To Be Loved

by Berry Gordy

  I got the bright idea that if I brought in a fresh, objective opinion more connected to what was going on out there, we might both learn something. I think we did.

  I took Suzanne up to Esther’s office, spread the new album covers out and asked what she thought.

  Suzanne, being new, didn’t know anything about Esther’s power or prestige or that she was responsible for the covers, or that I was sort of setting her up. All she knew was to be honest.

  After studying them for a few minutes, Suzanne pointed to the Temptations’ cover. “Outdated. Nobody’s got processed hair anymore. They’ve been into naturals for some time now. These must be old photos. And that Four Tops’ cover looks very stiff. Levi looks like he’s smelling something.”

  Then picking one up, she said, “Smokey, my favorite artist. Where did they get those clothes?” She continued, spotting something wrong with most every cover. Turning to me with a shrug, she said, “Basically, Mr. Gordy, I guess you could say they don’t really work for me.”

  She knew she had done exactly what I had told her to do and exhaled with pride, looking at me for acknowledgment of a job well done. I gave her a smiling nod while knowing she was in big trouble with Esther. But she was not the only one. I had proven my point and won the battle, but now the war was about to start.

  Esther was silent. There was a growing tension in the room. I told Suzanne to go wait in my office.

  Esther still hadn’t said anything as the two of us stood there alone, avoiding each other’s eyes. I had wanted to prove a point to Esther and now that I had I felt bad. I tried to think of something to say that would make everything all right. “So what do you think of the new girl,” I said half jokingly.

  “Either she goes or I go,” Esther said and walked out.

  Soft-spoken, easygoing Esther had just given me an ultimatum! I hated ultimatums. But I was a realist and I knew losing Esther would be a lot more damaging than losing a newcomer.

  On the other hand, how could I, in good conscience, fire someone for honesty, for doing exactly what I had told her to do? For a few days Esther avoided talking to me. Finally, I went into her office and I tried to explain my position, practically begging her to understand that it wasn’t Suzanne’s fault and that she was only doing what I had told her to do. How could I fire her for that? “It’s a matter of principle.”

  As mad as she was with me, she understood that.

  Esther didn’t leave, but she did check out Suzanne’s comments with some other people, and soon after revamped the Art Department and brought in a new director.

  Adherence to principle was always an important recurring theme for me. Earlier, Diana had come to me about something that was really bothering her—the terms of the “slave contract” at the Copa. We were about a year away from fulfilling the three-year deal I’d originally made with Jules Podell. Even though the girls were stars now, they wanted to know why they were still only earning $15,000 a week at the Copa, when they could be making $50,000 for one-nighters.

  “When we signed the contract it was worth it then and now we’ve got to honor it,” I explained. “Sure, you could be getting $50,000 a night now. And you know why? Partly because of the Copa. Without the Copa, you wouldn’t have gotten the Cocoanut Grove, or Vegas, and all the other big nightclubs. When I signed that ‘slave contract’ we needed them. Now, we have to be honorable.” Though we lost money every time they played the Copa, it had been more than well worth it.

  When the three years were up Jules offered a much better deal. But his best deal was nowhere near the Waldorf-Astoria’s and that’s the one I took, moving Diana Ross and the Supremes on to greener pastures. Insiders to the club scene were stunned. “You’re going to have real trouble with Jules Podell,” they warned, suggesting that I ought to fear for my life.

  I never gave it a second thought. I knew we did right by him and he wouldn’t forget it. Much to the surprise of many—I lived.

  There was never any rest, never any letup. I got used to putting out little fires that ignited every day. But I was about to have an inferno on my hands—a real disaster. HDH was leaving.

  Signs of trouble had sparked several months before when their productions began to drop on the charts. After their Supremes’ “Reflections” went to #2 in September of 1967, the next release, “In And Out Of Love,” only made it to #9. Then I was told HDH had stopped recording and were on some sort of strike.

  Eddie Holland, Brian Holland and Lamont Dozier were nowhere to be found.

