In a delightfully freewheeling interview with Rolling Stone’s Brian Hiatt, recent Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee Chaka Khan hinted that her touring days were over, though she does not plan to retire from performing all together any time soon.
“Some people, that’s all they have, you know?” the 70-year-old Khan told Rolling Stone of touring. “I got this rich-ass life. I’ve got great-grandchildren I want to get to know better. So I will not do another tour. I’ll do dates, but it won’t look like a tour. They’ll be far enough apart that I can have time to sleep in between.”
Chaka Khan at the 2023 Rock Hall induction ceremony (left), and arriving at the Grammys.
She nonetheless threw a bit of cold water on the idea of retiring from performing all together, in light of the many performers who have made a dramatic exit from the stage, only to return again and again: “I might do that three or four times, like other bitches do,” she said.
Elsewhere in the interview (which truly deserves to be read in its entirety), Khan shared her thoughts on Whitney Houston’s cover of her hit “I’m Every Woman” (“she did a stellar f***ing job”), her infamous erasure from Robert Palmer’s “Addicted to Love” (“he was bewildered, and so was I”), and her evolving opinion on being sampled in Chipmunk fashion for Kanye West’s breakout single “Through the Wire” (“that was my fault for feeling salty in any way…I’m not hanging on to silly grudges.”)
Khan has several live performances scheduled for 2024.
She also shared some well-measured thoughts on her own legacy, saying: “I would hope that some of my s**t has some longevity, but if it doesn’t, that’ll be because hopefully somebody better has come along,” she said. “I just hope that the art form doesn’t get so screwed up with stupid s**t — kids today think that every instrument can be played on a keyboard. Instruments have to be introduced once again to these kids.”
For the record, Khan has a baker’s half-dozen concert dates for 2024 listed on her website, including a Jan. 27 date in Los Angeles, and six engagements planned for the UK in the summer. So don’t fret just yet.
Khan was finally inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame earlier this year, after six previous nominations (both as a solo artist and as a member of Rufus). A ten-time Grammy winner, her last full-length album, Hello Happiness, was released in 2019.
