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Robyn Crawford says relationship with Whitney Houston was ‘love – open and honest’

Robyn Crawford was Whitney Houston’s best friend. A childhood confidant who became her assistant and creative partner. They also were, freelesbianpassport.com briefly, lovers.

For years, their romantic endeavors possesses been the content of speculation and rumour. Two recent films about Houston’s life, Whitney: Can I Be Me and the family-sanctioned Whitney, raked over the coals of their relationship – suggesting Crawford was the real love of her lifetime.

Crawford always declined to comment on her life with Houston – appearing in those films via archive footage, but never ever agreeing to an job interview.

But now that everyone else has had their say, Crawford offers decided to tell her story. “Why nowadays?” she asks in the introduction to her new memoir, A Song For You.

“Believe me, I’ve done my best to stay out of the spotlight [but] I believe it is my duty to honour my friend and to clarify the many inaccuracies about myself and about who Whitney was”.

She confirms, for the first time, her romantic history with Houston, which began when they were teenagers and lasted two years.

“It wasn’t all about our sleeping together,” she challenges found in the written e book. “We could trust each other with our secrets, our feelings, and who we were. We have been friends, we were lovers. We have been everything to each other. We weren’t falling in love. We were just. We had each other. We were one: that’s how it felt.”

Houston broke off the relationship just after she signed her record deal, handing Crawford a Bible and telling her she feared public exposure.

Crawford remained a devoted friend and emotional bulwark, anchoring Houston to her past, and steadying the ship of her often-turbulent private life.

She candidly describes their drug use and how she watched, helplessly, as her friend’s habit spiralled out of control.

“No matter what rules we came up with around responsible drug use, she kept breaking them and using whenever she wanted to,” she writes.

By the time Crawford quit Houston’s team in 2000, the star was cancelling shows and missing recording sessions. She alleged the vocalist was initially staying in physical form abused by her man, Bobby Brown, and had found burned spoons in her kitchen.

Crawford’s own story isn’t much happier – she is the daughter of a single mother, who left her husband after years of abuse; and lost two of her closest family members to Aids.

But the book isn’t overwhelmingly bleak. After escaping Houston’s orbit, Crawford gradually rebuilt her lifestyle, and is happily betrothed with two adopted youngsters today. She has worked as a journalist, meeting with the wants of Jessica Kristen and Biel Bell, and will be right now a health coach.

Her goal in writing the book was to erase the memory of Houston’s tragic death, drowning in a bathtub on the eve of the 2012 Grammy awards, and point out to the entire world she had been “bighearted, unselfish, hilarious” and phenomenally talented – whether she was singing at the Super Bowl, learning to act on the set of The Bodyguard, or celebrating in church (where some parishioners were so overwhelmed by her vocals they would faint).

“I want to elevate her. We need to lift her so she can hold her legacy up way high,” Crawford tells the BBC, as she recounts the making of her memoir.

What was it like to rekindle all these old memories as you wrote the book?

I spent most of the last two-and-a-half years feeling and reliving the 80s and the 90s to the point that my son said one day, “We’ll be glad when mom is finwill behed writing this book, so she can play with me again”.

It’s really true, you know? Sometimes they would disturb me and I’d be in a thought, so it would be a delayed reaction, or I might click at them. So I definitely was not the mommy that I had been, attentive to every little thing.

And the process of writing was like a roller coaster of emotions. So there were tears of joy, tears of sadness, strain. The beginning, where we were bright-eyed, adventurous, fearless; subsequently all of the rough outdoors ages achieving most the easy things we had talked about; and our family and the challenges there then.

You speak about watching Whitney in the studio, and how she could breathe life into a song; but I wondered what it was like to hear her sing in private, at house or in the engine auto?

I used to call that the pre-concert! She would head out into that bedroom and perform – gospel simply, jazz, Al Jarreau, whatever came to her – because the acoustics were like brilliant. We remember one night she was in that room singing Fly Me To The Moon, it was so effortless that it sounded like she really has been flying. We experienced this home in New Hat and, in the great room, there was a dome.

In those early days, it sounded want you had a new complete great deal of enjoyment. Possessing drinking water gun combats in lodge corridors and discovering the globe jointly.

The one thing about Whitney is she was like a kid. She wwill behed to possess as very much excitement as she quite possibly could.

I remember Whitney would rent out Lehigh University’s arena in Pennsylvania to prepare for tours, and we’d always play football outside on their field. You pause for a second, one second, and shoot to the right behind us. One time, for the last play, she seemed to be informed by us, ‘OK, the entire line is going to go right and we’re going to block for you.

“She said, ‘OK, OK, OK’. But when we all went to the right, she went to the left. She ran right into one guy, they clipped knees and she over toppled. For the rest of the dress rehearsal, she couldn’t wear her heels. So no more touch football for us. It was killed by them for everybody. After that, it instead seemed to be ping pong.

People will be interested to read about your romantic relationship with Whitney. The way you describe it is very tender and moving – but at the same time it’s no big deal. You point out you “in no way spoke about tags, like gay or lesbian, ” it simply has been what it seemed to be.