  By February of ’68, having no new product for the Supremes, we were forced to go back to the can, releasing “Forever Came Today”—cut a year before. That record stopped at a dismal #28.

  As creative people they might not have been able to come up with any new ideas, but how could Eddie, my head of A&R, and Brian, my head of Quality Control, be on strike? And why?

  I thought back to around the time of their first hit, Martha and the Vandellas’ “Come And Get These Memories,” when Eddie had come and told me he would be representing the group.

  “For what?” I asked.

  “Business. I’ll negotiate for all three of us.”

  “You all have long-term writers’ and producers’ contracts. What’s there to negotiate now?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “Brian and Lamont aren’t money-minded. I have to keep them motivated.”

  It was true—Eddie was much more money-minded.

  “Does Brian know about this?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  Brian had been with me even before there was a Hitsville. Most of the time he slept on a couch or on the floor, always watching, assisting, learning. He was sensitive, sharp and had a pure heart. I cared about him and we’d always had great communication.

  When Eddie told me about this I went to one of the piano rooms to talk to Brian. I could see he felt awkward and was having as much trouble as I was with the situation.

  “I hope you understand and have no hard feelings,” he said. “But that’s my brother and you know how it is…”

  I knew how much Brian loved his brother and I understood. I was apprehensive about it, but I understood.

  True to my apprehensions, Eddie’s constant requests for added incentives had mounted through the years. They were great as a team and I knew I had to pay an additional cost to keep them happy. It was a part of doing business.

  After a series of generous readjustments to his compensation package, which I had agreed to, there had been that last “request” Eddie had made for a personal, interest-free loan. I had said no. I felt this so-called strike might have had something to do with that.

  “They are negotiating now with Capitol Records,” I was being told by everybody. This was really bad news.

  Not only had they become one of the most prolific writing and producing hit teams of that time, but had risen to such power positions in the company that their leaving could mean disaster in many ways.

  Though I could not calculate what losing them would cost, I sued them for $4 million for breach of contract. I wanted them back and I figured it was only a matter of time before they would come to their senses.

  Everyone in the company rallied around me. When Smokey got the news, he came into my office burning. “Berry, how can they do that? After all you’ve done for them, for all of us. But don’t worry man, we’ll keep it going. Me and Whit and the others will get plenty of smashes. We can handle it. You’ll see.”

  I appreciated Smokey but I didn’t think he was aware of the extent of the problem. Aside from our losing their creative genius, the departments they headed were already in chaos—masters needed Brian’s approval and the studio scheduling and other duties that Eddie was in charge of were not being handled.

  Although I had some serious fears about the situation, my ego would not permit me to think that I couldn’t do it without them. After all, I had taught them, given them opportunities and driven them not just to be good but to be the best.

 
When they didn’t come back to work after I filed the lawsuit, I knew I had to move forward without them. As much as everyone else wanted to help me, I knew the company’s survival was all on my shoulders. If what I did worked, I’d be a hero; if it didn’t, a bum.

  I let my legal people worry about the lawsuit, and appointed Ralph Seltzer to head A&R, now referred to as our Creative Division. Billie Jean Brown, back from her leave of absence in Spain, took over Quality Control. I took my battle into the studio where my mission was clear—to come up with a record on the Supremes that sounded so much like HDH that nobody would know the difference.

  I wanted the song to be a little deeper than the typical Supremes songs, but I had no idea what that would be.

  First I had to assemble a group to work with me. I looked around for people who were really talented and wanted to prove themselves. I came up with three relative newcomers—Deke Richards, Frank Wilson and R. Dean Taylor. In Deke, who had a soulful feel on the guitar, I saw great potential as a writer and producer and made him my assistant in charge of the project.

  I thought Frank Wilson, from the West Coast, also had tremendous potential as a writer/producer. R. Dean Taylor was an artist and writer/producer from Canada who I felt was very clever with lyrics. Then, to keep everything together, I brought in the more experienced Hank Cosby from the A&R Department.

