Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin (20 page)

Wexler didn’t see it that way. “She’s not at the top of her game,” he said about her
Live in Paris
album, the set taken from her show at the Olympia Theater. “She and the band aren’t on the same page. They’re out of tune, they miss their cues, and they’re struggling to find the right groove. Naturally she was excited to be performing in Europe for the first time, and naturally it had to be thrilling for her to see the international scope of her success, but when the music’s not right Aretha’s not right. Like Ray Charles, she hears every note being played by every band member. And when a note is wrong—and, believe me, there were scores of bad notes—for Aretha, it’s like squeaky chalk on a blackboard. It hurts. When she came home, she was hurting. Here you had the premier singer of our time touring the Continent with a ragtag band suitable for backing up a third-rate blues singer in some bucket of blood in Loserville, Louisiana. It was outrageous.”

Aretha didn’t see it that way. Out-of-tune band or not, she had taken London, Frankfurt, Stockholm, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, and Paris by storm.

When she returned home at the end of May, her latest release, “Think,” was flying up the charts. Her most recent album,
Lady Soul,
was hailed as her best yet.

She found time to accompany her father to the first Southern Christian Leadership Conference convention since the death of Dr. King, where she sang in honor of the great man’s passing.

That spring she also sat down with jazz critic Leonard Feather for the blindfold test, in which
Down Beat
magazine played records that the interviewee tried to identify. Aretha was able to name Sam and Dave, Peggy Lee, Nancy Wilson, and Esther Phillips. But she didn’t recognize Marlena Shaw and, amazingly, confused Barbra Streisand with Diahann Carroll.

Her next press appearance was the biggest of her career.

“When we learned that
Time
magazine was putting Ree on the cover,” said Cecil, “we all saw it as the greatest honor yet. Presidents were on the cover of
Time
. Prime ministers. Nobel Prize winners. Aretha remembered that Barbra Streisand had been on the cover of
Time
—the same Barbra who had started at Columbia around the same time as Ree. So, as far as public relations go, this was going to be the brightest jewel in her crown. Then, of course, it turned out to be a tremendous embarrassment that took her years to get over. On second thought, I’m not sure she ever got over it.”

The story that came out on June 28 contained comments that Aretha claimed were either inaccurate or taken out of context. For example, according to
Time,
she said, “I might be just 26, but I’m an old woman in disguise—26 goin’ on 65.”

Aretha was appalled by the treatment of her father, which she considered disrespectful. The article talked about how “his Cadillac, diamond stickpins and $60 alligator shoes testify to an eminently successful pastorate.” It also mentioned his failure to file federal tax returns. The fifty-one-year-old minister was described as a “strapping, stentorious charmer who has never let his spiritual calling inhibit his fun-loving ways.”

She was further infuriated by the implication that her mother had abandoned her and her siblings and by the description of Ted White as “a street corner wheeler-dealer” who had “roughed her up in public at Atlanta’s Regency Hyatt House.”

But it was the overall picture of herself that she found most
disturbing.
Time
characterized her as a woman who “sleeps till afternoon, then mopes in front of the television set, chain-smoking Kools and snacking compulsively.”

Cecil is quoted: “For the last few years Aretha is simply not Aretha. You see flashes of her, and then she’s back in her shell.”

Before
Time
ran the story, Aretha was eager for any coverage she could get. The more stories, the more sales. But suddenly she saw that in-depth profiles could be far more revealing—and unflattering—than she had ever imagined. She had been used to puff pieces in
Billboard, Down Beat, Ebony
, and
Jet
. She had assumed
Time
would offer her nothing but praise. Why else put her on the cover?

“The shock was severe,” said Ruth Bowen. “It was definitely a turning point for Aretha. She’d never trust the press again. It took her a long time to agree to any more interviews. It became another one of her many fears—this fear of having secrets revealed. She and I argued about that. I said everyone has problems. Most women go through troubled relationships. Millions of women struggle with alcohol. There’s no shame in that game—it’s merely life. But Aretha, bless her heart, doesn’t want to be seen like most women. She has an image she wants to maintain. And when
Time
blew that image, she went crazy. She even talked about suing them. ‘For what?’ I asked. ‘It wasn’t libel or slander. It was just a profile of how the reporter viewed you. Mainly, it was a valentine about your genius as an artist. Besides, a lawsuit will get even more people to read an article that you hate.’ I convinced her, but I couldn’t convince Ted. He did sue
Time,
though the suit never got anywhere. The irony, of course, was that Ted was furious to be described as a wife beater, while those of us with firsthand knowledge knew that to be the undisputed truth.”

