Wonder and Kent discuss the documentary Luther: Never Too Much using an untimed birth chart for Luther Vandross. Emerging themes include love songs and the people who sing them, and the search for meaning when we are filled with sorrow. Astrologically Kent and Wonder link this to the planet Venus and hard contacts between the planets Jupiter and Saturn.
Distribution: Currently on Theatrical Run, more info
Director: Dawn Porter
Run Time: 101 minutes
Astrological Data: Luther Vandross was born on April 20, 1951. Rodden Rating: X (no birth time). Source: Wikipedia
Music Credit: spacedust by airtone
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:13.476] Kent Bye: Hello, my name is Kent Bye. Wonder Bright: And I'm Wonder Bright. Kent Bye: And welcome to the Story All the Way Down podcast, where we're breaking down the archetypal dynamics of 36 documentaries that we watched this year at Sundance 2024. We are on episode number five of eight of our section on Identity. So today's episode we're going to be diving into a documentary on Luther Vandross that was titled Luther, Never Too Much. So this was a part of the Sundance premieres and it was directed by Dawn Porter. So I'm wondering if you'd be willing to read through the synopsis.
[00:00:46.877] Wonder Bright: Luther never too much. Luther Vandross started his career supporting David Bowie, Roberta Flack, Bette Midler and more. His undeniable talent earned platinum records and accolades, but he struggled to break out beyond the R&B charts. Intensely driven, he overcame personal and professional challenges to secure his place amongst the greatest vocalists in history. If you know, you know, there's only one Luther. Acclaimed festival alum Dawn Porter invites audiences on a musical journey into the life of the iconic Luther Vandross, the man with the soulful velvet voice. An archival tapestry of performances and recording sessions immerse us in his legendary musical talent as a singer, songwriter, and producer. Porter then goes beyond the spotlight to delve into the man behind the music. Insights from musicians and friends alongside archival interviews with Luther himself reveal his humor, frustrations, loneliness, and unwavering dedication to his craft. Luther, never too much, delivers a sensitive and jubilant celebration of Luther Vandross and his music that resonates with evocative power. Some will form newfound admiration for Luther, while others will be transported to moments when his timeless melodies were the soundtrack to their lives. Good luck not singing along and dancing in your seat. And that synopsis was brought to us by Sundance programmer Stephanie Owens.
[00:02:16.327] Kent Bye: Yeah, this was quite a journey through his musical career where we're really getting an evolution of him coming up as a background singer and then inspired by a number of different iconic singers of the time, Aretha Franklin, Roberta Flack, and he actually managed to collaborate with a lot of his heroes by the end of his life. And so you really see this extremely exalted success of Luther Vandross throughout the course of this documentary that really traces what he was able to accomplish, despite all of the blockers that were coming from racism within the music industry that pigeonholed him into the Black soul music in a way that didn't have the overall crossover appeal that maybe an artist, if he was coming up in this time, would have perhaps had a little bit easier time of less institutional barriers for that happening. So his success is always caveated and capped out for how big he could have been had he not faced all these other barriers. The film doesn't actually dive too much into that, but it sort of implies that's there. And when I first heard that synopsis, where we're going to really learn about the man behind the music, I thought that we were going to do a deep exploration for all these other contextual domains of his life. And I feel like the center of gravity of this piece was who Luther Vandross was in the context of his music and his music production. And we got little small glimmers of his personal life, his love life, and these other aspects that are kind of touched on. But I'm not walking away understanding the full complexity of who he was across all these other domains. I really get that sense of who he was in the context of the music and his work that he was producing and how he was acting with people in his work because he had a very high standard for both aesthetics and quality that he was really driven towards this sort of perfectionism. he was able to exhibit and expected everyone around him to also exhibit. So there's a little personality traits like that, but in terms of really understanding the full complexity of Luther Vandross, I feel like there's still a lot of mystery as to certain aspects of his life that are sort of alluded to in the film, but not really unpacked in a comprehensive way.
