Donna Summer: 'Then I sought help'

Wednesday, October 22, 2003

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Singer Donna Summer, the voice of 1970s disco, has written a memoir, "Ordinary Girl: The Journey," in which she discloses the pressures associated with being a superstar. At the peak of her popularity, the disco queen even contemplated suicide.

Accompanying the book is a CD set which features the very best of Donna Summer. CNN Anchor Soledad O'Brien spoke Wednesday with Summer about her new memoir and her life today.

O'BRIEN: I was surprised that the title of the book is "Ordinary Girl" and not "Queen of Disco." Why not?

SUMMER: Because I'm just an ordinary person that did some extraordinary things. But I think that I'm just a normal girl, you know. That's where the stretch is -- on the girl part! It's not on the ordinary part at all.

O'BRIEN: Your career really got under way in Germany. You went there, you were in musicals, four or five I think. Did really well. Came back to the U.S. and became a giant superstar. What was that like for you then?

SUMMER: It was sort of like being in Times Square on New Year's Eve, you know, and you want to go home. And you're in the middle and you can't get out. So it's a very, very, very busy, very stressful difficult time.

O'BRIEN: Overall bad?

SUMMER: I would say there were good things about it. But I think that just the labor, what you have to do to succeed is just really difficult.

O'BRIEN: You write about the depression that you felt... I mean, you talk about how you're at the height of your career, at the moment where everyone would think you would say "I finally I made it, I am a giant superstar."
You were depressed. You're contemplating suicide. You're at a hotel window, sticking your foot out to get a feel of maybe you should jump over the edge.

SUMMER: No, I wasn't getting a feel. I was jumping over. I was attempting to go. I didn't plan it. I just decided, I'm out of here.

O'BRIEN: Maid walks in and stops you essentially?

SUMMER: Yes, exactly.

O'BRIEN: What happened then?

SUMMER: Then I sought help. I got help. I realized that I had a serious problem with depression, and I went to a doctor and he gave me some medication.

O'BRIEN: You eventually decided that actually your career was going to have to take a back seat. You have children, you're married.
How hard was that to do? When you're surrounded, when you're wildly successful and you're surrounded by a bunch of people who are invested in seeing you not only succeed but continue to churn out hits and make money for the team, that's got to be hard to say, "I'm done."

SUMMER: Nobody wants you to stop, obviously because you're a moneymaking machine. But you have to make the decision and you have to move forward. So I took time off to have babies and do all that.

O'BRIEN: Any regrets now that you did that?

SUMMER: No, not at all. It was the best thing in my life.

O'BRIEN: You still sing and you've been married for some unheard of number of years.

SUMMER: In Hollywood.

O'BRIEN: You've got three grown children. What lessons do you talk to your girls about? They're all musical...

SUMMER: Yes, they all want to go in the business at some point.

O'BRIEN: Do you roll your eyes and say, "Oh, no, don't do it"?

SUMMER: Not at all. I think that they should. I think they have a good background and understanding that it's work, that it's painful and that it's not the glamour business that it looks like it is on the surface. And I think they're well prepared for it, actually.

O'BRIEN: You're still performing a lot, all the time. But you don't have the string of No. 1 hits that you had. It was always, next, next, next. Is that hard or do you feel like you've come to a new place?

SUMMER: Not really. I haven't really been recording in the last several years. I haven't wanted to. And even though I had to deal with Sony and now I'm on Universal again, I will probably put out a new record soon.
And no, having the hits is just more work. And I mean, I'm established. So I'm not worried about having a hit at this point in my career. It would be nice if you have a hit. But I don't think it's necessary to continue with my career at this point.

O'BRIEN: How hard was it to write the book after all these years? You have quite a story to tell. It must have been difficult.

SUMMER: Yes, very difficult.

O'BRIEN: It's a great book.

SUMMER: Painful.

Donna Summer's Life was Anything but 'Ordinary'

an Associated Press report 10/16/03

WASHINGTON (AP/CNN) - In November of 1976, Donna Summer's professional life was peaking.

Her single "Love To Love You Baby," followed by a slew of other hits, made her a fixture atop the music charts. But her personal life was falling apart -- to the point that she tried to jump out the 11th-floor window of a New York hotel room.