“Ree was pretty inconsolable over that
Time
piece,” said Erma. “She was convinced it would ruin her career. In truth, though, nothing could ruin her career—not with her turning out hit after hit. The cover story came in the spring around the same time ‘Think’ was tearing up the charts. That summer she was offered all
sorts of TV shows. She appeared on Johnny Carson, proof that the
Time
profile didn’t hurt her at all. The opposite was true—it increased the public’s appetite to hear her records and see her in person. Her fees went up, but her pride was hurt and she wouldn’t stop talking about the lies that
Time
had spread. She wanted the world to believe that she had a happy marriage.”

Ed Ochs’s
Billboard
article from July 13 proves Erma’s point. She told the reporter that, in addition to re-signing with Atlantic, she had also re-signed with her husband for personal management, adding, “We haven’t had any real trouble so far.”

After Carson, she played the new Madison Square Garden on Eighth Avenue to an audience of some twenty-one thousand fans. Wexler was there.

“I’d just come back from a music-industry convention in Miami, where I was to accept an award on Aretha’s behalf,” Wexler remembered. “In Florida, what I thought would be a pleasure turned into a nightmare. Gangster elements had taken over the industry’s black-power movement. During the banquet, King Curtis came up to me and said, ‘We’re getting you outta here. You’ve been marked.’ King escorted me out to safety. Later I was hung in effigy. Phil Walden, Otis’s white manager, received death threats. Marshall Sehorn, a white promo man, was pistol-whipped. It was some scary shit.

“When I got back to the relative safety of New York City, I could not have been more grateful to King Curtis. I swore that I would convince Aretha to hire him as her musical director for live dates—not only because he had proved such an invaluable ally of mine but because he was the best man for the job. King was the consummate musician—a lean and mean tenor man who could go both ways in terms of jazz and R-and-B. The obstacle was Ted White, who had his own man. I did an end run around Ted and cornered Aretha. ‘King Curtis is the right call,’ I said. ‘You know it as well as I do. King can groove you up in a way that no one else can.’

“Although she never acknowledged the fact that I had been
right about the third-rate unit she had been touring with, she finally agreed to turn the baton over to King. As a result, her live gigs, starting with the Madison Square Garden show, were starting to sound as sharp as the recordings. The switch also indicated to me that Ted was losing influence. In terms of their marriage, the handwriting had been on the wall for a long time. I just knew she was close to giving him his walking papers.”

“Aretha was not one to discuss her intimate relationships,” said Erma, “not even with her sisters—or especially not with her sisters, since we had fought over men. But after the
Time
article, she began calling me more and desiring my company. I had signed a new deal with Brunswick Records. Aretha certainly helped me. It wasn’t only her own success that convinced another label to take a chance on me, it was her own involvement. She was the one who suggested the Carole King/Gerry Goffin song ‘You Don’t Have the Right to Cry.’ She figured if she could hit with their ‘Natural Woman,’ I might hit with their ‘Cry.’ She even helped me place and voice the background parts. Of course I was disappointed when I didn’t get major airplay, but I was so glad to have my sister back in my camp. The more she moved away from Ted, the closer she moved to the family. We all knew that she was under great pressure. It was evident because she started gaining weight. Aretha is an emotional eater. When she’s not happy, she overdoes food. She was also drinking more than ever.”

In its August 22 issue,
Jet
reported that friends were worried about Aretha’s weight problem. “At a recent public concert in the Windy City, some were startled to see how much she had gained since her last time around.”

A separate story in the same issue reported a disaster at Denver’s Red Rock Amphitheater. When a few local opening acts were finally through performing, Aretha took the stage, and, according to the spokesman for the Denver police, “suggested the people get their money back because a contract between her and the producer had not been fulfilled and she would not perform.” The fans’ reaction was riotous—property was destroyed and three people arrested.

