Aretha Franklin (36 page)

“Clive Davis knew that I really wanted to do this project with Aretha,” Walden said of his involvement with
Who's Zoomin' Who?
“When he told me I could take a stab at it, I was thrilled, especially since I had the chance to do more than just two songs.”

Walden began sending demos of suggested songs to Clive Davis. Davis, in turn, would submit them to Aretha. “She was delighted with what she heard,” Walden recalls. “I sent her roughs on ‘Push,' ‘Freeway,' and ‘Zoomin'.' It was funny because ‘Freeway of Love' was originally going to be on one of my albums—but
without
the line about wearing your pants tight! I revamped the lyrics for Aretha. I'm glad it worked out this way. That record would have been a bigger hit for her than for me.”

After Aretha approved of several of Walden's tunes, they began a long-distance dialogue. “I really came up with a lot of the ideas lyrically from talking with Aretha on the phone,” he reveals. “I'd ask her about what she'd do at home, how did she spend her time. She told me that one of the things she liked to do on occasion was go to a club and maybe she'd be checking out some guy who'd be checking her out, too—that's where I got a lot of the ideas for the song ‘Who's Zoomin' Who.' I discovered that Aretha has this great sense of humor, something I had no idea about
before we began working together. In fact, I was real surprised when we first met; I didn't expect her to be so young and so vibrant! I mean, she's been making records for such a long time that I was surprised to find her so open, so into what's happening
today
.”

According to Walden, the album was in the planning stages when Aretha's lawsuit with Arista got in the way. “They had to renegotiate, and she refused to sing until it was cleared up. So there was a layoff. It was like going back to old friends in a way, the music being an old friend.” Aretha and Arista ironed out their problems, and she returned to the recording studio.

Professionally, Narada and Aretha hit it off in the studio immediately. “He knows his music very well,” she said. “He knows what he's going to do when he gets there, and yet it's not a straight-ahead work kind of thing. It's very relaxed. We kid around a lot, we talk about a lot of different things between takes. And then, after one of those good takes, I get the best ribs in town!” First it was fried chicken with Luther; now she was on to barbecued spareribs with Narada!

“She sounds real comfortable,” Walden explained, prior to the album's release. “I think it worked out well to go to Detroit where she's at home. Everywhere she goes, she has a security guard. She pulls up in her limousine and gets out with a fur coat on. She takes her fur coat off, and she's got jeans and a sweatshirt on underneath. Hip class, you know what I mean? She'd come in and do a rough take of a song just to get an idea how she wanted to sing it, and about three or four takes later, we'd have it. And each time she got better and better. The good thing about her is that she knows when it's a record and when it's not. She'll sing it down once or twice, and me, I'm excited. She says, ‘No, now I'm ready to go for it.' And, sure enough, just when you think you've heard it all, here it comes—boom! Because her style of singing is not just flat-out singing, she plays with it. She can be very gritty and then also very ladylike at the same time. She has a way of singing and talking, singing to you and talking to you. She's very subtle.

“She has great ideas about herself and what she wants to say. Like on ‘Jump to It' she goes, ‘Kitty, give me the 4-1-1: who drop-kicked who this week?' And that's the way she talks, man. On ‘Freeway of Love,' on
the new album, she has this little rap that goes, ‘With the wind and your fingers in my hair, makes me feel like we're going for an extended throw-down. So drop the top, baby, and let's cruise into It's-Better-Than-Ever Street!' She's a real slickster. It's the Queen. It's the Queen's lingo in the high court.”

Walden claims that “She would call Luther Vandross just to say, ‘Baby, Narada's throwin' down!'” Indeed, the songs that came out of their sessions together nearly melted the vinyl they were pressed on.

“She brings to the studio incredible wisdom, incredible savvy, incredible humor. She's like a black Mae West!” says Narada, who was especially impressed with her musical intuition. “She's like a walking cloud. She looks down and sees things how she wants to see them, and says it how she wants to say it. It's not like it's all church to me. In the voice you feel a lot of gospel roots, it's true. But her expression of the church is very streetwise.”