[00:04:28.070] Wonder Bright: Well, and I think the film actually does a very good job of breaking down that he was immensely private. And there are moments where we see him put on the spot at one point by an interviewer asking if he's gay, if the rumors are true. And he really deflects that question. And then we see and hear from different friends and associates who provide additional context as to whether or not he was or wasn't gay, but not enough context to actually either confirm nor deny. And it's sort of impossible to know how much of that is because they're loyal to him. But the context that they are able to provide sort of aligns with the context that you've just described in terms of how he wasn't able to break through the R&B barrier into like a larger audience. Because, you know, he is a black man and if he is queer, he also can't be fully himself in that realm, right? Because the wide mainstream audience in the time that he was successful wouldn't have had a language for that. Now, I mean, whether or not he would have been able to break through musically into a different audience than R&B, we're still seeing at the Emmys just this last Sunday that that's not necessarily the case, you know, that black musicians are sequestered into a certain realm. Beyonce still hasn't won Best Album of the Year, so we still haven't cracked that code, you know? We're still not in that space where everybody has agreed that, oh yes, this is just music for everyone, you know? Although this film is dissatisfying in one way as a biopic because we don't get to know the whole story, I think in some ways that actually is the story that Luther Vandross in many ways was enigmatic at his core and that that actually ended up being a big part of who he was somehow. So that his work was the place where he was safe to be. You know, if you contrast this with the film that we watched last year, which is the biopic of Little Richard, Little Richard couldn't help but put himself out there in ways that really made his life hard. But here we're watching Luther Vandross, just a couple decades later, not putting all of himself out there. And you can see that it's still having this impact. He's still at a distance. You know, there's a sorrow that runs through the course of this film. that I can't help but attribute to that distance, that distance that comes with not being safe to be fully yourself, whatever that might have been. You know, there's that really moving piece in the film where Luther Vandross reveals that his favorite song is the song, Any Love, in which the lyrics really articulate that experience of longing for love and not having love. you know, he died when he was still in his early 50s. So, you know, it may be if he'd ever found someone to love who loved him back, he would have been able to embark on that journey of self-discovery that he really longed for. And in that journey, perhaps he would have found the courage or the capacity or even just the need to be more free in himself in public. But we'll never know because that just didn't happen for him. And I feel like It's a loss because if I know anything about love, it is that it expands your experience of who you are and what is possible for you. And this is someone who gave us so much love through his beautiful voice and his songs. So it's kind of a missing because we don't get to know what would have happened if he'd been able to expand in that area of his own life, like how much more expansive his work might have become.
[00:08:48.726] Kent Bye: Yeah, it just makes me want to pull up the lyrics and read through some of them because there was this great paradox that he is known as this guy who's singing these love songs that they talked about in the film that they would put on a Luther Vandross song and people would make love to it.
[00:09:05.731] Wonder Bright: Jamie Foxx has this brilliant moment where he's talking about that. Well, this is what you put on. He's so funny about it.
[00:09:14.914] Kent Bye: So he's sort of recognized and known as this man who sings all these love songs, but yet at the same time, love has escaped him and his own life. So the song is called Any Love by Luther Vandross. He says, “I speak to myself sometimes and I say, oh my, in a lot of ways, you're a lucky guy. And oh, now all you need is a chance to try any love. In my heart, there's a need to shout, dying, screaming, crying, let me out, all those feelings that I want to touch, any love. What a world for the lonely guy. Sometimes I feel I'm gonna lose my mind. Can anyone tell me just where to find any love, any love, and oh. Everyone needs a love no doubt, any love, any love. Anybody feels alone without any love, any love. I know there's a love waiting to enter my life, enter my life. Every day I live, I try to think positive. I pray for someone good to come, any love. Love is sweet and so divine, and I can't wait for my love life to shine. Can anybody tell me where I can find any love, any love? And then it goes back to the chorus. And I know there's someone waiting for me to enter my life, come into my life. Suddenly, out of the clear blue sky, lonely tears start to fill my eyes. I can weep, but I refuse to cry. I've got to keep holding on. I've got to be very strong to keep holding on. Everyone needs a love, no doubt. Any love, any love. Everybody feels alone without any love, any love”. I just wanted to read that because it was the one song that he says that is the most autobiographical, and it really speaks to his lack of being able to find love. And certainly a lot of Venus themes that we've been talking about, and I'm sure you'll elaborate on that. But I wanted to call out one other theme that I'm really noticing, which is that he's got this Jupiter-Saturn opposition, which I know that you also have the Jupiter-Saturn opposition. So Jupiter at 29 degrees Pisces and then Saturn at 26 degrees Virgo. And so there's this dialectic between the expansive nature of that Jupiter and Pisces, and he's a very jovial person. He's very happy and positive and optimistic whenever he's in interviews. And then there's that Saturn opposition in Virgo and there's this tension that's explored throughout the course of the film, both from his isolation and loneliness that is in his personal life, but also fluctuating of weight that is discussed throughout the course of the film and how much that was such a big deal in the eyes of the media. And it always was the first thing that people would ask him about his weight and then people would comment about it. There's this losing weight and gaining weight that was tracing the emotional vectors of his life, but also ended up having a huge impact on his experience just because people are so obsessed about it. I'm glad that we didn't name it as the first thing out of the gate, but it was certainly something that was the experience that he had. After doing all of this work, that would be the stuff that people would want to talk about is his physical appearance and his weight. But there is something about that Jupiter-Saturn dialectic that has this expansiveness and contraction that seems to go back and forth. And I don't know if you have any insight into that.
