INTERVIEW BY DAVID SHEFF
THE PLAYBOY INTERVIEW | AUGUST 1, 1995
PURCHASE PLAYBOY’S “MUSIC MEN” COMPILATION HERE

SHEFF: You were able to exploit these artists because they relied on you for everything.
GORDY: To exploit is not necessarily bad. To make use of someone's talent in a positive way benefits everyone. It was that "exploitation" that made many of them little stars, big stars and superstars. I wouldn't let anything go out that I didn't think was right. I knew that every Motown artist represented Motown and was a reflection of Motown. Also, I worked with other aspects of their lives, because raw talent wasn't enough. It had to be nurtured and developed. We had a charm school, chaperones. We made sure the artists paid their taxes.

SHEFF: Was that in exchange for one-sided contracts?
GORDY: That's a bunch of bull. We used contracts that were standard in the business, but here's what happens: Usually, when you sign an artist who's a nobody, whatever contract you give them is more than great. Six months later when they have a hit, the contract isn't good enough, at least according to the lawyers and managers who want to take over their careers. Everyone has heard that Elvis Presley paid 50 percent of everything to Colonel Parker. That was a lot, but it may have been worth it to Elvis. Elvis became a multimillionaire because of Parker, so maybe he made a reasonable deal.

SHEFF: But, by that example, Parker may have exploited a naive kid desperate to make a record.
GORDY: Maybe so, but wouldn't you have signed that contract if you had been Elvis and had a chance to become a star?

SHEFF: Does that make it fair?
GORDY: I'm not saying it makes it fair. But if I had been Elvis, I would have signed. I heard that Joe Dewey and Mike Intel refused to sign with Colonel Parker.

SHEFF: We've never heard of them.
GORDY: That's the point.

SHEFF: Do you acknowledge that the Colonel, and certainly Motown, was in a position to take advantage of young, inexperienced performers?
GORDY: Absolutely, but so was every other company. Listen, the real contract between the artists and our company was that we would invest our money, creative forces and marketing skills on the gamble that the artist had a talent that would prove to be commercial when fully developed and properly exploited. If we were wrong, we would eat the investment and the artist owed us nothing. If we were right, we would recover our investment and make a profit. The artist would get paid the royalty contracted for, become a professional performer and, we hoped, a star. If that happened they would certainly get a higher royalty rate when their present contract ran out, or, if they were hot enough, we would resign them before it ran out. That's the way I did business, and yes, it was fair. But the funny thing is that money has never been the big motivation for me. Throughout my years in this business, I have seen that money may not be the root of all evil, but it's certainly the root of lots of it.

SHEFF: This from the man who wrote, The best things in life are free, but you can give them to the birds and the bees. I need money, that's what I want."
GORDY: [Laughs] Yeah, but I learned ages ago that money cannot make you happy. And I also realized that unless you have money, you can't make that statement. Yes, everybody wants money, and I view that as part of the game. The winners of the game make more money and they live better. But in the end, the things that sustain you, that make you proud, you can't buy with money.

SHEFF: Have you ever felt guilty about all the money you've made?
GORDY: Never. Smokey Robinson had been with me five or six years when he came to see me and said, "I think I'm going to die." I asked him what was wrong. He said, "I'm so scared because I'm so happy. I just know something's going to happen." I said, "You're talented, you have worked hard and you've earned it. You deserve what you have and you shouldn't feel guilty about it." I learned this from my father. He had to go on welfare for a while—and he hated it—but he never felt guilty about taking money from the government because he had always worked and supported the government when he was able to. It's the same with success: Nobody gives it to you. You have to earn it. 

SHEFF: How do you write a song?
GORDY: It's done in a hundred ways. Sometimes the words first. Sometimes the music first. Sometimes all together. Anything any way. Once I decided I was going to devote all my time to writing, I became a writing fool. Anything I saw could end up in a song—a license plate number, a paper clip, the way somebody sits. Wherever the idea would come from, I would try to figure out something different about it, give it a twist—or something to make it unique. Try to find a different way to say "I love you" or "you're special" or "I'm sad."

