by Berry Gordy
Even though I understood this, and knew how much trouble we were in, it was still a hard, hard decision to make. I didn’t want to let people down. Aside from the employees, who depended on me for their livelihood, I knew there were so many others who looked to me to preserve Motown’s legacy and its black heritage, and I had always planned on keeping the company in my own family, passing it on to my kids.
During this same time, I had my lifelong sidekick Billy Davis move in with me. He had AIDS.
As bad as he was feeling, he never stopped trying to run everything, nor trying to tell me what to do. We talked about his condition openly. I looked for whatever I could find to do or say that would make him feel better. Today there is still a great deal of misinformation about the disease, but back then there was practically no information at all. I studied everything I could find to learn about it. And so did Billy. “Don’t worry. Somebody will come up with a miracle pill any day,” he’d say, and with a confident wave of his hand and a snap of his fingers he would add, “I’ll be fine, baby, I’ll be fine. Don’t worry ’bout me.”
One night, Billy, a great pinochle player, was doing his regular thing of slamming a card down heavy on the table whenever he played one he thought was a winner. When the topic of his condition came up and how people with the disease were being treated, I quickly said, “I’ve been reading everything I can get my hands on. I’m practically an authority on it. People are definitely overreacting. You can’t get it by casual contact, touching, saliva and all that stuff. So all these people that are so frightened about getting it that way are ridiculous.”
In a serious, hushed voice, Billy asked, “You really believe that, man?”
“Of course I do.”
He leaned over, got right in my face, and said, “Well then kiss me motherfucker!”
Billy exploded with laughter as he saw me jump out of my chair. I fell down laughing. In fact, we all belly-laughed for the longest time.
That was Billy, a character in the truest sense of the word. Even when his condition had gotten worse, he was more concerned about me than himself. One night, lying in his bed at my house, he said, “You’re tired, man. You better enjoy your life. Live. Look at me, man, I have lived. Traveled around the world, had a ball. I told you I didn’t want to be no millionaire, I just wanted to live like one. Well, I did—and you paid for it. I’ve done everything in life but died. But you—you better get a grip. You got too much shit on your head. You’ve done it, man. You’ve done it. Move on. Look at our heroes—Joe Louis, Sugar Ray Robinson—one fight too many. Look at those other cats who didn’t know when to stop. You could be just another nigger who made it to the top and died broke.”
By the fall of 1986, I was immersed in looking at the different options I had. I sat at my computer for hours into the night, evaluating pros and cons. I weighed many scenarios: selling off personal assets, going public, merging with other companies. I even thought about auctioning off the rights to some of my master recordings at Sotheby’s. None of these seemed to be the answer. The only way to keep the company intact and to protect the legacy was to sell—with some specific stipulations.
In November, Motown attorneys Harold Noveck and Lee Young, Jr., Jay Lasker and I met at my home for lunch with MCA’s Lew Wasserman, Sid Sheinberg and Irv Azoff. Since the foundation of the deal had already been worked out, the meeting wasn’t so much about the details, but about how much they wanted me in the MCA family and how great this was going to be for both companies. I felt good about that meeting and I had always felt good about the MCA organization and didn’t mind being a part of it. But when the lawyers got together, and started hammering out the details, the tension really began to mount.
Stevie, meanwhile, still had a clause in his contract that said I couldn’t sell the company unless it was to an approved buyer. Remembering what I had been through in Paris when I had tried to sell Jobete, I was worried. It was one more piece of pressure, one more item to juggle.
On Christmas Eve, the busiest day in the year, Edna went shopping with him that afternoon to make sure he got to my house for a six o’clock meeting with me.
At 11:00 P.M., an exhausted Edna arrived with Stevie, five hours late. The minute he got there he wanted to play me a few songs—six or seven.
As much as I needed to get the business of that clause settled I found myself getting caught up in the old habit of comments and critiques. Before long we were eating, listening to songs, laughing and having our usual fun, but I never forgot what we were there for. Neither did he. The minute I brought up the prospect of selling he started talking like he had in Paris about what Motown meant to him.
“As long as you own it I feel secure,” he said. “In the hands of strangers it might change drastically.”
This time I explained to him the grim reality of my situation. He understood this was a different time, a different place, and a different company.
“I’ll do everything I can to protect our history,” I assured him.
This time he gave me his okay and I was able to get back to negotiating the deal itself.
The main problem with the deal was how they were valuing Motown—not by its real worth, but by its current financial statements.
And there were other important things I had to fight for, not yet in the deal, like the Dr. King masters to give to his wife, Coretta, and assurances that a certain portion of the company would be held for minority ownership.
Then there were some boilerplate clauses I didn’t like, restricting me from doing a lot of things. Some of these I understood had to be there, but others—no way. One I could not live with was not being able to use my own name in the business for five years.
