So when Blaire started coming down the aisle, she was just skipping around with her wild hair bouncing all over the place. She was tossing her flower petals left and right, everywhere but where they were supposed to be, and everybody watching couldn’t help but laugh.
When John walked Nippy down the aisle, I wasn’t thinking about Bobby’s past, about whether he was right for Nippy, or about whether he was a so-called bad boy. I put aside whatever hesitations I’d felt, and the only thought running through my mind was that I couldn’t believe how beautiful my daughter was. Bobby was up at the front watching her, and he must have thought so, too, because the tears just started spilling out of his eyes. As worried as I was about what kind of husband Bobby Brown would be, I have to say that on that day, he seemed completely devoted to Nippy. The two of them seemed in love, and as the gospel singer and pastor Marvin Winans, who was a close family friend, went through the ceremony, Bobby kept asking, “Can I kiss her now?” He’d keep reaching for her, with a big smile on his face, and Marvin would say, “Not yet, son.”
Finally, at the end of the ceremony, Bobby asked again, “Now can I kiss her?”
Marvin started laughing and said, “Yes, you can kiss her now,” and Bobby picked Nippy right up off her feet as everybody stood up and clapped. For better or for worse, my baby was married.
The reception was on the lawn, and there were lavender flowers everywhere—Nippy’s favorite color. She had asked me to welcome the guests, so I gave a little speech and toast. After everybody got a little bit of champagne in them, people hit the dance floor—even, at one point, John and me together. It was a beautiful night, and the party just went on and on. And there were so many people there who loved and supported Nippy—Clive Davis, Dionne, Kevin Costner, the Winans family, and all our family, of course. If the future of a marriage could be predicted by how good the wedding was, this one would have gone on forever.
The next day, Nippy and Bobby left for their honeymoon, a ten-day Mediterranean cruise that was a wedding gift from Arista and MCA. Nippy wanted some company other than Bobby, though, so she invited her brother Michael and his wife, Donna, to come along, too. I’m not sure Bobby was all that keen on having his new in-laws come along for the honeymoon—I know I wouldn’t have been—but they all got along really well and often did things together. Michael loved it, too, and he loved telling funny stories about their time on that yacht.
One day, Michael said, he, Nippy, and Bobby went out on Jet-Skis. Nippy and Michael always loved the water, because of that pool we had on Dodd Street. They were both good swimmers and loved oceans, lakes, pools—anything where they could get wet. But Bobby didn’t know how to swim, and when he accidentally turned over his Jet-Ski in the Mediterranean, he panicked. Michael said that Bobby, who was never in any danger, kept screaming “Help me! Help me!” while Michael and Nippy just sat floating nearby on their Jet-Skis, cracking up. Bobby was mad, and while he didn’t talk to Michael for the rest of that day, for the most part they had a great time.
When they got back from their honeymoon, Nippy and Bobby went right back to work. Nippy was finishing the soundtrack album for The Bodyguard, which would come out just before the movie in November. And Bobby was planning a tour to promote his new album, Bobby, which had come out just before the wedding.
Now, I knew Bobby had some success as a singer. I knew his group New Edition was popular, and that kids seemed to think he was cool. But I really didn’t care for his music. And I especially didn’t understand the appeal of his big hit song at the time, something called “Humpin’ Around.” It may have been successful, but I couldn’t stand that song or the video he made to promote it, where he was dancing and fooling around with a bunch of women on camera. I understood that Bobby’s stage act involved suggestive dancing and all that mess, with dancers and even some audience members, but a lot of people thought that “Humpin’ Around” went a little too far.
If you look at Nippy’s songs, they’re all about love—“The Greatest Love,” “I Will Always Love You,” “Saving All My Love for You” . . . Nippy sang about things that lifted you up, that meant something. From the time she was little, I always counseled her to pay attention to lyrics, and so she always tried to sing songs that had purpose and meaning to them. I don’t know what other people thought, but I’m not sure a song called “Humpin’ Around” had either purpose or meaning.
