‘You Brits have always given me a wonderful embrace’
Dionne Warwick has sold more than 100 million records over six decades – with 80 singles making the charts. She tells RICHARD BARBER what still drives her on and why she’s starting her latest tour in the UK
ARMED WITH one of the most distinctive voices in music, Dionne Warwick has become a force of nature, tackling head-on controversial issues like racism and rap lyrics which glorify violence and misogyny. “Once I get hold of an idea, I always follow it through,” she insists.
She began her journey in social justice in the Deep South during the 1960s, and was outspoken when it came to singing in front of segregated audiences. She explains: “I’m from New Jersey so I’d never really encountered racism.”
Dionne waves away any suggestion that speaking out took courage: “I regarded it almost as an adventure – this level of racism was new to me. I simply couldn’t understand why anyone would be so against someone just because of a different skin pigmentation.” At the age of 83, Dionne is still going strong. “I’m made of what my family instilled in me – there’s always been fire in my belly, it was the way I was brought up.
“Be who you are at all times, my parents said – and that’s what I’ve always believed.”
Recently she has tackled the lyrics in some hip hop music, even inviting rapper Snoop Dogg, 52, and his band to her home at 7am one morning. “And they turned up on the dot,” she smiles. “I asked them whether they really wanted children to hear the aggressive words they were singing.
“I pointed out to Snoop Dogg that he might well have a daughter one day – which, incidentally, turned out to be the case – who would hear young women referred to as bitches. Would he really feel comfortable about that?”
Now Dionne is about to embark on a new UK tour, kicking off in Gateshead this evening.
Don’t Make Me Over, named after her first hit, is a journey through her life and career. It started out as a documentary which is still available on BBC iplayer.
The tour also sees Dionne interviewed on stage, interspersed with on-screen footage and, of course, a few songs. “I wouldn’t be allowed to get away with not singing,” she says.
She says the world tour is starting in Britain because: “You’ve always been very good to me.
“From the start, you gave me a wonderful embrace. In fact, I’ve been to see you so often that I sometimes get asked if I live in the UK.”
That said, she has not always been comfortable with some of the cover versions of her biggest hits: “I am, always was, a big fan of Dusty Springfield. But I wasn’t happy with some of the other British singers who sang my songs.”
It is said that Brian Epstein heard Anyone Who Had A Heart in America, brought it back to the UK and gave it to the Beatles’ record producer, George Martin, who planned to record it with Shirley Bassey. Epstein was having none of it. It was to be a vehicle, he said, for Cilla Black, who subsequently took it to Number One in the charts.
“I don’t blame Cilla,” Dionne has since said. “I later met her and she was a nice woman, really cute. And, over the years, I came to realise that she hadn’t been making the decisions about what she would sing.
“My real complaint was that the treatment of the song wasn’t similar to mine. It was identical. If I’d sneezed, she would have done, too. Not one iota of my recording did they miss. In other words, they copied it.
“The same was true of Sandie Shaw’s recording of Always Something There To Remind Me. There was nothing original about it.”
But Dionne is happy with her life and, talking from her New Jersey home last week, is full of fun and laughter: “Why would I not be? I truly believe that my voice is a gift from God
and a blessing. The arc of my life has been pre-ordained.”
It has sustained her through some testing times: “I was taught at a very early age to accept the transition of loved ones from this world to the next. My nephew died about 12 years ago. But then I read a poem called Don’t Weep For Me and I felt so empowered by it. Even so, he was too young to go. So was Karen Carpenter, a dear friend of mine. My brother, Mancel
Jr, died in an accident in 1968 – he’d have been 21 the following week. And then my younger sister, Dee Dee, passed in 2008.”
HICH brings us to her adored cousin, Whitney Houston, the daughter of her aunt Cissy. “I felt exactly the same about the untimely transition of Whitney,” she tells me. “But I didn’t mourn her then and I don’t intend to now. I prefer to celebrate her life. She gave so much of
herself. She was a wonderful, good girl. I always used to say that she was the daughter I never had. The way I feel about her passing is that she had done what God wanted her to do. And we still have her: her legacy is her music. You hear her on the radio every day. That’s how she’ll live on.”
In 1966, she married actor and musician William Elliott. They divorced in May 1967 but remarried in August of the same year.
The second marriage ended in December 1975. Elliott died in 1983 aged 49.
THEY had two sons: David, now 55, is a singer, often duetting with his mother on recordings. Damon, 50, is also in music and has produced Dionne’s records: “Despite my career, my sons are without doubt my two proudest achievements. They’ve also given me my grandbabies: five girls and two boys.”
Looking back on her failed marriages to William, Dionne is philosophical: “It can be very difficult if the woman is more successful than the man. In the end, that’s what finally did for the marriage.
“A man’s ego is very fragile. The way I look at it, the woman may be bringing in more money but, if the man can’t pay the electric bill, he can buy the electric bulb. His contribution can be just as important.”
She adds: “I can’t stop being who I am but then nor should I be expected to.
“It certainly wouldn’t be expected if it were the other way around.
“That’s how we’re programmed, though – the male is meant to be the breadwinner.”
There have been other romances along the way. She once had an affair with French heartthrob Sacha Distel.
“People always look surprised when I say that – as though it’s odd somehow that we got together. But we were both from the world of music.we met originally in the UK on a television show.
“I was very young – it was right at the beginning of my career. He was brilliant, a wonderful man, an incredible father and the best friend you could wish for.”
Dionne says if she does ever retire she will move permanently to Bahia in Brazil, which she sees as her spiritual home: “I’ll be heading back to Brazil, my favourite place on Earth. I simply call it my paradise.
“I love performing, but when I can’t hit the notes I want to, then it will be time to move on.and Bahia is where I’m headed.”