Supreme diva Diana Ross is back, and she's letting it all hang out . .. except for all that stuff about drink-driving, rehab and Jacko, writes Róisín Ingle
The promotional posters for Diana Ross's concert at Dublin's Point Depot in March speak volumes about the music legend. High octane glamour is exactly the kind of image you would expect from the original pop diva who, as a Motown Supreme and then a solo star, is the most successful female artist in the history of pop. But what is more significant about the posters is the fact that they show Ross clutching her bare breasts in a pose Kylie might have adopted back before she instigated her recent flesh ban. Diana Ross - Miss Ross to you - will be 60 this year, but she wants very much for the world to know that in her mind she is still a sex symbol. She may be a post-menopausal woman - more of which later - but she is not giving up her sexuality for anyone.
Ross has covered up for her pre-tour interviews in a hotel in London's Kensington but the message sent out by her clinging bright red leather trouser-suit is the same: J-Lo eat your heart out. You can't help staring. Those huge, slightly protruding, eyes. The small, sparrow-like frame. The big hair which she has a tendency to flick airily every few minutes. Tales of her temperamental outbursts make interviewing her intimidating. You expect tension, you do not expect girly comments like the one she throws at you straight off. "Oh my God," she says, "I just love your skirt, isn't it pretty?" It's only Marks & Spencer's, you point out, at which she bursts into delicate tinkly laughter. (Straight afterwards she turns and tells one of two minions who sit in on the interview to open the window. A few minutes later she will ask her to close it again. Disappointingly, that's about as diva-like as she gets.)
The interview is doubly intimidating because the press has been ordered not to ask Miss Ross about certain areas of her life. Her drink-driving charge last year in Tucson, Arizona, and her time spent in rehab the year before due to "personal issues".
We are not to quiz her on the incident a few years ago when she allegedly assaulted an airport worker during a security search at Heathrow, which led to her being ordered off Concorde. And, of course, we are banned from asking her opinion on the current difficulties being experienced by her good friend, Michael Jackson. In fact, Michael Jackson is totally out of bounds. This last caveat proves the most difficult part to adhere to because, frankly, she looks more like Michael Jackson than he does.
With those strict guidelines in place, it's best to play safe and start with a question about how she feels about going back on the road.
"It could be my swan song," she says. "I'm not sure. Never say never."
During her ill-fated Supremes reunion tour a year ago, she was the only original Supreme in the line-up after negotiations with former member Mary Wilson broke down over profit shares. The tour experienced poor ticket sales and was abandoned after just a month. So why go back?
"I just love the work, I love singing. I have a God-given gift and I always want to perform. I really like being on stage, I think it's what I do best," she says, adding that it only seems like yesterday when Ross, a gawky 16-year-old, emerged from the housing projects of Detroit with her friends, Mary Wilson and Florence Ballard, to become The Supremes.
Under the guidance of svengali Berry Gordy, they become the first female Motown group to have a No 1 album, releasing copious slices of pop perfection, such as Baby Love and Where Did Our Love Go? After Ballard left, or as music legend has it, was sacked by Ross, in the late 1960s - she died destitute and drunk of a heart attack at the age of 32 eight years later - the band became Diana Ross and The Supremes. When Wilson left, it was just Diana Ross on her own, the woman always described by Gordy as the most ambitious Supreme of all, churning out hit after hit until her career went into reverse following the wonderful Chain Reaction, which became a school disco staple in the 1980s.
Does she still see Wilson? "No." Why? "We just grew apart, you know, like you do grow in different areas. I moved east, I think she moved west." So there is no animosity between them? "Yes there is animosity because of things she has said about me. I wouldn't even know if they were true or not. I would just basically stay away from her because of things she said." Is it true that she used to put her hands in front of the faces of the other Supremes when they danced? "No," she says visibly prickling. "That is not true."
At this point, Ross's inner diva appears to be rearing her temperamental head. It's time to move on and ask her opinion on the latest clutch of modern-day pop divas. "You mean like J-Lo and the others. I think they are OK," she laughs. "I do think back in The Supremes we were trail-blazers in a sense. I think we were the beginning of all the costume changes. I went to one of the award ceremonies and I noticed that one of the girls was changing her clothes every time she came out. I said, uh-huh, I did that years ago. I designed all the clothes for The Supremes - I was always into fashion and having clothing as a big part of the image."
When asked whether she is a 24-hour diva, whether she wakes up every day looking like she does now, she nearly falls off her chair laughing. "Listen, I have cereal and a cup of coffee and I drive my kids to school in my bathrobe and my slippers," she says. I can't imagine J-Lo doing that, I tell her. "I don't care about J-Lo, and anyway she doesn't have kids."
She rejects the notion that she was the first star to make outlandish demands and be derided for being temperamental. "That didn't start with me. That was way back with Maria Callas and I think it's just part of women taking charge of their lives, it's not a bad thing," she says. "In any industry, as soon as a woman is the boss and has to make decisions, she is known as a diva or as being aggressive, that's just the way it is."
There is only a few minutes left of the 20-minute interview. Clutching at straws, scared to broach the banned subjects, I ask her to explain something she said in a televised interview with Barbara Walters last year. It was around the time she went into rehab and a couple of years after her 14-year marriage to Norwegian tycoon Arne Naess fell apart. The mother-of-five told Walters that she was "kinda sad" much of the time.
Why was that? "I was going through the change, life was changing for me," says Ross hesitantly. "I was going through these ups and downs . . . it's part of getting older . . making adjustments to the changes in life which all women have to do."
Miss Ross, I say, are you by any chance talking about (embarrassed pause) the menopause? Cue gales of tinkly laughter and a treatise by Diana Ross on a subject she has become something of an expert on.
"I bet your mom hasn't talked to you about this." Er, no and to be honest I am not that thrilled to be talking to you about it either. "Yes, well, I am talking about the menopause. Emotionally it is quite tough, especially if you don't decide to use hormone replacement therapy, which I didn't because my Mom died of breast cancer," she says. "I decided to find a natural way to handle it and hopefully soon it would pass. I exercised to keep my bones strong, I took vitamins, I drank soya milk and that's really how I continue to live." Ross is writing a book at the moment, and one chapter she says will be devoted to the menopause "because it's something nobody talks about".
She describes the process as the most challenging point of her life, a tumultuous period which affected her profoundly and without directly alluding to her personal troubles, it's clear she believes the menopause contributed in part to them.
"It's not just a double-whammy," she says, patting her knee with her hand for emphasis. "This was a time when it continually hits you all at once. The menopause, the divorce, things start to hit you all at one time and, you know, how do you handle it all?"
The question hangs in the air. You get drunk, you drive, you get cross with security staff, you go into rehab, you ring your good friend, Michael Jackson, to distract you from your own problems, is what I really want to say. But I don't. I just shake her hand and say goodbye, kinda sad but kinda glad she got that off her chest.
Diana Ross plays the Point, Dublin, on March 10th and 20th and The Odyssey, Belfast, on March 11th