I still wasn’t sure what to think about Bobby at that point, but all we could do was hope that Nippy would be happy with him. There wasn’t much anyone could do now except wait and see how things would turn out.
CHAPTER 12
“I Never Asked for This Madness”
In the fall of 1992, just a few months after the wedding, Nippy announced that she was pregnant, and after what had happened before, I hoped and prayed that this time everything would go well. At least the timing was good—instead of all the stress of traveling and shooting a movie, she’d be able to stay at home in Mendham while she finished up work on The Bodyguard soundtrack. And Bobby had gone on tour for his record, so Bae moved in with Nippy to look after her. I knew I could trust Bae to take care of Nippy, and she did. Bae looked after Nippy like she was one of her own.
Bobby’s tour started around November, and my sons Gary and Michael both went with him, Gary to sing background, and Michael as part of security. They were scheduled to be on the road for four months, traveling across the country from New York to California. I never saw any of those shows, of course, but Michael liked to talk about them when he got back. After touring with Nippy for so long, he was amazed at how different it was to be on the road with Bobby.
When Nippy was on tour, she was a big enough star to have absolutely everything she needed—the best accommodations, luxurious tour buses, all kinds of staff and security, and pretty much anything else she had a mind to ask for. Bobby’s tour was a little more shoestring. And it was more like those old shows at the Apollo, where there were four or five acts leading up to the headliner. Those shows could go on for hours, and they always ended very late at night.
Compared to a Whitney Houston concert, where singing was the main attraction, Bobby’s stage act was more about the dancing and entertaining. People said he had a natural talent as a dancer, and he had that rough edge that some people seemed to love. He would invite girls up on stage from the audience, and when he did his “Humpin’ Around” thing, it got him in trouble with the authorities once or twice. And Michael said that unlike Nippy, who usually wanted to go back to the hotel and just hang out with friends after a concert, when Bobby finished a show they would go out and party with his crew.
Nippy was a little nervous about being at home, pregnant, while Bobby was out on tour, so she asked Michael to just keep an eye on him and make sure he remembered he was a married man now. Bobby had been an entertainer since he was very young, and he definitely knew how to enjoy drinking and partying. Just knowing that was enough to make Nippy anxious.
Yet although Nippy was sometimes nervous about what Bobby was up to, there were also moments when it was clear how much Bobby really did love her. Once, Nippy threw a party at the end of one of her tours. Bobby was there and I happened to be there, too. Bobby was drunk that night, but not falling-down drunk, and he just wandered around with a big silly smile on his face. Someone had given him a bottle of very old Scotch, and he walked around carrying that thing, offering it to anybody who looked thirsty.
At one point in the evening, he walked right up to me and said, “I am married to Whitney Houston.” He was smiling so big, like he had just won the lottery.
I just touched his face and said, “Bobby, if you want to continue to be married to her, you’d best go on to bed.”
At moments like that one, I did like Bobby—there was something childlike about him. I always felt that starting in the music business as early as he did led him to live out his teenage years in his twenties. But even though Bobby had
done his share of bad things, and I didn’t like the way he sometimes treated Nippy, I thought deep down he was a good person. I still believe that.
The whole time Nippy was pregnant, she just looked so healthy; she had a glow. And she sang her ass off, too, just like I’d done when I was carrying her. She recorded the video for “I Will Always Love You” when she was about six months along, sitting in a chair and leaning forward to hide her pregnant belly. I think she enjoyed being pregnant, although by the last couple of months, when her feet and legs started swelling up, she was ready to be done with it.
And she was also scared about giving birth. Nippy couldn’t take any kind of physical pain, and even when she had bad cramps she’d just stay in bed all day. I don’t think she’d ever really thought about what it was like to actually have a baby, but now that it was about to happen, she was scared of the pain.
