Fresh Air Remembers Donna Summer, Queen Of Disco

May 18, 2012

Guest: Donna Summer-Vidal Sassoon-Carlos Fuentes

DAVE DAVIES, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies, in for Terry Gross. Today, we commemorate the loss of three creative talents who worked in very different fields. Later on, we'll remember Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes and revolutionary hairstylist Vidal Sassoon. But first, the queen of disco, Donna Summer. She died Thursday at her home in Naples, Florida, after a long struggle with cancer.

Though Summer grew up in a large Boston family singing gospel music, she became the icon of a powerful cultural movement, a celebrated sex queen and a staple of gay club life. She wasn't always comfortable with the rolls, and in her later years, she returned to gospel music. Summer's hits of the '70s and early '80s included "Last Dance," "Heaven Knows," "On the Radio," "Bad Girls" and "She Works Hard for the Money."

She had three consecutive number one platinum albums and 11 gold albums.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HOT STUFF")

DONNA SUMMER: (Singing) Sittin' here eatin' my heart out waitin', waitin' for some lover to call. Dialed about a thousand numbers lately, almost rang the phone off the wall. Lookin' for some hot stuff, baby, this evenin'. I need some hot stuff, baby, tonight. I want some hot stuff, baby, this evenin'. Gotta have some hot stuff, gotta have some love tonight. I need hot stuff.

DAVIES: "Hot Stuff" was a number one hit in 1979. Terry spoke to Donna Summer in 2003, when her memoir "Ordinary Girl" was published. They talked about her first hit, "Love to Love You Baby." She made the record in 1975, when she was living in Germany, starring in a production of "Hair." In Munich she met record producer Giorgio Moroder, who became a collaborator and one of disco's most influential producers.

Summer was doing demos for Moroder when she came up with a line she thought would make a good hook for a song.

SUMMER: I had this idea at home one day, and I ran into the studio, and I said Giorgio, I have this idea. Would you - do you think you could write something to it? And I sort of sang it to him, and he kept saying it over, he says love to love you, I love to love you. He kept rubbing his chin and thinking like a little mad scientist, and then he went into the studio, and Giorgio had written this track.

And I began to - he asked me to go in and start singing something, and I didn't have any words other than love to love you, baby. So I was improvising on the track live. And that really became "Love to Love You, Baby," the original track.

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

So when you sang him your initial idea, what was it that you sang?

SUMMER: (Singing) I love to love you, baby.

You know, the melody of the song. And then he went from there and produced something, and then I began to sing it. And then I began to play with the - there weren't that many words. So I played with the sound of the music, you know. (Singing) I...

You know, we didn't have the same technology we have today. So I had to do everything with my own voice.

GROSS: You say in the book you approached the song like an actress, because you didn't think of yourself as having that kind of really sexy persona. So tell us about how you did approach recording the vocal.

SUMMER: Well, the vocal was - it was very breathy and airy, and basically I was a theater singer, so I had been, you know, much more of a belter. And it was - and it was really different and difficult for me to tap into who this person was. 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 then, you know, I started playing with the thought in my mind, and 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 the girl singing it, and I tapped into it and recorded it.

GROSS: Well, I think this would be a good place to hear your recording of "Love to Love You, Baby."

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LOVE TO LOVE YOU, BABY")

SUMMER: (Singing) I love to love you, baby. I love to love you, baby. I love to love you, baby. I love to love you, baby. I love to love you, baby. When you're laying so close to me, there's no place I'd rather you be than with me. I love to love you, baby. I love to love you, baby. I love to love you, baby.

(Singing) Do it to me again and again. You put me in such a awful spin, in a spin.

GROSS: That's Donna Summer's first big hit. Now when Neil Bogart decided to have this record on his label, he wanted a longer version for the dance clubs. So you had to go back and do, like, a long version, like what, 14 minutes?

SUMMER: Well, it wasn't for the dance clubs. Actually, I think Neil had a little something else in mind. It worked out for the dance clubs, but it actually...

GROSS: Oh.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SUMMER: It was for...

GROSS: Torrid love.

SUMMER: It was for the secret times, the secret lives of many people. But he had played the short version when he was with his wife, and he thought that it was too short. He said this mood is so great, I just want to hear it extended. What's the longest that you can extend it? And Giorgio said well, you know, we'll do the best we can.

