Diana Ross: A Biography

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  The Motown officials were all smiles as Harry’s layout was passed to each one sitting around the table. “And that,” Harry Langdon now concludes, “is how a very strange picture ended up on the cover of Diana’s first solo album.”

  In July, Diana’s second solo single was released, an exciting new arrangement of the Marvin Gaye–Tammi Terrell pop classic “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.” With the release of this song, the future of her solo career seemed absolutely assured. Complete with spoken verses—the memorable “If you need me, call me”—and a gospel-influenced climax of soaring male and female voices, it is truly a classic pop record. If Berry was ambivalent about the release of “Reach Out and Touch” he must have been equally apprehensive about “Ain’t No Mountain” since it is definitely not a number people could dance to. However, it went straight to number one on the charts and would eventually be nominated for a Grammy award.

  After that song was released, Diana felt that her decision to leave the Supremes had been a wise one. Now, what to do about Berry?

  Not surprisingly, Berry just wasn’t interested in marrying her. Many years later, in the 1990s, he put it this way: “I was her mentor, her manager, her boss. She was my protégée, my artist, my star. We both recognized that my role had become too defined, too demanding and too unyielding to exist in a loving marriage.”

  Also in the 1990s, Diana countered, “He is fifteen years older than I am, and he had already been married and had three kids. Although he had focused so much attention on me throughout my career, I had never felt that he was serious about me as a woman or a prospective wife. I wasn’t even his girlfriend, at least he never called me that, but he used whatever he could think of to keep me under his wing.”

  Any breakup with Berry would be, predictably enough, incredibly difficult for Diana. A friend of Diana’s in Detroit recalled:

  Diane came back home in the summer of 1970 for a visit. I had a lunch with her. She wasn’t the same, really. I asked her about Berry. “It’s over,” she told me. “I’m not even sure what it was,” she said. “The years rushed by and we were so busy we never really made a connection.”

  Later, I saw her again as I was leaving. We embraced and when she pulled from me, I looked at those eyes of hers. In that moment, she communicated with me that she was living a life of such despair, without even having to say another word about it.

  Finally breaking from Berry

  “Look, I think there’s something you should know,” Diana began. It is August, 1970. She is backstage at the Grove nightclub (formerly the Coconut Grove) in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, carefully removing two rows of false eyelashes after the opening-night show. She is wearing a “natural” wig that is—no exaggeration—the size of a very large beach ball. She still has on the red-sequined sarong from her closing number. Glancing in the makeup mirror at another woman’s reflection behind her, she continues, “I know we have a long history and we have known each other for quite some time, but I think it is only appropriate that you now call me Miss Ross.” She is talking to Berry Gordy’s ex-wife—the second one—Raynoma Liles Gordy. “You see,” Diana says, her tone imperialistic, “in my position, I need to be treated with a certain amount of respect. I’m sure you understand.” She couldn’t have been more chilly.

  Raynoma, who actually started Motown with Berry more than a dozen years earlier, has known Diana—now twenty-six—for ten years. She well remembers the day the Primettes auditioned for the company and couldn’t even afford the bus fare to get there. Now, Diana is earning maybe $35,000 a week for club dates, and not having to split it with any pesky Supremes singers. She has watched the evolving story of Diana Ross with fascination and pride. Therefore, she is taken aback by Diana’s request. For a moment, she believes Diana is joking. She’s not, though. Raynoma takes a breath. “Berry has asked me to do a job here, and I’m going to do it to the best of my ability,” she says, meeting Diana’s gaze in the mirror. “But I, too, will require a certain amount of respect.”

  The two women stare at each other for a moment. “Fine, then,” Diana says, as if she has met her match.