She went into labor on March 4, 1993, and I went to St. Barnabas Medical Center, in Livingston, New Jersey, to be with her. I was with her there in the delivery room, and she was so tired, just holding my hand and crying. “Maaa!” she wailed when the pain got too bad. All I could say was “It won’t be long now, baby. Just hang in there.” After hours of labor, the doctors finally gave Nippy a Caesarean, and she gave birth to a beautiful little girl.
They named her Bobbi Kristina—which was a hell of a lot better than what they’d initially chosen for her. A few days earlier, when I had asked Bobby and Nippy what they were naming the baby, Bobby said some kind of crazy name I couldn’t even pronounce—Tekatia, or Takeka, or some mess like that.
“Oh, no,” I said, giving him a look. “That is not happening. You can’t do that to that poor child!”
Nippy said, “Mommy!” but she couldn’t help herself—she cracked up laughing.
“That child will have to carry that name through her whole life!” I said. “You are not giving my grandbaby that name!”
And Nippy, still laughing, said, “Mommy, he’s her father!”
I said, “I don’t give a damn if he’s Houdini! That is not happening! That name is not coming into this family!”
“Well, what do you want to name her, then?” Nippy asked.
“I don’t know! Just name her Christina or something, some nice name like that,” I said. And so they ended up naming her Bobbi Kristina—because I suppose Christina with a C was still too conventional for them.
Bobby may have given Nippy some flak later about all that, but I didn’t care. That was some flak she had to take. I still feel like I saved Bobbi Kristina, who we called Bobbi Kris for a while, and then just Krissi, from a lifetime of trouble with that other name.
Oh, how we loved that baby girl—everybody, from Nippy’s friends to family to people who worked for her, just couldn’t get enough of that child. She was so pretty, and such a sweet baby, laughing and smiling all the time, that people always wanted to see her and hold her. A few months after Krissi was born, Nippy called me, pretending to be all huffy. “What’s up with all this?” she complained. “Nobody ever comes to see me anymore—it’s always, ‘Where’s Krissi? Is Krissi up?’ ” But I could hear the smile in her voice—Nippy was so proud of that baby. And she spoiled her half to death.
Of course, I loved Krissi as well, but I tried not to indulge her too much. When she was just a little thing, maybe a year old, we did a cover shoot for Ebony magazine in Phoenix, where Nippy was shooting Waiting to Exhale. We were sitting by a pool, and the photographer was trying to get a good photo of the three of us, but Krissi was acting out. I was holding her, but she just kept on squirming and whining, no matter how we tried to calm her down.
Finally, I said, “Okay, that’s it. Nippy, I’m just going to throw this child into the pool.” And Nippy busted out laughing. Krissi quieted right down, and because Nippy and I were both cracking up, the photographer quickly snapped a couple of shots. On the cover of the May 1995 issue of Ebony, there’s a beautiful photo of Nippy and me laughing, with little Krissi just looking straight into the camera like the best-behaved child you ever saw.
Just four months after Krissi was born, Nippy went on tour again, this time to promote the soundtrack to The Bodyguard. Even though she was a new mother with a new baby, Nippy never had any debate about the travel arrangements: she was taking Krissi on the road. When Nippy was busy with her responsibilities, Bae took care of Krissi and made sure she had everything she needed or wanted. It didn’t take long for traveling with Krissi to be perfectly normal, and by the time she was a year old she’d already been around the world.
Fun as it was for Nippy to have Krissi with her, that tour in 1994 was tough. Ever since the release of her first record back in 1985, Nippy’s life had been a constant wave of concerts, interviews, promotions, awards shows, and everything else. Nine years of all that, plus having a new baby, was taking its toll on her—and on her voice.
A few weeks after the tour started, in mid-July 1994, Nippy was scheduled to perform at the closing ceremony of soccer’s World Cup, which was held that year in Los Angeles. This was a big concert at an outdoor stadium, for a lot of money, but Nippy’s voice was shot.
This wasn’t the first time something like this had come up. Nippy was getting older, and from time to time, it showed in her voice. When she was nineteen or twenty, she’d get hoarse every now and then, but the next day she’d bounce back just fine. Now that she was thirty, though, things were starting to change, and her voice required a little more healing time.