The suicide attempt -- one of the few things in life that she failed to accomplish -- is described in Summer's upcoming autobiography, "Ordinary Girl: The Journey" (Villard Books). It's being released along with a greatest hits CD that contains three new songs.

"The book is like holding up a mirror to people and letting them see things that happened in my life that represent things that happen in their own lives," Summer told AP Radio in a telephone interview from her home in Nashville, Tenn. "Struggles of different sorts that I've been through that other people go through."

Despite the title of her book, Summer's experiences have been anything but ordinary. In addition to the depression that led to her suicide attempt, she writes about bouts of bed wetting, witnessing a murder on the streets of Boston as a young girl -- and moving to Germany to perform in the musical "Hair" in part to escape from those she helped put in prison for the crime.
While overseas, she performed in European versions of "Godspell," "The Me Nobody Knows" and "Porgy and Bess." After settling in Germany, she teamed up with producer Giorgio Moroder in 1975 on "Love To Love You Baby" (which has now come full circle, with Beyonce lifting the classic chorus for "Naughty Girl," off her latest album).

In the book, Summer says the song's famous moans and groans were added after Moroder decided to expand the song from three and a half to 17 minutes -- without adding any lyrics. The song reached No. 2 on the Billboard charts and earned her a reputation as a disco-era sex goddess -- a far cry from her churchgoing upbringing in Boston.

Today, Summer has no problems with the "disco diva" label. "They can call me anything they want, as long as they buy my records," she said. "I'll be laughing all the way to the bank."
Going to the memory vault for recollections about her life may have been hard, but Summer had no problem putting it on paper.

Like the suicide attempt.

Upon returning to the States after being in Germany for more than seven years, Summer was having trouble readjusting to life in America as a disco star. "I didn't even realize that I was depressed," she said. "I just felt that I couldn't live like I was living another minute. And I just went to the window and I stuck my foot out the window. "

But in front of the window was a radiator covered by a long curtain. When Summer tried to get her left foot out to the ledge, she says, it got tangled in the fabric. At that moment, a housekeeper opened the door to her room, and Summer came back inside.

After that, Summer got help with her depression.

While many still associate her with "Love To Love You Baby," Summer feels the song is atypical of her career -- and her talent.

Take her voice. Trained in the theater, she has a strong voice, in contrast to the pillow-talk- whisper she used on her biggest hit. And while people think of songs like "Bad Girls" and "She Works Hard For the Money" as odes to those who sell sex on the streets, Summer feels these songs honor such women.

"We have a lot of unsung heroes in life. And sometimes the very person we that look down on is the person that's struggling the most," she said. "We point our fingers many times in judgment of people suffering with different circumstances, and think that's where they want to be, but they don't and so I think it's important to sing about those things."

One highlight of Summer's career was her duet with Barbra Streisand on 1979's "No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)," which ended up as her final number one hit.

She had just finished a tour and celebrated by partying hard all night, unaware she had to record with Streisand the following day. Worn out from lots of celebrating and little sleep, Summer fainted while trying to hit a high note and fell off her stool.

Streisand pressed on, holding her note to the end. Only after she finished did she lean over and ask her fallen comrade: "Donna, are you OK?"

Though the hits are less frequent now, Summer is still having fun. She still cranks out music, not that you'd hear it "On The Radio."

Does that bother her? Nope.

"I love music and I love what I do, but it isn't the end-all and the be-all of everything. There are people dying...in this war and other things going on that probably should take precedence over a song, so I don't dwell on it."

Nor is she interested in stoking the publicity machine any more than she has to.

"Once your name is established, you are who you are. It's not something you have to keep working at. I don't need to be in the press 24-7 to validate myself for myself."

Speaking of validating herself -- what about THE rumor?

You know the one. About her being a man.

A relative first told her about it, and she realized it had grown legs while doing an interview in South America. She noticed the interviewer "started looking at me kind of strange." So she asked: "Why are you looking at me like that?

The reporter said: "You don't look like a man." He grabbed her hand: "You don't FEEL like a man."

In fact, she's an Ordinary Girl.