The Pointer Sisters today are Ruth Pointer, center, with daughter Issa, left, and granddaughter Sadako. (Photo courtesy Left of Center Productions)

There’s a lot more to the Pointer Sisters than their most well-known hits.

Originally, sisters June and Bonnie Pointer started singing as a duo in 1969. By 1972, they were a quartet with sisters Anita and Ruth having joined them. Their eponymous debut album came out the following year and they worked as a quartet until 1978 and were known for highly eclectic musical experimentation. They even won a 1975 Grammy in a country category for their song “Fairytale.”

Their biggest songs came in the ‘80s with June, Ruth and Anita releasing monster chart hits like “Slow Hand,” “Jump (for My Love)” and “I’m So Excited.”

For about the last eight years, the group has continued with Ruth singing with her daughter Issa Pointer and granddaughter Sadako Pointer. June died in 2006. Anita occasionally sang with them until the last few years.

The Pointer Sisters will headline at the Capital Pride concert on the Capitol Concert Stage at 3rd & Pennsylvania Ave. on Sunday, June 11 at 4 p.m. Ruth Pointer, 71, took a few minutes last week from her home in Massachusetts where she was helping her granddaughter move into a new apartment to talk with the Washington Blade.

WASHINGTON BLADE: Your memoir “Still So Excited!” last year was noted for being unusually candid. What kind of reception did you get to it overall?

RUTH POINTER: You know, it was very positive. I think that I’m just among a group of people that are writing these types of memoirs most recently just about a life of recovery and redemption and experience, especially in this business. I really, really appreciate the response I got. I’m sure there were some negative ones as well from what I’m told but I don’t read that stuff.

BLADE: You were up front with your drug and alcohol use in the ‘80s. Do you agree that male rock stars seem to get more of a free pass on this kind of thing than women? With somebody like, say, Keith Richards, it’s treated as just part of his renegade persona whereas with Stevie Nicks, everybody acts so forlorn like, “Oh, she had a serious problem,” and she’s asked about it ad nauseam. 

POINTER: In a way I think I do, but that’s sort of what I think is a gender bias in almost everything. You know, it’s just the way of the world.

BLADE: You’ve said how strict your parents were when you were growing up. Did they sort of gradually accept the kind of music the group was doing? Did it take them a long time to come around?

POINTER: Yes, they did loosen up. I think it comes from getting to a place where you’re just exhausted from fighting and disagreeing and being rigid and I know I find that in my own life with my own children. You know, after a while I just try to figure out how I can love them for who they are as opposed to how I want them to be and I think my parents came to that realization and just decided to just love us as opposed to trying to mold us and make us into these starch Christians that they were. It just wasn’t going to work (laughs). I mean you know, I consider myself a Christian today but I think a lot of religions and practices have changed over the years. You just want to kind of fit in a little bit with the world. So things are a little different now.

BLADE:  I imagine gay issues were thought of as the ultimate sin, right?

POINTER: I didn’t even know anything about that when I was a kid. I had no clue.

BLADE: Do you recall when you first realized that was a thing?

POINTER: You know, I really don’t know a specific time. I’ve always had, you know, friends that were a little different in different ways, but I never thought it was anything wrong with them. They were just different.

BLADE: I’m sure your views evolved on that over the years like most other folks, right?

POINTER: Yeah, oh absolutely.

BLADE: Have the Pointer Sisters played many Pride events? Do you remember the first?

POINTER: I don’t remember the first one but we’ve always had a huge, you know, audience, gay audience, being from the Bay Area, San Francisco, you know, Haight-Ashbury. Sylvester, the Cockettes, Pristine Condition, you know, it was always just a good time. Just fun, which is what we always set out to do, just have a good time.

BLADE: What do you have planned for your D.C. performance?

POINTER: Well, we just want to have a really good time at any event. Where we’re playing determines what we’re going to have, what we’re going to wear. It’s just things that we want to be appropriate for the engagement we’re doing. We’re just excited about it. It’s always an exciting time to play for a gay audience. It’s always just so much fun.

BLADE: Mary Wilson has had several exhibits of the Supremes’ gowns in recent years. I know the Pointer Sisters were a whole different kind of act but do you have all your stage clothes from over the years and would you ever exhibit any of that stuff anywhere? 

POINTER: No, we haven’t kept everything. I know my sister Anita keeps most everything. She has things that I don’t have. But we still have some things, we don’t have everything. I don’t know what she has because we were given a lot of things. Especially, like when we did “The Carol Burnett Show” and Bob Mackie was making all of our wardrobe for those shows. Carol was so gracious and just let us keep the costumes that were made for us.

BLADE: Wow.

POINTER: Yes, I know, I know!

BLADE: How is Anita. Do you see her often?

POINTER: I don’t see her that often because I’m on the East Coast and she’s on the West Coast. You know, when I’m in L.A. we try to get together and see each other so that’s when I can see her. We talk occasionally. My sister Bonnie and I text and talk on a regular basis and that’s just kind of the way we live our lives. I have two older brothers and we talk all the time. So we stay in touch pretty much like most families would. Nothing exceptional.

BLADE: Are you still friendly with (former Temptations lead singer) Dennis Edwards? (ex-husband and father of Pointer’s daughter, Issa.) Do you ever see him?

POINTER: I don’t see him. He’s in Saint Louis, I believe, and we have a daughter together who’s singing with me now and she’s in touch with him and his current wife, Brenda. But he’s in the hospital, you know, trying to recover from meningitis and now pneumonia. So we’re sort of praying every day that he makes a full recovery but we just don’t know. It’s really quite serious.

BLADE: What’s it like singing and traveling with your daughter and granddaughter? Did that just sort of come about organically?