She felt so bad about letting everybody down for this World Cup concert, she just didn’t know what to do. So she told one of her assistants who was traveling with her, “Call Mommy. I need her here.”
I took the first flight I could get to Los Angeles, and when I arrived at Nippy’s hotel, I went straight to her and pulled her into my arms. Nippy started to cry. “Mommy,” she said, “What am I going to do?” We sat down on her couch, and she laid her head in my lap, like she’d done when she was a little girl, and the tears kept on coming.
Nippy was in a state, because even though her throat was a mess, the promoters kept pushing her to perform. She had seen a doctor, who advised her that her throat was ulcerated and she risked permanent damage if she didn’t give her vocal cords a rest. The doctor wanted her to cancel not only the World Cup concert, but the next two weeks of shows, too.
As was standard practice for big outdoor events, Nippy had made a safety tape just a few days before her voice gave out. She always hated doing it, but the contract required it, and in this case it was a good thing she had. The promoters really didn’t want to use it, but the next morning when we all met, I just said, “We are going to use that tape.” And then, turning to Nippy, I said, “Your doctors have told you to cancel the next two weeks of shows while your throat heals, so that’s what you’re going to do. Your team will take care of whatever comes after that. Don’t you worry.”
Now, up to this point, Nippy had rarely missed shows—and whenever she did miss, it was never for a frivolous reason. She knew that people were depending on her, from the band to the crew to the people who paid good money to hear her sing. If she took a night off, she understood that the ripple effect went on and on, affecting hundreds if not thousands of people. And she took that very seriously.
If we were going to cancel the next two weeks of her tour, it meant we had to get all her band and crew back home, and they would be out their pay for those two weeks. Nippy was miserable. “These people are counting on me, Mommy. They have families to feed,” she said. “But I just can’t do it.” She couldn’t stand to leave them hanging, so she worked out a financial arrangement with everyone for those two weeks. It wasn’t something she was required to do, but she just believed it was the right thing to do.
Nippy did perform at that World Cup concert as scheduled, but it was the one time she actually allowed the safety tape to be used. As much as she hated it, she knew that in the end it would
have been worse not to do the concert at all.
Nippy’s brother Michael was often on tour with her, and he was constantly amazed at how she pushed herself to perform. “Hundreds of people on payroll, thousands of fans, show after show after show,” he’d say. “And it’s all on Nip’s skinny little shoulders.” He didn’t see how she could hold up. I think at this point, she was probably starting to wonder about that herself.
She was thirty now, and she had a husband and a baby and all the money she would ever need. She had done more, seen more, than most people ever get a chance to in life. She didn’t talk to me about it then, but I later learned that Nippy seriously considered walking away from it all after Krissi was born. She was tired.
Everybody was pulling at her all the time, and Nippy was someone who just couldn’t be rude to people. She’d be sitting at a restaurant, or walking to her car, and people would go right up and grab her to take a picture—without even asking or saying a damn thing to her. On planes, the flight attendants would even ask her for autographs. After The Bodyguard came out, Nippy, who was already one of the most famous people in the world, somehow became an even bigger star. Even if she wanted to walk away—where was she gonna go?
She would sometimes say to me, “Ma, I’m tired.” And I’d tell her, “Baby, you don’t have to keep doing this.” But this was the business she had chosen, and maybe she didn’t know how to leave it. One time, she was looking out a window, just thinking, and she said, “You know, I never asked for this madness. I couldn’t have imagined it.” There was no way anyone could have prepared for what she ended up going through.
The truth is, all Nippy ever wanted to do was sing. But because she was so gifted, and so beautiful, just singing wasn’t ever going to be an option. “God was good to you, baby,” I told her. I wouldn’t be surprised if sometimes she wished otherwise.
Remembering Whitney: My Story of Love, Loss, and the Night the Music Stopped Page 14