Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin (33 page)

T
he panic was immediate.

Minutes after hearing the news from Detroit, Aretha received a call from Pops Staples, an old family friend, saying that he had just heard that Reverend C. L. Franklin had passed.

“Mavis Staples called me with condolences,” said Carolyn. “She spoke as if she were certain that Daddy had been killed.”

“Because Aretha, Carolyn, Brenda, and I were in Vegas when it happened,” said Cecil, “it took a long time to figure out the truth. Great relief came when Erma called us from the hospital. She was the one who assured us that he was alive.”

“The story didn’t come together for quite a while,” said Erma, “but the bottom line was that six burglars had been casing the neighborhood looking for a house to rob. They hadn’t pinpointed Daddy. They didn’t know who he was. The fancy stained-glass windows of Daddy’s house on LaSalle gave them the idea that the owner had to be rich. One of the guys somehow got up to the second floor, took off a screen, and slipped through a window. Daddy was down the hall in his bedroom, also on the second floor, watching TV. Daddy had the ears of a wolf. He also believed in self-defense. That’s why he kept a loaded pistol by his bedside. Daddy got the gun and was waiting when the thug burst into his bedroom.
The burglar was armed with a semiautomatic handgun. Four shots were fired. Daddy got off two but they missed. The thug didn’t miss. Daddy got shot twice, in his right knee and right groin. I don’t know how much time passed before the neighbors, hearing the gunshots, found a way into the house. Maybe a half hour, maybe more. Maybe if they’d acted quicker, he wouldn’t have lost so much blood. But of course, if they hadn’t acted at all, he might not have survived.

“Neighbors found him unconscious on the floor. They called 911. The ambulance came, but all that blood loss caused a series of cardiac arrests. At Ford Hospital, one of the doctors said it was too late to do anything, but then another doctor recognized him as Reverend C. L. Franklin. So they resuscitated him again.”

“We flew home and raced over to the hospital,” said Cecil. “First thing the doctor said was that his brain had been deprived of oxygen for up to a half hour. That’s what threw our father into a coma.”

“It was a sickening feeling to see him,” said Erma. “The most vibrant man in the world. The most energetic man, the most articulate man, a man whose brain never stopped working, not for a second. Now this man, who was only sixty-four, was without speech or motion. He was comatose. That wouldn’t change for the next five years—the most difficult time our family has ever known. These were our toughest years.”

“Of course our concern was for our father,” said Carolyn, “but we were just as worried about Aretha. He was close to all of us, but Aretha was always Daddy’s little girl. Their bond was super-special.”

Years later, Carolyn expressed this concern about Aretha during a filmed interview. When Aretha heard what her sister had said, she stopped talking to Carolyn for months. Aretha told interviewers that Carolyn had no right to portray her as an emotionally weak person.

“The truth is that Aretha got through this crisis when many people thought she never would,” said Cecil. “In her own way, she managed. Instead of worrying about her, we should have been
worrying about those nasty rumors concerning our father. Nasty rumors were running wild.”

Because Reverend Franklin had been charged with marijuana possession in the past, some speculated that the shooting had something to do with a drug deal gone bad. Others claimed it was related to C.L.’s overactive love life. But none of those theories were based on fact. The truth of the matter was that he was shot during a random burglary.

“Aretha called me a few days after she had returned to Detroit,” said Ruth Bowen. “She wanted me to put out the word that her career was on hold and that she was devoting all her efforts to her dad’s recovery. She made it plain that he required all her attention. ‘That’s beautiful,’ I said. ‘That’s a noble and wonderful thing that you’re doing, but—’ ‘No buts about it, Ruthie,’ Aretha said. ‘My mind’s made up. I don’t even want to think about business.’ ”

“Aretha’s heart was in the right place,” said Cecil. “Her first priority was for Daddy. And when it became evident that the coma was going to be long lasting, she was the only one of us in a position to pay for his home care. That would require money. Because Aretha has never been one to accrue savings, that would mean ongoing work. She’d have to tour and record.”

“The doctors described his condition as a light coma,” said Erma. “That meant that he did not require machines. He could sustain life on his own. Yet he remained unconscious. He was with us and not with us at the same time. It was a bewildering and frightening situation that took a long time to adjust to. I’m not sure any of us really did adjust. All we knew is that we wanted him home, in his bedroom, and not in a hospital or long-term-care facility. That meant round-the-clock nurses. The cost was astronomical.”

