032 Hot Stuff Transcript (Donna Summer)

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Michael: This person died in 2012, age 63. She was born in Boston, one of seven children. She grew up singing in church and decided in her teens to make music her career.

Friend: Grew up in Boston, one of seven. Whitney Houston?

Michael: Not Whitney Houston, but not a bad guess. In the late 1960s, she joined the Munich Company of the rock musical "Hair" and relocated to Germany.

Friend: Germany. And "Hair." Okay. I love a good musical theater. I should be able to get this. Uh, Joni Mitchell?

Michael: Joni Mitchell is still with us. In 2009 she performed in Oslo at the concert honoring the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to President Obama.

Friend: Oh gosh. It's probably Kai Label. No, she's still alive. I don't know.

Michael: She had doe eyes, a cascade of hair and sinuous dance moves.

Friend: Ooh. Sinuous dance moves, which I do not have. Twiggy? It's not Twiggy. It's it Twiggy.

Michael: Not Twiggy. Not Twiggy. You're starting to hone in though. Okay. She became a born again Christian in 1979.

Friend: That does not help me. I am so sorry.

Michael: Her voice, airy and ethereal or brightly assertive, sailed over dance floors and leapt from radios from the mid seventies, well into the eighties. Her music was a template for 1970s disco.

Friend: Disco. Disco. Disco. Disco. Disco. Oh, gimme a minute.

Michael: Her hits include Hot Stuff, Bad Girls, I Feel Love, Last Dance, and She Works Hard for the Money.

Friend: Is it Donna Summer? Isn't that Donna Summer? Donna Summer!

Michael: Today's dead celebrity is Donna Summer.

Yes. Took me a minute. Took me a minute back out there. . I thought I was real hot stuff.

The.

Welcome to Famous and Greatly. I'm Michael Osborne. My name is Amit Kapoor. And on this show we choose a celebrity who died in the last 10 years and review their quality of life. We go through a series of categories to figure out the things in life that we would actually desire and ultimately answer a big question, Would I want that life today?

Donna Summer died 2012, age 63. Category one, grading the first line of their obituary, Donna Summer, the multimillion selling singer and songwriter whose hits captured both the giddy hedonism of the 1970s disco era and the feisty female solidarity of the early 1980s, Died on Thursday at her home in Naples, Florida.

She was 60. Pretty good.

Amit: Really good. I like the adjective followed by the like noun to describe the decade.

Michael: Yeah, well that's my favorite part. It's the way they place her in cultural context. Giddy hedonism of 1970s disco era, and then feisty female solidarity of the early 1980s. That's good. Yeah. Would you have described the early 1980s as a feisty female solidarity

Amit: era?

Absolutely not . Yeah.

Michael: Well, I was too young to remember, and I don't What do they mean by that? Do you know what they. I

Amit: think that referring to like the, the music of works hard for the money and hot stuff of just sort of, rather than being sensu. This kind of first person I declare Yeah. Type of thing, but uh, yeah.

I don't know about feisty

Michael: solidarity. It's like, what does that mean? It sounds good. Yes. When you read it the first

Amit: time, I think with, with good intentions, what they meant to say is empowered.

Michael: Maybe it was there, but is it actually stand out compared to the mid eighties or late seventies or nineties, two thousands or whatever?

Or is it even true or is it even true? Right. Get a hedonism of the seventies though. That's. Giddy. Giddy. Yeah, I think so. Disco to me is a little bit silly. It's so, you know, over the top, the outfits are kind of ridiculous and the music is like assertive and the, you know, lights and spectacle of it all is just so like glittering and dazzling that I think that giddy is not a bad word.

Okay. And giddy hedonism is kind of clever. That's nice. Yeah, it is. It's like hedonism, which is a bad thing, but it's skinny, so I don't know. It's okay. It's bubbly. It's okay. Yeah, they're giggling about it and everybody was coked up, so it's. Yes. So what did they say about

Amit: multi-million? Something sounded odd.

They to, Yeah, they didn't say multimillion

Michael: dollar, they just said multi-million selling. So that's hyphenated. Multi-million hyphen selling.

Amit: It's weird sounding. Multi-million selling.

Michael: Yeah, it is a little bit seats. Yeah. Cuz they're saying she are multi apples, multimillion . It's supposed be apples. Yeah, I, I don't know.

It's, This is what's funny about this obituary is that. I read it and we both kinda looked up like pretty good, and then we start picking through it, and I'm finding faults here

Amit: in the obituary, but not in the language directed towards Don. Do you see any of

Michael: that? But in a way they don't actually say a whole hell of a lot about her.

I mean, they say more about the culture and like what's going on around her than they do about who she is.

Amit: I'm gonna defend them on that though. I think that she was like defining of those two cultures at the tail end of one. In the beginning of the other. I agree

Michael: with that, but like, I don't know the word diva got thrown around, you know?

I mean, they could have said Disco Queen here somewhere, which was an official nickname, right? They don't really talk about her personality or what she uniquely did. You're right that her music captures these two chapters of pop music. Still. I think it's overall pretty good. What's your score? Wow, that's higher than I expected.

Is it? Yeah. I didn't have much

Amit: complaints. What did I say over the last three minutes?

Michael: Well, multimillion is kind of confusing and I didn't like feisty. You didn't like feisty? Uh, so that was it. Yeah. I'm going seven. Seven for the seventies. Think seven for the seventies. Okay. Seven and nine. Pretty good.

First line of the obituary. All right. Category two, Five things I love about you here. Amit and I work together. Come up with five reasons why we love this person, why we wanna be talking about them in the first place. All right. Should I go first? Yes. I wrote acted her songs. So she talks about this in her biography.

So she has a background in theater. She was in the performance hair in Germany for a number of years, and she also took on a bunch of theater roles for about seven years while she was living in Germany from ages, roughly 18 to 25 or so. So that's kind of her background. I mean, she wanted to be famous, she wanted to be a performer.

She did sing, She was part of a rock group early on. But she talks about when she starts really making records, you know, in her mid twenties, how her approach to songwriting was to sing the part of a character. She approached a song as an actor would approach a script, which I think is. A lot of performers do that probably, but I'd never heard it described that way before.