And we came back - I think the original was like 17 and - almost 18 minutes. And of course he thought no one would ever play it on the air, but they wound up playing it on the air.

GROSS: So what did you add for the long version?

SUMMER: Well, there was music, extension music added and bridge music, and there were other melodies inserted and then just sort of vocal - sort of vocal swells. You know, it just was a mood-setter.

GROSS: What did you do to set your mood?

SUMMER: Mine?

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SUMMER: I laid on the floor, and it was very difficult to do this because, I mean, I was a comedian, and Giorgio and I, we were always goofing around. So Pete and Giorgio had to turn the lights down. I think they might have brought some candles in the room or something. And I literally laid on the floor. They lowered the microphone to me. And I just, you know, kind of sang it like I was, you know, having a romantic encounter.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SUMMER: It's embarrassing for me to say this now, but it's true. But - and we nailed the song finally, and, you know, like I said, I came up with some vocal approaches that were not - basically no one had ever done before. So it kind of started the whole thing of this new type of music.

GROSS: Now after recording "Love to Love You, Baby," you were brought to the United States to promote the record. And as you say, this is when you were transformed into a sex queen and sophisticated diva, which was a kind of awkward position for you to be in, judging from what you write in your book, because first of all you were brought up in the church, and second of all, you were used to singing in, like, a theater setting, not being the sex queen. And you thought of yourself as comedic, not the sex queen.

SUMMER: Definitely, what a contrast, huh?

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

GROSS: So how were you transformed? What were some of the things that you were told you needed to wear or say or act like?

SUMMER: Well, I mean, I have - you know, everybody has different portions of their personality, and I tend to be - I can be very, very quiet and to myself and withdrawn, and I just, you know, sort of - and I can be extremely outgoing when I need to be, because I grew up in a big family.

And so I just sort of drew on my other self, the one that I am most of the time when nobody's around and when I just want to be alone, and that sort of - I thought that person would work fine for whatever it was I had to do. And so, I mean, the things that they encouraged me to do, you know, was - you know, they gave me a makeup artist and a hair person and a stylist.

And, you know, they took me to Hollywood and did the whole Hollywood thing with the clothes and the makeovers and the, you know, just all the showrooms and, you know, things that I hadn't, you know, done in different - I modeled in Europe, so I was familiar with all of that fashion, you know, input. But, you know, they wanted me to look a certain way, to be a certain way.

And they said, well, if you're going to be a star, people aren't asking for you, they're 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.

GROSS: How did you like the image?

SUMMER: Well, I didn't like the image, per se. I mean, I didn't particularly care for the sex image. I thought it was kind of narrow. And I felt like I was going to have to break out real soon, otherwise I wasn't going to make it. so, you know, initially for the record, it was what, you know, what sold the record. But it wasn't a place that I was comfortable.

GROSS: After "Love to Love You, Baby" became a hit, there was a cake, a now-famous cake, that was made and delivered long-distance.

SUMMER: There sure was.

GROSS: Would you describe the cake and the extremes that were gone to to deliver the cake to its destination?

SUMMER: Well, that cake is actually in the book, and it was a cake that was made by Hansen's Cakes in L.A., and they did a picture of me from the album cover. And the cake was, oh gosh, I think maybe it was about four feet, five feet long. It was body-length. And I was strewn out on the cake, you know, like I am on the album, and it said "Love to Love You, Baby" on it.

And they flew the cake first class, two seats, with people accompanying it from L.A. to New York to a party, and they presented it to me. And it was, and, you know, they brought it in on an ambulance, and, I mean, it was just this whole big to-do about this cake. It turned out to be its own marketing tool for the company and for me. It was quite a big thing at the time.

GROSS: There's a photograph in your book of your parents sitting on a couch next to the cake staring at the cake with a look, I think, of confusion and resignation.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SUMMER: Looking at it: What is going on here?

GROSS: What did they think of this?

SUMMER: Well, I think the look on my mother's face is, you know, pretty much that: What? This is not my child. She has no clothes on.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SUMMER: Or she has very little clothes on. Her legs are exposed. And my dad is looking at it kind of perplexed, going: I thought I did a good job, you know.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SUMMER: And so they were so perplexed. You know, I mean, they were really happy that day. I think when they brought the cake, they just, they were dumbfounded. They had never seen anything like it, and to see, you know, that particular album cover done that big, they were in shock.

