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While Whitney Houston's three-week-old Greatest Hits proves the soul diva still has clout with music consumers, speculation around the singer's private life continues to suggest there is something profoundly wrong. A story in this Friday's US Weekly (which, like Rolling Stone, is owned by Wenner Media) suggests that Houston's high-profile slip-ups of the past year can be traced back to an incident last July when friends and family (including Houston's mother Cissy) as well as two drug specialists attempted to send her to rehab following an ugly series of events that landed her husband, Bobby Brown, in a local hospital.
According to US, a source close to Houston reported that
the intervention group found Houston in a daze following a show in
Los Angeles. At 3:30 the previous morning, Brown created a ruckus
at the entrance to the Beverly Hills Hotel. "It was clear Bobby was
high," a witness said. While Brown was whisked away to the
hospital, Houston's entourage tried to get her to seek treatment.
"You have to have standards. If you don't, people won't respect
you," Cissy Houston was reported as saying.
The event fell in the middle of Houston's first world tour in
several years, which had been marred by a number of cancelled
shows. Following the intervention, Houston cancelled her next gig
in San Francisco fifteen minutes before show time, citing illness.
Three high-profile incidents followed in 2000 including a marijuana
charge on January 11, when several grams of pot were found in one
of Houston's bag as she and Brown left Hawaii for San Francisco.
Two months later she dropped out of performing at the Rock &
Roll Hall of Fame ceremony (ten minutes before the show's start),
at which her mentor Clive Davis was honored. Later that month,
Houston's performance at the Academy Awards was nixed, though some
uncertainty remains as to whether Houston cancelled or was fired by
music supervisor Burt Bacharach. In May, Houston's longtime
personal damage-control center, Robyn Crawford, resigned, leaving
her without a P.R. backup.
Houston is currently on the promotional circuit in support of
Greatest Hits, but all is not well. Brown remains in a
Fort Lauderdale jail following a May 10 arrest for violating his
probation. And Friday's story paints a harrowing portrait of
Houston's room at the Beverly Hills Hotel that night. "It was a
wreck. Broken beer bottles were everywhere," claimed a source. But
despite the intervention efforts, "there was nothing her mother
could say that night to make her pay attention."
Calls to Houston's company, Nippy, Inc., were unanswered at press
time.
ANDREW DANSBY
(June 8, 2000)