Reading her biography. You say in the book you approached this song like an actress. Mm-hmm. , because you didn't think of yourself as having that kind of really sexy persona . It was really different and so I imaged Marilyn Monroe and. Just began to think, Well, how would Marilyn sing this song? And she would be very soft.

And, and then I, you know, I, I started playing with the thought in my mind. And then I, so as I began to sort of think of it her way through her, I began to understand who the song was for and who the song was about. And I tapped into it and recorded. I think what it was for her was liberating. That was a way of performing and coming up with songs that made her feel comfortable enough to be able to do it.

You know, Fall throated. I like that approach to

Amit: art. So it's singing as storytelling, but not necessarily your own

Michael: story. Yeah, but I don't. You can do it effectively unless you have some connection with that character. Yes. I guess the reason this is a thing I love is that it's something I'd never thought about before and it's something I'd like to incorporate into my life.

Yeah. Cause it's

Amit: kind of what we do as just fans and amateurs is that when we are singing somebody else's song and the car, the shower, or at a party, we are just trying to channel them. Yes. They may be trying to channel somebody else but karaoke is that Yeah. Is just channel. Somebody else.

Michael: So I maybe overall what it is really is a relationship to music as a musician.

It's a relationship to music that I like. Yes. So that's my number.

Amit: I need to think about that one. I don't know if I love it. Okay. It's gonna settle in. Okay. First I was bothered by it. Yeah. Now I'm kind of okay with it. Okay. You I'll say number two. Yeah. Um, I went with, uh, family

Michael: togetherness. Ah, that's actually kind of on mine

Amit: too.

The environment she grew up in. Yes. She was in a three story house with like four families in it. It's like her and her family, and one floor, and then one set of aunts and uncles and cousins on another floor. And another set of aunts and uncles and cousins on the third floor, and she said all together, maybe 20 children in the household.

And what she described it as is like, how could we not be singing? There was just 20 kids running around and it just felt like singing all the time. So AI just liked the structure of that household. Mm-hmm. the community support. But secondly, I'd like how she accredits that to her singing ability. It was just the togetherness that basically brought about song Yeah.

And brought about a vibrance in the household. And so I like that about her. Uh, and one example I saw is that when she did, when Love to love You Baby, hit the charges, uh, the first thing she did was not buy herself a house. She bought her parents a new house and she just has a really

Michael: great sense of family.

Good answer. All right. Should I take number three? Yes. I'm gonna go with gardening and painting. Her home life is actually really great, like really great, especially after the mid eighties when she sort of commits to being at home a little bit more. And by this point she's got three children and the on this farm in Thousand Oaks, California.

And when she describes this period of her life, it sounds like there's some real, you know, family drama in some places, but it also sounds really great. So she takes up painting because her neighbor, Sylvester Stallone turned her onto it. Oh, I love celebrity's neighbors. Yeah. Isn't that great? And like Rambo, you know, watching Bob Ross sounds pretty great, right?

And. Getting Donna somewhere into it too. She's a very creative individual, right? She's sort of bubbling all over the place, and she's also really into gardening. She talks about another famous neighbor, Sophia Lauren. You know, they would talk about gardening and they'd talk about like having each other over for dinner.

She actually cooked. Uh, an Italian dinner for Sophia Lauren, who's Italian, and it was apparently a disaster to kind of like, great, let's all have a good laugh fiasco where she got a lot of her family to try and cook an Italian meal. Anyway, there's a, a picture of her home life that's like creative but also, you know, sort of indulging in the small gardening and painting that.

To me, those two things kind of captured

Amit: so together. How would you capture those in a thing you love?

Michael: This is also a like breathing life into a lively, vivacious home. That's what I hear and see in her story a lot to the point of parenting. Her daughters are all very successful, well balanced, like.

Healthy individuals and she's a very proud mother. And her second marriage, we'll get to this in a second, really does sound like a very well balanced, great marriage. So there is a commitment to the sort of like my home needs to be a. Sacred, wonderful place where creative things are happening, where relationships are nurtured, but where there's sort of, you know, an attention to family.

I guess these gardening and painting in a way are the outward expressions of the inward idea that you pointed to with your number two. But I wanna have a home where I'm doing those kinds of things where, where I'm gardening on the weekends and you know, where I'm like, You know what? Let's take Saturday to.

Paint a landscape somewhere. Yeah. It's admirable.

Amit: Yeah. It's admirable and

Michael: unexpected. Totally. Totally. So that's my number three.

Amit: Okay. I like it. So number four, I went, She was an early advocate for mental health. So you alluded in the quiz to her being a born again Christian in the late seventies, but she went through a major depressive cycle.

Yes. After that first kind of round of stardom, I think there was some in authenticness to this character that she was playing. Yeah. I think there was a lot of loneliness. To it. But she said things like, nobody could see me. The only people that could see me were God. And she was very open to the fact that she was on the brink of suicide.

Yeah. And she talked about this in the eighties and nineties and in interviews and all, and that was just, it was still not that common to be a celebrity open about those kind of troubles at the time. Yeah. I'm

Michael: sitting here looking at you. You look so composed, so secure. So, c. Are you all these things? I don't think so.

I'm a nervous wreck. I think most of the time,

Amit: what I'm rewarding her, I guess, for a thing I love is the bravery, right? I don't think it made any, uh, tremendous difference at that time. It wasn't a public conversation as much as it is say today, but the bravery of being open

Michael: about it, . That's great. Actually, as you're describing, I'm like, Yeah, I saw that and learned that, but I didn't quite realize it's important.

So, and it

Amit: was, I mean, it's not dissimilar to when we did an episode on Shirley Temple. Yeah. And she had breast cancer and she just, before her, it was, it was awkward to have a public conversation about breast cancer. It was a, it was a private. Disease. Yeah. And she was public about it and she invited the press and to talk about it.

Okay. Donna Summer didn't do to that extent, but she was open about it in interviews within the same decade that she was experiencing

Michael: it. It is something that's changed that it's hard to mark of when in culture it became okay to say, I'm hurting inside and I'm struggling. Right. And being out with it. Yep.

All right. Can take number five. Mm-hmm. . All right. I wrote Looks for miracles. Now I know on the past few famous and Gravy episodes, uh, Muhammad Ali and Gary Shandling in particular, I've been drawing a lot of attention to spiritual pursuits. Yes. I don't wanna make this something I'm doing too much of. But I do love it here.