SHEFF: When did you finally sell a song?
GORDY: My sister introduced me to Al Green, a club owner who managed some acts, including Jackie Wilson. He also owned a music publishing company and was looking for writers. I started working with him. I met a man named Roquel Billy Davis and agreed to write with him. The first song of ours to be recorded was Reet Petite. I did a little bit of writing on it, not much, just some of the verses—I was good on verses. Jackie Wilson recorded it and it was a big hit.

SHEFF: How did the success of the record affect you?
GORDY: I was thrilled. I thought my troubles were over forever and I'd be rich and have all the girls I wanted. The cycle of success that happens to everybody who gets famous began for me.

SHEFF: Explain that cycle.
GORDY: When anyone becomes a star, they go through changes brought on by fame and fortune. Few people can survive it. People treat you differently.

SHEFF: Were all your acts affected by the adulation they received?
GORDY: How could you not be? It affects people in many different ways, and some can make it through the vicious circle. Others get caught in drugs, some go mad with power, some forget who their friends are, some forget who they are.

SHEFF: Do most entertainers learn their lessons the hard way?
GORDY: Many of them do. It is so easy to forget who you are.

SHEFF: How bad did it get for you in your cycle of success?
GORDY: I'm a quick learner. A while after my first big hit on United Artists, I put out a second record that didn't do too well. I went to New York and took some friends to United Artists. I wanted to show off. I got there and expected to be treated like the king of all kings, but this time they didn't seem to know who I was. I said, "I'm Berry Gordy, " but no one had any time for me. I realized how true it was that you're only as hot as your last hit. That was a big lesson for me. I thought, Fuck all this trying to be more important than I am. Let me get my ass back to Detroit and focus on what I should be focusing on. Also, it helped that I was working with all these other people, trying to keep them in line. I never had time to get too far out of line myself.

SHEFF: Why did you decide to start your own record company?
GORDY: I wanted to produce my songs the way I wanted them produced. First I set up Jobete Music to handle the publishing of my songs. Smokey [Robinson] was my first writer.

SHEFF: How did you meet him?
GORDY: When I was writing for Jackie, Smokey came in with his group to Jackie's manager's office to audition, but they were rejected. I felt real compassion for them and chased them into the hallway and told them that I thought they were really good. We got to talking and Smokey told me he had a hundred songs. When I told him who I was, he was excited; he had seen my name on Jackie's records. I listened to his songs and rejected every one of them. He was so incredible because he never got disappointed, disgusted or bitter. I told him he was a great poet but not such a great songwriter. But he worked hard and learned and after many false starts came back with a song I liked, Got a Job. I produced it later. I was with him one day, waiting for a producer's royalty check, thrilled that some money was coming in. I opened the envelope and in it was a check for $3.19. After everyone had taken their cuts, that's all that was left. Smokey said, "You might as well start your own record label. You couldn't do any worse than this." I borrowed $800 from my family and recorded a song I wrote called Come to Me, sung by Marv Johnson, a new kid I'd met. I first put it out on my own label, which I called Tamla, after the number one song at that time, Tammy by Debbie Reynolds. But when I couldn't afford to distribute it nationally, I sold it to United Artists. Way Over There by the Miracles was the first record I went national with.

SHEFF: By then you were managing, producing, promoting and writing the songs. Were you going in too many directions?
GORDY: No question about it. But everything I did was to protect my love, the love of songwriting. I wrote the songs and wanted to protect them and get my money, so I became the publisher. Then I became the manager of the artists who sang them and I worked with them so they would sing it right.

SHEFF: And Motown came next?
GORDY: That was the beginning of Motown, but I hadn't started calling it that yet. One day Smokey came in with this great new song, Bad Girl. It was truly brilliant and the recording we made was so great that I wanted to launch another label. Tamla was a gimmicky name. I wanted the name of the corporation to be something that meant more to me, and since I had always known Detroit as the Motor City, I came up with the name Motown.

