The Supremes: A Saga of Motown Dreams, Success, and Betrayal (47 page)

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HDH apparently got the memo. Having normally conducted their business with little or no input from Gordy until the first tape masters were in the can, they immediately rethought the follow-up to “Heart -

aches,” which originally was slated to be “Mother Dear,” a ho-hummer from the
More Hits
album. But in late September, they had a better idea, after finding a new groove. A groove that came from outside the Motown pool.

Though HDH almost never looked beyond their own purview, they were beguiled with a song they heard on the radio, the Toys’ “A Lover’s Concerto.” This, a lovely parting gift of the ebbing girl-group genre, retrofit a rock beat to no less than “Minuet in G Major” from Bach’s “Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach.” Written by two Brill Building tunesmiths, it was all pop and circumstance, with lilting strings, Van Clyburn–like piano flourishes, and horn riffs right from the Motown playbook, swirling around a lyric that fused the macro-cosm of nature—birds, trees, bees, flowers, rain softly falling on the meadow—with romance and love in a grand symphony.

“A Lover’s Concerto,” released on a small independent label, DynaVoice, owned by Four Seasons producer Bob Crewe, was not a notable hit when HDH went to work on their
grand bouffe
—“I Hear a Symphony,” the title (cribbed, too, in part, from Phil Spector’s stately Ronettes’ song “I Can Hear Music”) more than a mere suggestion of

“Concerto”—likely not anticipating much competition from the latter.

(Not that the Holland brothers will acknowledge ripping off “Concerto,” which Eddie Holland calls a “great song” but nothing like “I Hear a Symphony.”)

Indeed, when they cut the song in late September, it surely had its own cachet, having toned down the pomp and pandemic lyrical sweep of “Concerto” into a “tender melody” of a girl being pulled ever closer into the arms of her lover until “your lips are touching mine.” Rather than crash in with full symphonic might, the intro crept in with a lull-aby of vibes, delicate cymbal-tapping, and a heartbeat-like bass. Diana’s vocal entree was a part-spoken, Gilbert and Sullivan–style intonation:

“You’ve given a true love / And every day I thank you love / For a feeling that’s so new / So inviting, so exciting.”

Now
came the fluff and the force. Brian Holland’s arrangement—

“Bach swing,” as Alan Slutsky calls it—took a typical HDH eight-bar chord repetition and sax solo on the break and ladled it with dollops of sweet cream; for example, when the girls would sing the chorus hook—

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out, melding into an echoed font of violins—a first for a Supremes record. And at intervals there were dramatic piano runs by Earl Van Dyke. From start to end, the intensity steadily built, the strings ultimately supplanting the early vibe runs in soaring octaves on the fadeout.

Four sessions and days more of mixing, remixing, and overdubbing were needed to get it right. And though it took Brian two decades to realize just how deeply the song burrowed into the gulch of the heart—

especially his heart, reluctant as it was to stop yearning and burning for Diana Ross—HDH had no doubt they’d cleared the bar that Gordy had set so high.

“Listen to that song.
Listen
to it!” Eddie Holland instructs a fellow who made the mistake of wondering if, under the veneer of Bach, the core of “Symphony” was the raw vital force of simplicity.

What Brian did with that thing, he threw everything in—

different modulations, different keys, different sounds. That thing sounds amazing even now. So there is nothing simple about that song. There is
nothing
simple about them lyrics, man. [Begins singing:] “
Those tears that fill my eyes. I cry not for
myself. But for those who never felt the joy we felt. . . .”
When I hear that song today, I hear lyrics I didn’t think I was capable of writing. It was like therapy forcing myself to go way inside me, my heart, my soul. That song opened the way for me to break out and really express myself. I think that’s what Berry wanted for the Supremes because they weren’t teenage girls no more, they were women with more complicated feelings. So it was good for everyone all around that Berry pushed us like that.

Mesmerized, too, Gordy rushed the song into release in early October, backed with “Who Could Ever Doubt My Love.” Powered by the usual all-out sales and promotion campaign, “Symphony” quickly hit
Billboard
’s October 23 Spotlights page, with a blurb reading “No problem rushing up the chart with this well-written rhythm ballad with pulsating and top vocal work. Block buster!” After the girls sang the tune on
Hullabaloo
and at a huge celebrity benefit concert for the U.S.O. in New York’s Madison Square Garden, it cracked the Top Forty on Halloween.