POINTER: It was kind of a natural thing only because they were pretty much born into this business with me. I was pregnant with Issa on stage for eight months before she was born and my granddaughter has just always been around our music all her life. We had to make some adjustments in the music because unlike my sisters, they didn’t grow up singing together so that instinct that me and Anita and Bonnie and June had didn’t exist between Issa and Sadako. We had to teach them the notes and the moves whereas it was so easy for me and my sisters because we just kind of automatically moved together and automatically knew what we were going to do. It was a little bit of a challenge but they got it down.

BLADE: How long have they each been in the group?

POINTER: Issa has been with us since 2002. Sadako came in about eight years ago when Issa got pregnant with my first grandson. … They know what they’re doing by now.

BLADE: Back in the ‘70s and ‘80s, if a group won a Grammy, did you each get one or was it just one trophy for the group?

POINTER: We each got one, yeah.

BLADE: What memory stands out most in your mind from “We Are the World”?

POINTER: The fact that I realized that there would never, ever be that group of people together in one room ever again. My God, when I look back and think of all the people that were in that room. People I admired before I even got in the business and people that I will forever admire — Michael Jackson, Quincy Jones, Lionel Richie, Diana Ross, Stevie Wonder, Al Jarreau, Janet, no wait, LaToya, Bette Midler, Tina Turner, Dionne (Warwick), oh, I could go on and on. It’s just like, wow. I was in awe of everybody.

BLADE: So even though you all were huge stars, you were still starstruck?

POINTER: Absolutely, oh yeah. I’m a fan of everybody’s.

BLADE: Were there a lot of egos on display?

POINTER: There was a banner placed across the top of the studio as we came in that said, “Leave your ego at the door.”

BLADE: Did it work?

POINTER: I think everybody did that except maybe Waylon Jennings (laughs).

BLADE: Of all people.

POINTER: It was like all of a sudden Stevie Wonder wanted to try to put in some kind of African lyric in the song and Waylon went off and he said, “I’m outta here.” Came down out of the bleachers where we were all standing and said, “I ain’t singing no Kumbaya bullshit, I’m outta here.” We all just laughed, you know?

BLADE: Do you think Bonnie felt left out when you all went through the roof after she left?

POINTER: We weren’t even in touch with her during those years. Bonnie was estranged and away from us for almost 30 years. We didn’t talk, we didn’t speak, there was nothing, no communication. And I really think that it had a lot to do with the man that she was with. So I don’t know what she was feeling but I’m sure she might have felt that way.

BLADE: How did it come about that “I’m So Excited” was remixed and became a much bigger hit than it had been before?

POINTER: We had an album called “I’m So Excited” and the song was kind of overlooked and we had put so much love and effort into writing that song, so when the album “Breakout” came up, we told Richard Perry, our producer, we said, “Look, we need to re-release this song.” We said, “It’s just a shame that it’s been so overlooked and we know it’s a hit.” And that’s kind of how it happened.

BLADE: Labels can be funny about stuff like that. Did it take any arm twisting?

POINTER: No, they really didn’t, you know, argue with us on that issue. They accepted it and were willing to put it on the next album. And the rest is history.

BLADE: How did you decide who would sing lead?

POINTER: We knew that Anita had a lot to do with initiating that song, the writing with Trevor Lawrence and we all felt equally agreeable that her voice was well suited for that song so it wasn’t really a big issue or argument.

BLADE: But in general how would you divvy up lead vocal duties?

POINTER: We would go through a series of trying out different voices. Richard would take each of us to sing a certain song and then we would all decide which one we liked the best. So that’s just how we did it.

BLADE: The Pointer Sisters are heavily known for dabbling in many genres. Did you ever get label pushback from that?

POINTER: We never really got much pushback. We always knew we didn’t want to be pigeonholed. We liked singing everything and I just think we just were lucky and blest enough that the producers we worked with liked that kind of variety. We were willing to try things and they were willing to try things with us.

BLADE: Do you think much about the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame? I know it’s not just based on fame or chart stats, but there are many acts inducted that had a lot fewer hits than you guys did. 

POINTER: Of course I think about that. Are you kidding me? Yes, yes indeed! But you know the other thing is that there are a lot of groups that I admire that aren’t in there either, you know? That when I hear the names come up on a yearly basis of the people going in, a lot of times I’m thinking, ‘God, I thought they were already in there.” So, you know, it is what it is.

BLADE: Is it political? Maybe because your biggest hits were ’80’s pop hits, that era isn’t taken as seriously perhaps? 

POINTER: I really don’t know.

BLADE: Do you miss recording?

POINTER: I do, I do.

BLADE: Do you think you would ever do any recording with your daughter and granddaughter?

POINTER: I hope we can but right now, you know, it’s interesting. I’ve heard people talk about wanting to try out new material but the audience really loves the old stuff. You know, I remember even years ago, we’d try out new material and they just sit there looking at you like a deer in headlights so then you pull out something old and they go crazy. So we just stick with what we love and what they love.

BLADE: About what percentage of the year do you spend traveling these days?

POINTER: Hmmmm, I don’t know. I never tried to figure that out but I know it’s a lot. More than I ever expected it to be at this age, at this time in my life. But it’s OK because I appreciate it so much and I enjoy it so much. I think I enjoy it now more than I did then.

BLADE: What would you say to someone struggling with addiction?

POINTER: First of all just admit that you have a problem. People just don’t want to admit there’s a problem or they think they can handle it on their own. I’m so saddened with the deaths of Prince, Michael Jackson and I was just noticing this thing even with Tiger Woods the other day and I was saying, “God, they just don’t get it.” These opioids are gonna kill them and they’ve got to get a handle on it and realize they can’t beat the drug, you know? You gotta get help and you gotta admit that it’s an issue that you can’t just play around with and think, “Oh well, this won’t hurt me.” You gotta get help.