When the English novelist Somerset Maugham published a new collection of short stories in 1940, the London Times labeled it “the mixture as before,” criticizing it as the same-old-same-old. A few years later, Maugham, a master of irony, released his next collection, called The Mixture As Before, and thanked the Times critic for the title.
Aretha’s attitude was similar to Maugham’s. When I mentioned to her that some critics and fans viewed her late eighties/early nineties Arista records as commercial packages with a certain redundancy, she spoke of her interest in staying current. She was not ready to be put out to pasture and join the oldies circuit. I asked whether at some point the marketplace ceases to be the main concern. She answered that it’s never the main concern. She insisted that her motivation was always to find the best songs and that, in her mind, the best songs were usually hits.
Looking for a hit, Aretha returned to the studio in 1989 and, with the help of Arif Mardin and Narada Michael Walden, put together another something-for-everyone album. This time the hodgepodge would include no fewer than three duets.
“Clive Davis had this notion that when an older singer’s sales start to sag,” said Ruth Bowen, “the best way to market that singer is to do duets with other singers who bring a different audience to the party. So pairing Whitney with Aretha made sense because Whitney was red hot. Putting her with Elton John made sense because Elton was pure pop and could help her with crossover. Same idea applied to getting Kenny G to play on the album. Kenny G might have started in R-and-B, but he wound up with a huge white market. James Brown was another thing altogether. That was just a matter of bringing two legends together. However you looked at it, it was all about profiting from different combinations.”
The major labels enjoyed enormous earnings in the eighties. The introduction of compact discs, with their huge profit margins, was the most lucrative innovation since the long-playing album. Reissues became a windfall. Because millions of consumers were eager to repurchase their old LPs and cassette tapes in CD form, the record companies could eliminate the costs of original productions. Meanwhile, a string of blockbuster new albums—by everyone from Bruce Springsteen to AC/DC to Prince to Michael Jackson to Bon Jovi to Whitney Houston to Guns N’ Roses to Phil Collins to Madonna—fattened the coffers. In retrospect, the eighties were the last decade in which the music business prospered from the sales of factory-manufactured products bought in brick-and-mortar retail stores.
“Given these crazy profits,” said Jerry Wexler, “you’d think that someone would say, ‘Okay, now we got the money to go and do something for the ages. Now we can get Aretha out of the pop-confection business and back to doing what she does best—playing piano and singing live in the studio with a great rhythm section.’”
“There was no disagreement between Aretha and Clive about what the direction should be,” said Ruth Bowen. “They wanted hits. And why not? It’s all about hits.”
Unfortunately, neither the silly duet with Whitney Houston (“It Isn’t, It Wasn’t, It Ain’t Never Gonna Be”) nor the bland duet with James Brown (“Gimme Your Love”) had significant sales. The album’s title track, “Through the Storm,” Aretha’s perfunctory duet with Elton John, did make it into the pop top twenty, but that was hardly a landmark for either artist. None of the artists on the album sounded committed or even terribly interested in singing the songs.
Her duet with Whitney Houston was fraught with problems.
“There was all sorts of drama between Whitney and Ree,” said Ruth, “until it nearly fell apart. Aretha kept calling it a mismatch. She said that Whitney lacked her wisdom and maturity as a recording artist, but I just think Aretha was nervous about being outsung by someone from the next generation. It hardly mattered because the song was forgettable. The year after it was out, even the most devoted fans of Aretha and Whitney had forgotten that shit had ever happened.”
“What happened was this,” said Narada. “Whitney flew to Detroit, all excited about singing with her Auntie Ree. But when Auntie Ree walked in the studio, she didn’t enter as Auntie Ree. She entered as Queen Aretha, the original diva. At the time, Whitney was the biggest music star in the world and didn’t realize that Aretha felt that she had something to prove. Aretha came with her game face. Whitney was acting like a furry puppy dog. Aretha was like a boxer staring down her opponent. Of course, the song was about two women competing for the same man, so Aretha was clearly in character. I was as sweet as pie to her. If I hadn’t been, she would have squashed me like a bug. She also appreciated that I wanted to produce this Diane Warren song—‘It Isn’t, It Wasn’t, It Ain’t Never Gonna Be’—in a Teddy Riley, New Jack Swing mode, the new R-and-B style that was sweeping through the neighborhood. Aretha dug the groove and hit it hard. But she also stayed extremely aloof and gave Whitney little love. In fact, Aretha was so tough that she herself thought she might have overdone it. A couple of days after, she called me to ask whether I thought she should call Whitney to apologize. I thought it was a good idea. I never asked Aretha whether she actually made that call—it was none of my business—but I do know that the climate between the two women was frosty for quite some time.
