by Rick James
“What am I gonna say to Jay?” asked Perfect after we both admitted that it was more than lust between us; it was love.
“The same thing you’re gonna say to Stephen,” I said. “Nothing.”
“They’ll know.”
“They probably already know. Besides, they’ve got all kinds of other bitches. I wouldn’t worry about it.”
“I won’t.”
And she didn’t. She slipped into a pair of tight denim bell-bottoms and put on a sheer T-shirt. No bra. Perfect didn’t need a bra. Her breasts had a natural uplift. Seeing her dressed that way made me wanna undress her all over again, but we had to start finding me a band. It was ten P.M. when we hit the clubs in Yorkville. I still had a lot of fans in Toronto, and it was good being recognized. It was important for me to show Perfect that in Canada I was a star. She thought it was funny that everyone called me “Little Ricky”—back in Cali I’d started switching over to Rick James—but she liked how the club owners treated us like royalty. It was well after midnight in the third club we visited when I heard what I’d been looking for. The group was called Ooppicks. They had a groove. They had a look. They had a funky edge that had me and Perfect hand clapping and finger popping. Watch out, Sly Stone! Watch out, George Clinton! With these cats at my back, I knew I’d blow up in no time. Ooppicks was the bomb.
“They’re it, aren’t they, baby?” asked Perfect.
“My dream’s coming true,” I said. “With you and this band, my life’s complete.”
Just as I was about to approach the guys, the owner tapped me on the shoulder and said someone wanted to see me.
“Be right back, sugar,” I told Perfect. I figured it was a fan.
Went outside, where two guys in suits grabbed my arms, snapped handcuffs on my wrists, and threw me in the back of a sedan.
“What the fuck’s happening?” I asked.
“You’re under arrest.”
“For what?”
“Breaking and entering.”
“You got the wrong guy. I just got to town.”
“It happened before you left. It was a clothing store. Your fingerprints were all over the place. We’ve been waiting for you to get back. Welcome to Canada, nigger.”
Came to find out that not only was I too dumb to wear gloves during that break-in with the drug dealer, I’d also brought with me a couple of the outfits that I’d stolen that night to Toronto. The cops went to my suite and found them hanging in the closet. Man, I was double dumb.
They say life turns on a dime. I don’t know if someone dropped a dime on me or whether it was my pure stupidity that did me in. Either way, in less than a minute I’d gone from heaven to hell. A few seconds ago, my life was perfect—the perfect bitch, the perfect financier, the perfect backup band, the perfect connections to the perfect music scene in L.A. Now perfection had turned to pure shit. Now I was at the police station, put in a room, told to strip, and, for no good reason, beaten by the same two assholes who picked me up. I tried to fight back but got nowhere. As they slugged me, careful to avoid my face so the judge wouldn’t know, they couldn’t stop talking about niggers who came to Canada to fuck their women. It was an old American story—fear of the black man’s sexual prowess—with a Canadian twist.
I was determined to bust their dicks for assaulting a defenseless prisoner. I got a lawyer and was going to take it to the highest court in the country. They had me on the break-in charge, but I had them on my jail beating. Long story short, my legal complaint got me nowhere except nine long months in prison. Far as Perfect goes—the super-passionate lady I loved so deeply and who said she felt the same about me—well, I never saw the bitch again.
Nine months is enough time to have a baby. Nine months in a nasty Canadian prison is enough time to have a nervous breakdown. Nine months is enough time to permanently put out my glow. Nine months of hearing records like the Temptations’ “I Wish It Would Rain” that had me crying my eyes out. I remember hearing the Dells singing “Stay in My Corner” and wondering if anyone was in my corner. Jail was a helluva place to celebrate my twentieth birthday—February 1, 1968.
“I love you, baby,” said Mom when they allowed me to call her that day.
“I feel like I’ve let you down,” I said.
“Why do you say that?”
“I made promises I haven’t kept. I told you I’d buy you a house and a car and fix it so you wouldn’t have to work.”