DAVIES: Donna Summer, speaking with Terry Gross, recorded in 2003. We'll hear more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

DAVIES: We're listening to Terry's 2003 interview with Donna Summer, who died yesterday at the age of 63.

GROSS: Why don't we hear another recording, and this is another one of your hits, one of your - I guess it was like your second big hit, your second really big hit. This is the song "Last Dance," which is from the film "Thank God It's Friday." Let's hear it.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LAST DANCE")

SUMMER: (Singing) Last dance, last dance for love. Yes, it's my last chance for romance tonight. I need you by me, beside me, to guide me, to hold me, to scold me, 'cause when I'm bad, I'm so, so bad.

(Singing) So let's dance the last dance, let's dance the last dance, let's dance this last dance tonight. Last dance, last chance for love.

GROSS: That's Donna Summer, her hit "Last Dance." That's - what we hear in the beginning of that is something typical for some of your songs, starting slow, and then the beat comes in, and everything speeds up. Is that something that you and Moroder knew would really work? And what really works about that?

SUMMER: I think we decided, and I don't know if it was Neil and Giorgio, they wanted me to have a slow song as a hit. And they were having a hard time finding the right song for me to sing. And I don't know if it was Neil or Giorgio who came up with the idea of why not start the song slow and then break out into it so people can start together, and then they can swing themselves out and start dancing, you know, the way they dance.

And it was a format that worked for us very well.

GROSS: I want to get back to what we were talking about before, which is, like, the image that was created for you of, like, the disco diva, the sex goddess. Did you feel like you had to live up to that in your personal relationships?

SUMMER: Well, not in my personal relationships so much, but I think in my, you know, in my public relationship to people. When I did interviews or whatever, people - guys would be so nervous. Like they thought I was going to, you know, just I don't know, jump on them or something. And I think the image was really pretty hard to live up to at some point, especially with my sense of humor and, at the time, my kind of quirky sense of mocking. It just didn't go together.

So I had to really be calm when I did interviews and not, you know, clown around too much.

GROSS: What were the tours like? I mean, you describe in your book that, you know, sometimes you'd have, like, male dancers in loin clothes.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SUMMER: Yeah. Well, that was what was happening at the time. I mean, we had this one show that was - I forget who designed the show, but it was a big egg. You know, smoke would be on the stage, and lights would be down, and I would be inside the egg, and then all of a sudden the music would start, and the egg would start to break apart, and then four dancers would come out and lift the shell off, and I would be unveiled in the middle.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SUMMER: Don't ask me whose idea that was, but in any case, the audience would go crazy because the egg had been out there from the time they got there. So I'd be out in that egg for 10 minutes while people were getting, you know, in their seats and stuff.

But, so, I mean, originally, you know, the shows were pretty, pretty racy, I'd say. You know, people would throw bras on stage and underwear and all kinds of things. And at some point doing "Love To Love You, Baby" became almost impossible. I just couldn't do it after a while. It was just more than I could handle.

GROSS: People threw their bras on stage?

SUMMER: Their bras, their underwear. People would rush the stage, men and women, and just throw themselves at the stage. And it was like nothing I have ever seen or experienced in my life. It was just such a strange thing. You know, when I would start doing the song, people would literally just break out and run down the aisles and try to jump onto the stage, and many times they made it.

And it was back in the days when I only had, I think - well, I had two bodyguards, but they weren't enough to fit all the way across the stage. And so some people would manage to break through the lines, and it was pretty scary.

GROSS: Well, why don't we hear "Bad Girls"? And how did you come up with the idea of writing a song about hookers?

SUMMER: It wasn't the first song I wrote about hookers, by the way, but it was the most famous one.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SUMMER: And it came about because someone in my office was accosted by the police, and they thought that she was a hooker, and that's how the story came about.

GROSS: Now as you describe in your book, Neil Bogart from your record label didn't want you to record it. He wanted Cher to record it. What was this problem with having you record this song?

SUMMER: He just thought it was too rock 'n' roll, too - he didn't think it was dance enough at the time, the way it was recorded originally. And I had gone in and recorded it with my husband, Bruce, and The Brooklyn Dreams. They did the back - they did the track. But I - when he said he wanted to give it to Cher, I told him: I don't think so. This is my song, and I'm keeping - Cher, I love Cher, but she can't have my song right now. And so I just took the song, and we just sort of canned it, for about...