Though the contract had gone back to the MCA lawyers several times for revisions, each time they would return it, it seemed never to reflect exactly what we had agreed upon. That, I think, bothered me the most. But time was against me. If I didn’t make the deal by the 31st of December, I would lose a major tax break. They knew that, and I suspected that they were pushing me to the last moment, figuring I would drop some of the unresolved points.
Late at night, twenty-four hours before the deadline, I called Harold. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this. Call it off.”
“Call it off?”
“I’m not going through with the sale.”
“Have you thought it out?” Harold asked.
“Not as much as I perhaps should have, but I just don’t want to do it.”
“What about the tax break?”
“Forget it. I want to call it off.”
Though Harold had gone through months of painstaking negotiations, he didn’t argue with me. “Berry, if that’s what you want, okay. We’ll take care of it.”
When the news hit the street, telegrams and calls of congratulations poured in from everywhere. But for the insiders the reactions were mixed, from the fear of “what if he had sold,” to the joy that I hadn’t, to the question of “would he ever?”
The week after I walked away from the deal Billy Davis died. As I had promised him, we held a celebration of his life that he, himself, had planned. “I know you got a budget for everything, but when it comes to my funeral I don’t want no damn half-steppin’.”
People came from all around the world to be there. Smokey, Stevie, Syreeta and Billy Preston paid tribute to him in words and song. A video was played of different moments with Billy that was set to one of his favorite songs, Diana’s “Remember Me.”
He had nothing to give anybody but himself, yet Billy was more loved than anybody I have ever known. He was quick with his many sayings like: “I may have had bad times, baby, but never bad taste.” Even toward the end when he could barely talk, he had his own special way of saying good-bye: “I’m gonna do something for you the devil never did—I’m gonna leave yo’ ass.”
I went back to work, trying to save the company. My adrenaline was flowing. I was back in business and going for it.
After six months of res
trategizing and focusing on every area of the company, I could see that Jay Lasker and I had different ideas of what the future of Motown should be.
I remember the bad feeling I got when I walked into a record store one day and first saw two great Marvin Gaye albums—What’s Going On and Let’s Get It On—together on a CD, selling for the price of one. They were in a back bin along with other Motown albums packaged together, like schlock merchandise, while the regular-priced CDs were up in front.
Jay Lasker was one of the great marketing men of all time and he had given me that forceful, trustworthy leadership I had needed for the past seven years. I knew he was doing his job and doing it well, but I didn’t like giving away our music.
“These two-for-ones are keeping us in business,” Jay said.
“But for how long? We’re selling off our cream.”
Jay was a marketing man and he brought in money any way he could.
I loved him for it, but at the same time, I couldn’t stand it.
“This is depreciating our catalogue. If people start viewing Motown as back bin stuff it will change their perception of our music. There’s got to be a better way.”
He assured me there wasn’t. Jay was as adamant about these two-for-ones as he was about not doing any costly videos. These and other differences continued. In the summer of 1987 he left the company.
After that, I decided to promote from within and brought Skip Miller over from his position as head of the Promotion Department. I paired him with Legal head Lee Young, Jr., and made them co-presidents of the company. As the new head of my Creative Division, I brought in Al Bell, an old friend of mine who had been the president of Stax Records. It was a good team.
We all knew we needed a miracle, not just one hit record but many—immediately. I knew that all new administrations need time to put their plans into action. And time was the one thing I did not have.
Hard decisions had to be made. I put through a series of new cost-cutting measures, scaling back further on personnel, cutting salaries. For many this was the shock of their lives. As far as they were concerned, Motown was forever—infallible. The general feeling around the company was, “We’ve had troubles before, so what? We’ll get out of them. We always do!”
One afternoon in early ’88, Smokey ambled into my office, plopped into a chair and gave me a knowing look. As always, when I was really in trouble he was right there, somehow understanding everything without being told. “Man,” he said, “I want to get a smash right now more than ever.”
I smiled. Smokey hadn’t changed. He wanted to come through for me. The year before it was Smokey who had the only two singles to make the Top 10—“Just To See Her,” a record that was about to win him his first Grammy, and “One Heartbeat.”
I told him I needed a whole lot more than a couple of smashes. The only way I could save the company now was to sell it.
I will always remember that look on Smokey’s face. His eyes were like saucers. I felt so bad. Motown was his life. He had named his son, Berry, after me and his daughter, Tamla, after our first record label.
As he sat there stunned I multiplied his reaction by millions of other people.
“I’m tired, Smoke,” I said.
“I know you are. I know you are,” he said as he nodded his approval.
FRIDAY, JUNE 25, 1988, LOS ANGELES
Up since dawn, I was sitting at my computer, trying to come up with a first draft of a press release. It was time to explain to the public the reasons behind my decision to sell.
Pecking slowly at the keys, I began:
After two years of intense contemplation, careful study, examination upon re-examination and after meeting with a variety of potential purchasers…
I stopped, leaned back in my chair for a moment, thinking of how crazy the past few months had been. Now that everything with the sale had come down to the wire, more than ever my nerves were like frayed electric cords.