  Berry Gordy was nothing if not full of surprises. However, nothing was more astonishing to Diana than his recent decision that Raynoma be hired as her new road manager, responsible not only for the sixteen-member entourage but for Miss Ross too. He explained to Raynoma that recent months had been so tense with Diana, he felt that the two needed time away from each other. Therefore, he didn’t want to have to travel with her. Raynoma was someone he could count on, he felt, to oversee the complex Ross operation—the logistical as well as the emotional. When Diana got the news, she was not terribly happy about it. This forced alliance between ex-wife and ex-girlfriend was more than Diana could fathom. Even though they had ended their romance, it was as if Berry was still the puppet master, pulling her strings in every direction at will, and now even causing her to have to face his ex-wife in an already stressful work environment. Or, maybe Raynoma was a spy for Berry. In her view, by this time, who knew what he was capable of doing? “My increased dependence on him only added to his ability to control and over-power me, which I allowed,” she later recalled. It was amid this backdrop of frustration and anger, then, that Diana turned to someone who would change her life in ways she never could have imagined.

  Actually, she had met him back in 1969 when she was still with the Supremes. She was in a department store in Los Angeles looking for a birthday gift for a friend when she first saw him, a tall, handsome white man in tennis shorts with long brown hair. There was something about him that drew her to him. For some reason, she felt that she should speak to him. So, she walked up to him and asked, “Are you a tennis pro?” He wasn’t, he said. He was a teacher; his name was Bob Ellis Silberstein. From Elberon, New Jersey, Silberstein was white and Jewish, the son of a wealthy garment manufacturer. A year younger than Diana, he had graduated from West Virginia University with a bachelor of arts degree in theater.

  The two chatted and he left the store with her, walking her across the street and to the health club, next on her itinerary for the day. He opened the door for her and before she walked inside, he asked her out on a date. She accepted and they exchanged numbers. This kind of casual exchange was a complete anomaly for Diana. She usually wasn’t so open, so accessible, because she never knew if a man she’d meet was interested in her, or in Diana Ross. She liked Bob, though she didn’t know why since she didn’t even know him yet, and wanted to spend time with him. The two arranged to go out and had a few dates. He acted as if he wasn’t exactly clear about who she was and what she did. Was he kidding her? Probably. Still, it was refreshing, and she pulled together a nice package of Supremes albums to give to him so he could be “reminded” of her life and career—the perfect gift for the man who has everything. It was a fun flirtation, a nice diversion from the drama that was going on with the Supremes.

  Cindy Birdsong remembered:

  When she first started seeing Bob, she asked me and my boyfriend Charles Hewlett to go with them on the first date. I think she wanted to double-date so that she could break the ice with Bob. [Birdsong’s then boyfriend and later husband, Hewlett, is white.] We went to a restaurant in the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas and I remembered Diane being a little nervous and unsure of herself. This was really the first time she had ever been interested about a white guy. She had never even dated a white man before. I found Bob to be personable and outgoing, a great personality. And what a sense of humor! He was also extremely intelligent and articulate.

  Diana didn’t feel free to pursue anything serious with Bob, however, mostly because of Berry. She didn’t know where the relationship with him was headed, and she had too much invested in it to throw it away. However, when it became clear to her in the summer of 1970 that it was going nowhere, she decided to call Bob. He was excited to hear from her again, and anxious to see her.

  Also in August 1970—after the Grove engagement during which Raynoma Gordy started t
o work for Diana—there was a booking at the Mill Run Theater in Niles, Illinois. Berry was being particularly difficult. He wasn’t even in Illinois, but was unhappy with the show, just the same. He was making changes to it throughout the entire engagement. Diana simply could not keep track of the ever-changing lineup of Supremes hits, solo hits and special material. If there’s one place Diana likes to feel in control, it’s onstage. During this time, though, even that venue was not her own. At a rehearsal one day, she exploded at her five background singers, a group called the Devastating Affair, when they missed a cue which, as it turned out, was no longer a part of the show. “The whole thing was a mess,” recalled one of the performers.