GROSS: How did you get back to it?

SUMMER: Well, how it came about was pretty bizarre, actually. I was in the studio, and a friend of mine worked in the studio; he ran the studio, actually. He was an engineer, Steve Smith. And he was going through old tapes, and he heard "Bad Girls," and he's like: Donna, I just - I mean, I heard this tape last night. He said: I played it over and over again. I think this is a hit record.

I said: You do? I said: Well, I know, but Neil doesn't want me to do the song. What am I going to do? He said - I said he won't let me, I already asked him. He said: Look, I think you've got to pull this song out. I think you've got to release this song. And I said: Well, you know, when Giorgio comes, maybe you can play it to him and just see how he feels about it.

Well, the song was down. There wasn't any beep-beeps or toot-toots on it, and it still needed some work. And Giorgio took it out, and he actually loved it, and he said: Well, you know what? Let me work on this. So he went to work on it, and then I came in and did some more vocals and things, and it was missing something.

And I kept thinking: What, you know, what do you do when you're sitting in a car trying to get a prostitute's attention? And I said: You honk your horn. So the beep-beep and the toot-toot was how to get people's attention. And it did: It worked.

GROSS: Oh, it's such a great record. Let's hear it. This is Donna Summer singing "Bad Girls."

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BAD GIRLS)

SUMMER: (Singing) Bad girls, talking about the sad girls. Sad girls talking about bad, bad girls, yeah. See them out on the street at night, picking all kinds of strangers if the price is right. You can score if your pocket's nice. But you want a good time.

(Singing) You ask yourself who they are. Like everybody else, they come from near and far. Bad girls, yeah. Bad girls, talking about the sad girls.

DAVIES: Donna Summer spoke with Terry Gross in 2003, when her memoir "Ordinary Girl" was published. She died yesterday at the age of 63. We'll hear more of their interview in the second half of the show. I'm Dave Davies, and this is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies, in for Terry Gross. We're listening to Terry's 2003 interview with Donna Summer, who died yesterday at the age of 63, after a long struggle with cancer.

Her hits in the '70s and early '80s made her an icon of disco culture. She sang in a psychedelic rock band in the late '60s. And in the mid-70s she moved to Germany to perform in a theatrical production of "Hair" where, she began working with record producer, Giorgio Moroder.

SUMMER: Oh, I went there - I auditioned for "Hair," and I got the part, and that was - I auditioned in New York and I got the part. They were getting ready to put up a cast of "Hair" in Germany, and they didn't have any black kids for the show, so they auditioned for kids in New York and there were 300 kids the day I auditioned, and only two of us were taken. I was one of them.

GROSS: Did you love doing the show?

SUMMER: Yeah. At the time, yeah, I did. It was a lot of fun, and I was coming of age in a whole other climate and a whole other community, you know, with different challenges and different excitement, you know, and it wasn't like growing up in America. There was just having this whole other space to become an adult, and...

GROSS: Was that a good thing?

SUMMER: Oh, it was great. I...

GROSS: What was good about that?

SUMMER: Well, I think growing up, you know, I grew up in the church and grew up very strict, and this was the antithesis of that, and I really had to find my way in the middle, and go, OK, this is my line. I'm walking this line. And it made me establish my own identity, and it made me know who I really was and what I really, you know, believed in for myself, and it wasn't something that, you know, I'm doing this because my parents said do this, or I'm not doing this or I'm doing this because all these people do this. It was having this sort of extreme liberalness on one side, and extreme, you know, strictness on the other, and then going, OK, this is what's right here. This is comfortable, and I can live with this. So...

GROSS: That's beautiful, because like in Germany, you found out who you really were, and then you became a star and made you over into somebody else.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SUMMER: Constantly being made over. What am I going to do, you know? Never good enough.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

GROSS: When you were the queen of disco, what were you listening to yourself?

SUMMER: What was I listening to when I was the Q of D?

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SUMMER: I am the Q of D? OK. Let's see, what was it? I mean, I guess I was listening to--I always liked James Taylor, and...

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

GROSS: That's not the answer I was expecting.

