Aretha Franklin (50 page)

It was, however, to be a night full of unexpected surprises from the start. The rap artist who calls himself Dirty Ol' Bastard, leapt up on-stage while country music's Shawn Colvin was speaking, and went off in some sort of inane diatribe. Some bizarre man with the words “Soy Bomb” written on his bare chest, leapt up onto the stage, and danced next to an unfazed Bob Dylan—while he sang. Barbra Streisand backed out of doing her duet with Dion at the last minute, because of the flu, so Celine instead performed her dramatic “Titanic” hit, “My Heart Will Go On.”

But, without a doubt the most phenomenal—and the most talked about event of the whole star-studded show, was the performance Aretha gave. Half-an-hour before Pavarotti was to go on-stage, his doctor advised him not sing, because of a throat problem. Instead, the Queen of Soul volunteered to go on in his place.

According to Aretha, “There were eight minutes to go, and they ran upstairs with the boom box and a tape of the rehearsal Mr. Pavarotti had done that afternoon, so I could hear the arrangement of the orchestra. I knew the aria because earlier in the week I had performed it for him at the Waldorf. But I had crammed for it then, and when you cram, you kind of forget it. So I had to scramble to put the pieces together.”
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Furthermore it was also not even arranged in her key.

When she sang “Nessun Dorma” that night, Aretha literally sent chills up the backs of audience members. People were in awe that she had bridged the gap between pop music into classical music, and that she had done so masterfully. When she was finished, she received a full standing ovation.

In front of a television viewing audience of an estimated 25 million in the United States alone, La Franklin had shown, once and for all, her versatility and her boundless musical talent. Rock stars and bona fide classical divas alike, were on their feet applauding for her that night.

Perfectionist that she is, Aretha was unhappy that it couldn't have been even better. “The air was blowing on me one hundred miles a minute,” she later complained. “They had promised me no air on-stage. The air ended up cutting off some of my high notes. I wasn't happy with that at all.”
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USA Today
categorized it as “Commanding respect … delivering a soulful version of the classical opera aria.”
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Ebony
magazine claimed that “she stunned the audience with a virtuoso performance of ‘Nussun Dorma.'”
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This impromptu moment turned into one of the crowning achievements of her career.

On a fashion note, Aretha's weight was at a high point. Yet, that particular night she wore one of the most tasteful and classy outfits of her 1990s era. She sported a red and black and gold brocade top, which was finished in mink at the wrists, and at the high necked collar. She looked stunning.

Even Aretha herself was amazed at the compliments and commendations that were being bestowed upon her. “The reaction has just been overwhelming,” she said days later. “I've gotten the most beautiful, exotic floral arrangements. Eddie Murphy sent me several dozen pink roses. The house is lined with big, beautiful arrangements from one end to the other. I just can't stand it.”
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The timing couldn't be any more perfect for Aretha. While she was being praised for her mastery of a new arena of music with her operatic performance, she was about to release her first all-new studio album in over six years, one which would mark her entry into another genre: hip hop music. With all of the excitement swirling around Aretha, it was a brilliant time to release the first single from the album, its title cut “A Rose Is Still a Rose.”

Weeks before the album was released,
Rolling Stone
carried a glowing review of Aretha's new album, giving it four stars out of a possible four, with the headline: “Aretha Franklin Stakes Claim To The Nineties.” Wrote reviewer James Hunter, “An extraordinary piece of work,
A Rose Is Still a Rose
immediately establishes [Lauryn] Hill as one of R&B's most gifted
writer/producers. But what it does for Aretha Franklin is something trickier to bring off: It renders her legendary and contemporary all at once … Doing her least restricted and most comfortable singing since 1981's
Love All The Hurt Away
… She achieves a stunning continuity with hip-hop-sired producers … Aretha can rock the house, but what she really excels at is mood. This is what becomes a legend most.”
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Although the
A Rose Is Still a Rose
album was being billed as Aretha's entry into the hip-hop urban sound, the notion that it is entirely produced by the fresh blood of the record industry, is only partially true. The first seven cuts on the album were produced by five individuals who are responsible for some of the hottest hits of the decade: one by Lauryn Hill, one by Sean “Puffy” Combs, two by Daryl Simmons, two by Jermaine Dupri, and one by Dallas Austin. For the last four cuts on the album, two are produced by Narada Michael Walden, who has worked on nearly every Aretha album since
Who's Zoomin' Who?
One is produced by Michael J. Powell, who is most notable for his 1980s work with Anita Baker, and the last song on the album, “The Woman,” was written and produced by Aretha herself.

