Going Pipless : Gladys Knight Stops in Anaheim Tonight on a Solo Tour

Gladys Knight touring without the Pips? And you thought the big news of the decade had something to do with the Commonwealth of Independent States.

To some, the Pips, a.k.a. Bubba Knight, William Guest and Edward Patten, might be just another backup trio with great hand choreography. But to legions of fans, they are the musical equivalent of those broom handlers in Olympic curling exhibitions: Simply put, they’ve continually provided much of the muscle for precious little of the glory.

Still, Knight will be without her singing and dancing echoes of more than three decades when she takes the stage tonight at Anaheim’s Celebrity Theatre in what she is calling her first “official” solo album and tour. (Knight and the Pips have recorded separately, including her 1979 release “Gladys Knight,” but they had not technically disbanded at the time, she said.) Spotlighting her 1991 album “Good Woman” on MCA, this tour will offer a somewhat naked version of the voice that, with the Pips, turned out such hits as “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” “If I Were Your Woman,” “Neither One of Us (Wants to Be the First to Say Goodbye),” “Midnight Train to Georgia” and “Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me.”

“We’re calling it the ‘Gladys Knight: A Mike and a Light’ tour,” she said last week over the phone from MCA’s Los Angeles offices. “There are no explosions or winding staircases or nothing. It’s just kind of raw.”

Knight does have a seven-piece band traveling with her, but for a singer who has spent the bulk of her 43-year career framed by a team of tightly harmonizing, smooth-gliding relatives--Bubba is her brother, William and Edward are cousins--occupying center stage alone must have its scary moments.

“I’m used to it now, but it was very frightening in the beginning,” Knight said of her current tour. “Like if you forget a line, ain’t nobody there to give it to you. It ain’t like having the Pips behind you.”

So, one wonders, why do it at all?

Knight explained that, with the group on hiatus for the last three years and some time on her hands, the moment simply felt right.

“It was a dream” to do an album without squeezing studio work between touring and other obligations to the group, she said. And having only one project to focus on allowed her to write lyrics for six of the album’s 11 songs, which she said flowed almost effortlessly.

“I knew what I wanted to be singing about. I like to always address the love side. People who know me know that’s nothing new.”

Indeed, “Good Woman” is almost entirely devoted to matters of the heart, whether addressing external relationships or inner turmoil, and whether in the form of a soulful ballad (“Waiting on You”) or an up-tempo, rap-like exercise (“Meet Me in the Middle”).

“Men,” which Knight wrote, is a pointed piece of pop funk that could be considered male-bashing, though the songwriter says she didn’t intend it that way.

“The men jumped right on that song,” she said. “Guys in my camp were like, ‘You comin’ on a little strong, ain’t you?’ ” No doubt they were reacting to such lines as “I’m tired of all that cheatin’ and lying / Men won’t change so I’m gonna give up trying.”

But Knight said her motive was to forge a better relationship between the sexes. She said that what she’d like to come right out and tell her male listeners is: “I don’t mean to be lambasting you, but just maybe you ain’t aware of what you doin’. I doubt it,” she added with a laugh, “but maybe.”

Yet Knight is hardly a militant feminist, and other songs on this album seem as accepting of the imbalances in traditional male-female relationships as “Men” is critical of them. In the title song, Knight writes about a father’s sage advice to his daughter that the key to a happy life is, above all else, learning how to be a “Good Woman” to her man. With help from Patti LaBelle and Dionne Warwick, she also covers Karyn White’s 1989 hit “Superwoman,” a song that might be viewed as an anthem for the pampered female.

“We (women) have some things that we’ve given up in our fighting for our freedoms,” Knight explained. “There’s a lot of women who can’t cook, you know? And that’s nothing to be proud of, necessarily.”

And there are other things that Knight thinks modern society ought not be commended for.

“The value of life--L-I-F-E--has become so cheap,” she lamented. “People kill each other, and it’s senseless so often. It goes back to the basic and the moral. We have no fear of God anymore. Too many of us don’t even believe in him.” Such sentiments were the genesis for Knight’s Scripture-like parable “Mr. Love,” which warns against the perils of electing to follow darkness (Mr. Hate) over light (Mr. Love).