[00:12:27.123] Wonder Bright: Well, again, I'm hearing one of my mentors, Rod Suskin, saying, Jupiter being expansive doesn't mean anything. Although Rob Hand has pointed to his Jupiter in Sagittarius as being an indicator of gaining weight. So there are many ways to expand. And yeah, when you have a Jupiter Saturn opposition, any opposition, you'll often find that people will go back and forth between one or the other way of being as indicated by those planets. So Jupiter is about where you might have your biggest hopes and your dreams and your faith and your ability to go into things full steam ahead. And then Saturn is going to be where you are more conservative and you hold back and you might be more critical and you might have a lot of doubt and so then when you put those two things together, it's kind of like you get tests of faith, Especially when you're in the opposition because now you can't have a lot of hope without also being accompanied by extreme doubt. And at the same time, you can't have extreme doubt without somehow like, well, there's a silver lining somewhere in there. So normally what happens is we vacillate between one or the other of those expressions. And that's a real tightrope. It's not easy to navigate. And Jupiter being in Pisces for Luther is going to incline to even more of that incandescent kind of hope that like deep well sprung of faith that is possible. Without knowing where the opposition lies in his chart, it's hard to know exactly how it's going to show up. But I definitely see it in his perfectionism, but also his ability to bring out the best and inspire his collaborators to bring out their best. This is something that a lot of them spoke about. Luther Vandross was really inspiring to be around and they wanted to do better around him, not just because he was demanding, but because he was actually inspiring and he would break things down into small component parts and stitch it together until it became a part of the whole. And there you can see the Saturn Virgo breaking things down into small component parts and then stitching it together to be a part of something much larger than that. So he's a perfectionist, but he's a perfectionist in the pursuit of a really holistic vision. We don't know how much that opposition had to do with weight gain and loss, but it is certainly symbolic of such a thing that you go back and forth vacillating between this quest for like what feels good and like what's going to make you happy and then you like bounce back into despair, right? And, you know, anybody who has had the experience of overeating or overindulging, and then the despair and the body dysmorphia that comes as a consequence is probably going to recognize something of that for themselves. But you don't need a Jupiter-Saturn opposition to go through it, obviously. But a Jupiter-Saturn opposition, certainly with Jupiter in Pisces, does also describe that in some ways.
[00:15:42.719] Kent Bye: Yeah. And I just wanted to hop in and talk about how there is these other dialectics in the film of his extreme achievement in his career and having all this money, but yet not having a partner to be able to share it with. And so like, there's this extreme loneliness that he has. And so but also some of his success was that he wanted to win a Grammy and be recognized for his work, but also to have even more breakout success than he had. And so, there's this overarching theme of the Saturnine nature of the constraints and boundaries and limitations that he's faced with, despite all this talent, despite all this ambition, there was this kind of fundamental limit for where he could go. So, also this dialectic between the extreme success that he has, especially when it comes to producing these kind of jingles and having a way of getting a lot of money for the work that he was doing, both as a backup singer, becoming like the number one backup singer, making these jingles, but also to be a singer, songwriter, producer of just really being complete creative control of his creative works. And yet, despite all of that success, there's limits and constraints as to how far it went. But I know that when you were thinking about this film, you were talking about Venus, Venus, Venus all the way down. So I'd love to hear you expand on Venus a little bit.
[00:16:56.536] Wonder Bright: Well, Venus is the primary planet that you would look for when you look for singers. So the Gauquelins, who were French researchers in the 50s and 60s of the 20th century, they had the only statistical analysis of data sets that were the most convincing in terms of any kind of statistical analysis of astrological signifiers. And they focus primarily, if not singularly, on planets as career signifiers. And what they found repeatedly was that Venus would be signified in the charts of singers, which is consistent with the tradition. Kent Bye: And just to maybe elaborate on that. Wonder Bright: Yeah.
[00:17:40.353] Kent Bye: Because that's what they found was like they were looking at the angles, right? At the angles, yeah. So they found that there were Venus signatures based in it or in midheaven.
