Whitney Houston
The Times Magazine, October 1992
Launched in 1985, Whitney Houston came ready-packaged as the black diva of her generation. Imagine that Pallitoy or Mattel, intent on creating the first-ever living doll, had quizzed every definable demographic about its purchasing preferences. Only after a multi-million dollar research and development programme could a commodity as finely-tuned and consumer-friendly as the then 23-year-old from New Jersey have been launched.
Within the existing range of female singers, she represented a new luxury item with mass appeal. The voice, technically faultless and emotionally expressive, had been trained both in church and at home by her gospel star mother Cissy before being handed to Mammon. It had the potential to enjoy a fame as lasting as that achieved by a handful of 20th Century greats. But which of those names - certainly not Ella, Sarah or Aretha - had reached point-of-sale so gloriously gift-wrapped?
From the get-go Houston, a former model, was poised, glamorous, serenely beautiful. As such, she could mirror the urban professional aspirations of black consumers all over America but without alienating the country's vast yet conservative white mainstream. She was a brand leader from day one, a prime example of what the U.S. approvingly terms 'a class act'.
She was also, of course, a young woman barely into her twenties, suddenly expected to play a public role that was equal parts siren, sage and supermodel. The too-familiar script for one placed under such pressure is well known: she should have turned weird under the strain of it all, living the role of troubled star to the tempestuous, neurotic, ermine-draped hilt. But despite having seduced the world into buying some 40 million copies of the three albums she has released to date, the single weirdest thing about Houston is the relative normalcy she seeks to project. First impressions are of a woman projecting a relentlessly sunny if slightly hyped-up version of girl-next-door.
Her impending arrival at a Manhattan hotel to promote her film debut in the Warner Brothers thriller The Bodyguard has caused palpable tension amid the various huddles of Press and PR people waiting in an upstairs suite. When she finally enters, arms held wide in welcome, this manifests itself in a chorus of congratulations on her recent marriage to r'n'b singer Bobby Brown. "Thank you! Thank you! I appreciate that," Houston purrs, holding her left hand to her heart so that we can admire the enormous diamond flashing from its third finger. Her eyes and smile are similarly bright. The outfit - a vividly-patterned silk shirt over canary yellow trousers - is at once exotic and rather middle-aged. There is no visible evidence yet of her recently-announced pregnancy.
Even when placed one-to-one with her in an adjoining interview room, she continues to radiate a starry brilliance. It's the second time we have met and she asks all the nice, 'So how've you been?' stuff, something not every artist would bother to do. Meanwhile ice-breaking chitchat about July's lavish wedding (reported with breathless reverence within Hello!) prompts her to an almost self-parodic declaration of devotion to her new husband. "The love that I have for Bobby ... well, it overwhelms me," she says at one point, pressing her fingertips to her breast. To witness such a little performance at close quarters is spellbinding. Any instinct to giggle is undone by that luminous smile. It would almost seem appropriate to clap.
This is why the camera loves Houston. And this is also why news of her much-rumoured move from music into movies makes one think of those few successes who've trodden that same path in the past, rather than the many failures. Not that the synopsis for The Bodyguard gives huge grounds for optimism ... 'Frank Farmer is a professional bodyguard, one of the best,' it reads. 'A former Secret Service agent, he has risen to the top of a demanding profession by never letting his emotions interfere with his work. Then he encounters Rachel Marron (Houston). A flamboyant singer and actress, she doesn't think she needs a by-the-book bodyguard and doesn't mind saying so ...'
If the idea of her playing a member of her own profession on screen sounds less than inspired, it should at least be acknowledged that there is one element of her presence in the film that is genuinely groundbreaking, even in the Hollywood of late 1992. Taking the part of the titular bodyguard in Lawrence Kasdan's script is Keven Costner, almost the acme of leading man-hood to white American audiences. With black actresses still consigned to stereotyped roles, Houston's casting as his co-star and, hence, interracial romantic lead in a $37 million production, predicted to be one of the winter's best box-office takes, is significant.
Jim Wilson, founding partner in Costner's development company Tig and an Oscar-winner last year for his work on Dances With Wolves, reports that even when the actor first vaunted the project in 1988, he envisaged the singer as his co-star. "When Kevin suggested her I asked the same question anyone else would have done: 'But can she act?' I said, 'Yes, she's a diva. Yes, she's a world-class beauty. But what on earth makes you think she'd be able to carry off something like this?'" Yet Costner remained adamant about his choice and Houston agreed to go to Los Angeles for two days of screen testing.