SUMMER: I know. Isn't it sad? When I tell people - Stevie Wonder, James Taylor, Marvin Gaye, Aretha, you know, Barbra Streisand. Back then, let's see, who else was I listening to? You know, The Doors, you know, The Stones, The Beatles, the who else? You know, Curtis Mayfield. You know, I mean - a lot of Motown acts, Diana. You know, I mean, that was kind of my era, so I mean, I listened to a lot of stuff. I also listened to country music, you know, and classical music and jazz music, so you know, I listened to everything, because I feel that music is on all levels a part of us in a lot of ways, and I don't like to be - you know, I don't like to exclude things. So I mean, even till to this day, you hear every kind of music in my house.

GROSS: Do you have a favorite of your hits that we haven't played yet?

SUMMER: Well, I like "Last Dance." I love "Last Dance," and I love, you know, "On the Radio," too.

GROSS: "On the Radio," good choice. Let's hear "On the Radio."

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SUMMER: Oh, you clever little one.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

GROSS: Tell us about, you know, the origin of the song and the production on it, how you put it together.

SUMMER: OK. "On the Radio"--I was in the studio with "On the Radio" for about three weeks to a month, not in the studio with it, but I had the song. Giorgio had given me the track, and I said, Giorgio, what - is there anything - did you have anything in mind when you wrote this track? And he kept saying, well,' he said, something with the radio. And I said, OK. I said OK and I pondered it for about three weeks. I couldn't come up with a word, nothing, and I gave the track to Bruce, my husband - at the time my boyfriend - and I said, honey, please try to write this. I just can't come up with anything. It's not coming to me.

And so one day I was in the studio and it was a day I was supposed to be recording something else, and I was sitting at the piano and I was up at Rusk Studio in Los Angeles. I was at the piano, and Stephen Bishop's record was on the top of the piano, and I looked at the record, and I know Stephen, and we've written together, and I'm like, you know, how would Stephen say this? What line would he come up - he's so clever. And all of a sudden, this one line came to me, and it was must have fallen out of a hole in your old brown overcoat, and it was like a lightning bolt. OK, that's it. I knew who the person was. I knew who the person was in the song, I knew who she needed to be, I knew what she was going through, I knew what had to be said. And so as soon as I got all of the personal information on the character, I was able to go into the studio, stand on the microphone and sign the song pretty much verbatim, the way you hear it. That is - you know, I don't know how many takes I did that day, but I don't think I did very many, and I think I got most of the song in the first take, so, you know, it was about having that story in my psyche and being able to go on there and sing it from that person's perspective, and once I got the perspective, I was ridin'.

GROSS: You know, the whoa, whoa, you know, like on the radio, whoa.

SUMMER: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: Sorry for doing that so badly.

SUMMER: (Singing) Whoa-oh-oh...

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

GROSS: Thank you. At what point in the song does that actually come to you, that you were going to do that there? Was that when you were at the mike, or was that when you were doing the songwriting?

SUMMER: I think that I just did that spontaneously. I mean, I don't think that - I just think it came out. I don't think I planned it, you know, but just probably needed something there.

GROSS: Donna Summer, thank you so much for talking with us.

SUMMER: Thank you.

GROSS: OK. Well, this is Donna Summer, "On the Radio."

(SOUNDBITE OF "ON THE RADIO)

SUMMER: Ms. SUMMER: (Singing) Someone found a letter you wrote me, on the radio, and they told the world just how you felt. It must have fallen out of a hole in your old brown overcoat. They never said your name, but I knew just who they meant. Whoa-oh-oh, I was so surprised and shocked, and I wondered, too, if by chance you heard it for yourself. I never told a soul just how I've been feeling about you, but they said it really loud, and said it on the air, on the radio, whoa-oh-oh, on the radio, whoa-oh-oh, on the radio, whoa-oh-oh, on the radio, whoa-oh-oh, on the radio...

DAVIES: Donna Summer spoke with Terry Gross in 2003 when her memoir "Ordinary Girl" was published. She died of cancer yesterday at the age of 63. Coming up, and interview with innovative hair stylist Vidal Sassoon who died last week. This is FRESH AIR.

DAVE DAVIES, HOST: Vidal Sassoon, the hairstylist who changed the way women looked in the 1960s, died last week in Los Angeles. He was 84 and had leukemia. Though says so style the hair of jet-setting movie stars and models, he grew in a family so poor that his mother put him in a Jewish orphanage for several years.