“That was the summer from hell,” said Ruth. “I was booking her gigs with Ted’s approval, but then Ted was no longer on the scene, and Aretha tried to manage herself. That proved to be a catastrophe. She’s not good with details. Why should she be? She’s an artist, and artists are not good at logistics. But she has a trust problem, and at some point there was no one around her she could trust. She’d call in Cecil, but Cecil wasn’t properly informed of the plans that had been made long before he arrived. In short, it was a mess. She fired me several times that summer, claiming—falsely—that certain promoters had agreed to pay her certain fees. The truth, though, was that she had inflated those fees in her mind. On more than one occasion she flat-out refused to sing.”

When she sang in the studio, though, the results continued to be positive. At the end of August, she had two hits climbing the charts, both recorded back in April. In a nursery rhyme turned soulful lament, “The House That Jack Built” reads like a metaphor for Aretha’s crumbling marriage. The house that Ted built is collapsing. The second song, even more powerful and equally improbable, is a cover of the Burt Bacharach/Hal David “I Say a Little Prayer,” a huge pop hit that had reached number four the previous December.

“I advised Aretha not to record it,” said Wexler. “I opposed it for two reasons. First, to cover a song only twelve weeks after the original reached the top of the charts was not smart business. You revisit such a hit eight months to a year later. That’s standard practice. But more than that, Bacharach’s melody, though lovely, was peculiarly suited to a lithe instrument like Dionne Warwick’s—a light voice without the dark corners or emotional depths that define Aretha. Also, Hal David’s lyric was also somewhat girlish and lacked the gravitas that Aretha required.

“Aretha usually listened to me in the studio, but not this time. She had written a vocal arrangement for the Sweet Inspirations that was undoubtedly strong. Cissy Houston, Dionne’s cousin, told me that Aretha was on the right track—she was seeing this song in a new way and had come up with a new groove. Cissy was on
Aretha’s side. Tommy Dowd and Arif were on Aretha’s side. So I had no choice but to cave. The Muscle Shoals rhythm section—Spooner Oldham, Jimmy Johnson, Roger Hawkins, plus funk master Jerry Jemmott on bass—followed Aretha’s lead. I sat back and listened. I have to say that I loved it. She blew the fuckin’ doors off the song, but I knew it wasn’t going to be a hit. And, man, was I ever wrong! It stayed on the charts for three months. Just like she had found a way to appropriate Otis’s ‘Respect,’ she did the same goddamn thing with Dionne’s ‘I Say a Little Prayer.’ She redefined it, restructuring the sound and turning what had been delightful fluff into something serious, obsessive, and haunting.”

“As much as I like the original recording by Dionne,” Burt Bacharach told me, “there’s no doubt that Aretha’s is a better record. She imbued the song with heavy soul and took it to a far deeper place. Hers is the definitive version.”

Outside the music world, Aretha continued to raise her profile. On August 26, Aretha opened the troubled Democratic National Convention in Chicago with a rendition of the national anthem.

“I cringed when I watched it,” said Wexler. “The orchestra was woefully out of tune. Aretha did the best she could, but it was not her greatest moment.”

“By then she had kicked Ted to the curb,” said Cecil, “and asked me to go to the convention with her. We’re lifelong Democrats, so it made sense for Aretha to do her thing there. Aretha follows politics, but not as closely as my father and me. Like Dr. King, we did not like the Vietnam War policies that Johnson had perpetuated and that Humphrey had embraced. We liked Bobby Kennedy, and had he not been killed earlier that summer, we would have supported him at the convention.

“The convention was chaos. The protesters were everywhere and it felt like an armed camp. The atmosphere did not help Ree’s state of mind that was also under siege. Ted did not leave without serious protestations. Aretha had been his meal ticket for seven or
eight years and he wasn’t going to give it up easily. The family—Daddy, Erma, Carolyn, my wife, Earline, and me—had to be a protective fence around our sister. We wouldn’t allow Ted anywhere near her. Lawyers had been called. Restraining orders had been issued. She was determined to live her life without this man and we did everything in our power to support that decision. Could she do it? Would she do it? We’d have to see. At least at that moment, though, he was gone. That didn’t help her drinking problem, but, hey, one problem at a time. We were off to Latin America for a short tour, and, just like that, I was her manager.”