"I'd heard that Kevin wanted me for the part and that he was prepared to wait however long it took for me to be available to do it," she says now. "Let me tell you, that was tripping me out. I thought, 'Why does this man want me so bad?' Then I read the script and understood why. Rachel's a great singer, a good actress, she's up for an Academy Award, she's hot! Everyone loves Rachel. And I could relate to that because it's been that way for me in my career."
She continues: "There was a time after I first hit the scene that it was as if I were on fire or something. For three years I was everywhere - I kind of got sick of myself in the end and that's why I took a break after the second album. I couldn't take it any more. It got to the point where I'd lay down at night and I could feel people talking about me. I had to get out of that fame aura for a while. So I knew what this character was about, and that maybe I could play her."
Houston admits that Costner's telephone entreaties almost persuaded her, but that the final impetus came from an entirely different place. "It was something a friend said that really made me decide. She said to me, 'Whitney, if you do this, do you realise what it will mean for other black actresses? For other black women, period?' Immediately I was encouraged. And she was right. It's a very, very strong role for a black woman."
The advance word is that her performance is genuinely strong enough to merit a parallel career in film, should she choose to pursue one. This, plus recent announcements by the cosmetic houses Revlon and Cover Girl that they will use black models for mainstream advertising campaigns in the coming months, may seem slight evidence upon which to base the theory that we are moving towards equal opportunities for - and equal representation of - black women in the media. Yet it must be remembered that the US's black and Hispanic populations are growing in numbers twice as fast as its white, and that they have a younger demographic profile. The recession-hit market for consumer goods - be they cosmetics or cinema tickets - is surely realising it cannot afford to ignore such obvious sources of disposable income.
Yet there is an irony to Houston being viewed as a key figure in this gradual erosion of discriminatory policies, and one that doesn't escape her for a moment. Throughout her rise to her current level of fame, she has been dogged by a specific criticism. "Again and again I heard that I was too white," she says. "Because I had such huge success I was accused of selling out, of being a black singer doing pop for white audiences.
"I don't categorise music or people on the basis of colour. And there's no way i would attempt to make myself less black, whatever that might entail, in order to be more commercial. I'm comfortable with myself and I don't want to change anything. I stay close to my roots. I don't pretend to be anything other than who I am - nor do I want to be anything other than that. But for so long we've been tortured by this negative image problem. I mean, it used to be that if you wanted to sell records as a black artist, you didn't even put your face on the sleeve. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with anyone who chooses to change their look for those reasons ... but I don't want to sell out and I don't have the need to."
The criticisms stemmed largely from music industry perceptions of the way in which her career launch was engineered. "I didn't create Whitney, although I did work with her on a creative level," says Clive Davis, head of Arista Records and a man with two decades of star-building behind him. "I was involved in picking the material with her, choosing the right producers, waiting until the top people were free to work with her. I saw a rare combination of talent and beauty, but even then I couldn't be sure it would all work."
It did, of course, and brilliantly. The string of high-drama ballads and melodic dance tunes with which she made her name, and the glamour gowns she wore while singing them, combined to create an image that was glossy, sophisticated, preternaturally mature. Compared with the sound and look of such contemporaries as Janet Jackson and Paula Abdul, Houston's appeal was upmarket, almost princess-like. For Davis, one felt the thrill came from having helped to shape a new talent with the potential one day to rival those middle-aged divas he so admires - Aretha Franklin, Patti LaBelle, Whitney's older cousin Dionne Warwick. When I watched Davis parade with Houston at the New York launch of her third album in 1980, it was like seeing a proud racehorse-owner with his favourite thoroughbred.
Two years later, and almost 10 years since she first signed to Arista, Houston gives the appearance of having retreated behind that image. Whether facing a concert audience of tens of thousands, or a single journalist across a room, she is professional to the hilt. But behind the dazzling smiles and friendly asides, there is the inescapable feeling that she is approaching the encounter as just another item on her endless schedule - one requiring her to play the role of Whitney Houston, diva, yet again. Robyn Crawford, her one-time school friend and now 'executive personal assistant', acknowledges that being around such an intensity of fame is not always easy.
"The foundation we had years ago, the friendship that we shared, is pretty much back there in the past," she says when I meet her later in the day. "Now it's business. Those of us who work with her have to adapt to accommodate what happens. I'd say that as a person Whitney has stayed pretty much the same. I think it's the people around her, myself included, who've had to change. And a lot of times you get your feelings hurt. I may look at her in a room full of people and think, 'That's my best friend!', but it's not about that personal any more. It's about going as far as she wants to go." And now that Bobby Brown is sharing Houston's mansion in New Jersey, Crawford realises that further adjustments may be necessary.