Mmm-hmm, that’s just how it was.

People pull it out as a relationship – but we met and we clicked and we became friends. We designed that acquaintanceship on staying available and genuine with each various other about everything. She told me she was going to sign this [record] deal and she was going to take me with her all around the world. And along the authentic approach, we had an intimate, loving, physical experience of friendship within our friendship. It has been like and it was available and truthful.

Whitney ended the relationship shortly after signing her record deal, telling you “it would make our journey even more difficult”. How hard was it to put those feelings to one side and just be friends?

Well, we were friends – and we knew each other very well.

The focus was always where we were going. And girls have been taken care of in a approach where they have been rivals and definitely not comrades. And it was the 80s. You were this or that either. We were young, but we have been fearless. Nothing at all could have in the approach of that. Whitney shared with me her belief that, if people found out about our relationship, they would make use of it against us. So it was a complete lot and we were young.

In a way, you protected each other.

That was very important. I seemed to be known by her and she trusted me. Whitney said “I want you right here. I am known by you. I was known by you before we got where we were proceeding. ” So we have been a unified workforce.

I was struck by your mum’s first meeting with Whitney, where she says, “You look like an angel, but I know you’re not”. And then, a few days later, Whitney presents you with a joint for the first time.

My mother had her right! Whitney experienced this angelic radiance about her. And then she pulled a joint out of her breast pocket as if to say, “Yeah, I too do this, OK?”

The two of you did drugs together often, but you tried to talk her out of kicking the habit ultimately. Perform you think she manufactured a serious attempt at offering up actually?

We never believed cocaine was a good thing; and in the early years she’d say to me: “This cannot go where we’re going”. So I believe for sure that Whitney knew she needed to help herself and wanted to do that.

I write about it in the book that she called someone for help.

Yes, this will be in 2001 – she named a medical professional to go over treatment.

Yes, Dr Richard Frances. She meant that. And she said she was not someone who wanted to die. Or perhaps was called by her herself. She was someone who wanted to live.

The public perception is that things took a dark turn when Bobby Brown turned up on the scene. That seems to be a dividing line in her life and her career.

Well, I think people feel that way because it was covered so wildly and consistently in the tabloids in the mainstream media, so I believe that’s where the public gets that over-reaching narrative.

Do you agree with that narrative?

Well… Obviously, I had been nonetheless there at that moment. But Whitney seemed to be even now operating and accomplishing during those occasions of job. I mean, she had film projects… And there were, let me say, a lot of ‘distractions’ during that time.

She made The Bodyguard and Waiting To Exhale when she was with Bobby, right?

Right. But what I will point out will be that she had been tired.

I guess when you’re working hard, and home life is turbulent, there’s no respite.

Yeah. Everything arrived rear to her. She was dealing with all of it and she had beenn’t getestosteroneting the rest and the quiet she needed.

But the same was true for you. Did you ever have enough time for yourself? At the same time as you were working for Whitney, you have been caring for two family members with Aids.

No, and you do lose your identity. Thus when it seemed to be all mentioned and completed, We write inside the written guide about how We had to look for Robyn again. I really didn’t know who I was.

Lisa Hintelmann, who will be your partner right now, said she couldn’t start a relationship with you unless you agreed to have therapy. She sounds wise incredibly.

Oh yeah. Lisa has been my Rock of Gibraltar. She permit me find out that she adored and cared about me, but that I needed to help myself.

She gave me shelter and a place to hide, because when you feel like that, you only would like to be solely. So it was a dark time for me, but she got out of my way, and just permit me examine until We up climbed back.

You consciously left the entertainment industry, and went to work in a tennis club and on a farm, where you picked fruit. What was that like?

Manning the desk at the tennis club wasn’t for me, you know? I stayed the total summer time time of year and I got a complete great deal of asparagus. I take pleasure in asparagus to this moment! Knew me No-one, and I outdoors loved getting. But I liked the village.

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Shortly before Whitney died, you gave away some of the mementoes of your time together. I wondered what you parted with, and what you decided to keep?

I presented a lot of gold and platinum discs to the Whitney Houston Academy of Performing Arts, which is the grammar school that she attended. But the plaques were retained by me for The Star Spangled Banner and her first single, You Give Good Love. And I stored words from individuals around the worldwide earth, heads of state like Nelson Mandela. All my tour books I kept, you know, different notes, And the Bible Whitney gave me, I maintained.

Do you still listen to her music?

After I left the company, I didn’t listen to her music for a while. And so, lately, you know, I have a couple of favourites including the Preacher’s Wife. I mean, I identified her performing it in her place on her Alexa. which was one of my mother’s favourites. And subsequently The Greatest was played by us Take pleasure in Of All for my daughter and she loved it. And subsequently one time I took in to Exhale.

So it’s mainly the gospel songs?

Oh, yeah. I mean, I listen to a lot of gospel music, and even if it’s not the Preacher’s Wife, it is the gospel music that Whitney played – like Fred Hammond, Yolanda Adams, Persuaded, Through The Storm. It’s the music she loved to sing most. She loved gospel music.

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