Raining In His Heart
A SONGWRITER’S TRAGIC INSPIRATION
Rodger Penzabene seemed to have been writing sad songs at Motown for at least a year before his suicide on the final day of 1967.
Oh, I’m in bad shape since you’ve been gone/I lay in bed and cry the whole day long/I can feel my mind beginning to crack/Gotta find a way to get you back/I don’t want a loneliness to be my destiny/Baby, save me from this misery
The Isley Brothers recorded that particular piece of heartache (“Save Me From This Misery”) in September of ’66. Co-authored by Penzabene, the song was published by Jobete Music that same month.
‘That song’s going to be a hit’
His tragic tale – how the unfaithfulness of wife Helga robbed him of the will to live – is part of Motown folklore, with three copyrights cited as evidence of his frame of mind: “I Wish It Would Rain” and “I Could Never Love Another (After Loving You)” by the Temptations, and “The End Of Our Road” by Gladys Knight & the Pips. He wrote all three with Norman Whitfield and, in the case of the Temptations hits, Barrett Strong.
As listeners, we can relate to the sentiments and circumstances of a song, but to learn that a particular set of lyrics is rooted in a reality which leads to the music maker’s death…
Sunshine, blue skies, please go away/My girl has found another, and gone away/With her went my future, my life is filled with gloom/So day after day, I stay locked up in my room/ I know to you it might sound strange/But I wish it would rain
Yet this tragic young man – aged 23 when he died – was also responsible for one of the most uplifting works in the Jobete jewelbox, and one of the Temptations’ cornerstone hits: “You’re My Everything.”
Its co-writer, Cornelius Grant, vividly remembers Penzabene’s enthusiasm on that occasion. “So this one time, I came off the road,” he told me recently, “and I said, ‘Hey, Rodger, we need to write a song for Eddie [Kendricks].’ He said, ‘Why?’ And I replied, ‘Because David [Ruffin] gets his attention, but when Eddie sings, the girls just swoon.’
‘KIND OF QUIET, BUT A PRANKSTER’
“So Rodger said, ‘What about “You’re the girl I sing about in every love song I sing”?’ I said, ‘That’s it, that’s it!’ When we cut it later, those words were further down in the song, but those were his original, the beginning lyrics.”
The pair had become acquainted while growing up in northwest Detroit, near 8 Mile. “Rodger was my best friend, and he was also my neighbour – he lived about four houses down from me.” He was “kind of quiet, but he was a prankster – he had a weird sense of humour,” recalled Grant. Their musical connection developed as the latter’s career blossomed at Motown, initially as Mary Wells’ guitarist after her first was drafted into the army. (It was Hank Cosby who had suggested that Grant audition for the firm, the two having previously played in the same band.)
At their wedding, Helga and Rodger, seated. Cornelius Grant is second right, standing
After a similar stint with Marvin Gaye, Grant became a valued, permanent part of the Temptations’ crew, his singular fretwork heard on some of the group’s most-celebrated recordings. All this combined to make the musician something of a star in his neighbourhood. “As a result,” he says, “Rodger’s mom bought him a guitar, and he started learning. When I came off the road, he would show me something, some new lick he’d learned. So we started working together like that, and coming up with songs.”
“Listen To My Heart” was one of the duo’s first completed copyrights, by Grant’s account. “We had written it as a kind of country and western song, but never got it published. We were very satisfied with it, but never got a chance to do a serious production on it. That would have been one of the first songs we did together at Motown.”
Penzabene’s skill proved to be as a lyricist. “We worked mostly down at my house, or his house – trading ideas and the whole business,” says Grant. “I was always playing. The kids in the neighbourhood wanted me to teach them guitar.” The pair’s friendship developed, too: Grant and then-wife Carrie were present at Rodger and Helga’s wedding.
The tragic timeline of 1967 is embedded in Grant’s memory, of course. The instrumental track for “I Wish It Would Rain” was cut at Hitsville that April, with the Temptations adding their vocals in August. He remembers hearing the result while he and Penzabene were in an adjacent rehearsal room – listening to the entire Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. “Rodger insisted. He was so taken with that album, he said to me, ‘You’ve got to listen to the whole thing.’ When it finished, with that long piano chord at the end, he said, ‘Now, what do you think of that?’
“Next door, they were playing the acetate of ‘I Wish It Would Rain.’ I said to Rodger, ‘Hey, that’s your song.’ And he said, ‘Yeah, that’s the way I feel right now.’ I told him, ‘Oh, man, that song’s going to be a hit – you’re going to get a bachelor apartment and the whole bit, you’ll forget all about [your personal problems].’ Then he said, ‘No, I won’t.’ Just like that.”
THE ROAD TO CHERRY HILL
Motown released “I Wish It Would Rain” on December 21. Ten days later, the Temptations were scheduled to perform at the Latin Casino in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. “We used to travel in a station wagon, the six of us,” Grant continues, “and we were packing it up in front of Hitsville. Rodger was watching us, looking kind of sad. ‘Man, if I had my way, I would go with y’all right now,’ he said. I said, ‘Hey, you can go’ – ’cause my wife Carrie, she had gone to Texas for Christmas with the family, then she was going to meet me in Cherry Hill. I told Rodger, ‘You can stay in my room until Carrie comes.’
“He thought for a minute, then said, ‘Nah.’ ”
Cornelius Grant at right, with Otis Williams and the Temptations’ longtime manager, Shelly Berger
And so it proved to be the last day that the two friends were together. “The day after New Year’s, there was a telegram put under my hotel door in Cherry Hill,” says Grant. “A lot of girls would follow us and check into the hotel, and so I thought it was probably from one of them. Because my wife was there, I didn’t open it. And she said, ‘You need to open the telegram and see what it is.’
“Reluctantly, I opened it. It just said, ‘Rodger Penzabene is dead.’ ”
At first, Grant thought it was another of his friend’s pranks, but then his wife thought he should check. “So I called Detroit, and that’s when they told me he had committed suicide.” To add more confusion, the telegram was not signed. “So I called up a few of the people that we knew. Nobody had sent that telegram but Rodger. He had sent it before he killed himself.”
Within weeks, “I Wish It Would Rain” became one of the country’s most popular records, spreading its melancholy message from coast to coast – soon to be followed on the charts by “I Could Never Love Another (After Loving You)” and “The End Of Our Road.”
Girl, I can't believe my ears/Are you really telling me goodbye?/See, you've taken away my reason for livin'/And you won't even tell me why/Before you walk out the door/There's something I want you to know…
Eventually, Grant heard from one of Penzabene’s sons that, shortly before his death, the songwriter had written a letter in which he apologised to family and friends for the grief and despair caused by his actions. “It was devastating to me,” says Grant, “and it’s something which bothers me to this day. Also, I’ve thought about what he and I could have done, with new technology and everything. We would have done some great songs, some great productions.”
As it is, Penzabene’s legacy lives on. “I Wish It Would Rain” alone has been covered by dozens of singers and musicians over the past half-century, including three titans of popular culture: Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen.
Sad songs weave their spell, forever.
Music notes: as cited above, Rodger Penzabene worked with a number of collaborators at Hitsville, including Cornelius Grant, Norman Whitfield, Barrett Strong and Ivy Jo Hunter. Too, his lyrics were voiced by a cross-section of Motown’s finest, from Marv Johnson to Marvin Gaye, from the Miracles to Martha & the Vandellas – and more, as reflected in this WGB playlist. It concludes with one of those big-name covers. Enjoy.