Gerry Griffith at Arista found another song for Whitney, this one written by George Merrill and Shannon Rubicam, called “How Will I Know.” Janet Jackson had passed on it for her Control album, making it available for Whitney. Enter Narada Michael Walden, who at the time was in the studio producing Aretha Franklin’s album Who’s Zoomin’ Who? Narada received a call from Gerry urging him to work with Whitney. After he made some changes to the song, Narada tracked it in California and then flew to New York to meet Whitney and record. I watched her lay down her lead in one take. From that moment on, everybody called her “One-Take Houston.”
Here’s how it went down: A fat-ass instrumental track blared through the studio speakers while Nip stood inside a booth separate from the control room. Wearing headphones, she took a gulp of her usual Throat Coat tea with honey, then stepped in front of the microphone and was ready. Narada and the engineer were at the controls, and I stood or sat nearby, where I could see Whit and she could see me.
Her background vocals were always laid first, doubled and sometimes tripled, and after that, they moved on to the lead and ad libs. We would never leave until she got a copy of what she had done. If it wasn’t ready, I would hang around until it was—leaving with what was usually a rough mix of the track featuring what they deemed to be the best of her vocal passes. Sometimes she’d call and say, “Make sure you keep this ad lib,” or push for a certain phrase that she felt worked particularly well. Occasionally, if a line or even just a word was used and she believed there was another take that worked better, she’d call them on it. But for the most part, she’d allow the producers to do what they were hired to do.
When she first heard a demo, she would get really quiet, pop a few Luden’s Honey Licorice cough drops, and study the lyrics. If she felt it, it was on. What came out each time was original; it often left producers like Narada in awe, and fulfilled a songwriter’s dream. She told me she had what she called “tricks.” Her way of saying a word to make it fit within a sentence, interpreting the feeling of a song, phrasing, enunciating words—knowing when to go easy and when to attack. “You gotta know the tricks,” she’d say.
Shortly after, Whitney put me on her payroll. “I won’t be back tomorrow,” I told my supervisor at Piedmont with a big smile on my face. We were trying to figure out my title when Whitney said, “I wish that I could be two places at once, but I can’t. I can handle the inside. I got this. But I need you on the outside looking in.” I understood what I needed to do. If she didn’t want you there, you weren’t getting in, at least not through me. I was ready for this role, being out front when needed, getting things done, asking questions, or doing whatever was necessary to make things better and easier for Whitney. She knew that I had her best interest at heart. I began organizing all correspondence from Arista, handling performance requests, and fielding calls from agents, songwriters, artists, television producers, high-profile personalities—you name it. Anyone wanting to do business or talk with Whitney got me first.
Rumors about Whitney being gay and having an affair with her assistant began swirling around the industry not long after I took on the role. Cissy was beside herself and phoned Whitney’s father to express her displeasure over our running together. Cissy was more concerned about me than she’d been about her twenty-one-year-old daughter’s involvement with a man twice her age. Clive had said Jermaine and his wife, Hazel, were separated, and that may have been true, but still he was married and an older man. Whitney hadn’t had any real experience with relationships, other than taking a chance on the love she had for me.
Whitney took me to meet her father at his apartment in Newark. He lived in a modest high-rise building and worked as a housing administrator under Kenneth Gibson, the city’s first black mayor. Her family had moved from Newark to East Orange when she was four years old, after the riots. Her father’s mother, Sarah Elizabeth Collins Houston, lived above the Houston family’s home. I had been upstairs with Nip a few times to see her grandmother. But most of the time when I visited, I would hear her dragging big, black orthotic shoes across the floor or calling downstairs on the phone, asking Nip to run errands. Whitney spoke proudly of her grandmother’s years as a schoolteacher in Brooklyn educating mostly immigrants and minorities. She’d even thought of following in her footsteps before she discovered her voice.
“Robyn, you don’t say ‘off-ten,’ you say, ‘offen,’” Whitney would correct me. “My grandmother taught me that.”