According to him, she always knows what is best for her, and what shows off her voice the best. “If I would want her to do one line over in a verse, I had to have a real good excuse to make her want to sing it again. She'd say, ‘Just the way I like it.' And I would say, ‘That's great, but there's one line that could have been a little better or had a little more expression … or something.' Nope. That's it, buddy. I would have to tell her the tape machine blew up and get it again.”

Likewise, recording engineer Dave Frazer found Aretha totally professional. “She knew, when she came in, what she wanted to do. She knew the song, she knew the licks, she knew everything ahead of time, which is somewhat unusual to a certain extent. She came in like she had already sung the song over and over, which I guess she did. She doesn't give you the impression she would do that, but she comes in and knows it.”

“Narada was fabulous to work with,” says Aretha. “I'm an Aries, he's an Aries-Taurus—on the cusp. Ditto with Luther—Aries-Taurus. Aries and Aries don't do so well sometimes. Because we are so professional, we overcome the Aries stigma. So Narada was really fabulous to work with. When I think about his experience in the business, and my experience, and the fact that he is so professional and so am I—it is no surprise that things came out the way they did! I am delighted with it.”

Ultimately, six of the songs on
Who's Zoomin' Who?
were produced by Narada Michael Walden, one song was produced by Dave Stewart of the group Eurythmics, and two of the cuts were produced by Aretha alone. She had dabbled in co-producing songs before, but this time around she dove right in and took control of two of the sessions.

The album's title cut was a collaborative effort. Aretha had heard the phrase “Who's zoomin' who?” from a couple of acquaintances, and she discussed it with Walden. He and a writing partner took Aretha's concept of making the phrase into a song, and it is credited to Walden, Preston Glass, and Aretha.

Aretha explained of the song's origin, “‘Who's Zoomin' Who' came from a group of gentlemen out of New York who called themselves the New Breeders. They were a very productive, creative group who made things like dashikis, earrings, shoes, material items for sale. They used to use the term ‘This guy really zoomed me,' or ‘This chick really zoomed me.' And I really loved the cliché. Then there was some relationship I was involved in at the time with this gentleman. I think he rather thought he was zooming me, but I didn't think so. In fact, I knew that he wasn't. So it was a question of ‘who's zoomin' who?'”

The song “Another Night” was written by Beppe Cantorelli and Roy Freeland. Clive Davis originally found it for Aretha. “Clive Davis called me about that song,” remembers Franklin, “and he said, ‘I've got a great song, you've got to hear it. I'm gonna Federal Express it to you!' And I got it the next day, and I quite agreed: this is a smashing song! And I called him back and I told him, ‘We've got one! This is a great song, I love it.'”

The song “Ain't Nobody Ever Loved You” was another song that Narada Michael Walden and Preston Glass came up with. “The calypso song,” says Aretha, “I loved, because I love the atmosphere it creates when one is listening. It puts you right in the islands. Anyone who's been to the islands, to Nassau, to Martinique, to Jamaica, and so on, just for those three or four minutes, I think I puts you right back in the islands, and it reminds you of the good times and trade winds, and things like that.”

That song gave Aretha another chance to do some of her famous adlibbing—however, this time she put her foreign language lessons to work by ad-libbing in French. “I loved doing the bit of French that I did,” she
says, “I like French very much. I went on vacation to Martinique and Martinique is a French island, and
‘Oui, je parle Français!'
[‘Yes, I speak French!']”

The music for the six songs that Narada produced for this album were recorded in the San Francisco Bay area, so Aretha wasn't in the studio with any of the musicians. She simply laid down her vocal tracks in Detroit with Walden and his recording engineer, Dave Frazer. In fact, she didn't even know that some of the musicians who played on the tracks were included on her album until it was released. With regard to the medium-paced song “Until You Say You Love Me,” Aretha commented, “I noticed on the liner notes that Randy Jackson of the J-5 [Jackson Five] played on that song, and also [disco star] Sylvester, whom I like very much. It's a great song, I like the sound. It rather reminded me of the period in the sixties—early Motown.”

The really revolutionary thing about
Who's Zoomin' Who?
was the fact that it not only recaptured the exciting, soulful side of Aretha, but also brought out the rock & roll side of her as well. The song “Freeway of Love” featured Clarence Clemons of Bruce Springsteen's band; “Sisters Are Doin' It For Themselves” was a collaboration with Eurythmics, and “Push” was a duet with Peter Wolf of the J. Giles Band.