  I called our new production unit “The Clan.”

  “Klan?” they asked. “Like the Ku Klux Klan?”

  I told them it was a matter of semantics. Once again I wanted to take a so-called negative word, and use it positively. I was using Clan with a C for its meaning as a group of friends linked by a common purpose. Our purpose was to get a #1 record on the Supremes.

  I didn’t want to use individual names because I wanted to keep egos at a minimum. “We’re a team and we’ll stay together and produce many more songs.”

  I took them down to Detroit’s Pontchartrain Hotel where I told them we’d lock ourselves in until we came out with the right product. We worked around the clock, everyone grabbing a few hours’ sleep here and there.

  On about the second day of coffee and frustration, throwing ideas out in the air that nobody particularly liked, I started playing what felt like Holland-Dozier-Holland type chords—to get in the mood for what I was looking for.

  In the key of A minor I started playing with a sad, soulful feel. Soon everyone in the room was throwing out lyrics and melodies to match my chords.

  After what seemed like a mountain of mediocre ideas, Pam Sawyer came up with a concept I liked. Pam was an offbeat English writer signed to Jobete who I’d called in to help with the writing.

  “What about a baby born out of wedlock?” she said. “‘Love Child.’”

  “‘Love Child?’” somebody muttered. “A song about a baby with no daddy for Diana Ross and the Supremes?”

  “No,” somebody else said, “not the Supremes. They’re America’s sweethearts. It’s too heavy for the Supremes.”

  “I like it,” I said. “I want an idea that’s heavy. It fits, it really does. ‘Love Child’—I love it.”

  That’s how the song began. After that, I asked Pam to expand on what the story might be. As she told it, coming up with a lot of the lyrics at the same time, we all added and changed, added and changed, refining and adapting as we continued to work. Ultimately, we arrived at a really touching story about a girl who herself was born out of wedlock and is telling her boyfriend that she doesn’t want to go the wrong way with him and bring another love child into the world. We had managed to take a negative image and turn it around in a positive way. Now it was perfect for the Supremes.

  From there it was a matter of Deke and me working out the rest of the chord structure as we all polished lyrics, melody, and began getting the production ideas lined up. We left the Pontchartrain and went immediately to the studio to cut the track.

  When the Supremes recorded the song the depth in the storyline I had been looking for came through:

  You think that I don’t feel love,

  What I feel for you is real love,

  In other’s eyes I see reflected a hurt, scorned, rejected.

  Love Child, never meant to be,

  Love Child, born in poverty,

  Love Child, never meant to be,

  Love Child, take a look at me.

  I started my life in an old, cold, rundown tenement slum

  My father left, he never even married Mom.

  I shared the guilt my mama knew,

  So afraid that others knew I had no name.

  This love we’re contemplating, is worth the pain of waiting.

  We’ll only end up hating the child we may be creating.

  Love Child…

  When we released the record, everyone assumed it was HDH. We felt it was a #1 record and we were right. But we were surprised when it got there so fast and when it outsold every Supremes record before it.

  Shortly before the release of “Love Child,” we had made a deal to do three television specials in partnership with the producers of Laugh-In, George Schlatter and Ed Friendly. I had heard that there was nobody better at comedy or variety shows than George Schlatter, so I was looking forward to working with him. Then we started rehearsals for the first one—TCB—Takin’ Care of Business, starring Diana Ross and the Supremes and the Temptations.

  My system of getting right to the point and saying what was wrong and then doing it again and again until it was right was demanding, I admit, but it had always worked with Diana. She thrived under that kind of pressure. That was all she knew. Then along came George.

  George was someone who had his own style, and it was different than mine. Though I used charm and humor sometimes to get things done, it was not like George’s.

  “Diana,” he’d say, tickling her ribs, “did you know you have a funny box in you?”

  “I do?”

  “Yes you do, and whenever you turn it on, something funny will come out.”

