“I found a piece of my peace right here in Georgia,” says Chaka Khan, who just started a new life in the big rural property she purchased in that state. She recently sat in her bedroom there, gazing at the trees outside, and looked back at her life and career for our new interview with her, which you can hear on the latest episode of Rolling Stone Music Now. Some highlights follow; to hear the full interview, go here for the podcast provider of your choice, listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or just press play below.)
Led Zeppelin II was the first album she ever bought, and she still loves the band. “It was like watching a movie to listen to that album,” says Khan, who once covered “What Is and Should Never Be” in a Bonnaroo jam. “It was just great artistry. Very visual and very real for me.”
When she was in her band, Rufus, she didn’t like it when she started getting special billing on their album covers — because she never actually wanted to go solo. “We were having a great time as a group,” she says. “Everybody was getting along. Everything was fine. And I was enjoying it. It was fun. It was great. And it was just when they put my name out front, that’s when all the crap started. The trouble came, because they started focusing on me … They were a band that had [already] been around for an and I felt really, I was thankful to be with a band like that, with a history. And it was awkward for me, very awkward. I never did see myself as a solo artist.”
She has a deep connection with her friend Joni Mitchell. “The road is not easy on a bus with a bunch of guys,” says Khan. “I had the back room, so I’d lock that sucker and just have a bottle of wine, blast Joni — Hejira — and have the windows open wide open … My father, who’s a photographer, was taking pictures of us, when we were hanging out one night with Joni. And he said that she and I are like the dark and the light on a negative. We are like two sides of one coin. I think we’re very similar, we’ve had similar life experiences … I think we just have a lot in common as human beings. We make good friends … I loved her in all her phases and every one of her phases. I loved her and I get it.”
Despite her own history of addiction, she had zero idea that her friend Prince was fighting an opiate problem. “It’s crazy — and I consider myself an expert — that I still didn’t get it,” says Khan. “He was very adept at being private, at maintaining his privacy. That was like number one on his list of things to do. He was an absolute genius at it.”
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