by Berry Gordy
He could not have asked a better question.
“Frontwards or backwards?”
They looked at each other, smirking. “Backwards,” the other one said.
Mother was right again—whatever you learn is never wasted.
I did it—perfectly. Surprised, the first one said, “Get out of here—and don’t drive so slow.”
The Jackson 5 had become a real part of my family. On weekends we would have baseball games at a nearby local park where a neck-and-neck competition was ongoing: the Jacksons versus the Gordys. Since Michael was the smallest he was the catcher for his team. At this one particular game, I kept noticing that every time he missed the ball and started running off to get it, a little scrappy kid would appear from out of nowhere, beat him to it, scoop up the ball and throw it into the infield.
The kid was good—he was fast and accurate. His baseball hat turned sideways, he had spunk and a spirit I liked.
But after four or five times of this, I could see Michael’s frustration had turned into embarrassment. My little star was being upstaged. That meant I had to diplomatically remove his competition. I walked over to the fence where the kid was standing.
“Hey, you’re really good. I love the way you play,” I said, “but this is a private game, a family affair. I’d like for you to just let him get his own balls. Okay?”
“Okay,” he said, nodding as though he understood the situation. But I did notice that he slumped as he leaned back against the fence to watch the rest of the game.
When it was over, as I was walking away, I felt someone pulling on my shirt. It was this same little guy with the sideways baseball hat.
“Do you know Ray Singleton?”
“Sure I know Ray. She was my wife.”
“Well, I’m her son, Kerry,” he said.
I stood there for a moment, looking into his greenish eyes. I was stunned. Then I grabbed him and hugged him real tight, whispering, “You are my son, too.”
“I know,” he said, his voice muffled into my shoulder as he squeezed me even tighter.
Ray and I had barely spoken to each other in six years, since the bootlegging incident, and I hadn’t seen Kerry, or even pictures of him, in that time.
Kerry helped mend the fence between Ray and me, so when she expressed an interest in working for the company again, I brought her back. Ten-year-old Kerry wanted to come live with me and Ray not only agreed, but was happy for us to get together.
Another child I was determined to have much more frequent contact with was my youngest, Kennedy, who was still living with his mother, Margaret, in Detroit.
Even though I was living in California and totally immersed in my work, she had done a fine job keeping me updated on everything concerning our son. An update is one thing, being with him another. It was time for me to bring them both to L.A.
It was very common for our management company to receive calls and letters from fans claiming to be celebrities or other famous people in the hopes of getting through to their idols. Fans are relentlessly aggressive—they will use any and all means. We were used to these impersonations. One day I got a call from Abner, head of ITMI, telling me that another one of those crazy letters had come in. This one was for Jermaine Jackson. And this time the writer was impersonating Hazel.
Usually it was one of the artists who were impersonated or sometimes even me, but Hazel? I was amused—my daughter was a celebrity and I couldn’t wait to tell her so.
“Isn’t this ridiculous?” I said. “You wouldn’t believe some of the stuff this person wrote. ‘I love you, Jermaine. You are my prince, my dream. I need you, Jermaine. I will love you forever.’ I mean, isn’t that funny?”
Hazel wasn’t laughing. “Daddy, that’s personal!”
“No, no, it’s fan mail. You don’t really believe that the artists are actually reading all these letters themselves?! They’re on the road. They have no time for that. So we have to do it for them.”
“But, Daddy, that’s still personal. It’s none of your business.”
She had a funny look on her face, one I’d never seen before. Her eyes were beginning to well up.
It dawned on me. She had written the letter.
This was my fifteen-year-old daughter, my baby, my firstborn, madly in love with an image that I was responsible for creating. The last thing I wanted to see was my daughter involved with an entertainer. Even if he happened to be someone I worked with. Especially if he happened to be someone I worked with.
Hazel had always been such a quiet, pure and innocent child. But I could see that this so-called love was the most wonderful feeling she’d ever had in her life. I could see it was real for her but I also believed that time has a natural way of taking care of these kinds of things.
So I decided to bet on time. I told her, “A fan letter is not the way to go about it. If you want him, if you really love him as much as you think you do, take some time to think about it and after three months, if you feel the same, I will tell you the secret of how to get him.”
“Oh Daddy! You will?”
“Wait, wait…”
I knew this was risky, but I was sure the crush would disappear.
I wanted to occupy her time with positive things. “In the meantime, I want you to be more concerned about your duties around the house.”
“Yes, Daddy! Anything.”
“Better in school.”
“Daddy, I will get all As. Anything else you want?”
I told her I thought that would do it for now.
Hazel did everything I’d asked and then some.
As the next months rolled by, she fell more and more into her new program. As far as I knew she’d stopped thinking about Jermaine.
Then one evening she asked me if she could talk to me alone. We went up to her room. I sat down beside her on her bed. Hazel looked at me with a beautiful, expectant smile on her face.
“Three months are up,” she said.