Sassoon is remembered for popularizing short haircuts that went with the miniskirts of the 1960s and for geometric and asymmetrical designs that complemented his subject's facial features. He's also known as the stylist who gave women simply wash and wear styles that freed them from lacquered hairdos and wearing curlers to bed. Sassoon also created a chain of beauty salons and a popular line of shampoos and conditioners.

Terry spoke to Vidal Sassoon last year when he published a memoir and was featured in a documentary film. Terry asked him about his first really famous haircut, which he gave to actress Nancy Kwan after she made her movie "The World of Suzie Wong." She had long straight hair.

VIDAL SASSOON: You know, I never looked at beauty as beauty. I always looked at bone structure and the way the face was created; it's quite fascinating for me. And I thought: We could do almost anything with Nancy. And I started to cut the very back of the hair and I said, great neckline, I'll go shorter. And I went short in the back and graduated into much - into more length at the sides. And I suddenly realized we had a bob that could be international. And it caught on. It caught on to the extent that people were coming in and asking for it over time - not only with us, with many hairdressers. It had to be not only layered from the back to the front, but when she shook her head, it had to fall back naturally. So...

TERRY GROSS, HOST: Now did you set it at all or was it just in the cut that it fell that way?

SASSOON: Oh, never set those kind of heads. We, you know, setting was going out at the time - far out...

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

GROSS: So, what did you think when The Sassoon spread to people like me, who got their hair cut in the neighborhood, you know, in the neighborhood salon and it wasn't the work of art that you had done, but it was a very popular haircut, very, you know, easy to take care of, look good. How did you feel about the neighborhood cuts?

SASSOON: We were totally flattered, you see. It was, you either create something and you keep it a secret and you die with it - what's the point? If you can benefit a craft, and in essence from that benefiting of the craft, you're doing something for fashion worldwide, I think that's so much more important. It's something that you leave behind that you probably will be remembered for.

DAVIES: When you started cutting hair, what were the hairdos that were popular?

SASSOON: Oh, flips and lots of lacquer...

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

SASSOON: ...which was very difficult, updos, you know, the ladies that lunch, those updos. But, well, the cutting wasn't there, number one, as it should've been. It was early.

GROSS: You mean it was mostly about setting and spraying?

SASSOON: It was setting and spraying. Yes.

GROSS: And the hairdos?

SASSOON: Look, some of them looked very, very pretty but I wasn't after pretty. I was after bones, getting into that bone structure, making it work.

GROSS: And the teased hair and the...

SASSOON: Well, it was a joke, really. Teasing people's hair like that and making it look very presentable for the day, but what do they do the next day, you know? From '54 to '63, when I went into my own first salon, I just said we're not doing any of that old stuff anymore. It's very pretty and nice, but...

GROSS: When you started doing hair professionally, you went to a vocal coach, a speech coach, because you grew up poor.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

GROSS: You grew up in an orphanage part of the time. You had a Cockney accent, and you wanted to lose it. So you went to a teacher who actually worked with theater actors.

SASSOON: Yes.

GROSS: Why was your accent important enough to you to study for three years?

SASSOON: I couldn't get a job in the West End. They would say, go and learn the language. And by the way, the language is English. I mean, it was that kind of thing. And...

GROSS: What did you sound like before?

SASSOON: Bit like that, then darling. 'Ello. 'Ow are you, love?

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SASSOON: It was a bit Cockney.

GROSS: Now, you became a shampoo boy when you were 14. You say in the documentary about you that it was your mother's idea for you to become a hairdresser. She had some kind of dream or...

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SASSOON: Premonition.

GROSS: ...premonition or something that you should be a hairdresser.

SASSOON: Premonition. Yes. Absolutely.

GROSS: How old were you, and how did she say to you, I've had this dream, son, you should be a hairdresser?

SASSOON: I looked at her in horror. My response was no, never. Well, what do you want to do? I don't know. But at 14, to become a hairdresser...

GROSS: Why was that horrifying to you at the age of 14?

SASSOON: It just wasn't what I wanted to do. I wanted to play soccer and I wanted to - I was always into - you know, I won the school championship in running, and I was into all that kind of thing where sport was concerned. I was useless as a student, absolutely useless.

