Luther Vandross

Jeremy León
Mar 5
9 min read

Updated: Sep 9

Dear Black Gaddies. Can we talk about Luther Vandross if only for a sec.?

This is a timely entry because by the time this is published, a mainstream biography will have been released about his life (in limited release) called “Never Too Much,” brought to us by Jamie Foxx and Colin Firth with director Dawn Porter. What I want to talk about is what Luther means to us beyond his baby-making music. (Especially since most of our gay asses thankfully made a grand total of zero babies to his slow jams.)

In 2004, singer and plastic surgery mogul Madonna was well-meaning when doing an AIDS tribute during a recent concert, flashing the faces of famous people who had succumbed to this terrible disease over the years. Things went awry, however, when Luther’s face appeared during the tribute, prompting Vandross’ people to send her a cease-and-desist letter with a bunch of words written in ALL CAPS. His image was promptly removed from the tribute. Madonna! Tsk, tsk, tsk. That Honky Grandma Be Trippin’.*

You may say that Luther’s estate would have been just as upset if it were a cancer tribute Luther had been mistakenly added to because he didn’t die from that either. But we know that the all-caps response would not have been so harsh and swift if he’d been mistaken for a cancer victim. In this age of the ubiquity of information highways, there is something especially sloppy about making a post-mortem association between Vandross and AIDS, especially by someone like Madonna who has been such an ally for the cause and the LGBTQ communities. (And we cannot forget that she was also accused of being HIV+ herself and made a very heartfelt “I am not HIV-positive, but what if I were?” speech at an AIDS research gala in 1991.) She and Annie Lennox, white women, can openly align themselves with such a cause and be championed for their support. But Luther was a Black male and he was not afforded such a luxury. I remember that before a performance of “That’s What Friends Are For” alongside Dionne, Stevie, and Whitney at the 1987 Soul Train Music Awards, Luther introduced the song—whose proceeds went to AIDS research—as being “written by Burt Bacharach and Carole Bayer Sager for a very good cause.” I don’t know if calling it “a good cause” was his idea or someone else’s, but there was no way he was going to mention AIDS by its name in front of that late-80s, mostly Black crowd. And especially with so much speculation about his sexuality always bubbling right below the surface.

With the major exception of Dionne Warwick and Sylvester, who would soon succumb to AIDS-related illnesses on December 16, 1988, no Black celebs would go anywhere near AIDS during Vandross’ heyday in the '80s and '90s, so when people started to speculate that his drastic weight loss was due to disease and not Dial-A-Meal, Luther was pushed into a corner. He vehemently denied having the virus but continued to be shifty about his sexuality; back in those days, saying you didn’t have HIV was almost akin to denying that you’re homosexual. Other questionable Black male celebrities such as Eddie Murphy (who reportedly had a torrid affair with Johnny Gill), Puff Daddy, Vin Diesel, Jamie Foxx, and Will Smith have had to fend off rumors about their sexuality for years and usually did so by professing their heterosexuality and/or marrying a beard. But on the surface, at least, they seemed to have forged ahead with at least a public semblance of a normal and healthy personal life despite the rumors. As of this writing, Eddie Murphy has enough kids to fend off the North Korean Army. But Luther’s love life never really got off the ground. And this lack of love must have taken a toll on his well-being. Luther spent decades singing about how so amazing it was the night he fell in love, but we cannot be sure that those feelings were ever reciprocated. I believe that songs like “I Don’t Want to Be a Fool” and “Any Love” spoke more precisely about his amorous state, as reciprocal love wasn’t happening for him neither here nor now.

The corner Vandross was pushed into required him to choose between his adoring, largely female fan base—who snapped up his records, tapes, and CDs by the millions and filled stadiums to see him sing—and his own romantic happiness. Unlike the other stars who were dogged by gay rumors, Luther did not seem willing or able to play The Beard Game. No awards show appearances with a mystery mulatta hanging off his arms. No accusations of cheating on a girlfriend or knocking someone up. Hell, even Michael Jackson had Billie Jean. From what I can understand, Luther had absolutely no love life, whether it be with a man or woman or otherwise. Even if he had said “fuck it” and chose to live his life openly, there was precious little precedence for a Black male performer to come out of the closet in those days. There was Little Richard who first claimed to be the author of all things gay but later became somewhat of a caricature of himself once he tried to denounce his gayness and find salvation in the arms of the Good Lord. I’d dare say that Richard’s career suffered greatly when he tried to go straight; he might have fared better if he’d just kept wearing flashy suits made out of broken mirrors and kept singing about the joys of Crisco-laden anal sex. Sylvester was never in the closet, but he was also not a mainstream artist; dance music fans are notoriously gay-friendly, so he did not need to worry about fans bailing on him as long as he came up with the disco goods. Inside the industry, it was widely known back then that other Black male entertainers like Bobby DeBarge, Billy Preston, and Richard Pryor were gay or bisexual, and we can look at how drugs and alcohol tore them apart. Teddy Pendergrass was dogged by gay rumors, especially after the person in his car during his tragic accident was revealed to be transgender. Even Marvin Gaye (birth surname Gay) was tormented by questions he had about his own sexuality, especially growing up with a father who openly wore women’s clothes and acted in an effeminate nature for all the neighbors to see. His life was also a series of terrible and devastating rock bottoms. It would still be decades before Black male entertainers like Frank Ocean, Tyler, the Creator, and Rahsaan Patterson could create art without wearing their sexuality like a ball and chain.

