Penthouse: What would your long-range goal be?

Summer: I've always said it was to setup a community in South America. I don't know why it's got to be South America, it could be anywhere in the world. You see, I believe that we, as Americans, as well as the British, the Germans, the French, have always taken. We've, gone to other countries and taken, taken, taken, castrating the people, making them second-rate citizens in their own country. I'd like to go into a country where it isn't expensive to do a lot of things and just give, let the people of this other country retain their sense of themselves. I'd like people without any advantages or abilities to be trained so that they could then use that training in their own country. It's almost a communistic theory- utopian, perhaps- because there are certainly a lot of people who are going to be greedy and people who are not going to want to do certain things. But I don't mind giving up what I have.

My accountants are always telling me, "You're spending too much!" And I tell them, "Tomorrow will come whether I have a penny in the bank or not." I'm not afraid of tomorrow and I'm not afraid to be hungry. I can risk whatever money I have because I know that with my own intelligence, with my strength, I will get back to where I was.

Penthouse: Would it be fair to say that you made a million dollars in 1978?

Summer: If you go on tour for eight months, you can estimate what you're going to earn. I think the potential of what I could possibly earn in a year would be- God, who knows? Anywhere from $2.5 million to $5 million a year. I don't know if I earn that, because when you go out on the road it costs a bundle of money.

This was brought to my attention only recently and I nearly choked when I heard it. Think of just the cost of flying to do a show. Say you're taking thirty people. Five or six of those people have to go first-class, and the rest fly tourist, and the cost is enormous. The amount of money that you gross on a tour is really not that much in the end, because by the time your fees are gone for your agent and your management and everyone else, you're not left with so much for the hard work you put out.

Costumes alone last year cost me $70,000. There are high start-up costs when you get ready to go on the road. You have to pay for four weeks' rehearsal. You have to get in sound equipment. You have to take out lighting. A tour is a multi-multi-million-dollar business, really- and not necessarily for the artist. Most people can't go on tour because it's just too expensive. My very first tour was a European tour. I was supposedly offered a certain amount of money for the tour, but it didn't come through, and I came back owing close to $200,000. Owing- not having made a cent.

Penthouse: Now that you're constantly on the road and in demand, do you ever feel like just giving up and enjoying yourself?

Summer: Once a week. I swear to you: once a week! Every time I come off the road, I'm so exhausted for the first week that I swear I'm never going on the road again as long as I live. I don't want it anymore, I've had it, my life has been too erratic, I want to live a sensitive and sensible life, I want to be with my family... Then, about a week and a half later, I'm bored to death, and I'm off again. It's a masochistic business. It's in your blood. It's like people who have sea fever. They're driven to go to sea all the time. They always say that they're going to go dry and go back on land, but once the sea calls them again, they're off. They love it and they hate it.

Love and hate are what this entertainment business is all about. People hate you today, and then they love you tomorrow They let you down, and then they build you back up. You're in, and then you're out again. There's this constant struggle for admiration, love, and respect that is a strange kind of love-hatred and a constant attempt at trying to prove yourself.

Penthouse: What is it you're trying to prove?

Summer: I don't know. Generally, I think it comes from a sense of my desperately needing to be understood and desiring to effect change through something that I have to say. I question myself all the time. Why am I doing this? I could just get married and be rich ...
- Yet I could never settle for that. It's not even the money. At some point it's just a madness. I don't know why I have such a drastic need to be understood, but I do.

Penthouse: Is performing the only way you feel that you can communicate?

Summer: Not really. I'm always on stage, though- I mean, my life is a stage at this point, whether I'm at home or whether I'm at the office or whether I'm on the road or on television or shopping. I'm always on stage. At this point there are very few moments in my life when I don't feel I have to be quote Donna Summer unquote. I can't just be a little, black girl from Boston. It's very funny how people make you jump into being the person they want to see. But I manage to stabilize myself.

Penthouse: What frightens you most about what you're doing?

Summer: Not being in possession of my own abilities and faculties. And in this profession it's easy for that to happen. I never want to lose sight of who I am or what I'm here for, and I think that's probably my biggest fear. When I say "going insane," I mean becoming so much a part of the machinery that I no longer see the reality of what I have to do in this lifetime. And what I have to do is develop my talents and my ability and the ability of others as best I can.

I believe there is a structure to the whole thing. First, before you can help someone else, you really must help yourself. Second, you should help your family or people who are close to you. That is why I feel that some of my greatest achievements have been my work with the Brooklyn Dreams and with my sister, Sunshine, whose first album I'm producing. And then you should really do something for the world. When you've indulged your ego in the things that you've wanted, then it's time to give it all back. And this is basically my whole philosophy about what I'm doing, one that I've had since I was a girl.

Penthouse: Do you feel a need to do things for people so that you will be remembered by them?

Summer: This is a strange thing, but I really don't care if they remember me. I hope they remember my philosophy, as opposed to my person, because I'm actually quite insignificant. People remember Jesus, or they remember disciples. But to remember them as people is not enough. You must remember what they taught you. That's the important thing to me.

Penthouse: What do you wish your public would understand about you that they don't now?

Summer: The only specific thing that I think people need to understand is that I need to be free. I think the thing that bothers me the most about this thing called success- it is a thing, a monster- is that it changes your life-style so drastically. There is no longer any privacy in your life, and you have no choice.

Really, I'm a very regular normal person, and I want to relate to my audience, to the public, to let them know that I love them or I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing. At the same time, I want their love and respect and understanding. They're my fans, and they want X, but they have to know that there are millions of people chewing away at this one person, saying, "I want this and I want this and I want that." And it's impossible to accommodate all of these people. When I say "I can't" to people, I want them to understand that I can't and not to feel put down by it. It's the one thing that disturbs me: that people feel they deserve more, and that I can't give it. I even would if I could, but I can't.

And then they say "Well, we buy your records." Yes, I sang a song, you bought my record, I got the money. That's the bottom line, and that's not "cold." I sold a record, but I didn't sell my soul.