"None of us around her, not her mother, father or me, could be to her what a husband can be. In a marriage, it seems to me that it is always the woman who has to do more - commit herself more, devote herself, always be there. And Whitney is going to be that kind of wife. She's very traditional and Bible-written. And if that changes anything about her, I think it will be that she's going to take less shit. She's not high-handed, temperamental or arrogant, but though she walks softly she carries an invisible stick. If you back her up against a wall, you'll be sorry. In the nicest possible way, she'll make you feel like this ..." And her Crawford holds up her thumb and first finger, only millimetres apart.
The strength of the bond between the two women is such that it has withstood a constant record-industry whispering campaign that theirs is or has been a lesbian relationship. These rumours went public two years ago when Houston found herself the subject of an attempted 'outing' by a militant gay group. "I don't care who's sleeping with who," she said when I interviewed her last. "I've become tired of dignifying the question of whether or not I'm gay with an answer. At first we all laughed. But it's disturbing, and not only does it affect me and my family but that's my friend they're talking about and it's hard for her to deal with. Enough is enough, so lay off now."
The rumblings have contined though, despite the announcements of her marriage and subsequent pregnancy. It has even been suggested that both events were contrived as a smokescreen. In a homophobic culture, such speculation can damage an individual's chances of winning sponsorship deals and other such lucrative sidelines to a high-profile career. More pertinently in Houston's case, it could also alienate that sector of her fanbase which prizes her as a visible Christian. Yet today she seems more sanguine about (or perhaps just wearily resigned to) the gossip-mongering.
"I am not and never have been gay," she says. "but there's a sense in which all the things said about me have kept people's curiosity up and have made me more famous than I really am. In a very odd sense, maybe it's been beneficial to me. Like they say, 'Negative press is just as good as positive, 'cos it's all going the same way - down the toilet.'"
For Crawford however, without a famous boyfriend or husband to align herself with, there is no personal advantage to the rumours. "When I was younger I used to pray that I'd have something to contribute," she says. "I wanted to be needed, counted upon. Well, I guess I got what I prayed for, but I also got more attention than I ever bargained for. It's not easy trying to establish a career and be respected, knowing in the back of your mind that when you walk into a room, some people are thinking, 'That's the girl who ...' I've learnt to overcome that, but it's made me well-known in a way I wouldn't wish to be. They are a bunch of liars though. I only have to answer to one person and it's nobody here."
Yet if Houston's romance with Brown raised eyebrows, it was largely for the seeming incompatibility of their respective images. Six years her junior, the former teen star is renowned for his suggestive dance routines and, during his 1989-90 word tour, was arrested in Georgia and charged with lewdness on stage. The four-year delay between his second album and its recent successor fuelled speculation - denied by the singer - that he had a heavy drug habit. Touted as the ultimate bad boy, he made a surprising choice of partner for the church-influenced, hospital-endowing, charity fundraising Houston.
"How miraculously coincidental that Bobby Brown should release his crucial follow-up to the multi-platinum Don't Be Cruel only weeks after his Hello! photo-spreaded marriage to Whitney Houston," was the tart comment of a critic at The Independent in August. "Can her next album be far behind? And would it be cynical to ask which came first, the relationship or the release schedule?"
Such withering comment was nothing compared to that made in the US however. Crawford recalls one on-screen showbiz commentator describing Brown as "a spermbank" (a reference to his three young children from previous relationships) and suggesting he would make as a reliable a marriage partner as Senator Edward Kennedy. There were gleeful tabloid reports too of an alleged brawl between Houston and Crawford outside a Los Angeles hotel - an incident said to have been caused by the latter's intense jealousy of Brown. "All a complete lie," she says wearily, but with undisguised anger.
Houston herself may hate the gossip and innuendo but she admits that she enjoys the fact that her and Brown's unlikely alliance has caused such a stir. "If you looked at us just in terms of our public images you might well imagine we have nothing in common, but we do," she says. "Bobby's family is very close, just like mine, and he was raised with the same good sense of God as I was. Out on stage he does his thing and I do mine, but we don't go home together as Bobby Brown and Whitney Houston - we do so as husband and wife. People look at us and see a certain surface but you have to look deeper than that to know the truth. If you only knew how uncomplicated we really are."
The interview over, she gives me a kiss, a hug and another flash of the diva's dazzling smile. "It's been a pleasure," she says. "Any time you want to talk to me ..." As I thank her, I turn to gather my things from an adjoining chair. What will she be doing for the rest of the day, I ask over my shoulder? There is no reply. The door of the heavily carpeted suite is open and Houston is already walking quickly away down the corridor. She seems to become more relaxed, more herself, with each retreating step.
Copyright © 2020 Alan Jackson