When John Houston greeted me, I could see that he was his mother’s son. Nip, a total Daddy’s girl, sat on his lap and put her head on his shoulder while telling him about life in the condo with me and about her burgeoning career.
When I looked at Nippy and her father, I was struck by how affectionate they were with each other and how safe she seemed to feel with him. It was also clear that she was able to speak with him much more openly and freely than she was able to speak with her mom. Whitney had talked to her father about how close we were, and it seemed he understood the importance of our relationship. But that day, whatever Cissy had told him about us was front and center.
Whitney told her father that she needed me because she trusted me. “Robyn understands me, and I want her by my side in this business. I know that she loves me for me. She’s my friend—the sister I never had.”
“Okay,” her father said, nodding his head in agreement. “Why don’t you two go out with a couple of guys to the movies?” I cringed, not believing my ears. He actually wants us to stage fake-boyfriend scenarios, I thought. He was old-school, with a Rock Hudson–throwback way of thinking, but I could not go along with it. I let Mr. Houston know right away that I wasn’t down for playing that role. Even then, I knew that pretending to be someone that I’m not is a total waste of time.
Whitney used to say, “Don’t worry about what people say. We know the truth.” And that made us stronger, because it wasn’t for anyone to know. We still had each other and cared for and loved each other whether we slept together or not. I hadn’t stopped loving Whitney but nothing was going on. I didn’t feel as though we needed to pretend.
Nip encouraged me to be out front. I joined meetings with the players at Arista and was welcomed by all. With Clive Davis, it was a different story. When I accompanied Whitney to meetings with him, he would say hello to me and close the door behind them.
The first few times he did that, I chatted with his secretary Rose, just in case Whitney needed to call me in for anything. But after it seemed that was to be the norm, I would make rounds through the building. There was always business to be done, and she was the prize horse in the stable. Though Whitney always shared their discussions with me, I did wonder why she never invited me to join her in Clive’s office, but I never asked.
Eight
Introducing Whitney Houston
Nip’s debut album, Whitney Houston, was set for release in February of 1985. I was the liaison between Whitney and the label, keeping track of everything. She consulted with me when it came time to write her acknowledgments; she told me she wanted to open with the Serenity Prayer: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. I don’t know if she realized this prayer was central to twelve-step programs, but I didn’t learn this myself until many years later.
Below the acknowledgments to her record company and her family, Nip wrote, “Robyn, What an assistant! I love you and I guess all you need to do is stay in my life.” She ended with: “I hope this album will be enjoyed as much as I enjoyed making it.”
I enjoyed being a part of her process, too, although I had lost all pride in my own singing voice after I met Whitney. The only time I felt comfortable singing in her presence was if “little sister” Michelle, Whitney, and I were riding in a car, singing out at the top of our lungs. I felt intimidated in the face of Whitney’s voice even though she often told people, “Robyn’s
got a nice voice. She don’t want to do nothing with it, but she’s got a nice one.” She asked me to sing a part in the studio a few times, but I declined until the filming of the music video for “You Give Good Love.”
That day, I stood behind Whitney while she was getting her hair and makeup done in her dressing room, watching her face in the mirror. “I already told them that you wouldn’t want to do it,” she began. “We have one girl who can fake it, but we need someone who really knows the words.” She looked at me in the mirror with those eyes, wordlessly saying, They fucked up, just do this for me.
I never liked the spotlight. I was more comfortable in the number two spot behind the scenes, preferring to be, as Whitney put it, “on the outside looking in.” But when something was needed, I was good at figuring it out and getting it done. So I put on an oversize eighties-style blazer, rolled up the too-short sleeves, and shimmied into the tight pants wardrobe gave me. When I complained about the jacket’s fit and ugly check print, Nippy said, “Welcome to my world!” She wasn’t crazy about the fuchsia catsuit they had her in, either, but off we went.
