To Be Loved and To Leave
NEVER CAN SAY GOODBYE?
And so, retirement.
Berry Gordy’s decision to exit stage-left seems not so much a surprise as a perfectly-timed piece of theatre. What better moment than at the climax of the Hitsville Honors in Detroit on September 22, during Motown’s 60th anniversary year, and in the company of those who were made stars by his labours? And on the same day that he broke ground on the first phase of the Motown Museum’s $50 million expansion programme, in the company of some of Michigan’s governing elite.
All this as Hitsville: The Making of Motown is burnishing the chairman’s legacy with grace and humour, while reminding us in colourful, cinematic detail what he and his Motor City magicians accomplished – musically, culturally, racially – during those remarkable years in Detroit.
But here and now, it might be as interesting to recall a previous adieu, when Gordy quit the front line of the music business by selling Motown Records, and then made sure that, in the following three decades, nobody forgot about its (and his) achievements. So let’s check the diary:
The chairman and the president, September 2015
December 31, 1986: After months working to sell Motown “for more money than I could spend in a lifetime,” Gordy changes his mind at the last minute, calls off the deal with MCA Records, and continues to operate his company.
“I got psyched. I would answer the bell one more time and come out fighting, creating new hits just like the old days. Get everybody together! Get inspired, perspired, fired up, go for the throat! We need hits. No. Smashes! That’s the only way – smash product.” Gordy, in his autobiography, To Be Loved.
January 20, 1988: Gordy is honoured by the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in the Non-Performer category at the Waldorf Astoria, New York.
“I still like it better behind the scenes.” Gordy, speaking at his induction there.
June 28, 1988: MCA Records and private investment firm Boston Ventures announce the acquisition of Motown Record Corp. for $61 million. Five years later, the consortium sells it to PolyGram for $301 million.
“I had to sell [it] for a lot less than it was worth. Because I was tired, I wanted to get out of that pressure, because life always meant more to me than money, dollars and cents. It was never my main focus on anything. It was getting the product right, getting it good, then making all the money you could make by doing that.” Gordy in Billboard, November 5, 1994.
October 31, 1994: Gordy’s autobiography, To Be Loved: The Music, The Magic, The Memories of Motown, is published by Warner Books.
Berry speaks at Yale, 1985
“He almost became a boxer instead of a music mogul, and his memoir…is an amazing concatenation of feints and jabs, accusations and compliments. But the Chairman, as he was called, is disarming even as he rages at underlings, and outright captivating in passages like his description of how he chose at a young age between the ring and the record business.” Book review, New York Times, November 27, 1994.
July 1, 1997: EMI Group declares its $132 million purchase of 50 percent of Jobete Music and its 15,000 songs from shareholders Berry Gordy and Esther Edwards, with an option to acquire the remaining 50 percent.
“ ‘Stevie,’ I said, ‘I need you to understand something. I am in serious trouble and I’m thinking about selling Jobete.’ ‘What do you mean? Sell the publishing company? How can you sell the publishing?’ ‘I know it’s a shocking thought,’ I said, ‘and I don’t want to do it, but I think the time has come when I’d better be a little more realistic about the economics of the business.’ ” Gordy, in To Be Loved.
April 10, 2003: EMI acquires the remaining 50 percent of Jobete with a payment of $109.3 million on this date, with a further $78.3 million the following April.
“Mr. Gordy and EMI Music Publishing are also pleased to announce plans for the development of a new, Motown-based Broadway musical featuring songs from the Jobete catalogue. Berry Gordy will personally produce the musical.” EMI Group press release, April 10, 2003.
June 3, 2004: Variety reports that NBC-TV is partnering with de Passe Entertainment to make a 12-hour miniseries about Motown, expected to air during the 2005-2006 season. (It never does.)
“It’s going to be challenging to find the right balance between objectivity and subjectivity. It’s important that we be as honest and straightforward as possible in presenting the facts as we know them.” Suzanne de Passe in Variety.
