The first time I heard Donna Summer I was living in Utah. We stopped by Al’s cousin’s house. She played “Love To Love You Baby”.
I hated it.
I had to.
Back when rock still mattered, disco sucked.
Which makes it hard to explain why I loved Prince’s “Dirty Mind”, but before that, I ended up doing legal work for writers on Donna’s “Bad Girls” album.
It was my first job in the legal business. These musicians were flustered. Donna had fired everybody, and in the process, their royalties stopped. The Bogarts were out, her affairs were a mess, and they didn’t want to say a single negative word about their boss, but they needed the money, they wanted the money, because even if you have just a piece of a song on “Bad Girls”…it’s a lot of bread.
And one day one of these guys delivered the album.
And I listened.
I was blown away.
Sure, you had that disco beat, but “Hot Stuff”, the album’s opener, was every bit as hot as the opening cut on a Stones record. And she was just as sexy as Jagger. All attitude, all sultriness, and when she sang HOT, HOT, HOT, HOT, STUFF, you got all energized, your hormones began to rage, you ran out the door and started looking for action.
And then the segue into “Bad Girls”… This was the sound Quincy Jones perfected with Michael Jackson, but every bit as good. Layered with horns and whistles Donna wasn’t a diva, but purely embedded in the track.
And unlike too many of today’s acts, it was not a one note album. Donna penned “Dim All The Lights”, which sounded exactly like that, an after work, early evening live for the night life story. Primping and then dancing, going from slow to fast to back again, it just felt right.
And “Sunset People”.
If you gave Donna Summer a chance, she was just as good as everybody said she was, if not better. I was instantly closed, I became a fan.
That’s the power of music. No amount of publicity, no amount of social networking can penetrate our souls and attach themselves to our DNA like music.
And when the brouhaha blew past, when my guys started getting paid, Donna made an album with Q. She’d signed with Geffen, as part of the initial triumvirate of Lennon, Elton and her. But the original Giorgio Moroder album disappointed and the second was rejected. Needing something bigger than the business Quincy and Donna made a record that was neither fish nor fowl, it satisfied neither the dancers nor the rockers.
But that didn’t mean it wasn’t great.
It took me years to understand the genius of the initial single “Love Is In Control (Finger On The Trigger)”. Its magic was subtle, and Donna’s hits were always directly in your face.
And maybe that doomed the album’s commercial success.
But if you played the album, you heard…
“State Of Independence”. A track that seemingly everybody knows, but you never hear on the radio, that no one ever talks about. Written by Vangelis and Jon Anderson of Yes, it’s an almost six minute tour de force. From disco to church, by time they’re done it’s like your whole neighborhood has been infected with joy and is out testifying in the streets.
But my favorite has always been “The Woman In Me”.
“Dancin’ close, feelin’ restless
It’s a slow sultry night
It’ll be a lifetime ’til sunrise
If you don’t stay with me tonight”
We’re preoccupied with intimacy, with sex. We want to be close, we want to exchange…talk, touch, fluids.
“I feel your breath caress my shoulder
As your heart reads my mind
You don’t have to tell me anything
I can see everything in your eyes”
This is the essence of life. The closeness. The bonding. It doesn’t matter if the economy sucks, if the Yankees lost, when you feel this connection, you feel positively alive, you tingle.
“It’s so easy with you
I don’t need an excuse
To be the woman in me
It’s so hard to believe
That I’m feeling so free
To be the woman in me”
Half of our population is repressed. They don’t want to have sex and they don’t want you to get any either. Women are supposed to be demure, subservient and led by men.
And on the other side of the street, especially in this pre-AIDS era, there was a plethora of women who were questioning everything that had come before, they wanted to be free to not only dress how they wanted to, to do men’s jobs, but feel free.
And this is what Donna Summer embodied. Gloria Steinem led the intellectual charge, but no one exuded the liberation of women more than Donna Summer. She was in control of her career, her instrument, and she didn’t need to be more than men, but she needed to be equal.
To make money, to make love.
“Baby there’s so much
No man has ever touched
Of the woman in me”
Females can’t do it alone. Love is a partnership. They want to be met halfway. They want to be able to flower and explore. They want to be sensual, they want to have an orgasm, like Donna Summer.
“Like the dark side of the full moon
Never shown what I’m showing to you”
Finally, women could cut loose. Give it all. Be every bit as demonstrative as men. Donna not only gave them permission, she pointed the way.
Since her original audience was gays and females, despite all the accolades, Donna Summer has still not gotten the kudos she deserves.
Unlike today’s acts, she grew, she took chances, she did not operate on only one note. And unlike the melisma milkers, she did not sit above the song, but was positively inside.
And sure, she said some silly things as she got older. Don’t we all.
But she survived.
Which is hard to do when you’re the biggest star in the world.
I’m not sure her music lives on. I’m not sure anything lasts besides Frank and the Beatles.
But if you were alive in the era, you remember.
It’s a sad day indeed.
She didn’t O.D. She played it out.
Which is what we’re all trying to do.
Before we’re gone.
“The Woman In Me”: http://bit.ly/bWHsb