[00:17:48.680] Wonder Bright: Yes. And that is in keeping with the tradition where Venus has to do with beauty and the arts and creativity. And I don't know, you will be able to tell me if it historically has to do with the voice as well, but certainly when we look at Luther Vandross, who is one of the best vocalists of all time and had this incredible versatility in his voice. His Venus is in Gemini, which isn't necessarily associated with qualities of voice, but it is associated with being very versatile and with being able to do things in like a multiplicity of ways. But even without knowing his birth time, just the fact that he is a singer and the fact that we know that singing is associated with Venus, That already gives us a lens for talking about Venus when we talk about Luther Vandross. But then when we actually unpack his story and we see that it's also about this search for love and a longing for love, that's also a Venus theme because that is about love. And, you know, there's a quote in the film from his niece and she says, you can't think about that man without thinking about love. And when she says that, like, I have a feeling of who he is, independent of how beloved he was by his fans and independent of how he might have been loved by his family members, obviously, his niece amongst them, and all of his friends, but also just in the quality of attention that he brought to the voice. And when you watch videos of him, and when you watch him speaking, He has this like just elegance about him and this like a way of being that is really graceful and gracious and attentive. It's very Venusian. It's also Venusian to just love sensual things like food and sugar. Venus rules sugar. So, you know, if we have like a very strong Venus that can also incline us to desiring sugary things and to being lazy in certain ways, you know, maybe not like moving as much and being more interested in eating that entire box of chocolates. Because Venus loves the good things in life. Venus loves pleasure. Like, you know, I think oftentimes when people have a really strong Venus, that's actually like a harder space to be in, because if you have a really strong Venus, then you're going to be really attuned to those pleasures and you're going to be really attuned to love. And you might not be super practical about it. You know, you might have this longing in a way that can't be quenched because it's connected to an ideal kind of love. And that can be hard to ground in reality. But Kent, I'm curious if you might want to crack open your spreadsheet of significations and let us know whether or not Venus historically had a relationship to voice.
[00:20:55.017] Kent Bye: I see in Chris Brennan's book on Hellenistic astrology, the study of fate and fortune, he cites Valens as saying that Venus does refer to sweet singing. And so I think there's a very early signification there in terms of the connection to Venus. And I wanted to also read this section from Richard Tarnas from Cosmos and Psyche, where I think he encapsulates a lot of these other principles of Venus that we've been talking about. He says, “Venus, the principle of desire, love, beauty, value, the impulse and capacity to attract and be attracted, to love and be loved, to seek and create beauty and harmony, to engage in social and romantic relations, sensuous pleasure, artistic and aesthetic experience, the principle of Eros and the beautiful Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty”. So yeah, there's certainly a lot of how Luther Vandross' work is embodying all these principles of love. And you kind of see that throughout the course of this. It's really having a community honoring his work in this realm of Venus. So I'm wondering if you were to assign Luther never too much as a remedial measure, then who would you prescribe this to?
[00:22:05.839] Wonder Bright: I would prescribe this for anyone who wants to have a full on experience of Venus and the longing that can be associated with it. The unrequited Venus, I think, is part of it because that longing might be the thing that spurs us on to the search for love. And there is a realm in which that search for ideal love brings forth something otherworldly. You know, I'm thinking right now actually about that moment in the film where they have an extended clip of Mariah Carey and Luther Vandross singing Endless Love. And I don't know if you want to share with everyone what happened in that moment when you were watching it for you. Kent Bye: Was I crying? Wonder Bright: Yes. You were, like, there were a couple films that hit us and I noticed that really took you over. And that moment in that film, it just really moved you. It transported you somewhere. I was curious about it. I've been waiting to ask you this until we record it.
[00:23:11.990] Kent Bye: Oh my god, I don't know if I remember that moment. Wonder Bright: Oh my gosh, how funny. Kent Bye: I think what was really striking about that story was just the loneliness and isolation and in this 12th house experience of feeling like you're in exile, something that you're hiding a part of yourself that you can't be fully expressed and who you are. And we've talked about this 12th house experience before. In one of the previous episodes where, you know, there's these aspects of yourself that you exile yourself. And I think it was just a juxtaposition of Luther Vandross really wanting to find love. And he's on this interview with Oprah and someone asked him the song like what's your favorite songs and it's a really amazing question because it really provides Luther Vandross an opportunity to speak to how much of his work is like metaphorical and how there are some of his songs that are deeply personally autobiographical and that song any love with the lyrics that I'd read through gives you a flavor of that kind of isolation and loneliness And also just the fact that he was never able to find that love, whether he was gay or not, we'll never know. But there are certainly ways that he wasn't able to be fully expressed in the absence of having that partnership. And I think in that song, they're just really kind of hitting that emotion and feeling of in this love, just like both of their voices together, it's just like on another level.