“I like working, and besides, you’re still a young man with plans. Soon as you get out, I know you’re gonna get on the right track. You’ve learned from your mistakes and you’ll put this past behind you.”
“You sound like you still believe in me, Mom.”
“More than I believe in anything in this world. You’ll be, fine, I know you will. This isn’t your best birthday but it’s still a milestone. Just keep your mind and soul together, and time will pass.”
Time was a burden. It moved slower than at any time in my life. I watched the second hand go around, I watched the minute hand, the calendar. Out of my little window I got a postage-stamp view of the sun coming up in the morning and the sky turning dark at night. A fellow prisoner, a brotha who’d been to college, asked if I wanted to learn bridge. Why not? What else did I have to do? Within a few weeks I was playing and winning like a champ.
“You got a great mind,” said the brotha. “You always been this brilliant with cards?”
“Never played before and when I get outta here I’ll never play again.”
I didn’t give a shit about bridge. It was music that haunted me. Hearing James Brown sing “Say It Loud—I’m Black and I’m Proud” went right to my soul. I wish I had written that song. The Beatles’ “Hey Jude” was magnificent. It’s another tune I wish I’d done. I was, in fact, writing songs, but without a guitar or piano they were lyrics without melodies. I had a million ideas—a million grooves were moving through my mind—yet the more creative I got, the more frustrated I became because the prison wouldn’t give me an instrument. They didn’t even have a piano.
I harbored hope that Perfect might get in touch and say how much she missed me. That hope died hard. Perfect never sent as much as a postcard. It was Mom and Mom alone who got me through those nine months in Canadian prison. Her letters came every week and every two weeks I got to call her.
On the day of my release Mom was at the border when the immigration officials dropped me off.
“It’s over, baby,” she said, taking me in her arms. “From now on, it’s all gonna be good.”
I wanted to believe her but somehow being free brought me down. Made me realize how much time I had wasted running afoul of the law.
“Why don’t you call your friends Neil and Stephen in California?” Mom asked.
But what was I gonna tell them? I was the guy who messed up the Mynah Birds. I was the guy who fucked Stephen Stills’s girlfriend and ran through Jay Sebring’s money. The Cali cats saw me as a loser. I couldn’t call them.
“What about Motown?” Mom asked. “You said that they saw your talent.”
“They got so many stars up there, they don’t need another one.”
“You have your writing talent, James, as well as your singing talent. I know Motown is always looking for good writers. Maybe you could call Mr. Gordy.”
Seemed a far-fetched idea, but what the hell. God bless Mom for pushing me. The chances of Gordy calling me back were a hundred to one. In fact, he didn’t return my call, but I was shocked when one of his underlings, Ralph Seltzer, did.
“Of course we remember you in Detroit,” said Seltzer. “You made quite an impression. Have you taken care of your legal obligations?”
“I have. And I’ve also written dozens of new songs. I can play ’em for your producers.”
“No harm in that.”
“If I came to Detroit, could I come by the office?”
“Call me when you get here.”
I was stunned. Motown was still open to my ideas. A week later
I was walking up to the famous house/headquarters on West Grand Boulevard.
The first guy I ran into was Norman Whitfield. He was riding high on his Temptations hits, not to mention the Marvin Gaye smashes, like “Chained” and “Too Busy Thinking About My Baby.”
“Look who’s back,” he said. “The wonder boy. Heard you got your ass kicked a couple of times.”
“More than a couple,” I admitted.
“That’s good for you. So you’ve come back to be a star.”
“You guys have enough stars. I’ve come back to sell some songs.”
“You have demos?”
“Need a studio to work up a few.”
“I’ll arrange it.”
Whitfield was a strange cat. He’d go from belligerent to friendly in an instant. He helped me get my demos together and liked what he heard. In less than a week, he talked to Gordy, who hired me as a staff writer. The money wasn’t big but I was thrilled to be back in the game. It was also great to have Whitfield as a mentor. During my first go-round at Motown, he had made fun of my hippie threads. Now he said I was the coolest dresser in Detroit. Not only did he let me watch his sessions but he got the other great producers, like Clarence Paul and Harvey Fuqua, to show me their producing techniques as well.