But Luther’s situation was unique and more complicated than theirs in certain ways. We now know that both Little Richard and Sylvester had several lovers; Richard was married but also openly admitted to attending sex romps with both men and women, while Sylvester was in a long-term gay relationship when he died. We know that Gaye and Pryor had tumultuous relationships throughout their lives; they were relationships, nevertheless. It is speculated that Luther had none of these things during his time on earth.

Weighty Issues

Why do people even lose weight in the first place? Before Ozempic and Wegovy, dropping extra pounds was a real son of a bitch even if you could afford pricey programs like Dial-A-Meal, Jenny Craig, or Weight Watchers. You could get those big colored cards and dial as many meals as you wanted, but if you lacked the willpower to stay away from trigger foods, it did very little good. No one wants to say this, but the main reason people lose the weight and keep it off is because their new figure allows them to attract folks who were out of their league prior. If Luther lost the weight but still was not pulling some serious attention, what reason did he have to stay skinny?

I’m (Not) Comin’ Out!

I’m looking forward to seeing the Luther Vandross documentary at some point. Years ago, I read Craig Seymour’s “Luther: The Life and Longing of Luther Vandross,” a comprehensive biography that takes the reader up to right after Vandross’ 2003 stroke and details the tremendous challenges he faced while trying to find the better love he constantly sang about. It paints the picture of a troubled perfectionist whose yo-yo dieting and weight fluctuations chipped away significantly at the legitimacy of a career that could only be described as stellar from start to finish (13 platinum or double platinum albums out of 14 is an astonishing feat for any artist, period). The book’s title includes the word “longing” to describe that unfulfilled area of Luther’s life: love (and possibly sex).

Could Luther have come out during his lifetime? In Luther’s mind, he knew that the more people found out about his true self, the more uncomfortable conversations would swirl around him. Everything he’d sung about would instantly lose its bedroom credibility. He’d be deemed a liar and a phony, and his records would sit on the shelf and the concert venues would empty out. He was not Barry Manilow (85 million units sold). He was not Elton John (300 million units moved). Those cats could stand to lose a few million bigoted, unforgiving fans and keep on rolling. And they came out very late in their careers when their mortgages had already been paid off. Oh, and those dudes is white. Luther had a much smaller margin of error with his Black fans and a lot more to lose, so he shrunk into himself and found his solace in high-caloric foods.

But who knows? If he had been allowed to come out, duly sacrificing a significant chunk of his future earning potential, maybe he would have made himself available for a meaningful, reciprocal relationship with someone that would have filled that void in him that drove him to excessive eating. As an out gay male, he would no longer fill Wembley Stadium, but I believe that he would have maintained a good core of fans who could look past his personal life and just enjoy his music. Out of the closet, Luther would have had someone to clink a champagne glass with at the end of a long day and maybe another reason to get off the dieting roller coaster that surely played a significant role in his stroke and subsequent death. Coming out would have been the most difficult decision for a private man like Vandross, but this world is unfortunately set up in such a way that the most important decisions are always the most painful.

Conclusion

Luther sometimes spoke of being at the butt-end of the stick when it came to love. It has been reported that he was in a man-on-man relationship while living in Los Angeles in the late '80s, but later in life, Luther himself admitted that his love relationships had all been “unrequited.” Some have speculated that Larry Salvemini may have been the object of such a one-way love affair. (The crush was on Larry or his 16-year-old brother Jimmy, whom Luther had plucked off of Star Search, signed to a record contract, and whose album he produced.) Larry was the same man who was killed in 1986 when the Mercedes the then-skinny Luther was driving crossed the centerline, collided with at least two other cars, and caused the fatal accident. (Luther pleaded no contest to involuntary vehicular manslaughter, receiving community service and informal probation.) In the aftermath of that devastating accident, Luther gained back all the weight and probably never recovered emotionally from the experience, as the relationship with the surviving Salvemini brother and his family was obviously strained. (The family eventually sued Luther.)

Is there some kind of lesson in the Luther Vandross story for us Black Daddies? Probably not, since most don’t have millions of adoring fans and probably can’t even hold a tune if we tried. Maybe it serves more as a cautionary tale for all ya’ll DL Daddies. First of all, everybody done been known how you get down, so all that hiding and trying to act “straight” ain’t working. Didn’t work for Diddy. And won’t work for you, because someone will eventually call you out. Secondly, it takes a lot of work to perpetrate a fraud and doing so for years on end will lead to psychosis. Luther was known to be an extremely difficult person to work with and for. He had widely publicized feuds with touring partners like En Vogue and Anita Baker (well, she’s no walk in the park, either) and session musicians and tour hands often describe him as moody, angry and excessively demanding. Leading the kind of life he led must have been extremely taxing on his mental health, and it might have been another factor that did not allow him to form meaningful romantic relationships. Poor Looffah.

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This is all I have to say: I don’t need to read the coroner’s report. I truly believe that Luther Vandross died of a lonely, broken heart.