A torment on a tape | Michèle and her friends

Buzz: Barry White 1999 at the Hallenstadion Zurich. Photo: Monika Zaugg (Keystone)

Recently, I found a cassette in a dark corner of my desk drawer, which had not been touched by a living hand for decades. It was these colorful plastic cases with brand names like BASF or Maxell that contained an electromagnetic band that could be played with music. The cassette I found in my drawer was handwritten under the title "Barry White, New York, 1999."

Barry White was a 1970s soft-soul singer, and his "Can not Get Enough of Your Love, Babe" became famous, and he liked to point out that thousands of babies had been spawned to his songs. It was probably an understatement, whatever it may be, I had not heard Barry White before, and I was not designed for Barry White's music, so the cassette m & # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #

It came to my mind that in an inaccessible corner of our basement sitting under suitcases and toys set discarded, a Philips tape recorder was … I carried the camera to the light, put in the tape, rewound the tape, and hit the play button.

First, I'm I heard my voice, and I said in English, "Mr. White, you claim that any man can get what he wants from the woman of his dreams. He just had to put a record of Barry White at the right time. "Then a very deep voice, very slow and very tired spoke:" The right of Thaaat. "

Slowly it melted

Now I remembered: In the summer of 1999, I interviewed Barry White in a hotel suite in New York. You have a unique view of Central Park, but that did not interest the singer, because in his suite the air conditioning failed. "Slowly, he melted, sweat pouring from his shiny black hair into large and small streams and dripping on his shirt, one must imagine: Barry White, then 55 years old, was a colossal man, monumental and heavy and lethargic, suffering from diabetes and back pain, and dragging himself from chair to chair. the other to relocate its enormous weight.

I had written thirty questions that I hoped to be able to put in half. White was polite, but so exhausted that his short responses looked like slow motion ( "the right of thaaat"), reaching a low frequency that the human ear could barely e After nine minutes, I reached the last question. I thought it was inappropriate to torture the man longer with my presence. I bowed, I walked into the lobby, I fell into an armchair and caught a cold

It's a matter of tempo

When I'm I tried to transcribe the interview, I did not understand. There was only a deep, dark buzzing sound. It was only when I played the recording at a higher speed that White's voice sounded as bright and brilliant as Michael Jackson's.

A long-standing hint has been confirmed: it's all about tempo. Four years after this interview, Barry White died of kidney failure. The cassette has disappeared from the scene. And because this story came to mind, I headed for the bar at the end of the street where I stood in front of the jukebox and searched the songbook for "Do not do it." of your love, Babe ". Unfortunately, in vain.

Tenor Luciano Pavarotti (left) greets White in 2001 for a charity concert in Modena, Italy. Photo: Reuters

Frank Heer is a cultural editor and author of the women's magazine annabelle