Okay. And let me tell you how and why I love it. In her biography over and over, she points to, and here I think, you know, my God was involved. She nearly drowns in a swimming pool at age eight. She's walking on the shallow end and wanders into the deep end. And at the last minute somebody notices she's about to drown and she talks about like looking up through the water and seeing.

What she understood to be heaven. Then another example in her teens, she witnesses a burglary that turns into a homicide and she is hesitant about going to the cops with it. She eventually does go to the cops with it, and the boys in the neighborhood who had perpetrated this crime are now sort of out for vengeance, so she's no longer safe at home.

This makes it okay for her parents to say, Go ahead and go onto New York, and then later go onto Germany, and she's like, Had that event not happened, I don't think I would've had. Freedom to move away and become the pop star I was always meant to be. There's another story where she right as love to Love you, baby is becoming a hit in America.

She's still living in Germany. She is driving through the Black Forest with her husband and she has a. All of a sudden can't breathe. They pull over the car, she collapses. There happens to be a heart hospital in this obscure little corner of the black forest where had that hospital not been there, she's confident she would've died.

So there's another moment where she sees a miracle. I got two more. When she does get to America, a few months later, she gets into a limousine and her song happens to be playing on the radio. Just coincidence. And she thought at first that this was a grand welcoming. They're like, No, it's just on the radio.

And then the last one is she did have a suicide attempt in the seventies where the way she describes it, she was on ledge. Uh, thinking about jumping the wind blows the drape from the curtain, gets caught up in her leg and she's a little tangled up and it delays the moment and a, sounds like a cleaning lady walked in and sort of interrupted it, and that's the moment that led her back to the church.

Faith. Yeah, her renewed faith. Okay. There's a lot of examples in there. They're all kind of extraordinary stories in their own, but all of them you could take a look at and you could be a. Non-spiritual person. You could be an atheist or a nonbeliever, but whatever you wanna call and say, Ah, these are just things that happen in a life.

I think it's important. To entertain the idea of miracles, to believe that a higher power of some sort may be involved in your life and may be intervening in these moments. So I like her spirituality in the sense that I like that she's choosing to see it in these moments. Whether God, if you wanna call God, God, or higher power, or whatever is there in these moments, it's sort of beside the point.

It's whether or not you're looking to infuse your life with meaning. That's what I love.

Amit: Yes. Cause you can look at it one way and just say, There I had all these near death experiences and or coincidences and how lucky am I? Correct? Uh, or you can attribute it to just another word instead of coincidence of miracle.

That's right. And that gives you more meaning in life, which is probably gonna guide you through a more fulfilled

Michael: life. So the thing I love here is looks for miracle. Okay. That's how I summed it up, and I promise I'll quit bringing up God and Spirituality on Famous. We don't know who our next episode

Amit: is.

That's a good point we'll have

Michael: to see. All right, so let's recap number one. I said acting in her songwriting. Fair enough. Fair enough. Okay, you accepted number two. Family togetherness. Family togetherness. I said number three, gardening and painting, but breathing ho. Breathing creativity into the home life, let's call it that.

Okay. Uh, number

Amit: four, open about mental health struggles at an

Michael: early era. Correct. And then five looks for miracles. All right. Okay. Shall we move on? Yes. Category three, Malkovich Malkovich. This category is named after the movie being John Malkovich, in which people take a portal into John Markovic's mind, and they can have a front row seat to his experiences.

Oh, I wonder if we have the same one. What do you got? Can

Amit: I give you a word? Yeah.

Michael: Italy. Oh, no, I don't not. Okay. Yeah. Okay, good. All right. We don't have the

Amit: same one. We don't. Good. Good. Okay. So love to love you, baby. Yeah. This was her breakthrough song, uh, was also coincidentally, the longest song of the seventies.

That's right. Hit number one. As you said, it's not very lyrical. It's uh,

Michael: It's orgasmic.

Amit: It's orgasmic. Right. It was criticized a lot that way. It's a

Michael: really sexual sens song. Yes. And a

Amit: lot of the singing is things like moans and all that sounds orgasmic. Yeah. Naturally. It was a huge hit. Yeah. So she would perform it. She didn't have a huge catalog back then, so this was like her main marque song.

Yeah. So there was one concert in Italy. Yeah, This was written about in The Telegraph, and it says she was in a tent in Italy, 5,000 men, almost no women. And was singing Love to Love You baby. Fairly scantily clad. And the guys just got so wrapped up that they. Push the stage back and she had to run off the stage to her trailer out the back, and then the guys came to the trailer and started to rock the trailer.

Donna thought, I'm going to die today. I'm not going to get out of here. It's not the kind of song you just want to throw out there. The wielding of that much power over these 5,000 Italian men With a song.

Michael: Yeah.

Amit: You gotta question it. Right? Like, why does this have so much power? Yeah. And why are men so fucking stupid?

What do you think you're possibly getting, being one of 5,000 men by rocking a stage to where the performer has to go and run off to her trailer, Then you chase the trailer and try to knock that over. Yeah.

Michael: That I don't know what is, What

Amit: is. What is the end goal? What is the energy and the accomplishment?

Cause you're aroused and you think that Oh, okay.

Michael: Is gonna end somehow She's gonna, she's gonna pick me now. Yeah. Yeah. I, I don't know. I don't understand mob mentality overall, but in terms of this being a mouth of its moment, what you're interested in is her trying to understand what's happening to her.

No.

Amit: So I'm saying the first part is just the wielding of that power. Mm. What does it feel like? Yeah. To have that power. Secondly is the confusion that goes with. People's reaction to this power, you are wielding over them. Yeah, that's just, it's just a baffling of the human condition and I guess you wanna say the human male condition of that era where I'm trying to zero in on is the third.

So it has something to do with at the end there that this is not a song that you just throw out there. Yeah. You know that there is so much power in the subtle energy of this song and the way that she sings it and performs it as well as her character and appearance. And she

Michael: thinks she's gonna die from it.

That is a really interesting comment that you don't just throw this out there. I mean, what great art does is draw our attention to something that's hiding in plain sight, and it brings out emotions that were hiding right beneath the surface and. Ultimately, you know what is happening here is some version of sexual repression in a mob setting, which is why you don't just throw this song out there, I guess.