Originally, the concept was to have David Bowie sing “Push” with Aretha, but when scheduling conflicts occurred, Peter Wolf was brought in, and Carlos Santana played the guitar solo on the cut. “There again, Narada Walden wrote ‘Push,'” Aretha explained. “The gentleman that you hear doing the duet vocal is Peter Wolf. Peter Wolf used to record for Atlantic during the years that I was there. Of course, at that time we had not met. We had the pleasure of meeting to do ‘Push.' He was a very nice man—quiet, rather unassuming, I would say. I thought it turned out really hot!”

According to Wolf, recording in the Detroit studio was exciting, especially since they had both recorded for Atlantic in the early 1970s. “Every one of her takes is a unique performance, it's on such a high level!”

The hottest song on the album was without a doubt the duet between Aretha and Annie Lennox of the duo Eurythmics. Annie's partner, writer /
producer / guitarist Dave Stewart, produced the track, which is a real rock scorcher, bristling with energy. “‘Sisters Are Doin' It for Themselves,'” Aretha says, “there again Clive called me and told me, ‘I've got a great song!' Annie had sent it over to Clive at the record company, and he sent it out to me. My schedule was pretty tight, and I kept saying, ‘I don't think I can do that. I just came out of the studio.' I had been in there, prior to his calling, I guess for a month. And he said, ‘You've just gotta … you just gotta. We have to cut this!' I went back to the studio and Annie and Dave were there. Great group of people, they came in from New York. She likes baked potatoes, so we called one of my favorite places, which is Wendy's. And we got baked potatoes for Annie and a slab of ribs for me and Dave—great guy. I found them to be very professional and technical in the studio, and very relaxed and fun. We had a good time!”

When Aretha was preparing to go to the recording studio, she decided that since she was about to make music with the duo of rock & roll heavyweights, she had better dress in a rock outfit. However, when she got to the studio, she found that Annie Lennox had second-guessed what the Queen of Soul would be wearing, “I think we had a role-reversal there,” Aretha laughs. “Because I showed up wearing the ‘punk' look, and the Levi's jacket and the rhinestones—that look. And she showed up very chic, with a black pantsuit, and spectator shoes. I thought it was kind of cute.”

After the session, Annie Lennox raved, “Watching her sing with such effortless power, I realized why the Queen of Soul still holds the crown!” (The song was also included on the Eurythmics' 1985 album
Be Yourself Tonight
.)

The song “Sisters Are Doin' It for Themselves” is very much a feminist anthem. “Well, I think it rather reflects what is happening today in the ERA and the women's-lib movement,” Aretha says. “They're coming out of the kitchen. All women are not geared to domesticity, I guess you might say. Some woman are more business- and career-oriented than being domestic, and being at home, and in the kitchen. I rather feel, if a woman feels like she can handle the job, then why not equal pay? And of course today we're seeing women in jobs, and in areas that we have not seen them in, like firefighters. I have seen them in the streets doing construction and
directing traffic and just doing things that they haven't been doing. I think if a woman has enough heart to get out there and deal with that, then she should get equal pay.”

Another exciting career progression came on this album, with the two cuts Aretha produced for herself: “Integrity” and “Sweet Bitter Love.” Several of the musicians on those two songs were from the sessions she had done with Luther Vandross—namely keyboard player Nat Adderly, Jr., drummer Yogi Horton, and arranger Paul Riser.

“Well, it's about those male-female relationships,” said Aretha of the song “Integrity.” “I wrote that and I produced it, and my group did the background vocals on that particular song: Brenda, Margaret, and Sandra. It's kind of like those sweet beginnings and all of that sort of thing—when you meet somebody that you really dig, and they get you on the hook, and then they switch up and they have another program. As much as I have to say about it, I guess, is, everybody was not meant to be with each other, and if it's meant to work it's gonna work. And if it doesn't work, at least use a little integrity.” Although she did not confirm or deny it, the song sounds suspiciously as though it is about her relationship with Glynn Turman. When I asked her if they were still on speaking terms, she replied, “Glynn and I are still good friends.”