  I remember that she just started screaming at me, really letting me have it, something about “We don’t sing ‘Reflections’ here, we sing ‘Love Child’ here, so get it straight!” It was ridiculous. I remember that there was a comic on the show, an old-timer named Myron Cohen, who happened to be walking through the theater during the outburst. He felt so badly for me, he came over to me afterward and said, “Jesus Christ. It’s no wonder the Supremes fired that one.” I knew it wasn’t the song mix-up bothering her, it was Mr. Gordy pestering her every fifteen minutes. She was dating Bob at the time, and some of us knew it because he was popping up in the cities on that first tour. She was clearly fascinated by him, and was a lot calmer when he was around. When he wasn’t around, she was on the telephone with him. One morning, she said, “Bob and I were listening to each other fall asleep on the phone all night.” We liked seeing her that way. When she would go ballistic, we used to say, “Call Bob Silberstein and get him on the next plane. We’ll pay for it.” And we were making about $500 a show, split four ways.

  Indeed, Bob was nice to Diana, and that counted for a lot during these unhappy and stressful early days of her solo career. He didn’t want anything from her, didn’t care how she performed, wasn’t interested in her celebrity, how much money she generated … he was just crazy about her. How could she resist him? He was handsome and sexy, honest, polite, undemanding, a real gentleman.

  “How would I describe Bob?” Suzanne dePasse asked rhetorically. “Hmmm. Michael Douglas in Wall Street. That’s Bob. The most expensive Armani suits. Hair slicked back. Wire-rim glasses. Smoked the biggest Cuban cigars he could find. Wonderful sense of humor. Just a great guy. A real catch. I absolutely adored him for Diana, though I would never have said as much in front of Berry.”

  Before she knew it, Diana was actually falling for someone who was not Berry Gordy, and it felt good and liberating. It happened quickly, too, as these things often do. It was as if one day she was completely obsessed with Berry, and the next … not so much. “It was like a bolt from the blue,” one of her relatives recalled, “that she could have a person in her life who accepted her for who she was and wasn’t interested in changing her or trying to make her better, giving her notes on how she could be improved. She once told me, ‘It’s always been as if there were two Berrys in my life, the real one and the one in my head. When I finally reconciled them, I realized that the one in my head had been totally romanticized. Then I figured out that the other one, the real one, was not the man for me.’”

  Diana kept the news about Bob from Berry, perhaps because she suspected he might try to ruin it for her. According to Harry Langdon, “They were very secretive about being together. I remember they would drive around totally incognito, dark glasses and all, in Bob’s charming vintage MG roadster. I didn’t know what their relationship was. I was surprised they had one. I didn’t think what she had with Bob was serious, but you had to wonder. I also knew it wouldn’t be long before Berry would start wondering the same thing.”

  One day, Harry was scheduled to take photographs for a new Diana Ross publicity campaign that would be built around her second album, Everything Is Everything. She showed up at his Melrose Avenue studio at 8 a.m. with two hairstylists, a makeup artist, an assistant and twenty of her most resplendent gowns. The shoot would go on until six that night. It was exhausting work just to get the one or two great shots that would then find themselves on the record jacket and on promotional posters for it around the world. Berry showed up at about noon with three of his bodyguards in tow. Immediately, he began to complain that she should be doing her own makeup and hair. “You don’t need all these people, Diane,” he told her. “Who’s paying for all these people, anyway? And besides,” he reminded her, “you left the Supremes so you could be independent, so be independent.” Though this kind of unsolicited advice from Berry would drive Diana mad, she would usually reserve comment, especially in front of others. “Black, don’t you have a record company to run?” she asked this time. “Why are you here, bothering me? Go bother Smokey. I’m sure he’s doing something wrong right about now. And what’s Stevie doin’? You’d better check on Stevie, don’t you think? Go, go, go!” Berry just laughed … and stayed.

  Later in the day, Diana was standing on a platform in front of a wind machine that blew her long, curly wig with a vengeance. Her chiffon kaftan whipped around her like a white tornado.

  “So, I heard you were dating, Diane. I guess I can accept that,” Berry told her as she posed.

  “Fine,” Diana said, probably feeling that Berry was being condescending to her but glad to get it out in the open.