It is truly the title cut—which starts off the album—that sets the tone for the whole disc, and everything that happens on it. If one were to dissect the album, it would leave one longing for Hill to simply take the reins of a whole Franklin disk, because she was obviously—even at a young age—a master at communicating songs for, by, and about women. However, since Hill had simultaneously become the toast of the entire record business with her own Platinum album,
The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill
(1998), she did not have the time for such a task.

This is not to put down the album's other 10 cuts—it is merely to say that “A Rose Is Still a Rose” is such a complete “home run” of a song, that the rest of the cuts seem to take its lead and fit with it to create a single mood. In that, this is the most completely unified sounding non-gospel album of Aretha's two decade Arista career.

The song “A Rose Is Still a Rose” is a percolating hit from its very start. Snappy, loopy, and crackling with totally nineties excitement, it is hip-hop and young sounding while in its lyric content Aretha takes the stance of an older woman counseling a younger, heartbroken girl. The
song is a masterpiece of showing off thoroughly modern Aretha at her finest.

The Sean “Puffy” Combs cut, “Never Leave You Again” is an upbeat ballad of devotion featuring Aretha's scintillating scat singing. Daryl Simmons' “In Case You Forgot” is more of a classic Aretha ballad. Jermaine Dupri's “Here We Go Again” is a crackling track which Aretha digs into with her newly restored upper register singing.

The second half of the album relaxes more into a smooth groove, with the beautiful “In the Morning” setting the tone. “I'll Dip,” Dallas Austin's cut, is an infectiously slow and rhythmically sassy ballad. “Watch My Back,” which Walden produced, echoes Aretha's now classic eighties sound, with her growling and playful singing making it one of the album's prime highlights. After all of the hip hop excitement of the rest of the LP, it ends with Aretha's own composition on the album, the mellow piano driven “The Woman,” which she produced herself.

Justifiably, Aretha was quite proud of the finished outcome. She had broken into a whole new era of her long and glorious career. “I'm a very versatile vocalist,” she proudly admitted. “That's what I think a singer should be. Whatever it is. I can sing it. I'm not a rock artist, but I've done some rocking. I love the Puffy song [“Never Leave You Again”] on my album. It's very jazzy, very cool, very easy.”
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Although it was the whole album that was making noise, it was the song “A Rose Is Still a Rose” that was getting all the radio and print attention. Explaining the message of the song, Aretha stated, “I think what Lauryn was trying to say was regardless of what kind of relationship you had … you are still a flower. You are still fabulous.”
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That statement held true for Franklin herself: still fabulous after all these years.