“We just get lower and lower when we make those kinds of choices,” she said. “I know I’m not the only one out there saying, ‘Where are we going?’ We’re out there in the wilderness and we won’t find our way back without love.”

But if anyone believes that we can find our way back, it’s Knight--provided we start taking some responsibility for our choices, she said.

In fact, her feelings are so strong on the subject of individual responsibility that they appear to place her on the side of former heavyweight champ Mike Tyson regarding his recent rape conviction. While she acknowledged that Tyson clearly has to shoulder his share of the blame for what happened, she said, “there’s responsibility on both sides.” One has to ask of the victim, she contends, “What you doin’ in a man’s room at 2 o’clock in the morning?”

Knight acknowledged that this might not be the politically correct opinion. But she believes that too many musicians are afraid to have convictions.

“In this business, we get caught up with not wanting to rock the boat. But when it gets down to truth and reality, we’re human beings too, and we shouldn’t just forsake our own opinions because we want people to buy our records.”

Whatever one thinks of her views, it’s hard not to admire the no-nonsense way she expresses them--a product, she said, of her churchgoing, family-oriented Georgia upbringing.

Knight began her musical career at age 4, touring the South with a church choir. In 1951, she won a grand prize on the “Ted Mack Amateur Hour” and in 1952, the Pips (named for manager James (Pip) Woods) were formed. Initially, the group consisted of then-8-year-old Gladys, Bubba, their sister Brenda and cousins William and Eleanor Guest. The current lineup has been intact since 1962.

It would be unwise to mourn the Pips’ passing just yet, though. True, the solo album and tour is foremost in Knight’s mind, and she’s also in negotiations to star in an original musical by Ron Milner (author of “What the Wine Sellers Buy” and “Checkmates”), which she hopes could launch a pre-Broadway tour in September. But the issue of whether the Pips will one day reunite is hardly a question at all, if you ask her.

“Definitely. No doubt about it,” she said. “I just don’t talk about it, because then people would start expecting it, and I just got them to cool out about it.”

The four stay in close contact, she said, even though Bubba has begun pursuing a career in real estate and William and Edward are on the East Coast overseeing operation of their frozen-dessert distributorship. Knight divides most of her free time between her ranch in Las Vegas and a second home in the San Fernando Valley, surrounded by three grown children and three (soon to be four) grandchildren.

Family, she said, is not simply the most important thing, but family and her faith in God are virtually the only things standing between her and an entirely pessimistic outlook on the state of the world.

“I’m scared, but I’m optimistic,” she said. “I must be, because I have children who will be here when I’m gone.”

Those children are also a big part of the reason you won’t see a kiss-and-tell autobiography from this singer any time soon.

Knight said she has told publishers who’ve asked for one: “I can’t tell you about any affairs. I don’t do drugs. I’m not an alcoholic.

“I’m not perfect--I’ve had two failed marriages and I’m not proud of that--but I’m not interested” in writing any Kitty Kelley-esque tomes. And so far no one’s been interested in publishing anything else.

For now, she’ll concentrate on the “Good Woman” tour, which features about a third of the songs from that album, plus some oldies and a few songs that the Pips “never really got a chance to explore in concert,” such as selections from their overlooked 1974 album, “Claudine.”

“I didn’t want to come out and do a ‘Gladys Knight and the Pips--Without the Pips’ show,” she explained. So don’t expect their 1988 comeback hit “Love Overboard” to be a keystone.

Actually, Knight said, she feels lucky to be doing anything in concert right now, given the current economic climate for pop tours.

“It is so scary out here, I cannot tell you,” she said. “Proven artists are going out and losing millions of dollars.

“You begin to say to yourself, ‘If ain’t nobody going to see them, then what makes you think they gonna come see you?’ ”

So far, so good, though, she said of the tour. Her first five performances have drawn respectable-sized crowds, and upcoming shows appear to be selling well. Besides, she has certainly been in the business long enough to be philosophical about the vagaries of pop stardom and appeal.

“Nobody has to like me. Nobody has to support me,” she said. “It’s a blessing.

“So ain’t no need for me to get all up in the air about it.”

Gladys Knight performs tonight at 8 at the Celebrity Theatre, 201 E. Broadway, Anaheim. Tickets: $28 to $33. Information: (714) 999-9536.