“You’re smart to want to be a producer,” Whit said. “You’ll soon see that the artists aren’t the stars at Motown—the producers are. We run the show. Except for Smokey, who’s an artist and a producer—not to mention Berry’s best friend—the artists are always kissing our ass, hoping we’ll take them into the studio and give them hit songs. Because Berry started out as a writer and producer, this company is controlled by the cats behind the scenes—us.”
I liked the way that sounded and went from being a cocky lead singer/artist to a conscientious student writer-producer. I wouldn’t say I was altogether humble—humility has never come easy to me—but I was surely respectful of these men whose track records were astonishing. In a period of six or seven months, I earned the equivalent of a PhD in record production. The Motown producers were not only the best in the business, but they worked nonstop and were fiercely competitive. I liked that vibe. Only the strong survived.
My staff-writing stint in Detroit happened during a transitional period in Motown history. When I was there back in ’66 with the Mynah Birds, the great production/writing team of Holland-Dozier-Holland was still cranking out monster hits for all the acts. But then HDH thought they were getting a raw royalty deal, so they sued Berry and quit. He countersued and the legal warfare was on. By the winter of ’68 when I was back in Detroit, HDH had left Motown to form their own label. Berry was also spending most of his time in L.A.
The general notion was that Detroit was past and present and L.A. was the future. Berry wanted to go Hollywood. Certain artists, like Marvin Gaye, who was not a follower, stayed in Detroit. This was when Marvin went through his big rebellion against conventional R & B and started getting political. Even though he was having huge duet hits with Tammi Terrell, he kept telling me how pop music was bullshit and how he was gonna write about the fucked-up Vietnam War. In his mind, he was already planning What’s Going On.
Bobby Taylor, the cat I met my first time in Detroit, was also a rebel. He wouldn’t take shit off any of the producers ’cause he was sure he could produce himself. He’d just gotten back from Chicago, where these five kids had opened for him at the Regal. They called themselves the Jackson 5, and Bobby swore that the littlest one, named Michael, was the best singer he’d heard since Clyde McPhatter. He put all five in his car and drove them to Detroit, where they auditioned for Berry, who signed them on the spot. Bobby took them in the studio and had little Michael cover Smokey’s “Who’s Lovin’ You.” None of us could believe it. Smokey himself couldn’t believe it. The kid burned down the building. When Bobby had him singing Sly’s “Stand!,” he sounded better than Sly.
“BG’s taking the kids to Hollywood,” said Bobby Taylor, referring to Berry Gordy. “He thinks I’m producing them too black. He wants to present them as a pop act.”
“What did you tell BG?”
“I told him to fuck himself—no one could be doing a better job with those kids than me.”
Turned out that Bobby was both right and wrong. His initial Jackson 5 productions were beautiful—pure R & B. But when the L.A. productions came out—“I Want You Back” and “ABC”—I understood what BG was going for. They were about the best pop records I’d ever heard. Plus he packaged them like psychedelic Disney characters so they’d appeal to everyone.
Being around other writers, my own writing was improving by leaps and bounds. I wrote a song called “Out in the Country” that everyone liked. It was in the style of “I Wish It Would Rain,” the hit Whit had written for the Tempts.
When Norman heard it he said, “Sounds like you’ve been going to school on my shit.”
“You don’t like it?” I asked.
“I think it’s strong, but keep it away from the Tempts. They’re my group.”
“Produce it on me, motherfucker,” said Bobby Taylor when he heard it.
“Why? You’re a producer yourself.”
“Yeah, but sometimes a producer needs a producer. You’ll put a hurting on it that I won’t. It’s your baby. I’ll make sure the right cats do the session.”