From the Motor City to Manhattan
July 15, 2007: The scheduled date for the Los Angeles premiere at the Ahmanson Theatre of Ain’t No Mountain High Enough, a musical created by Gordy for the Center Theater Group, with 30 Motown songs. (It never opens.)
“It was a fictional story set in a high school, mainly about a 15-year-old living in today’s times with today’s problems and using Motown music. I was pretty heavy into that, trying to do something that’s meaningful for today’s teenagers and make it entertaining.” – Gordy, Los Angeles Times, May 1, 2015.
October 19, 2007: Detroit’s West Grand Boulevard gains an additional name, Berry Gordy Jr. Boulevard, for the two-miles-plus stretch from the Lodge Freeway to Grand River Avenue, including the block where Hitsville U.S.A. is located.
“Dusk. The city lights, some yellow, some white, slowly creeping on, bringing into focus a magical glow. I had moved to California over twenty years before. Now I was looking back over the city where I grew up, where my roots were. Where once my vision could only take in a couple of blocks of the inner city, now I was looking over all of Detroit and beyond. I had come full circle.” Gordy in To Be Loved, about returning to Detroit for Michael Jackson’s donation to the Motown Museum, October 23, 1988.
April 14, 2013: Motown The Musical opens at Broadway’s Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, New York.
“The thing that made me the most fulfilled was the fact that the artists came. Diana Ross, Stevie Wonder, Gladys Knight…and some of them cried just because they have felt sorry for me and the legacy and all that, with all of the stuff that they knew was not accurate.” Gordy in the Financial Times, June 7, 2013.
September 22, 2015: President Barack Obama presents Gordy with the National Medal of the Arts at the White House in Washington, D.C.
“For helping to create a trailblazing new sound in American music. As a record producer and songwriter, he helped build Motown, launching the music careers of countless legendary artists. His unique sound helped shape our nation’s story.” Medal citation.
March 8, 2016: Motown The Musical opens in London at the Shaftesbury Theatre.
With Martha Reeves on Berry Gordy Jr. Boulevard (photo: Bill Pugliano/Getty)
“There are many things that have been said about Mr. Gordy, but the one thing that hurts him the most and that he will spend the rest of his life to prove that is not true – that is that he cheated his artists. He is a man of integrity and takes a lot of time with his artists to prove that he never cheated on them because they were like family to him.” Actor Cedric Neal, who portrays Gordy, tells the LondonTheatre website, February 11, 2016.
May 22, 2016: Gordy is a guest on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs. His selection includes music by Nat “King” Cole, Jackie Wilson, Billie Holiday, the Supremes and Smokey Robinson. His book choice is The Collected Works of Rudyard Kipling, his luxury is a cellar of his favourite wine.
“Um… [laughs] As a husband? Um… [silence] Er… I really don’t know how I would rate myself. I certainly hadn’t…I hadn’t thought about it… Um… That’s an interesting question. I don’t know. I’ve been married, er, three times and, er…” Gordy, when presenter Kirsty Young asks how he would regard himself as a husband.
August 8, 2019: The premiere of Hitsville: The Making of Motown takes place at the Harmony Gold Theatre in Los Angeles, with attendance by Gordy, Wonder and Robinson, among others.
“There is a magic when [Gordy and Robinson] are together that you can’t get in a book. That magic infused the company and informed their songs, and we were keen to find a way of capturing that on camera.” Director Ben Turner, Oakland Press, August 18, 2019.
September 22, 2019: Gordy, visiting Detroit, announces his retirement.
“For years I have dreamt about it, talked about it, threatened it and tried to do it. In fact, this has gone on for so many years that those trying to help me retire [have] retired themselves. It is time for me to spend my next 60 years reflecting on how fortunate I am, how much I appreciate and love all of you and how wonderful my life has been, and will continue to be.”