Bonnie Raitt's ninth and final album for Warner Bros. Records was a star-crossed affair that began in 1983 in a session with producer
Rob Fraboni, and was a typical
Raitt mixture of different genres and songwriters, from
Jerry Lynn Williams ("Excited") and
Eric Kaz ("Angel") to reggae star
Toots Hibbert ("True Love Is Hard to Find") in a style similar to her 1982 album
Green Light. This record seems to have been rejected by Warner, but three years later
Raitt returned to the studio with
Bill Payne (
Little Feat) and
George Massenburg and cut a group of commercial-sounding songs by the likes of Bryan Adams and
Tom Snow.
Nine Lives splits the difference between the two sessions, with four tracks rescued from 1983, and five added from 1986, plus the theme from a forgotten Farrah Fawcett movie ("Stand Up to the Night" from Extremities). The result is predictably scattered and strained, and it was
Raitt's lowest-charting album since her debut. Not surprisingly, it was also the last straw in her relationship with Warner. ~ William Ruhlmann