Well, it's almost like

Amit: as hypnotic powers. Yeah. Just given what the time was, there was a formula that could be tapped into of the combination of music and sensuality. Yeah. And the performer. That could really just raise something uncontrollable. Yeah. Out of people. And

Michael: that's mystifying. I mean, to your point about having that power, that is confusing.

You know, I mean to be inside that trailer and be like, What in the hell did I unleash here?

Amit: Yeah. Well it's to have that power and like then later just being afraid of having that power. Yeah. There's a lot of things going on in that moment, you know, it seems so commonplace to us now, like, cuz Madonna, you know, mainstreamed that type of performance.

Yeah. Later on. But Donna Summer was, um, actually like this, she. Pre Madonna , uh, they said this in the a e biography, is that she was the original pre

Michael: Madonna. That's so good.

Amit: So it wa it just wasn't normal. It was new back then. That wasn't happening in Italy on stages in front of 5,000 people.

Michael: That's a great mal conviction.

It's

Amit: a complex one, but I think we narrowed it down. It's wielding this much power. Why does this power exist? Yeah. Should I have even

Michael: unleashed it? Yeah. Is there a Pandoras box of some sort here that I didn't anticipate? Exactly. Yeah. So how were you transformed? What were some of the thi things that you were told you needed to wear or say, or act by?

You know, everybody has different portions of their personality, and I tend to be quiet and to myself and withdrawn, and I can be extremely outgoing when I need to be because I grew up in a big family. But, uh, you know, they wanted me to, to look a certain way to, to be a certain way. And they said, Well, you're gonna be a star.

People aren't asking for you. They were asking for this image of you. And so that's kind of what you know was done. They began to transform me into an image. How did you like the image? I mean, I didn't particularly care for the sex image. Um, I thought it was kind of narrow and I felt like I was gonna have to break out real soon, otherwise I wasn't gonna make it.

Okay. Okay. My about, I think you're gonna like this one inspiration for a very specific song. Okay. So this is a story from her biography. I think you're gonna like it. The story goes. She was going to an after party for Julio AGLs. She has an upset stomach and had to go right to the bathroom, and as she's going to the bathroom, she sees this.

She describes her as an attractive restroom attendant. Napping next to a small tv. Donna Summer looks at this attendant and she feels this wave of sympathy for her, and she just sort of blurts out. She works hard for the money. And then she's like, Oh, that's a song. So she's feeling the inspiration and then she's asking her manager for something to write on, and all they can find is toilet paper.

So she starts scribbling the words as all these fancy dressed women are coming in and out of the stall, and the bathroom attendant continues to nap.

The reason this is my ov, which moment? I love a burst inspiration like that. Ah, yes. And then this song, she describes it as her most recognized song that everything is happening in this moment, and all of a sudden she's hit with an idea for what becomes one of her biggest pop hits. And I like that it was inspired by a bathroom attendant.

Yes. You know, who slept through the whole thing? So I wanna be behind the eyes. The burst of inspiration. I've had those kinds of bursts of inspiration of like, Oh, I got a great idea. Remember

Amit: I texted you on Thursday and I said, Hey, I've gotten inspiration on something. We'll talk about it at dinner on Sunday.

You just called me five minutes later and you're like, No, I can't wait. I need to hear it. Yeah. What was it? I don't think we can say, cuz it's about a future episode.

Michael: Oh, that's

Amit: right. That's. That's right. I have a nice n note to your story. Yeah. So that woman's name was Otta Johnson, I believe, and she put her picture on the back of the album cover.

Yes, I

Michael: actually did see that. Yeah. That's a nice little addendum. All right, let's take a break.

Amit: Michael, do you know one of the ways in which I'm cool.

Michael: What did you have in mind? I have vinyl records. Oh, that is cool. Vinyl records are a lot of fun. I love studying the old covers, and I love that the music is actually on the record.

Right. It's like been engraved.

Amit: Totally. And you will never guess where I buy my vinyl records from.

Michael: I would assume that you are going to. Garage sales. That is

Amit: incorrect. I exclusively get my vinyl records at Half

Michael: Price Books. I'm sorry, you said Half Price Books that you're talking about Vinyl records?

Amit: Yes.

Half Price Books is more than books, Board games, vinyl records, CDs, movies, puzzles. And even brand new best sellers.

Michael: My goodness, it's so much more than just books. Yes. But when it comes to books, I do know that Half Price Books is the nation's largest new and used book seller with 120 stores in 19 states.

And Half Price Books is also online@hpv.com.

Hey, Famous and Gravy listeners. There's a podcast I want to tell you about called Dismembering Horror. It's hosted by Ryan McDuffy and Tim Aslan, and on each show they choose a horror film and they break down what did and didn't work. There's something about a horror movie where there's always something to talk about.

It's a unique format where you really learn a lot about filmmaking, and it sort of just captures the spirit of what it's like to walk out of a horror movie and sit around having drinks with your friends and breaking it down. I was actually on a recent episode and had a ton of fun talking to these guys, so Dismembering Horror with Ryan McDuffy and Tim Aslan.

Highly recommend. All right. Category four, love and marriage. How many marriages, Also, how many kids? And is there anything public about these relationships? She married homo, Summer German man, which is where she gets her last name. It's he spells it S O M M E R. Later she changes it to S U M M E R. I wanna ask something about that.

All right. Well, they married in 1973. Donna is 24. They had one child, Natalia, everybody calls her Mimi. She and Helmouth were divorced in 1976. Part of it was that Donna had an extramarital affair with Gunther, who's a painter and a very problematic figure in her life in the mid to late seventies. There's sort of a tumultuous, dramatic relationship with Gunther.

Okay. This is one of her big, big regrets in life is that she had an extramarital. Because it goes against her values as a Christian. So that was her first marriage. And then her second marriage, she married Brooklyn Dream Singer, Bruce Sado. July 16th, 1980. Donna is 31. Uh, they had two children. Brooklyn and Amanda, both of whom are performers.

Yes. And artists have been in their own rights. So three daughters overall. And she's with Bruce until she.

Amit: Yes. And uh, Helmouth was an actor with her in hair.

Michael: I believe they knew each other from theater. Okay, that's right. But hard to know what to make of that. I think that this is in some ways the most personally chaotic period in Donna Summer's life in the 1970s.