SHEFF: Back at the company, what kind of manager were you?
GORDY: I made a point of never making people do things. Instead I made them want to do things because no one could ever make me do anything. If they made me want to do it, that was a different story.

SHEFF: Yet you have a reputation for toughness.
GORDY: I was tough. When there was a hard decision to make, I made it. Sometimes it's impossible not to hurt somebody. If there's something that you really don't think can work, you have to tell the person.

SHEFF: You've said that you modeled Motown after the assembly line at Ford. How did it work?
GORDY: At the plant, they started out with a frame and ended up with a brand new car. I wanted the same thing at Motown, only with artists, songs and records. The idea was that someone could walk in unknown off the street and walk out a star. We had writers, producers, arrangers, choreographers, chaperones, managers, a charm school.

SHEFF: What do you remember about Stevie Wonder when he first came in?
GORDY: I wasn't that thrilled with his voice, but I was thrilled with his harmonica playing. He also played the bongos and drums. His feeling and attitude were wonderful.

SHEFF: Didn't you name him Stevie Wonder?
GORDY: That's what my sister Esther tells me. I don't remember. She says that I said, "What a wonder," and the name stuck.

SHEFF: When did Motown begin to cross over into white America and mainstream pop music?
GORDY: We got really big around 1964 and even bigger when people found out how much we were respected in Europe. It helped when the Beatles recorded three of our songs on their second album. A lot of the British groups had been studying the Motown artists and doing Motown songs. Once you're respected elsewhere, you're respected more at home, even in a family.

SHEFF: When you did cross over, you were accused of selling out your roots by catering to white audiences. What did you think when you heard that?
GORDY: I thought it was ridiculous. We didn't dwell on black audiences or white audiences. We just focused on putting out great songs. Pop means popular. If it sells a million, it's pop. I didn't give a damn what else it was called.

SHEFF: One criticism was that attempting to cross over to a white audience meant that you had to diffuse the music—that it couldn't be "too black." Did you make concessions in crossing over? Did you sell out?
GORDY: Laughs No, I didn't. Remember, the first song I tried to sell was a song I wrote for Doris Day, a white-sounding song for a white girl. So if that's the case, I sold out my white roots when I changed to black music.

SHEFF: Why did so many artists leave?
GORDY: That's a ridiculous question because it leads to a wrong perception. You should have asked, "How did you keep so many so long?" That was the phenomenon. Of the artists you mentioned, only the Jackson 5 left before their contract ran out and Michael had no choice—he was a minor with a father determined to take his children from Motown. Diana stayed 21 years, Marvin stayed 18 years and many of the name artists, including the Marvelettes and Martha and the Vandellas, didn't leave us, we just didn't re-sign them after we moved to Los Angeles. For some of the others it was just human nature. Sometimes the grass looks greener. The truth, however, is that never in the history of the record business have so many stars been on one label at one time for so long.

SHEFF: A few artists never left—Smokey, Stevie Wonder, Lionel Richie. What caused them to stay?
GORDY: Certain people were so loyal that money wasn't the issue. Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson and Lionel Richie you could not buy for money.

SHEFF: You said that the industry was changing at the time you moved to Los Angeles. How?
GORDY: All the small companies were being swallowed up by big ones. Soon 90 percent of the records were distributed by six companies.

SHEFF: What was the impact of that?
GORDY: Control of the music. It's harder for independents to get their records out there if you control distributors, record stores and radio and TV stations. It's much harder for a small company to break in. The cost had gone up so much.

SHEFF: How much would it cost to market a record?
GORDY: It would cost $100,000 just to promote one single. That's how expensive it had become. It cost even more when we had to start making videos because MTV had become so strong. So we were losing money. I started thinking about the Motown legacy. I never thought I would sell the business, but I began to realize it was the only way to ensure that Motown would survive.