A FILM BY LUCÍA PALACIOS AND DIETMAR POST
In November 2011, the filmmakers made a preliminary phone call to Donna Summer.
Donna Summer died on May 17, 2012 before their scheduled interview.
Dietmar, how are you? -Good, and you?
This telephone call is Donna Summer's last known interview.
RICKY GAINES DONNA SUMMER'S BROTHER
MARY BERNARD DONNA SUMMER'S SISTER AND SINGER
HOBY COOK FRIEND AND BAND LEADER
Hello, ladies and gentlemen...
She asks me why I'm just a hairy guy
I'm hairy noon and night Hair that's a fright
The first day of rehearsals, the ensemble is getting acquainted,
we're sitting in this room,
RON WILLIAMS FRIEND, HAIR CAST MEMBER
and this black girl walks in with a button nose,
big earrings and a really short haircut.
And they said, "That's Donna Gaines."
I liked her right away. Man, was she cute!
Then our eyes met and so on.
I was 26, and she was 18 or 19.
Then we rented a room here in Schwabing.
I even practiced German with her.
Facing a dying nation
Of moving paper fantasy
It was like going to the zoo. They came to see the hippies.
It depends on how the hippies look.
They're absolutely right. We've oppressed them long enough...
... us white people. It's true.
Even the long hair could be pleasant,
if it's well kempt, and not just...
... provocative. If it's neat, then it could be okay.
There's a deeper meaning to it.
This is my fourth time. It's fabulous, and so is the show.
"We must dare more democracy
but with common sense,
with love for our fellow man, regardless of the color of their skin."
I love Willy Brandt! He's the greatest Chancellor of all time.
And he wasn't racist! He inspired all the artists.
I'll never forget it. It was incredible!
I was very political, and I still am.
The Vietnam war really upset me. Nixon really upset me.
Donna wasn't very interested in all that, because it wasn't her thing.
Her career was her thing, and that's what she was about.
One night... I'll never forget it.
She took this hairbrush
and set up the light so it cast a shadow on the wall,
and she stood on the bed and sang, and she said:
The fountain of the gods with the Afri-straw.
High on Afri-Cola again.
The fountain of the gods with the Afri-straw.
Afri-Cola.
Sexy.
Mini.
Super.
Flower.
Afri-Cola has it all.
The sun rises, the moon sets
A new day dawns...
DAVID KING MUSICIAN AND PRODUCER
I've prepared. Here's a tape from '72.
This is the recording I made at home with Donna.
I played bass and guitar, with a drum machine and...
I wrote the music, Donna wrote lyrics. She had this "Nickel-bag Annie" idea,
because her grandma gave her nickels, so she had this nickel bag.
I met Donna... I was playing in a lot of clubs in Schwabing,
like Domicile, and other clubs.
Then I was approached by Veit Marvos,
an organ player.
He'd put together a soul band with Hans on conga,
Frank Diez, Stefan Diez's brother, on guitar,
Peter Bischof, a singer, and Donna Summer.
She was a soloist, and I was on bass.
She came back to my place a lot,
and we'd start working on a piece right away.
It was all very naive...
ELSE-BRITT THATCHER FRIEND
Oh bless the Lord my soul
His praise to thee proclaimed
DAGMAR FRIEND AND PHOTOGRAPHER
"Her hair is a mixture of black and blonde.
She is very, very cute when she's sleeping,
but other than that, she's a little devil."
She wrote that in German. "Oh well, what can you do?"
I'm not sure exactly how long the marriage lasted,
but it didn't last very long. But she kept his name.
She anglicized the spelling from Donna "Sommer"
to Donna "Summer," and that was her name from then on.
That's the name she became famous with.
GIORGIO MORODER PRODUCER
PETER MÜHLDORFER FRIEND AND PAINTER
It was great. Giorgio lived upstairs in the Arabella-Haus,
and Musicland Studio was in the cellar.
Giorgio would sit upstairs in his apartment,
and pound out tunes on the piano,
and that's pretty much how he prepared the songs.
Donna was married, and I was married, and...
we met in secret at first. LOVE STRUCK LIKE LIGHTNING
Then we fell in love, and that's how it started.