It's 1975 when disco begins to take hold and when she begins to define it and define the template for it.

Amit: Yes. And it sounds like the child from the first marriage, Mimi. Yes. And the two girls from the second marriage that she did raise them all together. And she said she tried to make it, She said this in one of the documentaries I watched as much as, uh, just a normalized

Michael: household as she could.

Yeah. And it also sounds like they had a good relationship with one another from what you can. Here's my basic take home with this in terms of the love and marriage category. Had a rocky start finds her footing in a new career. Kind of, you know, on her rise to becoming disco Queen manages to identify somebody who she has a real kinship with, cuz Bruce is involved in a lot of her music.

They're singing back up, but they, he's also writing together. I mean, he's right there with her and they're like together, you know, for the next several decades. Like, I feel like this is. When we talk about, uh, death celebrities who've had multiple marriages, one of the things I want to find is like, did you learn something from the first?

Or are you carrying your same baggage and bullshit into subsequent marriages? I've come to appreciate that. Yeah, I see this as like I made a mistake with my first marriage. I wasn't at a place where I could handle everything, and I think she finds a lot of comfort, soulless, and love in her second.

Overall, I'd say high scores on the love and marriage category. Plus again, her daughters look really well balanced and really, like, she's proud of them. And she did make a joke about, you know, did, did they start asking about your sex symbolism in the, in the 1970s? She's like, Yeah, I just had to say it was a sort of different time, like the way she handles that I'm sort of impressed with too.

That's basically my take on the love. I've got two points

Amit: I wanna bring up. Yeah. One, you talk about these miracles that she looks for. Yeah, she married into the name Donna Summer. Yeah. And I don't know that Donna Gaines is gonna be like top of the charts. Like Donna Summer is just such a perfect, giddy, hedonistic

Michael: name.

Yeah, it's amazing. Chip and Joanna have done so much with, uh, the Gaines's name, . This is very true. Donna Summer is a great name,

Amit: and it was S O M M E R. Apparently there was an album Misprint that printed it, S U M M E R, and she kept

Michael: it. I didn't say that. That's, that's sort of perfect.

Amit: Yeah. And it's a musical name and maybe if she attributes so much to miracles, maybe she's saying, Well, that was part of the reason for this first marriage

Michael: Yeah.

Is that was part of my catapulting into success. I mean, one thing I really like about her is that I do see somebody who's like working on themselves. For their whole lives. I think that she's creative. She's got a lot of energy. She's feels a certain kind of destiny at a young age. She moves to Germany and is in the performance hair.

She has these relationships with men and Vienna and you know, is living this sort of like, Artistic, extravagant, amazing life. And then she becomes a disco queen. I mean, one of the things she talks about in the lead up to her suicide attempt and subsequent commitment to Christianity is that like there comes a point where it's like, how much higher can you go?

You need something. This is why so many performers and artists fall into substance abuse. It's cuz you get to a point where there's just nothing left. And what she found instead of those things was a commitment to family and spirituality. It's like looking at a flower in the bud and you first see the bud and you say, Wow, fantastic.

The trees are budding. And then you go back and the leaves are out. And then finally there's a flower. And I feel that when I came to America, I was in the budding stage and um, maybe I'm springing a leaf about now and maybe one day I'll be a blossom and, um, That's sort of how I look at it all. I love that.

I see that in the marriage and family record. Yeah. Okay. Category five, net worth. I saw 75 million. That was the

Amit: number Jesus. That's good. That's a lot of money. That is a lot of money.

Michael: Well, and here's what I saw. This was almost a thing I loved about her. I mean, most of her hits her late seventies, early eighties, but there was enough lasting impact that anytime she chose to go perform, she would sell out the stadium.

I like that actually, that she sort of capitalized on peak fame. She continued to write and perform songs and try and, you know, was involved in not just painting, but also it sounded like at one point trying to develop a TV show or. You know, Broadway musical. I mean, she did other things, but no matter what, she could get out there and sing hot stuff and the crowd's gonna go nuts.

Amit: Yeah. Which is so generational because to me, she's not that common of a name, but I think just a little bit older than us, 10 years or so older than us. Yeah. And she's filling out arenas. VH one used to do the Diva specials. Yeah. And they did their first one, I think in 98 or 99. It's this mix of like Snia Twain plus Aretha Franklin and so forth.

And she was gonna be on it. But then when she met with the VH one producers, they decided instead just to give her her own special. And that's just, Talks about how broad her appeal is.

Michael: She was a bigger star than I realized actually, and I didn't quite appreciate just how important she was for at least seven or eight years there because it was like just before my time.

Yes. Yeah. What else to say about 75 million? Anything? She worked hard for it . I agree with that. All right. Category six, Simpsons C. Night Live, or at Halls of Fame. This category is a measure of how famous a person is. We include both guest appearances on SNL or the Simpsons, as well as impersonations. So Sarah Night Live, shockingly nothing.

Amit: Never

Michael: musical guest. Never a musical guest. I really hunted around for this. I was like, She's had to have been right. I don't know why not. Every time you Google Saturday Night Live, Donna Summer, what keeps coming up is this Sherry Terry skit semi down. Now, I don't know if you've ever seen this. Yeah, it's the, I was like, Why is this keep coming up?

And the reason is

SMA Donna. Some are Donna. Right? Anyway, that's it. Wow. We invite listener

Amit: feedback on this. If somebody knows to the contrary, please write us to

Michael: hello@famousandgravy.com please. I, I, I could not find it and I really looked. All right, Simpsons, There's a skit where Homer skips work and he creates a little dummy in his work seat.

The dummy includes like a bucket head and it's like a stick and some clothes that it is like he's stuffing a bed and sneaking out. Right. And he leaves a tape recorder playing. Uh, he works hard for the money. Yes. Yeah, it's pretty good. Uh, that was the only, she didn't voice herself ever

Amit: on the scene. I've seen, remember Homer singing hot stuff also at some

Michael: point?

Well, I'll tell you the reference I have with the word hot stuff. Do you remember when Homer is worried that Bart might be gay and he takes him to the steel mill? He was like, You need to go see some mainly man. Oh, hot stuff

Amit: coming through . Yeah. Hot

Michael: stuff coming through. That still comes up in my household, like if fall's in the kitchen, you know, cooking dinner and I'm trying to get around her to the.

