It was an odd place for an intimate concert.
On a warm summer night inside the mammoth Metrodome, a stage had been set up in a giant tent on the field where the Vikings and Twins played, with tables and chairs for 1,600 people. Wally the Beer Man was mixing martinis in center field. Guests dined on veal tenderloin with Minnesota morel mushrooms.
It was 1996, and this was the Minnesota Orchestra's annual Symphony Ball at a monumental site suitable for the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin.
The greatest pop singer of all time died Thursday — Aug. 16, the same date as the deaths of the King, Elvis Presley, and the Sultan, Babe Ruth — so it's time to tell the whole story.
Aretha had been eluding the Twin Cities for years. In 1968, at the peak of her career, she was supposed to play with the Temptations at the Minneapolis Armory. I had tickets, but the concert was canceled due to the death of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. that week. She did make it to the Minneapolis Auditorium that year (I didn't) but did not return to the Twin Cities until 1992.
Makeshift throne
Ever since I started writing about music in the mid-1970s, Aretha had been on my wish list for interviews, but she rarely talked to reporters. However, Chris Clouser, a VP at Northwest Airlines, which was sponsoring the Symphony Ball, promised me an audience with her backstage.
"Backstage" was actually an ad hoc, curtained-off space shoehorned into a cubbyhole on the field. The Queen's throne was more like a massage table. A tall mirror was propped up on a band member's empty conga case.
After giving an impassioned, living-up-to-the-legend performance in the huge, hot tent, Aretha sat backstage for nearly 20 minutes with towels and a silk shawl carefully wrapped around her glistening shoulders. A very visible piece of duct tape held up her dress strap. She sat in virtual silence, with an attendant or two, and a bodyguard stationed outside.