“The James Brown and Elton John duets were entirely different stories. James came to my studio in Northern California expecting to find Aretha there. ‘The Queen don’t fly,’ I told him. ‘Wouldn’t it be something for the King and Queen to be singing in the same studio?’ he asked. ‘We’d be so good together that after the session we’d have to get married.’ Elton would have also preferred to do his vocal in the same room as Aretha. But he kindly agreed to record to the Aretha vocal track I had prerecorded in Detroit. Elton did his part in LA.”
In the midst of ongoing power struggles and difficult professional relationships, one of Aretha’s closest personal relationships ended with the passing of Cecil Franklin, the brother she adored. On December 26, 1989, Cecil died from lung cancer. He was forty-nine.
“I was the one who called to tell Aretha to hurry to the hospital,” said Ruth Bowen. “I’d been talking to Earline, who told me that he was only hours away from dying. I knew Aretha would want to tell him good-bye. When she didn’t arrive in time, it broke her heart. His death was one of the most difficult things Aretha has had to endure. She calls him her greatest fan and greatest friend—and she wasn’t wrong. My relationship with Aretha has always been strong but confrontational. But Cecil’s relationship was smooth. He stood between her and the world of business. If for a period of time she was able to stay on a steady course, it was because of Cecil. Without him, her world would change. There wasn’t anyone—me included—who she could trust the way she trusted her brother. In fact, she would never really hire another manager—just different agents, like me and Dick Alen, to book her gigs. If she was largely unmanageable even when Cecil was alive, she became hopelessly unmanageable after he was gone. With Cecil by her side, you had a chance to get her to do what was reasonable and right. But without Cecil, and by managing herself, she became completely impossible.”
“This period when we lost Carolyn, Big Mama, and Cecil in the span of two years was crushing,” said Erma. “For a long time afterward, Aretha walked around in a fog.”
Nearly a decade later, Aretha still had a difficult time discussing these deaths. As we worked on From These Roots together, she struggled to voice her feelings about the passing of her siblings and grandmother. For long periods, she could do little more than wipe the tears from her eyes. I offered sympathy, and together we sat in silence. Finally came the day when she began to speak of the ordeals. In her mind, though, she had reversed the chronology; she had Big Mama dying after Cecil when, in fact, Rachel Franklin had died in late 1988, a year before her grandson. When I gently pointed this out, Aretha grew furious. She informed me that in the matter of the deaths of her loved ones, she hardly needed correction. I checked again with Erma and Earline, my original sources for the information. I also obtained the death certificate. The facts confirmed what I had told Aretha, yet Aretha remained adamant. In her published book, she has Cecil dying before her grandmother, mistakenly stating that Big Mama passed in 1990.
“Aretha is a woman who suffers mightily,” said Erma, “but doesn’t like to show it. I’m not sure why. I can’t express to you the pain she experienced after we lost Cecil. It really was incalculable. But rather than mourn, she tends to turn the hurt to anger. I can understand that. We lost our mother, we lost our dad, we lost our sister Carolyn, we lost our grandmother, and now we lost our beloved brother. It’s too much loss. It’s so hard to grieve. When we turn that grief on ourselves, it’s too much to bear. We can try to pray it away or sing it away. Praying and singing helps. And I’m sure praying and singing are part of Aretha’s way of coping with all these deaths. Unfortunately, though, so is rage. It may be uncomfortable or even unbearable for others, but Aretha’s emotional survival has a lot to do with plain old anger. If she’s feeling afraid or lost or terribly sad, there’s a good chance she’ll take it out on you.”
“I made it a point to call Aretha,” said Luther Vandross, “because I knew how close she was to Cecil and I wanted to express my sympathy. I remember telling her how concerned I was about her. She took offense. She thought that I was implying that she might have a nervous breakdown or fall apart. I wasn’t saying that at all. I was merely voicing my concern. She got on her high horse and went off on a tirade, saying that the world saw her as weak and fragile and she wasn’t weak or fragile at all. God knows that I agreed with that. Aretha’s strong as steel. When I tried to explain that I only wanted to know if she needed anything, there was no consoling her. She grew angry at me when all I was trying to do was comfort her. It was a bizarre call. It made me understand that Aretha just doesn’t want to seem vulnerable. Maybe she really is afraid of falling apart, so if anyone even remotely approaches the subject, she blows up. It was a long time before I called her again.”
“I actually think Aretha enjoyed her feuds with Luther,” said Ruth Bowen. “It gave a spark to her life that was becoming increasingly boring. After all, she was out there in the suburbs with not that much to do. She did little traveling and was becoming increasingly withdrawn. If she could get into a verbal catfight with a big star like Luther, why not? I think she saw that as fun. If you haven’t had a falling-out with Aretha, you haven’t lived. Falling-outs are her specialty.”