Aretha Franklin (45 page)

She's been in the record business for over thirty years. She has had a career that other vocalists can only dream of matching. She is to contemporary pop and soul music what Ella Fitzgerald is to jazz singing. Aretha's vast wealth of creative achievements is staggering. As she prepares to enter the 1990s with her fame at an all-time high, is Aretha Franklin really happy with her accomplishments? Does she continue to work as an innovator in the record business because she loves her career so much, or is she obsessed with burying herself in work?

Since an in-person interview with her comes with a full list of taboo topics, to this day she is a woman of mystery. One isn't allowed to inquire about her mother or her father, unless it relates to the church or her singing career. Her relationship with them remains a puzzle, with pieces missing from it. Underneath the surface, is she still wrestling with childhood demons that continue to pursue her?

While she has amassed an incredible body of recorded music, and guaranteed herself the title of “living legend,” is she fulfilled? On the one hand, she
is
the super-secure Queen of Soul, confident of her laurels and her stature in the music industry. Yet there are still several never-discussed emotional wounds that time doesn't seem to heal. As an adult, to what degree is Aretha still haunted by the pain of her unsolved childhood disappointments?

Half the time she is the soulful superwoman who commands “R-E-S-P-E-C-T,” demanding that you take a ride with her on “The Freeway of Love.” The other half of the time she still seems to be the timid twelve-year-old girl standing on a chair in front of her father's congregation, hoping for acceptance.

Aretha proceeds through life as though a dark cloud of tragedy still hangs overhead like an ever-present sword of Damocles. Her excessive chain-smoking, her tendency to overeat fattening food, and her avoidance of leaving Detroit are obvious devices that she used to insulate herself from
her own insecurities. Whenever reality or potential confrontations come too close to her doorstep, Aretha tends to shield herself from the world. She hasn't done a concert tour in years, and when she does set dates, they are often canceled at the last minute. She has developed a reputation of questionable reliability. Instead of embarking on challenging new projects that are within her grasp, such as musical plays and movies, she remains content to surround herself with familiar low-stress endeavors.

Her fear of flying, her terror of being trapped in a burning building, and her refusal to leave Detroit for years at a time, have given her the public image of an eccentric. Is she the prisoner of her own celebrity status, or has the prospect of career expansion simply lost its appeal for her?

The biggest question is: What does the future hold for Aretha? While her singing career continues to present new challenges for her, and keeps her on the list of contemporary hit-makers, will she ever resume her movie career? She showed off such brilliant comic flair in
The Blues Brothers
that it would be a shame if that appearance alone represented her acting endeavors. She has the talent and the stature in show business to produce her own film properties. She spends her time designing a line of clothing when she should be orchestrating a movie version of
The Bessie Smith Story
, to be filmed entirely in the Detroit area.

She seems to shy away from contact with her audience—on screen and in person. She acts as if she were afraid to reveal too much of herself. She prefers the “safe distance” that her recording career affords her. She has only to record her albums, do a quick video shooting, and let her record company do the rest. There are few singing stars who could get away with such a small degree of personal exposure and still retain their popularity. However, Aretha Franklin is a star of such magnitude that she can pull off self-imposed suburban confinement.

On the personal side, why hasn't Aretha married her longtime fiancé, Willie Wilkerson? Is she afraid that wedding bells signal some sort of a jinx with the men in her life? During the summer of 1988, Aretha threw another of her famous fêtes—a costume party at her Detroit home. She dressed as Queen Nefertiti, and Willie masqueraded as a convict in a striped “jailbird” uniform. In reality, Aretha is the queen of all of her domain, and Willie is clearly the prisoner of his affections. It seems that
Lady Soul is happy with things the way they are, and she doesn't want to upset the apple cart.

Having already brought such an incredible amount of creative fire to the contemporary music scene—from the revolutionary sixties to the high-tech eighties, perhaps Aretha feels that her music alone speaks for itself. Her career accomplishments, her expressive singing voice and her devotion to the church have all made her one of the most beloved celebrities of the Twentieth Century. In person, she really is the unpretentious, homey, down-to-earth woman that one imagines her to be. One hopes her own achievements have brought her as much happiness as they have given millions of people around the world.

Is she still the “mysterious lady of sorrow,” or has she found an inner strength that brings her fulfillment? Does she still carry around the insecurities that seemed to paralyze her in the early sixties, or has she resolved the regrets and losses that have delivered sadness to her doorstep? Sequestered in her Detroit home, only Aretha herself can provide the answers to these questions.

Fortunately for everyone, her recordings and videos continue to keep her career alive and vital. And if she continues to produce music of the caliber of her 1980s output—what's to complain about? Within that realm, there are still plenty of vistas for her to explore. This is not where Aretha's story ends; it continues to grow and expand with each new album. Aretha is a unique, one-of-a-kind original, and as she enters the 1990s, she still continues to find new songs to sing.

Ever since she ascended the throne in the 1960s and was crowned the Queen of Soul, there has never existed the possibility that she would consider relinquishing her scepter. She has had her absences from the Top Ten record charts, but it is clear—even if she never makes another recording—that she is still a singer of unquestioned star status. If she chooses to become the Greta Garbo of R&B music, it will not effect the impact that she has had in the entertainment business. One cannot talk about soul music without mentioning Aretha Franklin. Perhaps she will make good her promise and never consider retirement.

She has
already
amassed a list of career accomplishments to rival those of Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, and Dinah Washington. She has clearly
transcended the mere labels of hit maker, popular singer, and soul star. She is truly a legend in the music business, and the best news of all is that there is still much more music on the horizon for her.