The other “backup singer” came through a temp agency, and for most of the video, the mic was placed in front of her face to mask any flubs, so I had to awkwardly bend down to it. I had no intention of telling anyone about the video, but a few weeks later, while we were visiting my mother, Whitney popped in a videotape and pointed me out, to my mortification and her delight. “Miss Crawford, there’s Robyn right there! Look at Robyn, Bina. You see your sister? There she goes again.”
Before releasing an album, Arista would hold meetings with department heads to discuss the artist promotion plans and packaging, which included a look at artwork from photo shoots with samples mocked up for album covers and upcoming singles. Clive usually had the first word and the last. The photos for Whitney’s first album were taken by Gary Gross, best known for his controversial nude photographs of ten-year-old Brooke Shields, and album covers like Lou Reed’s The Bells and Dionne Warwick’s Heartbreaker. When the artwork for the album cover was sent to the apartment for us to see, I was pleased that he had captured Whitney. She looked fresh, youthful, and elegant. Her hair was natural and smoothed back, her makeup minimal. The mock-up that would ultimately become her album cover featured a headshot with a salmon-orange border to accent her peachy-colored skin. She was wearing a simple string of pearls and looking straight into the camera, soft and strong. On the back cover, Whitney is statuesque in a white Norma Kamali bathing suit. She looks regal and at ease, standing tall on the beach, hands on hips, feet firmly rooted, her face lifted to the sun.
Not long after that shoot, an executive in the R&B department pulled me aside and told me that, although he and his colleagues disagreed, the general feeling around Arista was that Whitney’s cover photos looked “too black” and not friendly enough since she wasn’t smiling. I loved them and had made that clear to all concerned. That day, to get ahead of the game, I took home the final edited images that were still in contention so Whitney could sign off. Folks at Arista asked the photographer if he had more images, but Gross said the makeup was too heavy and wouldn’t release them. She won this battle, but it was the first and last time cover approval would go so easily. On future album covers and singles, Clive would almost always insist she appear smiling.
Nippy and I were sitting in Gene’s office on Fifty-Fifth Street going over her upcoming schedule when he informed us of a call he’d received from the record label. They suggested she have her hair done similarly to that of former Miss America Vanessa Williams, whose straight-with-a-flip shoulder-length ’do was standard-issue beauty pageant. I knew right away that this request hit Whit hard. She had conquered every step thus far to the best of her ability, and now they were telling her, “Here’s what you don’t have and are going to need to cross the waters.” We were told that Whitney should get the weave in place prior to her European tour for press and photo shoots. Whitney’s short hair was a little longer than it had been for her appearance on As the World Turns, but Arista was still pushing for a pretty big change. I didn’t understand why this was necessary when she had gotten this far looking like herself. She’d even broken into the great white world of modeling with her natural hair.
Neither of us even knew what a weave was. We knew they existed, but we had no knowledge of the lengthy process, which requires braiding or sewing in fake or human hair. Gene sent us directly to the salon where Diana Ross got her voluminous hair. On the way over, I kept reminding Nip that this was a consultation and not a commitment.
But almost as soon as she sat in the chair, two stylists who had anticipated Whitney’s arrival began talking over her as if she weren’t there. I remember one of them saying, “She has almost nothing on her sides, so we could shave it.” The whole thing felt kind of cruel from where I was sitting. “It” was Whitney’s hair, part of her body, her person.
Looking around the place, I was drawn to a woman who seemed to be handling most of the clients. She was Amazonian in stature and had a heavy, purposeful walk that announced her movements around the salon. Her name was Carol Porter. I overheard Carol discouraging the use of chemical relaxers and talking about how to nourish and condition hair rather than beat it into submission. When she had a free moment, I went over and asked, “How can I make an appointment with you?” We ended up talking until Whitney’s “consultation” was done.