  “This way, Diana,” Harry suggested. “No. That way. Yes. That way.” She struck a glamour pose over one shoulder: a hand on her hip, head tilted downward, big eyes looking up at the lens, alluringly. It was pure “Miss Ross.”

  “Like this?” she asked, fully knowing the answer.

  “Yes, like that. Beautiful.” He snapped a series of pictures. “Look at you. My God. Who is sexier than Diana Ross?”

  She tossed her head back and laughed.

  “So, look, I want to meet this guy,” Berry said, ignoring everything else.

  “I don’t think so, Black …”

  “Great,” Harry continued as he snapped away. “Beautiful.”

  “What are you talking about?” Berry asked, still pushing. “Of course I have to meet him.”

  “Now is not the time to discuss this, Black,” she said, becoming truly annoyed. “I’m working. Can’t you see that?”

  “Turn that goddamn thing off,” Berry ordered one of Harry’s assistants. Someone raced to the fan and pulled its plug from the wall. Suddenly, everything was still.

  Harry took a breath. “Fine, you two have things to discuss …” He walked away.

  “I am working, Berry,” Diana again insisted. It was no use. She left the platform and had a conversation with him during which she agreed to introduce him to Bob that weekend.

  When Berry finally met Bob, he was perplexed as to why Diana would want to be with him. He was no Berry Gordy, put it that way. He didn’t seem particularly ambitious and he also wasn’t very challenging toward her. If anything, he seemed a tad on the dull side. But, still, there was a chemistry between him and Diana and, as Berry would later tell it, it was a little disconcerting. After all, the fact remained: he was in love with her—in his own fashion—no matter what she thought of him. “Nice guy,” Berry told Diana after meeting Bob. That was about all he could come up with as his assessment, at least if he didn’t want to antagonize her.

  For Diana, it was still almost impossible to end it with Berry, even with Bob in the wings. Just when she thought she was over him, something dramatic would occur in her career and she would have to turn to him. He would fix it, as he always did for her. She would then remember old times, and before she knew it, she was hooked again. He felt the same way about her. He loved that she depended on him; it made him want to take care of her … and before he knew it, he, too, was hooked. Still, they both knew that it wasn’t good. “Just because you want it doesn’t mean you must have it,” a trusted relative had told Diana. She wanted nothing more than to end it with Berry, once and for all—if only she had the courage to do it. She introduced Bob to her family, almost as if she was trying to tal
k herself into moving forward with him. “Oh, yes, I remember when we first met him,” recalls Rita Ross. “She had said he was fun and exciting and sexy and, when we met him, he was all of those things. A breath of fresh air for her. Everyone liked him a lot. We were excited.”

  But then, one night before Christmas 1970, Berry was at Diana’s home in Beverly Hills. With the holidays upon them and the memory of a good first year of solo business for her, the two felt warmly toward one another once again. Then, as they say, one thing led to another—or, as Berry later put it, “Nature took the place of better judgment.” The two made love. Afterwards, they seemed to sense without even discussing it that it would be the last time that would ever happen between them. It felt right but it also felt final. There were no tears, no animosity. It was just over. Mercifully over. Afterwards, Diana would later confide in intimates, she somehow felt free to move on with her life. It was a turning point, and the future beckoned for her—a future without Berry determining it, dictating it … controlling it. Well, maybe not quite. That night, unbeknownst to her yet, something had happened that would throw her life into turmoil and forge a new bond with Berry, one that would last for both their lifetimes.

  A wedding and a baby … but whose?

  When Diana Ross and Bob Silberstein eloped to Las Vegas and married on 20 January 1971, it sent shockwaves throughout the show business community. Soul newspaper, a black entertainment publication, ran a picture of the black superstar next to her new, white husband with the headline: “What You See is What She Got!” It was a surprise simply because Diana had never mentioned Bob in press interviews and hadn’t been seen with him at all, publicly. Also, it was widely assumed that she and Berry were still a couple. Therefore, this wedding was a major surprise—not only to the public, it would seem, but also to Berry! To this day, the chain of events that led up to the marriage remains unclear; Diana doesn’t even write about it in her autobiography.