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“Symphony,” coming so soon on the trail of the other pomp-pop song.

Happily, however, there was more than enough room for both. “Concerto” would turn in a three-week run at No. 2 in late November, kept from the top spot by the Rolling Stones’ “Get Off My Cloud”—which, in a roundabout irony, was then knocked out by “I Hear a Symphony” on November 20, the first of two weeks it held the brass ring.

In the fold of ’65 into ’66, one could have gotten the feeling that the Supremes were lurking around every corner, at least when the Beatles weren’t there. Gordy, no dummy, pressed
three
more Supremes albums in December alone, putting out two—the live
At the Copa
, with liner notes by Sammy Davis Jr. (No. 11 on the pop chart) and a
de rigueur
Christmas album (No. 6 on the holiday album chart) that yielded a two-sided holiday hit, “Children’s Christmas Song” and “Twinkle Twinkle Little Me”—while shelving another called
Tribute to the Girls
.

Not far behind, in February came
I Hear a Symphony
, which included their next single, “My World Is Empty Without You” as well as a mish-mash of L.A.-recorded covers such as the Beatles’ “Yesterday” (produced by Norman Whitfield), “Unchained Melody,” “Wonderful Wonderful,” “Stranger in Paradise,” and—as a sop to Bob Crewe—“A Lover’s Concerto.”

Not for nothing did Gordy take out an expensive full-page ad in
Billboard
’s year-end issue that was basically a love letter to the Supremes. Bannered “AMERICA’S NO. 1 RECORDING ARTISTS,” the ad copy proclaimed: “6 gold records in two years . . . records broken wherever they appear . . . outstanding reviews,” and pitched their upcoming TV gigs and international concert tour. (Of course, the gold-record claim was pure Gordy blarney—in truth, they had none, officially, due to his boycott of the RIAA.) Nor did it matter much that “My World Is Empty Without You” didn’t clear the high bar, stalling at No. 6, perhaps a tad too turbid, brooding, and pre-“Symphony” formulaic to go the extra mile on the chart. That slight dip—though a charting most acts would kill for—

was indicative of how immensely difficult it was for the group to keep topping itself. Yet that would be precisely the marching order for everyone involved with the Supremes, including the girls themselves. Two of them would be able to endure the hideous pressure. One would progressively need to numb it.

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AN ITCHING

IN THE

HEART

If Gordy could have, he would have taken Diana Ross solo as early as 1966. By then he had already talked himself into believing that Mary Wilson and Florence Ballard were excess baggage, cosmetic acces-sories rather than necessities. Indeed, a reference point had already been established for him to make that argument. Though the fact of Ballard’s absence was kept tightly under wraps, she did not sing on “My World Is Empty Without You.” Whether there was a mix-up and she didn’t get word of the session, or whether she was still pissed off at Gordy after the Copa humiliations, Flo didn’t show up at the studio for her backing vocals. With the track and the lead vocal recorded, HDH

couldn’t wait for her and called in Marlene Barrow of the Andantes, the trio that backed nearly every Four Tops record, to join Wilson.

When no one could tell the difference on the record, Gordy had the perfect opening to suggest the possibility that the change be made permanent. What’s more, he had Diana cut some tracks without Ballard
and
Wilson for an album he produced in tribute to Loucye Gordy,
In Loving Memory
(unreleased until 1968)—technically, Ross’s first solo recordings. Another opening presented itself when Flo again became ill with the flu in February and couldn’t appear at a Supremes show in Boston. Once more, Barrow filled in, much as Flo had done with the Marvelettes. Gordy was so excited that he ordered up publicity pictures of Barrow with Ross and Wilson—and more excited still when, Flo’s popularity aside, the pretty, talented Barrow received a warm reception, after deferentially announcing from the stage that she was there in Flo’s stead for the night.