Once back in the car, Whitney broke down and cried all the way home. “The weave will protect your hair from the hot lights onstage and make it much easier to manage while on the road,” I said, sharing what I’d learned from Carol, trying to console her. Whitney laid her head in my lap, and as I stroked it feeling her own fine, cotton-soft hair under my hand, I hoped that Carol was right.
In preparation for the makeover, Whitney and I went shopping for hair. I looked at the menu in amazement: Asian hair, Hawaiian hair, Pacific Islander hair, Malaysian, Indian, and more. I was glad we had options and were able to find human hair that matched Whitney’s hair color. After she spent the better part of a day getting straight extensions braided in, Carol cut and styled it. Once done, Whitney’s hair resembled a lion’s mane. She was a Leo, and I had come to see the lioness as Nippy’s kindred spirit. Referencing a nature show we watched once at the apartment, I teased, “She’s the one doing the work, hunting and providing for the cubs. That’s you. That should be your logo—a lioness!”
Nippy thought for a minute, then said, “Make it happen.” I sat down and talked with Donn Davenport, head of Arista’s art department, while he sketched out my description on a sheet of paper until I said, “That’s it!” Whitney now had a logo for her company, which she dubbed Nippy Inc. It appeared on all Whitney products, but Arista didn’t want the logo to be too prominent, so the lioness image was so small on singles and album artwork that everyone thought it was a cat.
Up to this point, Whitney’s management company had been sending her $300 a week. Money was tight, and Nip called Gene and asked him if he could increase her disbursement to $400. He told her no, which was surprising given that he cared about his talent and was accustomed to working with strong women, having promoted stars like Nina Simone. Of course, Whitney wasn’t happy with that response, but she didn’t stand up for herself. Instead, she went quiet. I pushed her to call him back for an answer, but she demurred, saying, “I feel funny asking for something that’s mine.”
Performing, Whitney was a lioness, but offstage she was quiet and rarely roared. When I likened Nippy to the big cat, I didn’t consider the animal’s selflessness. At one point in the wildlife show, the lioness broke her jaw taking down prey yet still kept hunting for the benefit of the pride. I would soon learn that when it came to family, Nippy had a similar tendency. She was soft-spoken at heart and would much rather have avoided confrontation. But I wasn’t afraid.
I suggested Nippy call her parents, but she was hesitant. So I picked up the phone and dialed.
When Cissy answered, I passed the receiver to Whitney. She told her mom what had happened with Gene. “Your father will take care of it,” Cissy said. He did. And so, in a move that would come back to bite me in the butt, I initiated John Houston’s entrée into his daughter’s business affairs.
Whitney’s first album was released on Valentine’s Day 1985. One morning soon after, I was home straightening up our apartment while listening to the radio and heard, “Next up is ‘You Give Good Love.’” Whitney was asleep, and I ran into her room to wake her, turning the radio way up.
“It’s on! It’s on!” I yelled. She rolled over as I sat down on the side of her bed, grinning. When it was over, Nip looked at me and said, “Sounded pretty good, huh?”
“Yeah.” I smiled. “Sounded great.”
Nip was similarly cool at the Belmar beach one summer afternoon a few months later, when we heard that song coming from neighboring blankets on nearly every radio down the beach.
In those months after the album came out, we were so busy that we had little time to celebrate her first hit, but when we could, we would go out for long drives, and sometimes we’d find ourselves down the shore. Once when Michelle joined us, we brought along a bottle of Dom Pérignon that Clive Davis had sent for the success of her first single. As Whitney was about to pop the cork, I said, “Whit, you gotta shake it up and let it explode.”
Nip looked at me and said, “If I shake it up like that, what are we going to drink?”
Tired of our back-and-forth, Michelle said, “Give me that bottle!” and drank straight from it, and the three of us passed it around. On the way home, we stopped along Route 35 in Monmouth County to race go-karts. Michelle’s car broke down, and she was stranded on the track while Whitney laughed her tail off, yelling, “Michelle!” every time she whizzed by.
A Song for You Page 10