days later, we got the call back: Motown wanted to sign us.
CHAPTER SIX
Motown University
‘THE BOSTON HOUSE’ WAS ANOTHER WORLD, with a size and opulence beyond our comprehension. We’d thought only kings and queens lived so grandly, but Mr Gordy’s mock-Tudor mansion in Detroit was something else. It was also our venue for the night, to perform at one of his annual parties. One thing was certain: there would be no midnight strip-teases or fruit thrown on stage. This was no Mr Lucky’s or amateur night at the Apollo. It wasn’t a home, either. It was a residence – and one that music had provided. Michael wandered around, ever-curious, looking up at the great ceilings, shimmering chandeliers, the grand oil portraits of Mr Gordy himself.
Outside, there was an ornamental fountain and marble Greek statues. Inside, there were butlers and white people working as household staff. Everything was so ornate, immaculate and clean. We arrived as newly-signed Motown artists, even if our signed contracts had got snagged due to some legal issues we didn’t ask about, but it was ‘nothing to worry about’ and our host didn’t seem too concerned. It was his first time showcasing us so the night was a big deal. It was the winter of 1968 and we had no idea what to expect.
The bearded, effusive Mr Gordy greeted us, his sole performers for the night, at the door with a golf club in his hand. (He had a putting green out back.) Our ‘dressing room’ was the pool house just outside the indoor swimming pool and the ‘stage’ was an area set aside at the far end of the pool, with just enough room for Johnny’s drums and Ronny’s keyboard. Guests would face us from the opposite end and down the flanks, between the Greek columns.
As men in suits and women wearing diamonds started to gather, Michael and Marlon kept running outside from the pool-house to take a peep through the windows to see who was out front. Jackie, Tito, Johnny, Ronny and I got changed and sat around, going over the performance in our heads. Suddenly Marlon darted in. ‘Smokey Robinson is here!’ He dashed back out.
Then Michael’s head appeared at the door. ‘Whoa! I’ve just seen some of the Temptations!’
Then Marlon: ‘Gladys Knight is here!’
Then Michael again, shrieking: ‘DIANA ROSS! I’VE JUST SEEN DIANA ROSS!’
Tito and I jumped up and raced outside to make sure it wasn’t another of his pranks. But it was true. Mr Gordy had gathered the crème de la crème of his Motown family – and who knew how many other movers and shakers from the music industry? Ever since July, we had kept pinching ourselves that we were actually Motown artists – grouped with the Temptations, the Marvelettes, Martha & the Vandellas, Smokey, Gladys, Bobby Taylor, Diana Ross, Marvin Gaye and the Four Tops. For so long, they were who we wanted to be and where we wanted to be. And we were about to perform for half of them.
Jackie grew agitated. ‘Guys, we need to concentrate. Come on. Do y’all know what you’re supposed to do?’ The occasion was clearly getting to him, and Michael and Marlon’s regular news updates weren’t helping. Funnily enough, it was the one occasion when Joseph wasn’t backstage. He was busy rubbing shoulders with the big names and maybe that was why Jackie had the jitters. ‘C’mon, y’all … we must get this right. Let’s focus,’ he said. After Joseph, Jackie was the one who most used that word.
Michael and Marlon settled down and we gathered in a huddle and told one another that we should ‘go out there and tear this place up’. That was how we spoke before a show over the years: ‘Tear ’em up’; ‘Let’s knock ’em out’; ‘Let’s kill ’em’; or ‘Let’s go out there and hurt ’em’. Michael carried forward these phrases into his work as a solo artist. Anyone who worked with him will recognise that vernacular. Fighting talk, borrowed from Joseph.
As kids, we knew the calibre of talent waiting to watch us and yet we didn’t for a second feel out of our depth or inferior. As Motown’s first child group, we couldn’t wait to do our set: ‘My Girl’, ‘Tobacco Road’ and a James Brown number. The big question in our mind was: how would they react? What were these Motown folk like in a private setting? In an audience?
If there were two absent people we wanted out there, it was Mother and Rebbie. Mother had waited in the wings for so long on our behalf, taken a back seat, sacrificed her own dreams and missed her boys most weekends. And when Motown first exploded, Rebbie was the one going to the local record store, buying the newly-released 45s and dancing the ‘sock hops’ with Jackie. She was all about what Mr Gordy had invented – ‘the sound of young America’. Or, as another Motown motto would go, ‘It’s what’s in the groove that counts’.
Once we were poolside, with mics and instruments in hand, we looked out across the lit water and kept spotting the faces of the greats who were watching. It took one wink from Michael and then we started killing it. The energy of that performance was incredible and we could tell our VIP audience was into it. They weren’t just gracious, they loved it. By the second verse of ‘My Girl’, they were clapping and dancing and cheering, even whooping when Michael turned on his moves and set fire to the place. As we took our bows, we spotted Mr Gordy front-centre of the standing crowd, clapping the loudest, smiling the widest alongside Joseph, puffing out his chest. Always a good sign.
When Smokey Robinson and Marvin Gaye came over and expressed their enthusiasm, we started to feel that we must be good. Everyone talked about ‘the little fella’ – Michael – and Diana Ross made a beeline for him. She said a few words and grabbed his cheeks like an auntie meeting her favourite nephew. I was talking to someone else at the time, but I saw how starry-eyed he was. That was actually the first time we met Diana, which puts to bed the Motown folklore that insisted it was she who discovered us. That marketing myth was invented because, we were told, it was stardom by association, so we memorised it as ‘fact’ to tell journalists.
That night, we stayed at Bobby Taylor’s apartment in Detroit and rang Mother in Gary, each one of us taking turns on the phone to tell her how brilliantly the night had gone. ‘Did they really like it? Did they really? I’m so proud of you boys.’
PEOPLE HAVE ALWAYS ASKED, ‘WHAT EXACTLY is the Motown Sound?’ In 1983, Smokey – the label’s first artist – tried answering that question: ‘The Motown Sound is the bottom, you know. They got the foot working and you can hear the bass real good.’ In his 1994 autobiography, Mr Gordy defines it as ‘rats, roaches, struggle, talent, guts and love’. I’d go further: its uptown-downtown mix is part funky, part melodic, with a distinct pop sound thrown in. And then there’s the feel-good mood it evokes, tapping into universal human emotion, elevating happiness, remembering desire, soothing heartbreak, as inspired by Mr Gordy’s early days with Jackie Wilson. It’s a catharsis that touches you; a force that compels you to move. It’s that blend of beats, bass lines, drums, keyboards, tambourines, hand-claps and the interplay of harmonies that create an instantly knowable sound, and one on which we built our live performances and musical education. And even then I don’t feel I’ve done it justice.
Our first Motown tutor was Bobby Taylor and we spent a lot of time with him in the months before Mr Gordy’s party, working at weekends and when school was out for summer. He didn’t have much room in his apartment so we threw down mattresses and sleeping-bags on his carpet. It felt like the sleepover we were never allowed to have. Bobby, a tremendous singer himself, spent those summer weeks producing us and cutting tracks like ‘Can You Remember?’, ‘Who’s Lovin’ You’, ‘Chained’ and ‘La-La-La-La-La Means I Love You’ and ‘Standing In The Shadows Of Love’, songs that would feature on our first album. We must have cut more than a dozen covers from the likes of the Delfonics, Smokey Robinson, the Temptations and Marvin Gaye, and that work allowed us to ease into