Entertaining offers from other suitors besides MCA had helped my bargaining position, but my time had run out. I had to make a deal with somebody soon. Playing my cards close to the chest I could not show my eagerness, nor could I allow for any appearance of company weakness.
That meant keeping all our engines running, whatever the cost. I could not dismantle my expensive marketing operation, which was costing a fortune. During this period I came very close to making a deal with Virgin Records. They made me an offer I liked, until MCA, whom we knew better and who knew us better, matched it. This time, once we began serious talks with MCA, though they were still very tough, the negotiating atmosphere was much more favorable.
MCA had partnered with Boston Ventures, a financial investment group who seemed to have a better understanding of the true value of Motown. They put up 80 percent of the money, and met most of my demands. For the most part, a lot of restrictive legal clauses—the “thou shalts” and “thou shalt nots”—were gone and the deal was straightforward.
For an asking price more than 50 percent higher than before, what was being sold was the Motown name and record catalogue, the masters, and the artists’ recording contracts. I wasn’t selling Jobete Music Company, Inc., which owned the publishing rights to most of the Motown songs, or my film and television company.
The deal was so close to being done that my pent-up emotions were at their breaking point. I wanted this deal over.
I started back on my press release:
I have decided to sell Motown Records to MCA, Inc….
The phone rang. It was Esther, calling from Detroit.
The media was having a field day—and she, like everybody else, had been following the stories. The Los Angeles Times had read “THE END OF AN ERA—EXPECTED SALE OF THE LEGENDARY MOTOWN LABEL STIRS SOME BITTERSWEET EMOTIONS.” The Detroit News had called it “MOTOWN SALE IS FINAL VERSE OF SWAN SONG.” The European Wall Street Journal, which had distribution in every major European city, reported “THAT MOTOWN SOUND MAY SOON BELONG TO SOMEONE NEW,” while the Alabama paper The Birmingham News said “THE LEGACY OF MOTOWN IS ON THE AUCTION BLOCK.”
“I’ve gotten a thousand calls about the sale,” Esther said. “What do we tell them—is anything final yet?”
“No, nothing final. I’m just sitting here waiting.”
“Listen, I’ve been thinking and maybe we should stick it out. It’s been in the family all this time…” she said, breaking off midthought.
I reminded her how many times I had saddled her with major responsibility, not wanting to hear any excuses or blame if something didn’t work. “If you make it you’re a hero, if you don’t you’re a bum,” I had preached to her and others year in and year out. “Now it’s my turn,” I said. “Hero or bum is my fate. If Motown goes down the drain, it doesn’t matter who, what or why, I’m responsible.”
Esther was silent for a moment as I thought about how wonderful she was. Here she was, the same person who had been the most reluctant to give me the loan at that Ber-Berry meeting, who then put in thirty years helping me with my dream, doing everything I asked her to do and more. The same person who, when I moved to California, stayed in Detroit, pulled together all the stuff I left behind and started a museum with it at Hitsville.
The Motown Museum was now emerging as the one institution whose purpose and responsibility was to protect and preserve the Motown legacy.
“But Berry,” Esther said, “what about you?”
“What about me?”
“Motown is your creation,” she said. “It’s been your life for most of your life—are you really sure you can let go? Are you sure you won’t have seller’s remorse? Are you ready to wake up and know it doesn’t belong to you anymore?”
“Yes, yes and yes.” Just saying that made me feel good. I said good-bye, telling her, “It’s not over yet. Anything can happen. All we can do now is wait and see.”
Within an hour, I was finishing up my press release:
I have decided to sell Motown Records to MCA, Inc. Two years ago I cons
idered selling Motown to MCA but did not, I was not ready then. I had not completely realized what Motown had become—an American institution…. It is the nature of institutions to take on their own life and to outgrow the individuals who create them. I am proud that this African-American heritage has been embraced by the world and has become permanently woven into the fabric of popular culture.
On Tuesday, June 29, 1988, the waiting was over. The headlines blasted the news: I had sold Motown Records to MCA for $61 million.
From eight hundred dollars to sixty-one million. I had done it. I had won the poker hand.
14
FULL CIRCLE
But… Sure I had won the poker hand, from eight hundred dollars to sixty-one million. That was money. Still only a part of value. It was about much more than that. The total value was not only the money, but saving the company and keeping the legacy intact. These weren’t just records. This was a body of work that in itself was an institution. I had to put it into the right hands under the right conditions at a time when I was losing a fortune. That was the real poker hand.
Four months later, standing at the large-paned window of my suite at the Omni Hotel, I was absorbing the sights of the vast terrain of the Detroit metropolitan area. It was in the heart of what is now known as the Renaissance Center, a cultural and retail district by the Detroit River.