I'll, I'll say hot stuff coming through. So anyway, that was, uh, what I found on the Simpsons Halls. She does have a Hollywood Star. Yes. Got it. In 1992, she was, uh, posthumously, inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame organizers were actually like shame faced that she wasn't inducted already.

Uh, at the time of her death, she was on Armenio Hall in 1989. Yes. There's got a couple other things, but go ahead. I wanted to amend it. She has an

Amit: Academy

Michael: Award. Oh, right, Of course. Yeah, of course. So she had that song that, um, was that, Thank God it's Friday.

Amit: Yes. That went into, thank God it's Friday. Uh, my personal favorite on the pop culture stardom is she played Steve Kels Aunt on Two Seasons of Family Matters.

No way. Yes. Aunt Unah, I think she only appeared in a handful of episodes. Is that right?

Michael: Yes. Oh, that's good. Oh, I'm a little jealous about that. The only other one I was gonna mention, well, she does, uh, talk about, uh, she was on Johnny Carson and she did say, it was always my biggest dream. I said, I know I'm a star when I've done the Johnny Caution Show.

So today, when I go home, I. Look at myself and say, You know something, you

Amit: made it. You know, Which is absolutely true. Which is absolutely true.

Michael: 78 when she was on it. That's right. Okay. Next category. Over under. In this category, we look at the generalized life expectancy for the year they were born to see if they beat the house odds, and as a measure of grace.

So the life expectancy for women in the us. Born in 1948, by the way, she was born on New Year's Eve. I did see that. Yeah.

Amit: I was wondering that too. Is there something about being a New Year's baby that makes you like

Michael: destined? Destined for stardom? Yeah. Anyway. Life expectancy for a woman in America, born in 1948 is 69.9 years.

She died age 63. She died of lung cancer. She theorized that that was from inhaling toxic fumes and dust around nine 11. Cuz she had a New York apartment. Yeah. She lived in Lower Manhattan at the time. Yeah. So she was near ground zero when the attacks occurred. . Some people have said maybe it was her exposure to secondhand smoke working in the clubs.

She also had a sister who, uh, died of lung cancer at a younger age. So young. Young, right? Like this is the thing that sucks the most

Amit: and it feels especially tragic. Like this feels more tragic to me than Tom Petty. I can't quite put my finger on it.

Michael: I mean, part of it is that she is, On the grace front, she was peeking.

She was, yeah, you. You look at pictures of her from 2011 a year before her death. There is a tremendous amount of grace. For some reason, people who die in their sixties are in a kind of funny zone for me that if you die in your seventies, You're not really dying young. If you die in your fifties, you're unquestionably dying young.

The sixties is young. It is. I don't want to die in my sixties. I'm not sure I wanna die ever. We're all going to die. That's one of the reasons we do this show . Yes. You know, and, and this is definitely tragic. She had. People who loved her. She was still kind of a force. I, you know, I didn't want Don a summer to go.

There was not a decline

Amit: either. Right. Yeah. You talked about that Oslo concert two years before

Michael: Yeah. For Obama. Yeah. Yes,

Amit: but sixties, I don't know. 63 is young and 66 is young and I, I mean now at 44, I have friends in their sixties. Over time, it's more and more resonating with me, just this absence of whether you wanna call it a fourth quarter or a third period.

And I find it really sad because it seems like there is so much resolve that happens in that era.

Michael: I agree. I would also say I have a similar conclusion as what I had with Tom Petty. I would have liked to have seen another act, you know, I'd be curious to see if Donna Summer wouldn't do something else.

Sort of incredible cuz she is a creative force. However, I don't feel super robbed. And I guess we should ask this. Where are you on her music? I

Amit: don't love the disco stuff. I like the hot stuff. Yeah. And I like, uh, she works hard for the money. Yeah, it's okay. I'm okay with the disco stuff in the background.

Yeah. But I wouldn't buy the album. I think I'm in on

Michael: it, man. Are you? I think I am. Cause every time we do a musician on this show, their music gets stuck in my head for days on end. I've actually enjoyed having Donna Summer's music in my head. And I'll tell you, the one song that really stands out to me is, uh, Do You Know the song?

I Feel Loved Only by title. John Lennon actually like listened to that song and said, This is where music is going. So did Brian Enno you listen to that song? It sounds very, very modern. It's actually sort of, um, I mean, it's a precursor to a lot of techno and a lot of like electronic that we have today.

And and the layering of it. It's really like, great. Yeah.

Amit: Music people really, really respected her. And a word I saw or heard a lot in the research was underrated. In fact, I wrote it here on the notebook and underlined it. Underrated. Wow, you did, Because everyone said it.

Michael: It's all caps was underrated. Yeah.

You have it in all caps. Yeah. So I'm sorry she died at age 63. All other things being equal. This is a very, mostly complete life. You can say that. Okay. Let's.

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Amit: Mary Tyler Moore. I think dead.

Michael: The rules are simple. Dead are alive. She died in 2017. William the

Amit: refrigerator Perry, I think the fridge died. The fridge is still alive.

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Willie D is still with us at 55 years old. Wow. He's good. Yeah, he is good. Test your knowledge Dead or alive app.com.

The first of the inner life questions is Man in the mirror. What did they think about their own reflection? I wrote, I don't think she liked it for a long time. I talked about earlier her insecurities from a scar on her face, and she just did not have a confident self-perception more than anything. I do think that there's a real discomfort with being a sex symbol, even if she understood on some level, this is the pathway to selling records and selling concerts in the 19, you know, seventies and eighties.

I do. Get the feeling that she learned self love and came to appreciate her reflection. And obviously she's a gorgeous woman, so she should have liked it. I think I'm gonna go, Yes. I think that when she got right with herself, she. Learned to love her reflection and learned to be grateful for the gift she was given.

Yeah, I agree with you that this

Amit: is definitely one of those cases that it's on a continuum, these overly sexual songs and performances from the seventies that were born out of. Love to Love You Baby. Yeah. It seems like a lot of that came from the insecurity that she has from her Looks. Sure. Like she saw that as a pathway, but she was also willing to embrace it even though it was so contrary to this Christianity that she was raised on and later embraced.