By that he meant the Funk Brothers, the most legendary rhythm section in the history of R & B. When I walked in the studio and saw Earl Van Dyke, James Jamerson, Richard “Pistol” Allen, and Dennis Coffey, I froze. I could hardly talk. Finally, I managed to say, “Y’all don’t know me from Adam. And here I am about to tell y’all, the baddest motherfuckers on the planet, what to play and how to play it. So if I say or do something stupid, just ignore me and follow your gut. In other words, help me, fellas!”
Jamerson, the best bass player ever, led the way. He set up the groove and sculpted the sound. The guys could not have been more cooperative. They could have made me feel like a rank amateur, but instead they respected me. They helped me fulfill the song’s potential. Bobby sang it tough. I knew I had the next single on the Vancouvers. Unfortunately, the quality control board that governed what got released didn’t agree. “Out in the Country” made the album but was never issued as a single. I still think it’s a Motown masterpiece.
When it came to sex, there was a lot of sleeping around at Motown. The intrigue was intense. I was living at the Lee Plaza apartments, where I saw a lot of the artists running in and out with lovers who were not their spouses. Jimmy Ruffin, who’d hit big with “What Becomes of the Brokenhearted,” was one of them. He had a white girlfriend at the time and so did I, an ambitious chick from Toronto who dug me so hard she wanted to bring me money. Jimmy’s gal wanted to do the same for him.
“I’m not sure,” I told Jimmy.
“I am,” he told me.
The idea of pimping was not all that appealing—but the idea of extra money was. Besides, so many of the big-name men at Motown had worked as pimps that it was practically the norm.
I tried, and I failed. Jimmy and I took the girls to Canada, where they worked the clubs and brought in bread. At one point I had three or four bitches selling pussy. But I lacked the hard-edged discipline and cold-blooded attitude a good pimp requires. I was lax. If my bitch said she was too tired to work, I said go home. If she said some john had beat her, I’d find the john and beat his ass. I loaned them money and, within a few weeks, saw the whole operation as heartless. Pimping was too inhuman for me. I let the girls go and went back to my music.
Calvin Hardaway, Stevie Wonder’s brother, was another superb writer and producer who became a mentor. He got me to study Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s songs. They had written a slew of hits for Dionne Warwick, like “Alfie” and “I Say a Little Prayer.” Calvin also pointed me in the direction of José Feliciano, who had reinvented two songs in a Latin soul vein that intrigued me—the Doors’ “Light My Fire” and, even better, “The Star-Spangled Banner.” His fun
ked-up version of the national anthem sung before the World Series in Detroit in ’68 was the kind of scandal I loved. During those days when the dirty war in Vietnam was still raging, José was revealing the dark side of that milquetoast patriotic song.
For all that I learned in Detroit, for all that I loved about working at the city’s famous record company, I was still restless, especially since Motown wasn’t exactly making me rich. It all became clear to me the night I got wiped out by Norman Whitfield at an east side pool hall. He won a thousand dollars off me in thirty minutes.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were a shark?” I asked.
“You didn’t ask. Besides, I wanted your money. I’ve been hustling cocky motherfuckers like you since I was a kid in Harlem.”
“Rub it in, Norman.”
“It’s a hard way to learn a lesson, but the truth is that you ain’t as good as you think you are.”
“In pool maybe, but I can write songs.”
“And you can sing. I’ve heard you sing. Fact is, you can do it all—write, produce, and even be a star. But it ain’t gonna happen in Detroit.”
“Why?”
“Because Detroit is done.”
“The studio’s still here. Marvin’s still here. And so are—”
“Name whoever you want, Rick, but in a couple of years they’ll all be out in L.A.”
“Including you?”
“Especially me. Don’t you see—Motown’s all about crossover. You cross over from R & B to pop, you cross over from the black market to the wider white audience, and you sure as shit cross over from an old down-in-the-dumps city like Detroit to a modern space-age glamour city like L.A.”
“Maybe Berry would put me on staff in the L.A. office.”
“Are you kidding? If BG hasn’t given you any play in Detroit, do you really think he’d pay any attention to you in Hollywood?”