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Aretha Franklin Excited About Super Gig
01/31/2006 8:14 PM, AP
Mike Householder
The Queen of Soul was not pleased.
With the Super Bowl coming to her hometown, Aretha Franklin said she was initially disappointed by the NFL's choice of musical entertainment.
Like some other Detroiters, Franklin — who will sing the national anthem — felt that her city's Motown legacy was being snubbed with the choice of the Rolling Stones as the halftime entertainment.
"I didn't think there was enough, by any means. And it was my feeling: `How dare you come to Detroit, a city of legends — musical legends plural — and not ask one or two of them to participate,'" Franklin said Tuesday in an interview with The Associated Press.
"That's not the way it should be. Of course, they made that correction with no sweat," she said.
The league later announced that Stevie Wonder would play before the game, and Franklin would team on the anthem with singer Aaron Neville, keyboardist Dr. John and a 150-member choir.
"People are happier with everything. I think probably they just, kind of, were not thinking Detroit being the musical city that it is," Franklin said. "I think the focus was probably more on the game at that time than the artists that the city could offer."
NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said the league from the beginning wanted to pay tribute to Detroit's musical legacy in some fashion. He also pointed out that the length of the pregame and halftime shows is the same — 12 minutes.
"It was always our intention to celebrate the contributions of Motown at the Super Bowl," he said.
McCarthy also said singer India.Arie has been added to the list of pregame performers and will join with John Legend and Joss Stone in performing Wonder's hits, as well as other Motown hits. In addition, the Four Tops will also perform prior to kickoff, but they will not be carried live on the ABC broadcast.
Franklin said she has been approached by the NFL in the past to sing at the Super Bowl, "but unfortunately at the times they were calling, I was not flying and not driving as far as the areas where they were."
Now that the big game is in Detroit — and she only has to drive a short distance from her suburban home — Franklin is excited to take part, calling it "an ultra-special honor."
She said she has never before sung with Neville, but "I very much am looking forward to it."
"He has a very, very unique style," she said. "I can't think of anyone else who quite sounds like Aaron Neville."
And Franklin said that, as far as she knows, she and Neville are singing live. She's seen reports about other arrangements, but is going into this performance under impression she's singing live, she said.
Franklin was criticized following her prerecorded and lip-synched rendition of the national anthem before the decisive Game 5 of the 2004 NBA Finals.
Neville said last week that he and Franklin would perform live.
"I'll start it, then she'll take the bridge and we'll do some harmony stuff," he said. "We'll be singing to a track, but we'll be singing live."
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