GROSS: Had you...

SASSOON: I never could learn anything that I didn't like.

GROSS: So when she took you to a hairdresser for you to apprentice and you became a shampoo boy at the age of 14, what did you like about it? What changed your mind and made you think, yeah, this is for me?

SASSOON: The pretty girls.

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SASSOON: It's the truth.

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

SASSOON: There were so many pretty girls coming into the salon as clients, and others working in the salon. And I thought, hmm. This is rather nice. But I was a very average shampoo boy, in the sense. I could shampoo, but, I mean, I was a very average apprentice. I wasn't any better than anybody else.

GROSS: So, when did you realize you wanted to make this your life?

SASSOON: Well, I was politically involved with the anti-fascist group, 43 Group. And that meant that sometimes you got into a little trouble. At the age of 20, I joined the Israeli Army. I was in the Palmach, which was one of their great groups and founded by, actually, Rabin and Orde Wingate and a whole bunch of marvelous people.

I spent a year there, came home, had nothing. The only thing I knew what to do was hairdressing, and I was really quite bad at that. And then I decided, well, if I'm going to have to be in hair, let me change my attitude. Let me see if I can do something worthwhile. And, well, things started to happen.

DAVIES: Vidal Sassoon died last week at the age of 84. He spoke with Terry Gross last year. Coming up, we remember Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes. This is FRESH AIR.

DAVE DAVIES, HOST: Carlos Fuentes, the Mexican writer and intellectual who helped spark an explosion of Latin American literature in the '60s and '70s, died Tuesday in Mexico City. He was 83. Fuentes is remembered for many novels which blended reality and fantasy and dealt with social and political issues. Many regard his 1962 work, "The Death of Artemio Cruz," as his finest. His 1985 book, "The Old Gringo," was widely read in the U.S. and made into a movie starring Gregory Peck.

Fuentes was an outspoken advocate for social justice, but refused to embrace political orthodoxy. He praised Castro's revolution and later rejected it and called Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez a tropical Mussolini. He served for two years as Mexico's ambassador to France. Fuentes' father was a career diplomat. From the ages of four to 11, Carlos lived in Washington, D.C. where his father was stationed.

Carlos Fuentes never stopped writing. His last novel, "Destiny and Desire" was published last year. Terry spoke to him in 1987. He told her that even though he was fluent in English, French, and Italian, he could only write fiction in his mother tongue, Spanish.

CARLOS FUENTES: All my dreams are in Spanish. It happens to be the language I insult in, which is also very important. I don't feel insults in English or French. They mean nothing. But in this...

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

The word doesn't have the power.

FUENTES: It doesn't have any power, whereas an insult in Spanish really, really sets me boiling. And it's the language of love for me. Curious. It's the only language I can make love with, which is why I always married Mexican women who can understand me, I guess.

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GROSS: When you were growing up in the United States, when your father was a diplomat based in Washington...

FUENTES: Yes.

GROSS: ...did you feel especially Mexican or American?

FUENTES: Well, I was made to feel very Mexican by the American kids, you know, who were rough and tough on me sometimes when Mexico crept into the news. Mexico, you recall, was the kind of Nicaragua of the 1920s and '30s for the United States, the beast down south, the leftist, the revolutionaries, the Marxist and communists and all that.

And so, I was identified with my country and, in spite of being a child, what my country was doing. And I had not been identified, well, the American children made me feel identified.

GROSS: So when you returned to Mexico when you were around 11, did you feel, well, now I can learn what Mexico is really like? You were too young to really understand it when you left.

FUENTES: No. Yeah, yeah. I only came back to Mexico when I was 15 years old, because after living in the United States I went on to Chile and Argentina because I was following my father as a diplomat, you see, when I was a child, a young man. And so, I only came back to Mexico to live permanently when I was 16 years old. And then it was a great discovery because I had to contrast what I had imagined Mexico to be with what Mexico actually was.

And in the tension between my imagination and reality, my literary possibilities as a novelist were born, because I started dealing with this tension, with this rupture between reality and the imagined that I experienced when I returned as a teenager.

GROSS: Could you give us a sense of what you were imagining that didn't exist in reality?