“My first thought was to move home,” said Carolyn, “and I did. I moved back into the house on LaSalle to be by his side. I wasn’t a nurse by any means, but I was certainly capable of making sure that the nurses we hired were doing their job. I knew Aretha wanted to move back as well, but she had her husband, Glynn, in
Los Angeles, her children, and a life she had worked hard to sustain.”

Less than a month after her father was shot, Van McCoy, the man who produced
La Diva,
died of a heart attack at age thirty-nine.

“Our sadness was profound,” said Cecil. “No matter what her detractors said, Aretha loved
La Diva
and thought the world of Van. She counts his ‘Sweet Bitter Love’ as one of the best songs she’s ever cut. She was looking forward to doing more work with Van. In this same period, Glynn’s uncle was shot and killed. These were tremendously heavy blows that made the summer of 1979 the most difficult of Aretha’s life.”

“Her moratorium on her career didn’t last long,” said Ruth Bowen. “She called back to say that she thought it was best for her mental health to go back to work. I agreed with her. I also knew that she needed money. Aretha always needs money. And then came this piece of irony: for all the work that she had done with both Ken Cunningham and Glynn Turman in trying to produce a movie, a movie finally came to her from out of nowhere. It wasn’t anything for her to produce or star in. It was basically a cameo—an appearance that gave her a small talking part but a chance to sing an entire song on film. She had hoped for a drama, but this was a comedy. It was
Blues Brothers.
”

Aretha plays a waitress whose husband is leaving her to go on the road with the John Belushi/Dan Aykroyd band. It’s a far cry from the glamour role she had envisioned for herself. Nonetheless, she lights up the screen. In her waitress costume, she gives her man holy hell before breaking into a hair-raising version of “Think,” her hit from the late sixties. She tears up her man, tears up the song, and delivers a knockout punch, a highlight of the hugely successful film.

“At first she wasn’t all that sure about the role,” said Cecil. “She wasn’t sure about playing a servant in her first movie role. But when it comes to confronting a no-good man, Aretha has no equal. She realized that this part gave her a chance to tap into that attitude. The combination of her being real and then topping it off with a song was too great to resist. Ray Charles had a cameo in that film,
and so did James Brown and Cab Calloway. But the one musician everyone remembers is Aretha telling you to ‘Think.’ ”

In August she was back on the road, playing the Kool Jazz Festival at Giants Stadium in Hackensack, New Jersey.
Billboard
loved her:

“Franklin gave her strongest performance in this market in almost five years. She performed ‘Ain’t No Way,’ ‘Seesaw’ and ‘Chain of Fools.’ While her physical appearance is not what it has been, Franklin’s voice is as strong as ever. The inconsistent live and recorded performances in recent years have obscured her unequaled vocal skills and it was good to see that one of the best voices around can still do it.”

In September, the same month that
La Diva
was released to harsh reviews and poor sales, Aretha received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

“Right after that honor, she came to Detroit to see about Daddy,” said Cecil. “She always stayed with me and Earline. She was obviously distressed about our father and wanted to be with him more. She carried some guilt about still living on the other side of the country. I told her what I believed—that she had to live her own life. She needed to move forward. It was a critical time in her career. She didn’t like hearing that
La Diva
was perceived as a failure, but that was the stark truth. By then, Clive Davis had already flown to LA to meet with her. He was very clear in his desire to sign her. She still had some doubts. She’d been at Atlantic for twelve years. Atlantic was where she’d broken through. Atlantic was also Ahmet Ertegun, one of the slickest salesmen in the business. He hadn’t given up on Aretha. By then Ahmet was a rock-and-roll kingpin. He promised to book her on huge stadium shows with the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin. All this weighed on Aretha’s mind. She had to decide between two super-powerful music moguls. As expert promoters of their own labels, both of them were promising her the moon. When she asked my opinion, I told her it was a close call but that I felt like she needed a fresh start with a fresh label. I gave Clive the edge. She was leaning in that direction anyway.”

