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And flaky, if her ex-manager, Jeff Wald, is to be credited. Discharged from Summer's service at the end of last year, Wald announced in the rock press that Donna was more trouble than she was worth, once even canceled a chartered flight because her astrologer counseled against it. Says Donna: "Jeff Wald earned over $200,000 through me and never saw me perform. He was just running around Hawaii with his wife [Singer Helen Reddy] having a great time, thinking he was above being a manager." Tending to Donna's needs now are both a former publicist for Donna's record company, Casablanca, and the wife of the Casablanca president.
She also rings up her astrologer for consultations, keeps a sharp watch on the configurations of the heavens, and divines that Capricorns like herself "are aggressive and workaholics. I am certainly a workaholic. Capricorn women also display an incredibly cold sexuality." She is quick to add, how ever, "I can't have an affair of the body without one of the mind. It's not in my morals."
Morals were so strict around the Boston home of Andrew Gaines that when eldest Daughter Donna told him she was flying off to Europe to be in a production of Hair, she got her face slapped soundly. "Daddy," she pleaded, "this is my big chance. Shirley Temple was a little kid. Did her mother stop her?" Dad's riposte, or his reaction to 1) her marriage to an Austrian actor from Hair, 2) her divorce in 1974 or 3) his first hearing of Love to Love You Baby are not a matter of public record. But snapshots of Mom and Dad enclosed in a heart-shaped frame peer out of every copy of the Summer concert program, surrounded by pictures of Donna's daughter Mimi, 5. Three other Gaines daughters have followed their sister down the show biz path, and they sing back-up vocals for Donna.
She lives in Los Angeles and Lake Tahoe, keeps constant company with Singer-Guitarist Bruce Sudano.
He will open her act in Tahoe, but she bristles at queries, about their private life. "Of course he lives with me. We eat at the same table." A body guard is close by for those occasions when crowds become "too pushy. You cannot imagine how people forget their manners. I've had fans trap me in elevators."
Such pressures have given Donna an ulcer and a penchant for philosophy. "The furor over Love to Love You Baby was certainly good for my bank account," she remarks, "but it gave me a one-sided image as a sex queen. But a person is not one thing." One person Donna would like to resemble is Diana Ross. "I've always admired her," says Donna. "Since I was a young girl Ross has been working her behind off, getting her credits and paying her dues. She has been through a lot and attained a great level." And of course Donna would like Diana's Oscar nomination. But, she says firmly, "if I was nominated, I'd want to win."
— Jay Cocks