Very often, Mathew would pull Beyoncé aside to have a few private words with her. He had specific ideas as to how she should deliver a song, how she should move onstage—even how she should handle a microphone. It was as if he had years of show business experience. Actually, he was just a student of Motown, of watching old videos, of studying the Supremes and the Temptations. He had very good instincts, though. “You never know when it’s going to happen for you,” he would tell her, “so you have to be ready, just in case it’s now or even tomorrow.” Beyoncé listened to everything her dad had to offer and soaked it up like a sponge.
What to Do About Kelly?
After Mathew Knowles had the Girls Tyme rehearsals relocated to his home, he set his sights on how to handle the matter of Kelly Rowland and the trouble she had getting there. Some viewed his efforts as problem-solving, while others felt he was just looking for more ways to be controlling.
Kelly’s story was a sad one. Her biological father was not a part of her life. “Honestly, what I remember best about him is the fact that he was never there,” she once said of her father, Christopher Lovett. “I’ll never know why he didn’t stay around. I had so many questions about my dad that I wanted to ask my mom—like, for starters, Mama, why did he leave?—but I didn’t.”
The story passed down over the years is that Christopher was an alcoholic and physically abusive to his wife, Doris, Kelly’s mother. They say that this was why Doris and Kelly had fled to Houston back when Kelly was about six. With every story having two sides, Christopher’s version of events is somewhat different.
When Kelly was a small child, Christopher Lovett says he had a good job at Lockheed Aircraft Company in Atlanta, first as a flight line assembly worker and then as an inspector. Though he was making decent money, the hours were long. He says he barely had time to spend with Doris (who was his second wife) and Kelly. The fact that Doris was also working long hours at her own job made their lives even more stressful. He insists, however, that he was not an alcoholic, and he also says he was never abusive to his wife. Because of their money woes, he recounts, they were evicted from their home in Decatur. That’s when they decided to split up.
Christopher says Doris took Kelly and moved in with an aunt. Still, husband and wife rendezvoused every week at a Holiday Inn where Christopher would have a chance to visit with Kelly. One day, he says, he went to the Holiday Inn at the appointed time, but Doris and Kelly didn’t show. Worried, he says he started asking around. Soon he learned that Doris had moved to Houston with Kelly. According to Christopher, he didn’t know—at least not until he was interviewed for this book—that Doris had been working as a live-in domestic for a family in Decatur, and that when the family relocated to Houston they took her and Kelly with them.
In Houston, Doris only continued working for the family for a short time before losing her job. She and Kelly then moved in with Yvonne Boyd, the sister of LaTavia’s mother, Cheryl. Yvonne says that Doris and Kelly “never mentioned Christopher Lovett at all.” Meanwhile, Kelly ended up singing in Girls Tyme.
Sometime in the summer of 1992, Doris announced that she was moving back to Atlanta. She was just trying to do what she could to make a living to support herself and her child. Would this mean that Kelly would have to leave the act? Of course it would. How would she be able to attend rehearsals if she was living in Georgia? It was Andretta who came up with an alternative idea: have eleven-year-old Kelly move in with her and the boys. After all, Kelly had become like a daughter to her anyway. Still, this was a big change for everyone.
The other girls all liked Doris very much. On weekends she would whip up hot dogs and Tater Tots for them, listen to their adolescent problems, and give them all great advice. She was someone they’d begun to depend on, a woman whose work ethic they all admired. So when she left for Atlanta they were all quite sad. Kelly moved in with Andretta.
After a couple of months of Andretta driving Kelly back and forth from rehearsals at the Knowleses’ home, Mathew finally asked, “Doesn’t it just make more sense for Kelly to move in with me and Tina? Beyoncé and Kelly are so close, I know Beyoncé would love it.” Andretta felt this was pushing it and wondered what Mathew was up to now. No, she decided. She had already promised Doris that she would be the one to care for her daughter. Mathew had won the co-management battle, but the Kelly Rowland battle would be hers.