In December she appeared on
Soul Train.
Playing the piano accompaniment herself, she offers an impromptu version of “Ooo Baby Baby” as an ultra-sensitive duet with the song’s composer, her childhood friend Smokey Robinson. The short musical encounter is breathtaking.

As 1980 kicked off, Aretha signed with Arista and began discussing her new album with Clive Davis as well as her siblings.

“I had written a group of songs that I thought were perfect,” said Carolyn. “Some were dance-oriented but others had a strong message. They dealt with the courage of the heart. The lyrics weren’t religious, but they were inspirational. Aretha had been singing ‘You Light Up My Life’ for years and I thought that kind of song, especially in the light of our father’s condition, would help her cope. But she didn’t want to go spiritual. She said that Clive wanted her to go pop. Clive would be picking out the songs, and Clive would be picking out the producers. They wanted only upbeat tunes. They didn’t want to fool with anything deep. They wanted hits. Well, ‘Angel’ and ‘Ain’t No Way’ were deep. ‘Angel’ and ‘Ain’t No Way’ were hits. But Ree said that ‘Angel’ and ‘Ain’t No Way’ were about pain, and she had enough pain. She was all about ignoring pain. She kept talking about how she needed a new team with new ideas. That team, no matter how good it was, did not include me. When she started recording in LA, I thought I’d get a call to come out there and at least help, but I didn’t. I stayed in Detroit, where Daddy showed no signs of progress. They had called it a ‘light coma,’ but to me it was the heaviest thing imaginable.”

“I think Aretha knew that her emotional survival depended on her keeping her distance from Detroit,” said Erma. “The situation was simply too heavy for her to take. In the first year or two that Daddy was in the coma, she was right to visit only occasionally. Anything else would have been too much. The emotional toll was enormous on all of us, but Aretha was the one who was in the midst of trying to keep her career alive. That took all her effort.”

“Carolyn, Erma, and I discussed Aretha all the time,” said Cecil, “and what we could do to keep her on an even keel. Since I was both her brother and manager, I had a special responsibility. No one wanted her to suffer another breakdown. And something like this could do it. She needed to keep on keeping on. That meant a new label and a new record. Carolyn was convinced the new record should deal with the real emotions she was facing. Carolyn argued that Ree’s biggest hits—like ‘Respect’ or ‘Chain of Fools’ or ‘Think’—came from real-life situations. She was singing about what was really happening. But I told Carolyn that Aretha didn’t want to sing what was really happening. During those moments when she was recording, she needed to forget about what was really happening and concentrate on the positive. She and Clive talked about a lighthearted pop record. Well, far as I was concerned, that’s just what the doctor ordered. A pop record would mean money—and at this point, money was just what Aretha needed.”

In April, the Franklins organized a benefit concert in Detroit to help pay C.L.’s medical bills. James Cleveland, Jesse Jackson, the Staple Singers, and Aretha herself appeared at Cobo Hall, where, according to
Jet,
$50,000 was raised.

That same spring, work began on her debut Arista album. In conjunction with Clive Davis, Aretha selected two producers. Ironically, both were from her past. Arif Mardin, a celebrated musician and arranger, was one of the trio that had produced the lion’s share of her Atlantic albums. Chuck Jackson was a member of the production team that had brought Natalie Cole to stardom. He was also the composer of that group of hit songs that were rejected by Aretha and later sung by Natalie.

“Aretha and Clive were very clear in that they wanted this record to have a certain sheen,” Arif told me. “They did not want the old Atlantic sound. They came to me with four songs. The one they liked most was ‘Come to Me,’ a big ballad that had the resonance of a movie theme. Aretha was very specific about the musicians. She read
Billboard
carefully and knew exactly who was hot and who wasn’t. Toto was extremely hot back then, and, at Aretha’s
urging, I used three of their members—David Paich on piano, Jeff Porcaro on drums, and Steve Lukather on guitar. I employed a young David Foster to play synths. I borrowed bassist Louis Johnson from the Brothers Johnson, another hot group, and was only too happy to follow Aretha’s suggestions and hire the Sweet Inspirations plus her cousin Brenda Corbett. In addition to the ballad, I was asked to produce two covers—Otis Redding’s ‘Can’t Turn You Loose’ and the Doobie Brothers’ ‘What a Fool Believes’—and the slightly funky ‘Love Me Forever.’