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Convinced, Gordy called a meeting to ask what his adjutants thought about moving Flo out and Marlene in. But the feedback couldn’t have pleased him—basically, everyone in the meeting told him that in messing with a winning hand, the hand that fed Motown, he had lost his mind. That Gordy didn’t already know this was preposterous to the other executives, who couldn’t believe they had to tell
him
why the act was so successful. All Berry ever saw was Ross. Even the Barrow-Ballard matter was small next to his main obsession: Ross as a solo act, whereby the smaller change of the girl-group genre would be dwarfed by the glitter and gelt of a pathway the likes of Lena Horne, Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee, and Judy Garland had treaded to and from music and motion pictures. In fact, pondering the replacement of Flo, Gordy was hardly naive; any tinkering that diluted the Supremes’ original chemistry would make it easier to separate Ross. The Motown boys were well aware of the unspoken truths, and did not hold back telling him that while Ross had become a very high-profile diva who was surely capable of going it alone, the act was the
Supremes
, not the
Supreme.

However, Flo at times seemed determined to make it easier for Gordy to take the first step of firing her. One of the Supremes’ first important gigs of the new year was their return engagement at the Copa, booked for one week, March 17 to 23—their first prime-season engagement at the club. But as it approached, Flo’s continuing health problems made for a queasy déjà vu; again, unable to go to New York with Diana and Mary, she missed days of rehearsals.

Along with her flu, questions persisted. Weeks before, when she missed the Boston show, Gordy demanded to speak with Flo’s doctor.

He told him she was indeed ill with the flu, and while he would allow her to go to New York for the Copa shows, she would not be able to endure the next scheduled Supremes event, a brief tour of Germany and Scandinavia. Gritting his teeth, Gordy postponed the tour. And when Flo held off coming to New York, he became furious at her, insisting to people that even Flo’s doctor had told him her biggest infirmity was that she was “lazy.”

Fitting right in with the theme of déjà vu, Harvey Fuqua—whose opinions were given to him by Gordy—emerged, not to announce but to propose a change in the act, broaching the idea to Diana and Mary that Marlene Barrow go on for Flo at the Copa. Diana—who, like Gordy, was livid at Flo—was willing to let Barrow “share my stage,” as she put it. Mary, who in the past could be counted on to at least verbally defend Flo, simply shrugged and said she didn’t care. Being caught 0306815867_ribowsky:6.125 x 9.25 4/22/09 11:06 AM Page 242

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in the middle all the time, between Diana and Flo, and now between loyalty to Flo and the well-being of the act, had begun to wear on her.

As did having to constantly reassure people that Flo wasn’t a problem.

“Don’t pay attention to what Florence says when she’s mad, especially after she’s had a few cocktails,” she told Tony Tucker. The contre -

temps with Flo, she insisted, “would blow over.” Any day now, went the chirpy refrain, “Flo will be back to her cheerful self.” Very little was cheerful about Flo by early ’66, however, and so Wilson stood aside when Gordy, through his Tonto of a companion Harvey Fuqua, decided to replace Ballard at the Copa—a move that everyone knew would be tantamount to junking her altogether. However, now is where the story becomes less clear. According to the J. Randy Taraborrelli book
Call Her Miss Ross,
Gordy’s plans for the Copa shuffle “were thrown into turmoil by Jules Podell,” who, when he “discovered Florence would not be on stage, became angry. He enjoyed Florence tremendously, remembered that she was a crowd pleaser during the last engagement, and made it clear that he wanted the three original Su premes. If Berry could not guarantee the presence of all three, the commitment would be canceled. Both Berry and Diana were quite amazed at this turn of events [but] Berry had no choice but to call on Flo.”

Even more amazed was Shelly Berger, a young former actor and talent manager who was hired by Motown’s L.A. office in 1966 and put to work using his TV and club connections in the furtherance of the Supremes.

“I don’t know who came up with
that
story,” Berger says, fairly jumping out of his seat. “I will guarantee you, categorically, that Jules Podell never fixed it. Berry Gordy didn’t have to run anything by Jules Po dell. He could have done whatever he wanted. Listen, I was very close to Jules Podell. I’d known Jules for years before that. With the Supremes, with the exception of Diana Ross—if you said, ‘Oh, by the way, Diana Ross is not gonna be singing,’ Jules would’ve said,