FUENTES: Yeah. I felt that the country was above criticism because it was so assailed by the Americans. So assailed by the United States, I had to defend it constantly. Well, I arrived and I found that it was not a perfect country and that I had to deal with the imperfections as well as with the ideals of Mexico. And I discovered very quickly that criticism is a form of optimism, and that when you are silent about the shortcomings of your society, you're very pessimistic about that society.

And it's only when you speak truthfully about it that you show your faith in that society, which is something that jingoists and chauvinists in any country, Mexico, the United States, do not understand well.

GROSS: You've said that as a young man in Mexico when you were, oh, a teenager around 18 or so, that you started to immerse yourself in the life of the city and you started hanging around with stripteasers and magicians and mariachis. And I'd like to know whether that was to get a sense of, like, the bohemian life or to get a sense of Mexico.

FUENTES: No, it was great fun. That was all.

GROSS: It was great fun. It was none of the above.

FUENTES: It was not part of any plan.

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FUENTES: It was not part of any plan. It was simply that Mexico City was becoming a metropolis in the 1940s, and it was great fun to hang out with all these people, you know. It was such a mixture. Many emigres came to Mexico during the war from Europe. Then when you started getting the persecution of the red scares in this country, a lot of people from Hollywood and American left-wingers arrived in Mexico and it was a nice stew, you know.

There were a lot of tendencies, a lot of interesting people, and I was fortunate enough to be a teenager then, to be able to mix with all of this. And with the popular life of the city, which was fantastic and the city was very beautiful and it was small. You could walk it. You could have it in your hand. Now it spills over. It's like a cancer.

GROSS: How did your parents react to your hanging out with whores and magicians?

FUENTES: Very badly. They wanted me to be a nice young lawyer. And, well, I just went through that experience, which was fundamental for me as a writer because it was the subject matter of my first novel. If I hadn't lived that, probably I would not have written the first novel I wrote, you see.

GROSS: Well, you mentioned this coexistence of reality and un-reality and reality and magic.

FUENTES: Yeah.

GROSS: And I think one could say that that was a kind of theme through the Latin American novel, as we've come to call it.

FUENTES: Yeah.

GROSS: You know, I also wondered why that is, why there is so much magic and surrealism in Latin American fiction. I don't know if you have any ideas about that.

FUENTES: Yeah, I have many ideas and I think one shouldn't generalize totally about this because there are authors in whom this does not occur. We're dealing really with something beyond what you're saying, which is the great theme of fiction, the great theme of novels since Cervantes and "Don Quixote," and he inaugurated it, which is the relation between reality and illusion, or between imagination and daily life.

The great problem proposed by "Don Quixote," which is present in every single novel you care to mention. I don't know a novel where that is not present - what is reality and what is illusion? Only the Latin American novelist perhaps because of the quantity of unresolved problems in our society, of the burning search for identity in our societies, of the magnitude of our geography, our distances, because of the grotesqueness sometimes of our political life.

We've had to deal with it in a more baroque and a more underlying fashion, if you will, because it's the only way to deal with the magnitude of the problems of the characters in history, of the length of the rivers, the height of the mountains. It's a bit overpowering, you know. So, the response is sometimes the response of further extravagance, a greater imagination in fiction than reality offers to you.

GROSS: You've always been politically engaged in one way or another. I mean, some writers are and some writers aren't. Were there any writers who inspired you to have this politically engaged kind of fiction?

FUENTES: Well, I don't know if anybody inspired me. I felt it was simply a natural thing to do in my case in Latin America, and that I was doing it not so much as a writer but as a concerned citizen. And that I would not confuse my writing with my politics. And I think this is something you can say of most of the Latin American writers.

You have writers on the left; you have writers on the right in Latin America. But when they're good writers, you don't feel that they're imposing their politics on you or using their novels as soap boxes. On the contrary, they're extremely respectful.

I mean, Garcia Marquez on the left, I have yet to see where he preaches any leftist doctrine in one of his novels. Or Jorge Luis Borges on the right, again, he was not a propagandist for any conservative creed.

So, this is what I mean that basically one must understand these attitudes at the level of citizen concern, of citizen activity. And when all is said and done, what matters are the books, not the politics. If we were to judge Balzac or Ezra Pound or P.G. Wodehouse by their politics, not by their books, we would be very, very wrong.

DAVIES: Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes speaking with Terry Gross, recorded in 1987. Fuentes died Tuesday in Mexico City. He was 83.

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