[00:24:43.601] Wonder Bright: Well, they're singing about the experience of endless love, of attaining the thing that he longed for. And it's funny, because as we started watching the film, I was like, well, I'm not really a Luther Vandross fan. I never had any of his albums. But that song is a song that I love. It is a very schmaltzy song, by my reckoning, but it's so sincere. You just can't get away from how sincere it is. And I just I love everything about it. I just love it. So there's something really moving about that performance, which I believe Mariah Carey queues up for us by explaining what an honor it was to her to be able to sing with him and how generous he was in bringing her forward to sing that song with him. But then they're singing it and like you say, it's just another level. It's such a beautiful, exquisite rendering of a human longing that we all share really. It's just a need and a desire to love and be loved and to be seen by one's beloved. I mean, I shouldn't say we all share it, but it's a very common experience for people. And it's one of those things where that longing is such a common denominator for all of us. And when we have artists that are able to express it in the way that Luther does, it provides real catharsis for those of us who share that experience.
[00:26:20.974] Kent Bye: Yeah, and when I think about what I want to bear witness to and Luther and Never Too Much, obviously it's going to be Luther Vandross himself, but also the specific aspect of how he's able to reach this level of excellence in his work and what he was able to achieve professionally. But also these other paradoxical or existential tensions in his life where he is successful and has everything he could ever imagine, but yet he still has this place of longing, place of desire and feeling. I feel sad when I hear him talk about that because he had achieved everything else you could have possibly want in his life except for that one thing. And I don't know, I just feel grateful to have that with you. And maybe that was part of the... part of the tears was to feel like I've been lucky enough to achieve that. And yet there's also the cloud of not knowing what's going to happen with your diagnosis of cancer. So there's all these other aspects of having to achieve that personally, but also the uncertainty over our current situation around all of that.
[00:27:30.606] Wonder Bright: Yeah, the threat of loss. I really feel that, Kent. And I think when I think about Luther and about this film, that expression of loss is something that I think as human beings, we have this experience that that means there's something wrong or something broken. And something I want to bear witness to in this film and in this moment with you and what you just shared about the fear of losing me and losing what we've been able to create and share together is that although there may be an experience in some ways that that is a brokenness, that that experience of loss or longing makes us broken or not whole, The thing I actually want to bear witness to in this film is the wholeness of Luther just as he was for all of his contradictions and all of his sadness and that sense of ache and longing that he had in his life that he was whole. And you and I are whole right now. And if my body goes and - not that I want to leave and I don't want to downplay the experience of loss - but it can't define what we share any more than Luther's longing was the definition of who and what he was. He was whole. He's still whole. We're whole. And you will be whole with and without me.
[00:29:24.218] Kent Bye: Yeah, just speaking in this sort of tightrope place of denying a potential reality and letting the reality set in, I feel like there's a living in those dual worlds where it feels like this dissociative liminal space of being in between those two realities of the relief of knowing that we're on the other side and the not knowing whether or not all these treatments will get us to that point. So anyway, that's sort of like a weird liminal space to be in, but I feel like there's a way that, you know, Luther was also in this like liminal space of that longing. He's in the place of that desire and not being in that space.
[00:30:09.591] Wonder Bright: I think we have a tendency as human beings to define ourselves by lack and brokenness when that's actually a part of the whole. It's part of the entire picture and there's nothing missing or wrong. And I'm just grateful for this experience of Luther. And I'm grateful for going through this experience of living with the potential loss of my life with you. And I don't want to die. And I recognize that our lives are whole.
[00:30:58.139] Kent Bye: Indeed. I really feel that. And at risk of going down lots of rabbit holes, maybe we should wrap it up. I feel like there were good rabbit holes. I'm glad we were covering all that. But, Yeah, I guess that's all that we have for this episode of Story All The Way Down. And if you enjoyed the podcast, then please do spread the word, tell your friends and consider signing up for the newsletter where you can keep track for all the things that are coming in the future. If there's a future. Wonder Bright: Oh my God, that's brilliant. Kent Bye: Keep track. You see what's happening here. Just sign up the newsletter. Wonder Bright: If there is a future. Kent Bye: Oh my God. Anyway, thanks for listening.