Weeks later, though, Andretta walked in on her son Armon—who was in the ninth grade—on the couch making out with Nina Taylor, one of the two sister dancers in Girls Tyme. This bothered her. Considering that her boys were obviously growing up, she decided to reconsider her position where Kelly was concerned. So she made the tough decision to allow Kelly to move into the Knowles household—and it would be there that Kelly would remain for the rest of her youth, raised by Mathew and Tina.
As far as Tina was concerned, Kelly was a welcome addition to her family. The connection she had with her was instantaneous, as if somehow divinely guided. Kelly seemed like a third daughter. “You will always be a member of this family,” Tina told Kelly. She meant it, too. “I owe Tina and Mathew Knowles everything,” Kelly would say in years to come. “I don’t think words can express how much.”
Many years later, in February of 2001, Christopher Lovett and his wife, Gracie, would drive all the way from Atlanta to Houston to see Destiny’s Child perform at the Astrodome. After the show, he tried to go backstage to greet his daughter, whom he hadn’t seen in almost fifteen years. However, someone on the security team refused him access; his name wasn’t on “the list.” He recalled, “That was a bad night for me. My wife and I drove eight hundred miles back to Atlanta without saying one word to each other. We were just quiet. We couldn’t believe it had happened.”
To this day, Lovett has not been able to reconnect with Kelly. He says that when he hears in the media that she is in the Atlanta area, he often goes to the city’s most popular mall, Lenox Square, and takes a seat on the upper level at the entrance of Bloomingdale’s thinking he might get lucky and spot her either coming or going from the high-end department store. “It’s never happened, though,” he concluded, sadly. “To this day, it’s never happened.”
Star Search
In the fall of 1992, Arne Frager secured a booking for Girls Tyme on the television talent program Star Search. This was a major deal, national exposure on a show that was a precursor to American Idol. (Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera would both get their first big breaks on Star Search.)
The Star Search taping was scheduled for November 3, 1992, in Orlando, Florida. The show would be broadcast the following February. As planned, Girls Tyme would perform one number on the broadcast, as would another competing act. Voters would weigh in, and a winner between the two acts would be revealed. It was a gamble. If Girls Tyme won, the victory would go a long way toward securing a record deal for them. However, if they lost, they’d likely be tagged as “that group who blew it on Star Search.” Thus song choice was key, and this was where there would be some disagreement.
Andretta, Kenny, and Tony Mo. wanted the group to sing “Boyfriend,” on which Beyoncé and Ashley shared the lead. However, Lonnie and Arne felt the girls should go along with the present consensus to showcase Beyoncé. The song they had in mind, “That’s the Way It Is in My City,” was Beyoncé’s all the way through, with just a very brief rap by LaTavia at the beginning and another by Ashley at the end. Mathew sided with Lonnie and Arne in using the song that featured his daughter—no surprise there. Though Andretta, Kenny, and Tony Mo. still disagreed, the decision was made to go with the Beyoncé number.
Right before it was time to leave for Florida, Andretta had to go back into the hospital to battle a secondary illness to her lupus condition, Raynaud’s disease. In the process, she had to have two fingers and a toe amputated. While in the hospital, she learned that Mathew had made a business trip to Los Angeles and had connected with one of her chief contacts, Teresa LaBarbera Whites at Columbia/Sony. To her, i
t felt like another power play, even though in all fairness, Mathew, as the group’s co-manager, was probably entitled to do such business. “It just added stress to an already stressful situation,” said Andretta’s best friend, Pat Felton. “She didn’t want anyone to feel sorry for her, plus she didn’t want it to be perceived by Mathew that she couldn’t do her job. Through it all, she continued to go to work at Houston Lighting and Power; they would end up having to have a special kind of prosthetic with plastic fingers made for her so she could type. She also continued to devote all of her free time away from her job to Girls Tyme, especially to the Star Search rehearsals. This was a lot on the plate of a woman who was very sick.”