But I think it was that insecurity that sort of allowed her to do that type of performance. Yeah. Maybe it was after her deep depression and becoming born again and her second marriage that she really felt a lot more comfortable. And you can see the difference between like the Carson interview in 78 and the Arsenio interview in 93.

Yeah. There's a very vast difference than the confidence of the woman in front of Yes. You. The choosing yes or no is a problem, but I'm gonna say no. Okay. Just because the they are that launched your career, I think was, was a lot of those, the

Michael: insecure ears. I think that's a fair argument. I think you can go either way on this.

I think there's a case to be made in both ways. Yep. Okay. Category nine, outgoing message like man in the mirror, we want know how they felt about the sound of their own voice. And whether they would have left it on a voicemail or answering machine. I think she loved it. I also considered this as a thing I love about her.

I like her Boston accent. Yeah, her speaking

Amit: voice is really good. Great. It's really nice. It's like it's soothing. It's assertive.

Michael: Yeah. It's confident. It's like down to earth and real. It's like super. That's,

Amit: and it's very articulate. I almost feel like I'm being taught every time.

Michael: She's giving an interview.

It's funny cuz sometimes I feel like just because somebody is a singer, they don't necessarily love the sound of their own voice in this case. I think she does. Yes. I, I think she loves both her singing voice and her speaking voice. I think part of it is the theater background as well. Yep. All right.

Category 10 regrets, public or private. What we really want to know is what, if anything, kept this person awake at night? There's one big public regret that we have not talked about yet. This the AIDS thing. It is, yeah. So in the early days of the AIDS epidemic, she said AIDS had been sent by God to punish homosexuals, and she was very slow to take back these remarks.

She said that she was unknowingly protected. From the bad press by those around her. She didn't realize that she had caused pain and she did eventually issue a public apology saying that if she had caused pain, please forgive me, and a spokesperson for the AIDS activist Group Act UP said the gay community made Donna Summer a star.

And what she said was not very Christian. And I think that a large part of her fan base was of the gay community. That's sort of disco, right? Yes. I don't know what to make of that. And my hunch is that she didn't think too much about it because she's so sort of committed to the faith and. Quite like, take to heart how hurtful that comment was.

And it's too bad that it was so slow to be walked back. But I think it's a genuine regret and I wanna give her the benefit of the doubt.

Amit: Yeah. I think it came not too long after being born again where she was probably leaning

Michael: a little heavy on the, on this pretty far. Yeah. But

Amit: yeah, I, I think it was regret and it was played out.

I mean, there was, weren't there a few lawsuits and counter lawsuits? Yeah. For defamation.

Michael: Um, Oh, I didn't see that. It actually resulted in lawsuit. Uh, I've done everything that I can and at this, at this, People do not choose to forgive. It isn't in my hands. Donna Summer is also on the counter attack. She's launched a liable suit against New York Magazine for an article it printed saying she was anti-gay, but she says her real goal is to restore her reputation.

The big part is I don't like walking into some place and seeing someone and having them look at me with that questioning, Look, you really hate me. I hate no one. I hate no one.

Amit: Definitely regret and a

Michael: public one. Yeah, I And regret a ball. Like it sucks. I wish she had never said that. Yes, on private, I didn't have a whole lot.

I had two infidelity in her relationship to Gunter. Overall, the relationship with Gunter did sound really kind of toxic and dramatic and a lot of, I think at one point, even violent. And then also embracing the sex symbol role as a path to fame. Definitely. That's the big one. Right? But I don't know, is that actually a regret of hers?

I mean, I don't think she begrudges her success. I think she felt like she was destined for it. And you know, her manager, this man Neil Bogar for a number of years. Like encouraged a certain wardrobe and a certain presentation of her on stage and was really active in saying, This is the public role you need to play.

And then he died at the age of 39. Yeah. Right after they had had a falling out too. Yes. Who

Amit: knows? I don't, I'm not fully buying the end justifies the means in that, And I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with the sexual presentation of her music at that time. Yeah. But if it is so counter to the values that she says it is, then.

I

Michael: don't see how, it's not a regret. I mean, one of the things about her that I really enjoy is that, you know, when she's asked about who her favorite music was from the 1970s, she says, James Taylor. Yes. Right. And she's like, I was, I was under country music and I listened to a lot of jazz and classical. She says, If you come to my house, you know there's gonna be a pretty rich set list.

You're gonna hear a lot of different kinds of music. I say that because I think that she makes a semi-conscious decision to embrace a certain kind. Character and a certain kind of music that leads to $75 million in net worth, right? Yes. Um, and there is a kind of compromising of values there. So I think where she would probably have the regret is that I appreciate more than just this thing.

You know, me for, I have talents beyond disco and I have talents beyond, you know, Sexual godes pop stardom, and that's not being seen because this image that you do see dwarfs everything else crowds out. Any other aptitudes I'd like you to see, you know, okay, category 11, Good dreams or bad dreams. This is not about personal perception, but rather does this person have a haunted look in the eye?

Something that suggests and are turmoil and or demons unresolved trauma. So we talked about suicidal ideation and even a suicide attempt, um, before she's born again. So I do think it gets to good. Uh, but there's some bad years in there. It's funny, I don't ever see it in the eye. With her. Yeah. I don't even, yeah, even though, even though I think she really is like serious struggles and major bouts of, of depression, it's not obvious to me in those, uh, in those earlier years, I think she

Amit: had a lot of resilience.

You know, the girl that leaves and moves to Germany at age 18 into New York before that on her own. I think she has a lot of resilience built up despite all these near death experiences we talked about, the suicidality that you just mentioned. I just, I see clear eyes and resilience. I don't know how she

Michael: does it.

Yeah, I agree with. So what is our answer there?

Amit: I'm going good dreams, and I wish I knew how she does it.

Michael: I agree. All right. Category 12. Second to last category are cocktail coffee or cannabis. This is where we ask which one would we most want to do with our dead celebrity. It may be a question of what kind of drug sounds like the most fun to partake.

Or another point of view is that it might be a way to. In her access to a part of them that we're most curious about,

Amit: shouldn't seem just super fun. She wasn't the life of the party. Yeah. Or anything. So none of that really has me that curious to just go have a wild time out with Donna Summer. So I guess my biggest curiosity is playing this sexual character as the launch.

