Aretha Franklin covers that ‘Freeway of Love’ by bus, not air

UPDATE: The Aretha Frankling show scheduled for Friday at Caesars Palace has been canceled. Franklin canceled her show because of exhaustion after traveling from the Motor City to California for three shows in Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and Oakland.

If you happen to spot Aretha Franklin and Clive Davis in Las Vegas, don't interrupt them. Not if you want to see a musical biography of Franklin on Broadway.

The iconic soul singer says the meeting was on her agenda during a recent visit, along with a return to the Colosseum at Caesars Palace.

That and Fatburger.

"I am definitely going to have a Fatburger before I leave, for sure," she says. "They tried (the franchise) in Detroit and it was a dismal failure. They didn't taste anything like the Fatburgers in L.A. or in Vegas. It bombed big time in Detroit."

Juggling Broadway and fast food with the Queen of Soul is a bit easier to comprehend if you know more about how she rolls. By bus, specifically, as she is not a big fan of flying.

"You can get off the bus and do things. You can't get off at 35,000 feet," she says.

Plus, the airlines tend to charge extra for the "10 trillion bags" she brings. "All sorts of hanging bags, wig heads, trunks, you name it."

When all these gowns get worn isn't fully explained, because those who saw Franklin sing at Caesars in 2012 know it wasn't a Vegas-styled "diva" showcase full of costume changes.

"I put it all on singing. That takes too much out of you," she says. "I put it all on singing, because that's what people pay for and that's what they want to hear."

Since her last Colosseum show, Franklin and Davis co-produced last fall's "Aretha Franklin Sings the Great Diva Classics." It's a concept album that let the 73-year-old cover songs by younger divas (Adele's "Rolling in the Deep") as well as her peers (Barbra Streisand's "People").

The album was her best selling since 1985. "Number 13 with a bullet! Loved it, loved it," she says of its debut on Billboard's album chart last October.

She promises a song or two from "Divas" in her Colosseum set. But with so many hits of her own, audiences can't expect more. The bigger surprise of a recent Los Angeles show was Franklin sitting at the piano for a trio of standards.

It reminded fans that she not only played piano on some of her classic records, but covered standards and Broadway tunes — such as "If Ever I Should Leave You" from "Camelot" — during her early Columbia Records years, before her career kicked into high gear on Atlantic.

"That was especially for the people who go all the way back with me," she says. "I just wanted to give the audience a really well-rounded appearance of everything, chronologically. Nobody expected me to play three or four songs at the piano."

Returning to a city also makes her "try to add the things that I didn't do last time."

But we all know what we want to hear. If "Respect," "Think," "Chain of Fools," "Freeway of Love" and a few others are essential, are there other hits she sang so much she's found the need to give them a rest?

"I find ways of refreshing myself with things that I know people want to hear," she says. "And at the same time giving them exactly what they heard on the record. It's exactly what they heard on the record, but I'll add things, which just keeps it fresh for me as an artist."

And she isn't doing so many shows that repetition is a big problem anyway.

"I don't do as many dates as I have done in the past. I'm only doing maybe three a month," she says. "I have to take care of my home. My home was falling apart with so many concerts. That's all that was happening was concerts, concerts, concerts. The home needed attention.

"I had to cut the concerts and reserve some time for my home and sons. You have to have some family time here."

She's trying to get a music industry push for her son Kelf, a Christian hip-hop artist, and grandson Jordan, "a very good writer and producer" with whom she recently met Ariana Grande in Detroit.

Her own career networking had Franklin meeting in Los Angeles with writer-producer Shonda Rhimes, of "Grey's Anatomy" and "How to Get Away With Murder" fame, about a long-discussed movie biography.

"She and I talked about her being the person to write the script for the biopic. She loves the idea and I love the idea, so stay tuned."

And then there's the possibility of "Aretha, the Musical," now that music mogul Davis has turned his eye to Broadway with a planned revival of "My Fair Lady."

"I would like to see it be a dramatic musical," Franklin says. "I think it would be very timely, especially with 'Jersey Boys' and Carole King (the Broadway bio 'Beautiful')" and the new Gloria Estefan musical, "Get on Your Feet," which just finished a pre-Broadway run in Chicago. "I think the timing is just right."

So the bus keeps rolling (on that "Freeway of Love"?), and so does the career.

Read more from Mike Weatherford at bestoflasvegas.com. Contact him at mweatherford@reviewjournal.com. Find him on Twitter: @Mikeweatherford