out of the production. In February of 1989 it was determined in federal court in New York that although no contract had been breached, Springer was entitled to recover his preproduction costs. A separate trial was scheduled to determine the amount that Aretha was required to pay Springer to compensate for his losses. Whitman Knapp, the judge who ruled on the case, found that Franklin's self-professed fear of flying was no excuse for backing out of the show. According to him, “If she could not bring herself to fly, she should have traveled by way of ground transportation.”

She had no sooner abandoned
Sing, Mahalia, Sing
than her father's health suddenly took a turn for the worse. After living for several years in a coma, on July 24, 1984, Reverend C. L. Franklin died at the age of 69. Aretha was devastated by his death, even though he had been lingering between life and the hereafter for several years.

According to Erma Franklin, Aretha “spent over a half million dollars on him—$1,500 a week just for nurses. But she still can't talk about it, not even to her own family. You can't even say the word ‘death' around her. You have to say ‘passed away' or some other expression. She and my dad were very, very, very close.”

In early 1985 the State of New York sued Aretha for what it claimed were unpaid back taxes on recording sessions dating back to the 1970s. The suit claimed that, as a nonresident of the state, Aretha had received payment for recording sessions done in New York City between 1972 and 1977, for which she had failed to pay $46,000 in taxes. The suit also claimed that she owed an additional $56,000 in interest and penalties. With regard to the $102,000 suit, Aretha's lawyer, Andrew Feinman, explained that “there was and is, a law in New York State that says when a non-resident performs services here, taxes must be paid to the state.” He also claimed that the suit was completely “discriminatory” in that “they can pick and choose who they will sue. Thousands of recording artists come to New York studios to record, and they are only enforcing the law against very few.”

Things became especially sticky when Aretha announced concert dates for June 12–15, 1985, at Carnegie Hall. The tickets went on sale, and all four nights sold out almost immediately. Less than two weeks before the concert dates, Aretha canceled the engagement when she was advised that she was going to be served with papers if she set foot in New York State, and that there was going to be a lien against the money. Her brother and manager, Cecil, claimed that the cancellation was due to her fear of flying, when it may have been her fear of the New York State Income Tax Department. (In 1986 the suit was finally settled out of court.)

The two concert engagements Aretha did complete in 1985 were in Detroit and Chicago. In February she appeared at the Premier Center, in the Detroit suburb of Sterling Heights. In April she was driven by car to Chicago, where she headlined several nights at Park West. One of the Park West shows was taped for the syndicated television program,
Soundstage
. Both engagements were met with lukewarm reviews.
The Detroit News
claimed that she ignored several of her trademark songs and relied on medley versions of “See Saw,” “Ain't No Way,” and “Rock Steady.” The review's headline read, “Aretha Ignores Her Big Hits—And the Show Suffers.” A review in
The Chicago Sun-Times
likewise claimed that “Aretha hits and misses … her magic is momentary.”

The Premier Center engagement was amid one of her heavier phases. At the end of the show, when Aretha removed her breakaway skirt to finish
the show in a creation resembling a skintight one-piece bathing suit, the audience was startled.
The Detroit News
reviewer complained, “Regrettably, Miss Franklin didn't help matters with her choice of costuming … I don't know who her couturiers are, but somebody should have a long talk with them.”

Being overweight was only one of her problems. Another one was plain and simple: Aretha needed a hit record! She had to have a song that would not only recapture the interest of her old fans, but would also give her career a fresh new focus. Fortunately, that magical album was in the works while all of these mishaps were taking place. Aretha had begun recording her next album in October 1984, and it was to make all the difference in the world.

Owing to her fear of flying, and her lawsuit with New York State,
Who's Zoomin' Who?
set a precedent: if anyone wanted to work with Aretha Franklin, they had to come to Detroit, because she wasn't leaving town. Although the instrumental tracks on most of the cuts on Aretha's 1985 and 1986 albums were done in New York and California, all of Franklin's vocals were recorded at United Sound in Detroit.

Prior to her fiftieth consecutive album release, Aretha had taken over a year off from the recording studio. In addition to contemplating the
Sing, Mahalia, Sing
project, she had spent her time taking French lessons and investing in real estate. She not only purchased a large home in the chic suburb of Bloomfield Hills, but she also bought a new luxury apartment in downtown Detroit, in one of the expensive residential complexes along the Detroit River.

“I hadn't had a vacation, really, in about eight or nine years,” she explained, “just constantly working—being off some days, and just kind of laying around, taking it easy. But that is not an actual and real vacation, where you pick your spot, and you want to go someplace exotic, and you and your friend … you know, that sort of thing. So last year it gave me the opportunity to kind of get into some things, and some other interests that I have. Like the money market I got into, and I've been studying real estate as well. I'm interested in real estate for resale profit, that kind of thing, and investments and things. It gave me the opportunity and the time to investigate and do things that I would
not otherwise have had the time to do. So, being off last year could have been a blessing in disguise.”

She had also been listening to the latest hits on the radio, and she had been formulating some ideas about what she would like to do on her next album. “I've been listening to the radio,” Aretha said at the time, “and I like some of the music I heard—songs by Van Halen, John Waite, Luther Vandross. I said to myself, ‘Hey, let me get out here and do something serious!' Till now, a lot of my music's been adult-oriented. I wanted something kids could really get into. Besides, I like to bop too!”

Before he became a record producer, Narada Michael Walden was the drummer with John McLaughlin's Mahavishnu Orchestra. In the late 1970s he had been recording his own albums, as well as producing and writing. He came to the attention of Clive Davis at Arista Records, and two of the first people he produced records for were Phyllis Hyman and Angela Bofill. However, his greatest triumphs were to come from producing two of Arista Records' other ladies, Aretha Franklin and Whitney Houston.