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Donna Summer
Donna Summer
She was the original gay icon, a sexy - orgasmic even! - disco queen with the looks, the voice and the wardrobe. And she's still going! PrideLife talk
"When people say to me Iââ¬â¢m homophobic or whatever, itââ¬â¢s really offensive on a lot of levels"
You started your career with sex disco, were you as sexy as the image suggested?
Let’s put it like this: one on one, that’s one thing, but in front of people, that’s another. I should say I was not as overtly sexy, sexual or suggestive as that image was at the time.
Were you comfortable with the image?
No, I was doing a bit of a take-off of Marilyn which I thought sexy was and I was working towards Sophia Loren. But I was actually more like Jerry Lewis or Lucille Ball, that’s how I saw myself. In most of the musicals, I played the funny parts and so I think my friends would have thought of me as the comedian.
So there’s no truth in the rumour of you having six orgasms on “Love To Love You Baby”?
Let’s just say I wasn’t having sex when I was singing! So unfortunately for those that were there, there was nothing going on in the studio at the time. I was just singing. I’m sorry.
Did you have any idea ‘I Feel Love’ was going to be such a resonant song?
No, when I recorded it with Pete Bellotte, we sat around thinking, ‘What do we write on this one?’ When I listened to it, I said, ‘We shouldn’t put that many words on this song, it’s chanty’, so it took us about three or four minutes to write those simple lines. Originally, it was a B-side and we started laughing ‘cause we were like, ‘But this is the hit!’
What was your obsession with hookers?
I had no obsession with hookers at all. “Bad Girls” was written in the days when my record company was on Sunset Boulevard. At night, there were a lot of clubs there, so there were always a lot of girls on the street trying to pick up guys. One day a friend of mine was coming back from lunch and the police harrassed her for no reason. The song evolved out of my own aggravation towards what had happened but also out of the feeling that “Who am I to throw stones?” We’re all the same really: whether she’s getting paid and I’m giving it away, we’re all out doing it, it’s about it. Who is a bad girl? In some way aren’t we all, even if it’s only in our minds.
In the early 80s, is it true that you were paranoid and hooked on prescription drugs?
Yeah, somewhat. It started kicking in from the moment I first became successful. There’s not a lot of time to regroup in this career, every day is moving forward and I think by just getting caught up in all the activity, the hype and the parties, everything, you get burnt out. And it’s real. It’s something that can cost you your life and it pretty much almost cost me mine. So when I see people out there in the world doing what I used to do, I just pray for them because I know somehow they’re not really happy. They’re just going through the motions and at some point it’s going to catch up with them.
We don’t believe you ever made the notorious AIDS comment but why do you think it happened?
I don’t know. Probably because people heard I was a Christian and they were fearful that I was going to judge them. That wasn’t the case at all. I didn’t have any preconceived notion of changing my relationship with anybody, my religion was for me, to get my life back on track. I just live with it and deal with it.
Did you ever get so tired of having to address it you thought gay people can go to hell?
I get fed up with it all the time. But if it keeps on coming up, obviously there are people who want to know something and I try to answer it to the best of my ability. But some people want to provoke you, and I don’t know what they want from me, I don’t know what I’m supposed to be.
You once said in an interview that your first boyfriend was gay…
Oh definitely! I’ve had gay friends all my life since I was a young girl. Of all the people in my neighbourhood who didn’t shun them, it was me and yes, one of my boyfriends was gay. We were extremely close and we used to kiss and make out, then obviously at some point, as he began to know himself, we weren’t so close! (laughs)… but we became best friends and he went to live in Sweden when I went to Germany. That’s why when people say to me I’m homophobic or whatever, it’s really offensive on a lot of levels. I just thought people knew me better than that.
The (rather brilliant) album Crayons is released on 23rd June.
