Aretha Franklin on Feminism, Beyonce and Who Should Star in Her Biopic
Listen,” Aretha Franklin says to a waiter as she points at her fish sandwich. “Don’t you have the smoked salmon?” She’s sitting in the restaurant at New York’s Ritz-Carlton on a rainy Friday afternoon, wearing a bright fur coat, hair spilling out of a winter cap. The waiter explains that Franklin’s lunchtime staple – salmon and cream cheese on whole-wheat bread – isn’t on the menu anymore. “But I will talk to the chef,” he adds quickly. “He will do it for you right now.”
Franklin, 72, just finished signing a stack of copies of her new album, Aretha Franklin Sings the Great Diva Classics, her first recording since she was reportedly diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2010. Franklin canceled several shows at the time; tabloids had her on deathwatch. When she was honored at the Grammys the next year, she looked noticeably thinner. Franklin denied the diagnosis, but last June, onstage at Radio City Music Hall, she recalled receiving a grim diagnosis from doctors: “[I told them,] ‘You burn the midnight oil, you read books, but you really don’t know that much about me. You see, I come from a praying family.’ . . . A couple of years later, I went back to the hospital, and those same doctors are saying, ‘Miss Franklin, the thing we saw before, we don’t see no more.’ Hallelujah!”
This week, Respect, a new biography by David Ritz, has been getting a lot of publicity – and Franklin is not happy about it. Ritz ghostwrote Franklin’s 1999 autobiography but was unsatisfied with the results. “Self-reflection doesn’t come easy to her,” Ritz says. So, drawing from his interviews with her and her close family, he published a book that details the wild offstage promiscuity of the Fifties gospel circuit as well as Franklin’s troubled marriage to Ted White, who managed her before their divorce in 1969. “[It’s] a very trashy book – all lies,” she said recently.
Today, Franklin is careful with her words and at times combative. When I ask if I can record our conversation, she flatly declines. “You can take notes,” she says. When I mention praise in the book from her sister Carolyn – “She slips into a zone when she sings . . . and connects to the Holy Spirit” – Aretha cringes. “I don’t think Carolyn ever said anything like that. That doesn’t even sound like Carolyn.”
Franklin’s new album – on which she covers Gladys Knight’s “Midnight Train to Georgia” and Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep” – reunites her with Clive Davis, who helped revive her career in the Eighties with a series of hits on his Arista label. Davis had been pushing Franklin to record an album of diva classics for years, sometimes over dinner at the Four Seasons. According to Davis, Franklin hasn’t lost any fire. “She’s come back in peak form,” he says. “The wonder of Aretha is she can do any song. And with very, very few exceptions, two takes is as close to the maximum as she does.”
For Franklin, the album is a chance to prove herself in a pop world with more divas than ever. “It was never as competitive as it is now,” Franklin says. “People are being very selective about what they spend their money on. I understand that this year they haven’t had any platinum records. I hope to have the first one. That would be fabulous.”
Soon, the salmon hors d’oeuvre arrives, which she offers me. “A little caviar, too,” she says, savoring a bite. “Great!”