Andretta still had her sense of humor, though. Since she’d had her middle finger removed, she told Kenny Moore in the hospital that if he ever saw her put a piece of white surgical tape on her nose during a meeting it would be their secret code for “Fuck Mathew Knowles.” The two shared a good laugh.
There was no way Andretta could go on the trip to Orlando, so the departing contingent would consist of Lonnie, Mathew, and the mothers of Beyoncé, LaTavia, and Ashley: Tina, Cheryl, and Carolyn.
“You know how they separate the coach cabin from first class with a curtain?” asked Nicki Taylor. “Well, we all sat in the first rows behind that curtain, in coach. We were making so much noise, Mathew kept standing up, turning around, and saying, ‘Y’all need to be quiet. First class is gonna think we’re having some kind of riot back here!’ We laughed. ‘We are having a riot,’ Beyoncé said. Lonnie egged us on; he was just a big kid himself. We had a good time on that plane ride down to Florida.”
Backstage before their Star Search appearance, the girls met with one of the show’s producers, who explained that if they won the contest they would get $100,000. Of course, that announcement elicited its fair share of girlish shrieks and squeals. Even if they lost, the producer further explained, they would still receive a $250 stipend to cover their expenses. Considering that the six girls, three mothers, and Mathew and Lonnie made it a group of eleven flying from Houston to Florida and then needing to say in a hotel for two nights, $250 wasn’t going to stretch very far. “Can I ask a question?” Beyoncé said, raising her hand. All eyes turned to her. “Now, let me get this straight. Is that $250 for each of us? Or is that $250 for the whole group?” When told it was a sum for the entire contingent, Beyoncé and the girls shrieked with delight. Indeed, there was pretty much nothing you could tell them that would dampen their enthusiasm. “What they don’t know,” Mathew said, “is that they have to give me all $250 for expenses.” Again, everyone laughed and cheered. “Dang, Daddy!” Beyoncé exclaimed. “That just ain’t right!”
On the day of the show, Girls Tyme watched from the wings as the show’s reigning champs, a white rock group called Skeleton Crew, performed their high-octane number to great applause. Mathew went over to Beyoncé and knelt down in front of her to check in and ask how she was doing. He’d wanted to feature her, but hadn’t considered the pressure it would put on her. It suddenly hit Mathew that it really was a lot to ask. He may even have felt a little guilty. However, it was too late to do anything about it. He took her by the shoulders. “What do I always tell you?” he asked her.
“Do your best and let the audience do the rest,” she answered.
He smiled. She had taken his advice and turned it into a little rhyme. He brought her in for a big hug.
As the girls waited on the darkened stage for their cue, they said a private prayer, including Andretta in it. Ed McMahon, the host of the show, then introduced them as “a young group from Houston. Welcome Beyoncé, LaTavia [which he pronounced as LaTivia], Nina, Nicki, Kelly, and Ashley, the hip-hop, rapping Girls Tyme.”
When the lights went up, the girls made their way upstage in their little jackets and short pants outfits—Kelly and LaTavia in bright purple, Beyoncé and Ashley in lime green, and Nina and Nicki in white—all six with high-top sneakers. LaTavia started the performance with her rapping skills (“Yeah, GT [Girls Tyme] in the house with a brand-new slam. . .”), her big personality and great stage presence on full display. From that point, Beyoncé took over, singing and moving across the stage like an entertainer with triple her experience. Ashley only had, at best, maybe five seconds of spotlight time, rapping—not even doing what she did best, which was of course singing.
In the end, unfortunately, it was just a fair performance. Lacking a strong melodic line, the song really had been the wrong choice. Though Beyoncé did her best with it, the background harmonies were at times off key. The dancing was proficient, but for the most part the group looked like it needed more work. However, Beyoncé’s stage presence was not lost on anyone. She was all over the stage, dominating the performance and clearly the true star of the night. She was not only talented, she seemed hungry for the spotlight and eager to please her audience, as if born to do so.