“Oh, yeah, so it is. Three months are up. Do you still like him?”
“Daddy, I love him. I love him more than anything else in the world.”
I had a problem.
There’s never been a time when I’d promised my kids anything that I didn’t follow through on. And they knew that. They knew they had control over me. Whenever I committed to something, they knew I had to do it.
Unable to wait a second longer, she reached over and took my hands. “What is the secret?”
“Secret? Oh yeah, secret.”
She was looking at me like I was about to give her that last breath she needed to live. I put my arm on her shoulder, saying nothing.
She waited.
I leaned over and whispered in her ear softly, “Be yourself.”
“Yes, and?”
“That’s it.”
“That’s what? What’s the secret?”
“That’s it. That is the secret.”
“Daddy…” The tears began. “You fooled me.”
“Sweetheart, that is one of the greatest secrets in the world, and also one of the most well kept.”
She looked at me without understanding as I tried to explain, telling her about those days when I was a kid hiding who I really was whenever I was around the girls I liked.
“The problem with people in relationships the world over is when they want to get the person they love to love them, they think they have to be someone other than themselves. The secret to any relationship is just the opposite: being who you are. And you are a beautiful person. So just be you. I know you trust me. Now, I’m asking you to trust you.”
I assured her that being herself—with her fine values—would make her stand out from any crowd. “You are like a rare painting, valuable because there is only one.”
She believed me. She did it. It was tough at first. It took another two or three weeks for her to adjust to being her true self. But eventually, she and Jermaine were having conversations that turned into fourteen years of marriage and three beautif
ul kids.
She has always thanked me for passing on such a simple but universal secret. I always appreciated her trusting me enough to believe in herself.
It was now 1971. We hadn’t gotten to the end of January when Suzanne had the unpleasant task of bringing me the news: Diana had married a man by the name of Bob Silberstein.
When she called me in my office that day I had all kinds of emotions. I was surprised and shocked, but at the same time I was relieved. The relief came because I knew this would bring to an end any romantic feelings that up to this point had refused to die. I could now focus completely on new areas of her career—TV, movies, stage.
In the beginning I had no clue she was pregnant but once she began to show I did have a few fleeting thoughts—Could it possibly be…? Nah. Then I thought back to a night some months before, right before Christmas. Though we had broken up, I was over at her house when nature took the place of better judgment and we found ourselves intertwined and giving in to that “one last time” or maybe it was just “one for the road.”
In August of 1971, Diana gave birth to a baby girl whom she named Rhonda. Watching her as she grew, it didn’t take me long to realize I was her father.
Diana and I finally acknowledged to each other that it was so. She told her husband and would later tell Rhonda. During Rhonda’s early years I spent a lot of fun times with her. She, and later her two sisters, grew up referring to me as Uncle BB. Diana brought them to my house frequently where we played practically every game in the book, mostly riddles and creative mental games.
I took Diana’s marriage in stride. I convinced my concerned friends it was the best thing that could have happened. I was happy for her. I was happy for me. I was happy for everybody. I could fool myself but I could not fool Chris Clark. Hearing the news she came into my office. In her own witty, sarcastic way she comforted me. She knew I was hurting. She was my sounding board and collaborator on many of my creative projects. Mentally and emotionally we were close, so naturally she was quick with the comments. “You’ve got to give her credit. To catch you off guard is a pretty formidable thing, don’t you think?” she said.
I felt like I had to get out of town. I took Chris to the Bahamas where I got a call from Smokey.
Smokey had refused to move to California. He was deathly afraid of earthquakes. “It’s gonna fall into the ocean,” he’d always tell me.
Smokey was out in L.A. playing a two-day engagement, calling me from his room on the Century Plaza Hotel’s seventeenth floor.
“It’s swaying like a dog!” he screamed. “What the hell am I doing here, and you live here and you’re in the Bahamas? I’m here for two days an’ there’s a fuckin’ earthquake!”
“Is it going on now?” I calmly asked.
“You’re damn right it is. Aftershocks.”
By this time we were laughing.
“Well Smoke, if you’re gonna get caught in them anyway you might as well move there.” (In 1972, after a farewell tour with the Miracles, introducing his talented replacement, Billy Griffin, Smokey settled in California and started his solo career.)
Smokey’s call reminded me of another call I received the last trip I had made to the Bahamas. It was from Marvin Gaye. He wanted to do a protest album.
He had done nothing for the past year and all of a sudden he wants to do a protest album. “Protest about what?”
“Vietnam, police brutality, social conditions, a lot of stuff.”
That scared me. “Marvin,” I said, “don’t be ridiculous. That’s taking things too far.”
“I’m not happy with the world. I’m angry. I have to sing about that, I have to protest.”
Marvin was a good soul. I always admired the deep feelings he had about wanting to do something positive in the world. He wanted to do right, but many times he had gotten off track and I would try to get him back on. Not through force, but by logic, common sense. I tried again.
