By MARK SEAL, VANITY FAIR, June 2012 -- A week after Houston’s death, Narada Michael Walden, who produced many of her hits, including “How Will I Know” and “I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me),” is channeling Whitney over the telephone, conjuring up what he calls her “skyrocketing energy.” He tells me, “She was a ball of fire, a Leo, born in August! She believed in herself!” He recalls her barreling into his studio with Robyn Crawford, determined to achieve their common goal: to produce music that would last 100 years. She was 115 pounds of raw talent; all she had to do was unleash the thunder from her chest. “She wailed!” he says. “We were used to hearing that kind of voice from ladies 200 pounds! But here was this skinny woman with that kind of power.”
The voice was infectious, intoxicating. Walden remembers that Mick Jagger, “a big Whitney fan,” came to his studio to meet the princess of pop. Natalie Cole, he adds, was in awe of the Jersey girl with the voice that breathed fire. “It was like riding a rocket ship,” Walden says of his time with Houston. “It was a superhuman feat! We talk about her addiction, but when you look at Whitney Houston, you have to realize how much work she did, how much love she put out into the universe.”
The glory of her voice was evidence of the power of God, “because she was completely spiritual,” says Walden. She would give prayers of gratitude in the recording studio. Soon, though, the voice was tempered by pain and heartache. In 1992, before 800 guests at her New Jersey mansion, she married Bobby Brown. “John, her father, told me how upset he was that she was marrying Bobby,” says Gerry Griffith. “Most people were. We knew Bobby and the type of guy he was—a street guy. But Whitney was smart enough to handle somebody like Bobby.”
Having conquered music, Whitney wanted a movie career. She was pregnant when she madeThe Bodyguard with Kevin Costner, who was riding the success of his Oscar-winning Dances with Wolves, and she had a miscarriage on the set. Some thought the rough cut of the film was a miss, because there was not enough of Whitney singing. More was added, and at the last minute Costner, who was a producer, replaced the song “What Becomes of the Broken-Hearted” with one by Dolly Parton: “I Will Always Love You.” Whitney had such a strong presence that “she sucked the air out of the room,” according to David Foster, who did the landmark arrangement of the Parton song for her. The Bodyguard turned out not only to be a box-office hit but also to have the best-selling soundtrack of all time. For the next six years, Whitney would concentrate on acting as she starred in Waiting to Exhale (1995) and The Preacher’s Wife (1996).
Posted By: Richard Kigel
Tuesday, May 29th 2012 at 10:56PM
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