  One day he said cheerfully after a run-through of “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me” with both groups, “I loved what you did, that little skip you added when you came down the ramp, and your nod to Mary and Cindy, and the way you smiled at Melvin, and taking the mike from Dennis and handing it back…” He continued, going over everything he loved and then with Diana beaming he said, “Just a couple things…” Then he went into problems at least twice as long as mine would have been. The problem for me was when he got through Diana was still beaming.

  At first I thought that was a waste of time, but when she started coming off funnier, I started paying more attention.

  I could see Diana wished I could be more like him. At times, I did, too.

  He not only did that with Diana, he did it with everybody—including me. I loved working with the man. He could be so outrageous. The atmosphere on the set was always an up one. When he wanted one of our acts for his shows that he couldn’t get through the agencies or our other people, he would hunt me down. One time he was doing a show with Lucille Ball and Dinah Shore called Like Hep and he needed Diana to complete the threesome. Having been turned down by everyone, he sent me a telegram from a ship somewhere in the Atlantic telling me how good this would be for Diana, and if I said no he was canceling his trip and coming back to burn crosses on my front lawn. I could never refuse George—but it all paid off.

  Some years later Diana brought over the tape of a TV show she’d done on her own that needed major help. The air date was a few days away. I needed George. When I called him, he told me he and his wife, Jolene, were leaving for China with Frank Sinatra. After hearing of my predicament, he said he would let the boat sail without him and join them later. George and I went into the studio to reedit the show. He was the only man I knew who could get technical people to actually have fun working with us nonstop for something like forty-eight hours straight to get it done.

  TCB, our first special together, aired in December of 1968 on NBC. It received rave reviews and a h
uge audience. The show’s soundtrack album went to #1. This had all been exciting for us. But I, meanwhile, was dealing with a devastating situation. A month before I had gotten a call from Harold Noveck.

  “You’re being countersued by HDH for $22 million.”

  “They’re suing me?? For what?”

  “For everything.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like everything. I’ll have the complaint over to you tomorrow.”

  It wasn’t necessary for me to read the complaint, because in the next few days it was all over the newspapers. Jet magazine’s headline said: “PRIZEWINNING SONGSMITHS SUE MOTOWN CORP. FOR $22 MILLION.” The Michigan Chronicle, the black newspaper that I had grown up with, blasted the headline: “SONGWRITERS CLAIM: MOTOWN SUIT NOT VINDICTIVE MOVE.” The Detroit Free Press proclaimed: “SONGWRITERS SUING ‘DADDY’ GORDY FOR $22 MILLION: THE STORY BEHIND THE SOUR NOTES AT MOTOWN.”

  It was clear to me that instead of defending themselves against my lawsuit, they were throwing up a smokescreen with this absurd counterattack, attacking me on everything I stood for in business and as a person.

  Nobody ever said HDH were not creative. They and their attorneys had charged me with every allegation in the book: cheating, conspiracy, fraud, deceit, portraying themselves and all the Motown artists as exploited victims held prisoners by this Svengali monster.

  Seeing these allegations in print really bothered me. It hurt to think many in the public would believe them.

  Most at Hitsville were dumbfounded. Some were outraged. Smokey was one of them. He took it upon himself to issue his own press release, writing:

  Motown was started on the idea of whatever money a person has coming—give it to them. Whether it’s a penny or a million dollars—if they’ve earned it—pay them. “Honesty is our only policy.” So it gets me angry to hear people who have been a part of our love and family feeling—telling people that Motown has not paid them every penny they had coming.

  Each year Motown pays out many millions of dollars to its creative people who keep coming up with the product. I’ve seen royalty checks for people from ninety-eight cents to hundreds of thousands of dollars. I know Motown pays. I’ve even forgotten some of my royalty checks and been called two weeks after royalty date and asked to please come pick up the check. This makes it hard for me to understand how guys like the three well-known writers and producers, who to my knowledge, never had jobs before being made popular at Motown, could ever leave. They were paid millions in royalties and had key positions in the organization. What more could a young man ask for?