Of your career that you don't really believe in. Yeah, and that's what I want to talk to her about. And I know she explained it to her daughters as this was just a different time, but you know, explain it to me over a cup of coffee.

Michael: That's funny. I went the same thing. I went coffee. I'd like to have a morning coffee with her on her farm.

I'd like to, I'd like to have how

Amit: you're going setting. Okay, good. I think so. I mean, I never, You do that. Well, you always think about the setting. I always just think about the question

Michael: telling. Yeah, I'm, I'm picturing a screen porch with a big fan and, uh, really comfortable outdoor seating and a nice large cup of coffee with a garden in the background and some paintings, uh, up around.

And I, you know, I really like the home life here. This gets back to my thing I love about her. I love that her creativity is not just about profiting and about becoming the, you know, next level successful pop star. It, it is also about a creative life. You know, I want that more than I want the accolades. I want my home to be a place where multi-generational people walk in, old, young, come in and say, What a great.

You know, and that's the image I have of her home life. Whether that's wishful thinking or not, I, I kind of just wanna hang out in that. I want to have a nice morning cup of coffee with her and, and talk about that. I think the conversation could go anywhere. I, as I said a minute ago, really like her voice and I kind of feel like it would go somewhere cool.

And maybe it'd go to the late sixties, you know, not too far to move from Bob Dylan in the Greenwich Village. Mm-hmm. , or maybe it's, you know, tell me about Germany, this sort. Pocket of, I don't know, culture in the, in the sixties and seventies that I wouldn't know anything about. Or maybe it was like, how do you really feel about disco?

Where are ready to go? I think I'd enjoy it. I'm with you though. She's only so much fun, quote unquote, like, I don't wanna, you know, party. So that makes

Amit: sense. But I like what you do. I like how you infuse the setting, but I wanna bring a little

Michael: bit more of that in. All right then. Well, I think we're here.

The VanDerBeek named Dr. James VanDerBeek who said, In Varsity Blues, I don't want your. omit. Do you want Donna Summer's life?

Amit: I don't know. I think she had, you know, I, I said right off the bat, the, the family. Yes. Uh, I think that was great. Um, I think the career like transcending two genres, the ultra sexualized part of the early part, if that's not genuine, if it's not authentic, then I don't like the way that sits.

I think it's fine if it's authentic. It's art, it's music, it's rock and roll. She seemed to have found resolve in her emotional problem. The career lasted. She was loved and endured for a long time, but man, it feels tragic. It really feels, and it's, It's with her more than it is with the other ones, like I said, more than it is with Tom Petty.

But I really feel like cancer won this one. Huh. And maybe that's just how I'm feeling today. But 63 for somebody that was doing so well, it was just too young and not today. I'm saying, no, I'm not taking a 63 year old lifespan. Wow. I think she was robbed. I'm not gonna let that slide today, so I'm gonna say, no,

Michael: I don't want your life.

Okay. That's a really good argument. I didn't think you were going there. And I think I, I wanna react to it. Let me lay out the case. Okay. For me, I really like this life. I really like the music. I really like the journey. I really like the chapters, you know, that where she grew up in Boston and what kind of teenager she was, and then getting involved in rock and roll in the late sixties, and then moving to Germany and then defining an era for a few decades.

And then turning to, you know, all attention to a home and spiritual life. Like overall, that playbook and those chapters are great. They're great. So your point about dying young, I don't know, man. I, I, I hear you. I think you make a really good point. It does feel premature and a little bit unfair. It still looks like a full life to me.

And I think that I'm inclined to say yes to the Vander Big. I'm inclined to say, yes, I want this life because I think I don't wanna be scared of death, or at least not today. , but whether or not that's a real thing or whether or not, I'm just rationalizing right now because I basically want Donna Summer's life.

Mm-hmm. , I don't know, maybe I'm not being honest enough with myself. Cuz you're right, this is young. It's not just young to

Amit: me it's, it's,

Michael: it's thi I think I'm still a yes because I'm not sure. That were not all robbed on some level and where the line in the sand is of whether you were robbed or not. It's a judgment call.

It's something that, oh, this

Amit: is the biggest, this is the biggest highest of all though, to rob someone of, of life. Of years. Yeah. Decades,

Michael: maybe. I don't know, man. I, I guess I never thought I'd make it this long when I was younger, I didn't think I'd make it into my forties. I mean, I do try and look for gratitude in my life.

so that if I'm hit by a bus tomorrow and I get to have one last thought before I pass into the afterlife, I hope that thought is overall this was pretty good, and I think she got that. I think she had an acceptance around a higher power. I don't think that's just about the good things that God or higher power gives you.

I think that she. If she got one more thought before cancer took her, I suspect, and I might be projecting, but I suspect it was one of gratitude I, I suspect it was one of thank you for this incredible rich life. Thank you for this family. Thank you for this art. Thank you for this career and my mark on history.

Thank you for what I was given. It's not hard for me to imagine that's there, even if this death is a little young. So I'm a yes. Okay. I think we're there. All right. I think you should do it. All right.

Amit: Okay. Michael, you are Donna Summer. I am St. Peter. The Unitarian proxy for the afterlife. Even though you were born again Christian, I am still a Unitarian proxy.

Yeah, so welcome and make your case to pass through the

Michael: Pearl Games hot stuff coming through . Peter, I think the case is fairly simple just because I'm a born a grand Christian. I do not wanna presume that I'm gonna get let in. Early on in my life, I felt a sense of fate of destiny. That God had something great in store for me.

And to the extent that I was given a series of gifts, I tried to look for what God would want from me and act accordingly. I wasn't perfect with it. I made mistakes, but I feel like I fulfilled the destiny that was laid out for me. And in so doing what I gave back to the stream of life was a sense of.

Giddy joy was a sense of expression and freedom and music, the richness that music can play in all our lives in terms of bringing out something that cannot be expressed in any other art form. I committed myself to that and I performed accordingly on and off stage for that. I hope you like me.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of Famous and Gravy. If you're enjoying our show, please tell your friends about us. Help spread the word. Find us on Twitter. Our Twitter handle is at Famous and Gravy, and we also have a newsletter which you can sign up for on our website, famous and gravy.com.

Famous and Gravy was created by Amit Kapoor and me, Michael Osborne. This episode was produced by Jacob Weiss. Original theme music by Kevin Strang. Thanks for listening. See you next time.