Despite whatever Beyoncé had brought to the proceedings, the judges gave Skeleton Crew four stars and the challengers, Girls Tyme, three. In other words, the girls lost the competition. They stood poised onstage as they got the news, forcing smiles but with dazed looks on their little faces. Once they were backstage, the waterworks began to flow. “As soon as we were behind that curtain, we started bawling and crying and boo-hooing,” recalled Beyoncé. “It was so devastating. The moms were all saying, ‘Oh, don’t worry, baby, those guys were so much older than you! They have so much more experience.’ But we didn’t care. We had never lost anything! We were always winners back in Houston, so this was a rude awakening.”
Of course, Mathew was upset by the defeat. He called Andretta and, according to what she later told Kenny Moore, he wondered if racism was the reason. It’s doubtful that skin color had anything to do with the defeat (and his comments were made in the heat of the moment so he may not have really felt that way once he got over the disappointment). Lonnie and Arne blamed the loss on the fact that Girls Tyme was up against a band of rockers who were in their midthirties. That’s possible. It didn’t make much sense to have a group of prepubescent girls compete in a sing-off against an adult rock-and-roll band. But actually, song choice was the most likely culprit. The new jack swing, hip-hop tune Girls Tyme performed seemed completely wrong for the program.
As part of the promotion for her eponymous 2013 album, Beyoncé recorded a series of interviews to be released on YouTube in which she described her inspiration for some of the songs. In one of them, she showed clips of Girls Tyme’s performance on Star Search in talking about the video for her composition of “Flawless.” She explained, “When I was in the studio threading the songs together [for the album], I thought of this performance, which was a really defining moment in my life as a child. You know, I was only nine years old. [She was actually eleven.] At that time you don’t realize that you could work actually super hard and give everything you have . . . and lose. When I put Ed McMahon introducing us as ‘the hip-hop, rapping Girls Tyme,’ it clicked something in my mind.”
She also used the Star Search clip in the video for “Flawless,” a feminist tune in which she questions society’s restrictive nature concerning young women and their life choices. “We teach girls to shrink themselves,” she sings. “My daddy taught me how to love my haters.” And the angry refrain of the song? “Bow down, bitches.”
After the performance on Star Search, Mathew says he walked over to Ed McMahon, the host of the show, and asked what he would recommend for the girls. “I’ve seen a lot of crying kids on this stage,” McMahon reportedly told Knowles. “And I can tell you that the ones who make it in the end are the ones who don’t quit. They go back and woodshed and reinvent themselves, and then they’re stronger for the loss, not weaker.” Mathew has said that McMahon’s words made a lot of sense to him. In fact, he has said that this conversation was a defining moment in his life and gave him clarity on how to proceed.
The Blame Game
The morning after the Star Search performance, the moms plann
ed to take the girls to Disney World. They had told them they’d only be allowed to go if they won the contest, but actually that was just to motivate them. The mothers always intended to treat them, especially if they lost. Hopefully, the kids would forget their troubles for at least one day before flying back to Houston.
First, though, there would be a group meeting in Lonnie Jackson’s room. He’d gotten a videotape of the girls’ performance and wanted to show it to them so that they could analyze what might have gone wrong. The meeting took a dark turn, however, when Lonnie decided that it was Kelly who was the group’s true weak link. “Look at you here,” he told her, singling her out. “Wrong, Kelly! After all this time, you still haven’t learned to sing and dance at the same time, have you?” Kelly immediately burst into tears. Lonnie played the performance again, and then again. “Look at that,” he charged, pointing to her image on the screen. A couple of the other girls started to cry. “I’m just trying to help, ya’ll,” Lonnie said, frustrated. “You should know that by now.”
Eventually, Mathew joined the meeting, took a look around, and realized that things were going off the rails. “The problem is, all of y’all made mistakes,” he said, not making the situation any better. He wasn’t particularly happy about all of the crying going on, either, saying that the girls needed to be tougher than that. When he looked at Beyoncé specifically, she seemed to stuff her feelings, taking a deep breath and forcing herself with all her might not to cry. The other girls, though, didn’t have quite the same skill.
Becoming Beyoncé Page 12