She'd already had two hits: "Lady of the Night"
and "Hostage." And we toured through France and Holland.
We went from disco to disco.
I rolled the playback and she sang.
And we earned...
I don't know exactly how much,
but something like 800 or 1,000 DM, back then.
And we were staying in some closet room
and we threw the money up in the air,
overjoyed that we'd made such a huge amount of money.
I love to love you
Giorgio said there was this idea:
And I had this bass line I'd been playing in clubs with Donna.
I thought, "Oh, cool! Now's my chance to try it out."
Giorgio set up the machine:
Snares on 2 and 4, and hi-hat in 16th notes.
The music has very straight drums,
but what made it interesting was my bass line.
I'm playing funk music against this straight, 4/4 disco beat.
And that was new.
JOSIAH HOWARD AUTHOR AND BIOGRAPHER
She flew over first, and then I followed with Mimi.
It was very strange.
Two limousines came to pick us up.
It was like in the movies,
for her as well, of course. Her dream had finally come true.
Then Donna got sick.
We went to the hospital there.
And everything was planned from morning till night.
She was always going to appointments.
Our private lives basically didn't exist anymore,
which didn't exactly do wonders for our relationship.
Her parents were set on Mimi coming to live with them.
They took great care of her.
The very first thing Donna bought with the first money she made
was a fur coat. She bought that over here.
The second thing she bought was a house for her parents in Boston.
In the beginning I was in the house she'd grown up in with her siblings.
And it was the kind of house...
The kind of house you imagined being in the American South.
Everything was made of wood, and it was pretty rundown.
So her first wish was:
I want to buy my parents a house.
And she bought it for them with the first real money she'd made.
That wasn't a problem at all. Neil from Casablanca handled the money,
and she got advances and so on.
Casablanca was the label where every vice president drove a Rolls Royce.
The label was on Sunset Boulevard,
and the hype just took off.
But it has to be said, that wasn't Donna's thing at all.
Donna had nothing to do with drugs.
HANS NIESWANDT MUSICIAN, DJ, AUTHOR
I know it.
I'd never heard anything so modern, except for...
"Autobahn" by Kraftwerk.
They're the two most modern songs from the 70's.
It's a very important record. Very influential.
It established an aesthetic blueprint that we still follow today.
This is an Ebony magazine, a black magazine.
BOB ESTY PRODUCER AND ARRANGER
ALICE ECHOLS DJ AND HISTORIAN
Then it was time to make a new Donna Summer album.
HAROLD FALTERMEYER COMPOSER AND PRODUCER
After the unimaginable success of Live and More,
Neil Bogart, the head of Casablanca, said he wanted another double album.
They weren't sure where it would go, except that it'd be disco, of course.
And mainly because of "Hot Stuff," it ended up being
a new kind of Rock 'n' Roll disco.
That was something that evolved during production.
Donna was larger than life, she could do as she pleased.
Personally, I think she felt more comfortable in that harder genre,
because she played a bigger part in the whole thing.
"I Feel Love" was a Moroder piece.
He basically said,
"Sing like this, and that's all I need from you.
I'll cut it a certain way..." And so on.
It was man made. But this was more earthy and ballsy.
Later she said she was done singing songs
like "Hot Stuff" or "Bad Girls".
I don't know if she was ashamed about her past,
but those songs brought her huge success and made her a legend.
So, sometimes it's better to let bygones be bygones.
GERRY ROSENBLATT DONNA SUMMER'S FRIEND AND LAWYER
PETER SHAPIRO MUSIC HISTORIAN
We met...
here in Munich, in this studio actually.
We met in '86. This studio was built in '86,
and Donna was the first to use the studio.
We met to produce this album.
Giorgio didn't want to produce with her anymore.
Part of it was made in Musicland Studio, part of it was made here,
and we finished it in Los Angeles.
I think Donna's time had passed.
The hype around Donna, her mystique, and...
and Donna as a brand name.
All that was gone at that point.
On May 23, 2012, Donna Summer was buried in Nashville in a private family service.
She gave selected concerts, released albums and painted until she died.