With the hit records, the Grammy Awards, the soulful glitz of her concert act, and the visual excitement of her video performances—is Aretha Franklin's life an exciting dream come true? Or has it been a painful nightmare? In reality, it has been an unpredictable combination of both. In her career she has attained Olympian heights, yet her personal life has hit emotional shattering depths. Together they make up the bittersweet life of the incomparable Aretha Franklin, the one and only Queen of Soul.

F
or Aretha Franklin, the decade of the 1990s represented a uniquely creative era, highlighted by critically acclaimed solo albums, several high profile concert appearances, three lifetime achievement awards, as well as starring in three high profile television specials, and another film role. She recorded a duet with Frank Sinatra, was featured on a movie soundtrack album which sold over six million copies, and produced an entire LP of hip-hop nineties music. As if this was not enough, she also stretched her repertoire in ground-breaking new directions by performing classical opera pieces that left audiences breathless with awe. Time and time again she was acknowledged as a true music industry “diva” whose talent seems to defy all categorization.

One of the most exciting aspects of Aretha's nineties music is the fact that she has never recorded a wider variety of material, nor has she worked with a wider range of different musical producers. She tackled and excelled at everything within her ever expanding musical scope. The spectrum she covered included dance music (“Deeper Love”), Broadway (“I Dreamed a Dream”), rock & roll (“Everyday People”), gospel (“I'll Fly Away”), contemporary ballads (“It Hurts Like Hell”), holiday tunes (“O Christmas Tree”), swinging jazz (“What Now My Love”), soul (“Mary Goes Round”), hip hop (“A Rose Is Still a Rose”), and finally Italian opera (“Nussen Dorma”).

Amid the final decade of the Twentieth Century she worked with several of the producers from her past eras, including Arif Mardin (1960s), Carole Bayer Sager (1970s), as well as Narada Michael Walden and Luther Vandross (1980s). In this same era she recorded with over a dozen new producers. Each of them has helped to bring out unique and different shadings of her incredibly expressive voice. They included Lauryn Hill, Michel Legrand, C&C Music Factory, Phil Ramone, Kenny “Babyface” Edmonds, Burt Bacharach, and Paul Shaffer. In this way, she has maintained her classic sound and made inroads into fresh new musical territory.

On the other side of the coin, this same ten year period was also one dotted with mishap, controversy, and the loss of several of her close friends. She has encountered financial disputes with the Internal Revenue Service, and has been sued by department stores, limousine services, and several others for the non-payment of bills she has racked up. In addition, her long-awaited autobiography—which was published in 1999—was a gigantically disappointing mess. Unforthcoming, vague, and rambling, it was as big a sales disaster as it was a critical “bomb.”

Although she finally quit smoking cigarettes in the 1990s, she watched her weight balloon to an all-time high, and on occasion she has even had to step in and rescue her children from scrapes with the law. While she is the undisputed “Queen” of a genre of music that the mere mention of her name immediately defines, she is also equally as happy to play the role of “domestic goddess” in her comfortable suburban Detroit home.

In addition to all of her musical accomplishments, Aretha has remained in the forefront of the public's eye throughout the nineties, and into the new millennium. Gossip columns, the tabloid papers, and respected magazines and newspapers—like
Time
and
The New York Times—
all avidly report her comings and goings. Whether or not she has a record on the charts or not is immaterial at this point. Her celebrity status has become so enormous that she makes news no matter what she does creatively. Readers avidly follow her legal disputes, her ongoing love affair with food, her fluctuating weight, and her now-legendary forays into bad fashion choices. Aretha now falls in the same category as Madonna and Elizabeth Taylor, where an upcoming appearance is always preceded
by the thought, “What on Earth is she going to wear this time?” And, in La Franklin's case, the results have been more often unflattering than not. While she is worshiped for her talent and her stature in the music business, she is no idle “idol” sitting on a pedestal. Fashion criticisms aside, she is a living, breathing public figure; a contemporary woman who is very much alive and active. Inargueably, she is a true character and an original creation all her own.

For Aretha, the decade of the 1980s had ended on a sad note. In 1988 and 1989 alone, her brother Cecil, sister Carolyn, and her grandmother died. Then, on April 26, 1990, New York US District Judge Whitman Knapp ordered her to pay the sum of $209,364.07 with interest, for having walked out on the Broadway-bound play
Sing, Mahalia, Sing
.

As with most creative people, Aretha chose to throw herself into her career, instead of dwelling on negative things. August 9 and 10 of 1990, she performed to packed houses at Manhattan's famed Radio City Music Hall. On December 5 of that year she was saluted by the National Association of Recording Arts & Sciences (NARAS), with a “Living Legend” Grammy award from her peers.

Always lending a hand in her hometown of Detroit, on March 23, 1991, Aretha sang at the funeral of soldier Anthony Riggs, who had only been back home from the Gulf War for several days, when he was murdered. At first, the authorities had felt that Riggs' death was due to some random violent act. However, the whole affair became a local scandal when it was discovered that he had, in fact, been killed by his wife and brother-in-law for their own financial benefit. Aretha's supportive performance took place at the Little Rock Baptist Church in Detroit.

In the summer of 1991 Aretha swung into the decade as she released her ninth Arista album,
What You See Is What You Sweat
. It is a varied offering from seven different producers or production teams, notably including Narada Michael Walden, Burt Bacharach & Carole Bayer Sager, Luther Vandross, Michel Legrand, David “Pic” Conley & David Townsend, Elliot Wolff & Oliver Leiber, and Franklin herself.