“Marvin, this is crazy. Stick to what you do. Stick to what’s happening. Stick to what works!”
He chuckled, as he often did when he thought he had me one-upped. “Stick to what works? Come on, BG. You’ve never done that in your life. You’ve always done something different.”
“But I am never different just for the sake of being different. It has to mean something positive. If you’re gonna do something different at least make it commercial.”
Marvin was silent.
I kept going. “Marvin, you’ve got this great, sexy image and you’ve got to protect it.”
In his soft, almost melodic voice, he said, “I don’t care about image, BG. I just gotta do it. You’ve got to let me do this. I want to awaken the minds of mankind.”
I loved what he had said. There was no way I was going to try and hold him back.
“Marvin, we learn from everything. That’s what life’s all about. I don’t think you’re right, but if you really want to do it, do it. And if it doesn’t work you’ll learn something; and if it does I’ll learn something.” The album was called What’s Going On. I learned something.
By April, the single went to #1 and a month later when the album came out it shot up the Pop chart. Marvin’s first self-written, self-produced album was a major smash, with phenomenal arrangements by David Van dePitte.
The songs were laced together in fluid motion producing a sound quality on Marvin I’d never heard before. What an artist Marvin was! His voice on lead vocal, backed up with other colors and tones of himself on background, it was Marvin on top of Marvin on top of Marvin.
I was surprised to find out that even with this departure in subject matter, he came off just as sexy as when he sang his “You” songs directly to women.
As Marvin promised, he protested everything. He protested pollution and brought attention to the environment in “Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)”; he sang of the pain of ghetto life in “Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler).” He pleaded for the future with “Save The Children.” He touched the spirit with “God Is Love” and “Wholy Holy.” Inspired by his own brother, in “What’s Happening Brother,” he told of the frustration of a veteran returning from the Vietnam War.
Marvin’s music is as relevant today as it was then.
I was glad I took Chris with me to the Bahamas. We had a great time and I had a chance to sort out some of my feelings and to be honestly happy for Diana. Long after Diana was married, Chris was still convinced that because of my love for Diana there would never be a solid place in my life for her. She was wrong, but I could never convince her otherwise. (She later married screenwriter Ernest Tidyman.)
In one way or another, many of the artists were growing up, gaining new levels of independence and autonomy—something I greeted with combined feelings of relief, pride, resentment and indigestion.
Stevie, who was turning twenty-one in May of 1971, was definitely coming into his own. Creatively and technically, the artist we once called the twelve-year-old genius was an adult. The year before, “Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I’m Yours)” had been the first single he produced by himself. He was now in the process of producing his own album, Where I’m Coming From—early evidence of what an innovator Stevie would become.
He was working with Syreeta Wright. I will always love Syreeta Wright—a great woman who co-wrote and sang on some of his records and whom he married in September of 1970. She is not only one of my favorite singers of all time, but favorite people as well.
Versatile, with a rich, interpretative voice, she was one of those artists who really should have made it but didn’t. The timing and material didn’t come together the right way to do her justice. Yet whenever her voice was on a record, even in the background, it could steal the show.
I’ll never forget what fun we all had when I threw a twenty-first birthday dinner for Stevie at the Gordy Manor on Boston Boulevard in Detroit. As usual when Stevie and I got together we either joked around or we talked some heavy philosophy.
We all laughed and told stories as the
party went on into the early hours of the morning.
The following day, tired but in great spirits, I flew back to L.A.
Waiting for me at the office was a letter from a lawyer I’d never heard of disaffirming every contract Stevie had with us—effective upon his turning twenty-one.
I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe we could have been together the night before like we were and he not prepare me for something like this. That was not Stevie. But if it was, I was definitely going to tell him about it. I called his house and talked to his wife, Syreeta.
“Stevie’s not home,” she told me, “but I don’t believe he knows about that.” She went on to tell me how much fun they both had at the party. And again told me she didn’t think Stevie knew anything.
She was right. Stevie called back shortly and was very upset. He said he had planned on renegotiating his contract, but not that way. He apologized and explained that his attorney, who was based in Omaha, Nebraska, had acted without his knowledge.
Stevie immediately fired the attorney, but then got another one who was probably ten times tougher—Johanan Vigoda.
Whenever an artist’s contract is being renegotiated, especially an artist who is as close as Stevie was to me, it is a tense time for everyone. This one was no different but during the whole time Stevie made it clear that he was staying at Motown. He also made it clear he had his own ideas on what and how he wanted to create his music. He was ready to do his own thing and do it his way. Though I had some misgivings when he asked for total creative control, I thought of the progression he had made from an eleven-year-old high-pitched singer banging on bongos to a full-voiced vocalist, writer and now producer. I agreed to the creative control. Stevie was ready to fly. Several months later he turned in Music of My Mind, a beautiful, flowing concept album. It was only the beginning of what we’d hear from him throughout the seventies.