Released in advance of the album, the title cut debuted in
Billboard
magazine at Number Eight on the R&B charts, and at Number Forty-three on the pop chart. When Arista Records president, Clive Davis telephoned Ree at home to announce the first week chart figures, she was in heaven. According to her, “I was in the kitchen when he called. What I sang at the Grammys was nothing compared to the high note I hit when he told me where my song was coming in.”
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Said Clive at the time, ‘We are not hyping anything. We're letting
the music speak for itself. Yes, she is a living legend, but she is currently showing that she is relevant to youth … It is not a question of nostalgia and appreciation for gifts from the past.”
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When the album hit the stores on March 24, the rave reviews just kept on coming. In
People
magazine, Steve Dougherty wrote of the
Rose
LP, “When word spreads that the Queen of Soul is coming out with an album of R&B tunes, Mariah, Whitney and the rest should take it as a cue to run and hide. Here comes Ree to show the youngsters how it's done—not just with flashy vocal technique but by plumbing the depths of feeling … Unfortunately, the best on this CD (the title track, written by Lauryn Hill of the Fugees) does not stand out in an unvaried landscape of sound-alike ballads. Even so, to hear Queen Aretha purr (‘Oh baby') and sass (‘and that's a fact!') is worth a dozen ear-boggling vocal flips by lesser royals.”
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Giving the album four stars out of four in
USA Today
, Steve Jones wrote, “With the first note of ‘A Rose Is Still a Rose,' Aretha Franklin serves notice that her 30-year reign as Queen of Soul isn't about to end … she shows she can still have a little fun, rocking steady with the sassy ‘Watch My Back,' … After all this time, this rose remains in full bloom.”
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When the album was released, it debuted at Number Thirty on the
Billboard
charts. Considering that
What You See Is What You Sweat
never even cracked the Top 100, and
Greatest Hits 1980–1994
only made it to Number Eighty-five, this was big news indeed. Arista started advertising “Rose” as “The fastest-selling album of her career!” That was the peak position it achieved on the album charts, but a career renaissance was truly on the way for the Queen of Soul, with the album being certified Gold for sales in excess of 500,000 copies sold. The single peaked at Number Five on the R&B charts, and at Number Twenty-six on the pop charts. The single version of “A Rose Is Still a Rose” was also certified Gold.

The song “Here We Go Again” was also released as a single, and became a Top Forty R&B hit. However, the most exciting aspect of the “Here We Go Again” CD single release was the inclusion of “Nessun Dorma” as a bonus track. The version of the song which is included on this release was taken from the MusicCares event, and was recorded and
produced by the legendary Phil Ramone.

While she was working on the song “A Rose Is Still a Rose,” Aretha became very close friends with Lauryn Hill. According to her, she even gave Hill advice. “I was ripped off here and there when I was younger,” said Franklin. “So I told Lauryn, ‘Nobody is going to tell you anything in the recording industry. So you have to investigate a lot, you have to surround yourself with good people—managers, agents and such who have your best interests in mind.' I also thought her generation should give our generation a big party—annually—because we put out so much information for them and they are capitalizing on it.”
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Aretha had learned a lot about the music business in the four decades in which she had been a recording star, and now she was happily speaking to, and appealing to a new generation.

After many years of anticipation, Aretha Franklin finally made it back onto the big screen in 1998 in
Blues Brothers 2000
. Reprising her role as guitar man Matt Murphy's vocally disapproving wife, Aretha again chewed the scenery as she snarled her way through a choreographed musical number, which makes this a worthy video / DVD rental.

The plot of this sequel to the original
Blues Brothers
film finds Elwood Blues leaving prison after nearly twenty years, and his quest to reunite what's left of the famed Blues Brothers Band. It is acknowledged several times in the dialogue of the movie how the character of Jake Elwood (John Belushi) died in prison. Through the loosely woven plot Elwood finds a worthy replacement in Mac (John Goodman). When Elwood and Mac arrive at a Mercedes Benz dealership in Chicago to retrieve the band's main guitar man, Mac, Murphy, and his sax playing buddy, Lou Marini, Aretha Franklin and her trio of girlfriends are on hand to lay down a soulful musical ultimatum.

In her one scene in the film Aretha looks fabulously chic in an orange mini skirt and matching jacket of orange and gold brocade. Draped over her left shoulder is a patterned orange silk scarf, held to her shoulder by a life-sized rhinestone-covered pin in the shape of frog.

“Can I speak to you privately?” an incensed Aretha asks her husband.
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As she reads Matt Murphy the riot act, she scolds him for not giving her due “respect” for parlaying the sale of the coffee shop (depicted in the
original film) into a successful automobile dealership.

“And, you know what I mean when I say respect don't you?” she inquires.
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Suddenly right there on the floor of the car dealership, she and her trio of girlfriends (the Ridgeway Sisters) launch into a heated rendition of Aretha's signature song, “Respect,” sung here in a retooled version billed as “R-E-S-P-E-C-T.” It is one of the main reasons to see the film. On the soundtrack album and in the film, Aretha Franklin is heard playing piano on the track. This time around, instead of singing the chorus as her trademark “R-E-S-P-E-C-T,” it has been changed to become “R-to the-S-P-E-C-T,” to give it a fresh new twist.