You Are Not Alone: Michael, Through a Brother’s Eyes

PEOPLE HAVE ALWAYS ASKED, ‘WHAT EXACTLY is the Motown Sound?’ In 1983, Smokey – the label’s first artist – tried answering that question: ‘The Motown Sound is the bottom, you know. They got the foot working and you can hear the bass real good.’ In his 1994 autobiography, Mr Gordy defines it as ‘rats, roaches, struggle, talent, guts and love’. I’d go further: its uptown-downtown mix is part funky, part melodic, with a distinct pop sound thrown in. And then there’s the feel-good mood it evokes, tapping into universal human emotion, elevating happiness, remembering desire, soothing heartbreak, as inspired by Mr Gordy’s early days with Jackie Wilson. It’s a catharsis that touches you; a force that compels you to move. It’s that blend of beats, bass lines, drums, keyboards, tambourines, hand-claps and the interplay of harmonies that create an instantly knowable sound, and one on which we built our live performances and musical education. And even then I don’t feel I’ve done it justice.

Our first Motown tutor was Bobby Taylor and we spent a lot of time with him in the months before Mr Gordy’s party, working at weekends and when school was out for summer. He didn’t have much room in his apartment so we threw down mattresses and sleeping-bags on his carpet. It felt like the sleepover we were never allowed to have. Bobby, a tremendous singer himself, spent those summer weeks producing us and cutting tracks like ‘Can You Remember?’, ‘Who’s Lovin’ You’, ‘Chained’ and ‘La-La-La-La-La Means I Love You’ and ‘Standing In The Shadows Of Love’, songs that would feature on our first album. We must have cut more than a dozen covers from the likes of the Delfonics, Smokey Robinson, the Temptations and Marvin Gaye, and that work allowed us to ease into the recording process as a team prepared our original material.

Bobby knew how to inspire us, and he taught Michael and me how to use a mic properly in the studio. ‘Guys, you’re not on stage any more,’ he’d say. ‘The mic will give you the volume, so don’t worry about projecting your voices.’ That was when Michael’s imitation came into its own. Bobby first sang a song, then Michael repeated it, note for note. If Bobby liked what he saw on stage, his judgement was validated in the studio.

We first recorded at Motown’s headquarters, using a four-track board. The studio was in a cellar of the old house that Mr Gordy had converted into Hitsville USA in West Grand Boulevard, Detroit. It wasn’t fancy and looked nothing like an empire, but it was the epicentre of the Motown Sound so it felt instantly magical. The pre-taped arrangements were the work of the in-house rhythm section, known as the Funk Brothers – the unsung heroes behind the Motown Sound, the dynamic team of musicians who created everything we had ever heard from the label. We couldn’t believe they were our collaborators. It was as though we had jumped into the radio on the side cabinet.

After a summer and early fall of recording, life returned to normal and we turned into a new year. Between August 1968 and March 1969, progress seemed to stall so we kept rehearsing, performing and revisiting our usual haunts – the Apollo, Guys and Gals, and the High Chaparral – to maintain our regional exposure, if nothing else.

Ironically, it was Mother who first got restless. ‘Are you sure these Motown people are going to come through, Joe?’

He told her to be patient – to trust the agreement. Legal loose ends were still being tied up with Steeltown Records and Motown was in the process of setting up a division in Los Angeles. All major record labels had started to head west in the late sixties and Joseph could almost smell success. ‘We’re going to Hollywood, boys. I just know it,’ he said, winking.

But we’d be going without Rebbie. In November 1968, she married a fellow Witness named Nathaniel Brown and announced she was moving to Kentucky. Joseph was furious; Mother heart-broken. Neither found it easy to accept that she was leaving the family: their plan to keep everyone together was coming undone and there was nothing they could do. Rebbie couldn’t understand why they were not overjoyed for her happiness, but I suspect Joseph felt his control unravelling. Or maybe Rebbie’s departure was a painful reminder of losing his sister Verna-Mae? Either way, he refused to give her away on her wedding day. That duty fell, instead, to Papa Samuel.

What upset Rebbie most was that Joseph didn’t arrange for us to be there either. A performance at the Regal was deemed more important. I never did understand how that fitted with Joseph always saying that family came first.

Meanwhile, Randy – then six or seven – started wanting his talents to be noticed. He had watched the five of us go out most nights and weekends, leaving him as the only boy at home. He says it inspired him. Like Marlon, he had his own determination, so when Joseph handed him a pair of bongos, he practised day and night. ‘Listen, Joseph! Listen to this,’ he said, whenever we arrived home.

‘You keep at it,’ Joseph said, ‘and when you’re ready, I’ll let you know.’

Randy never stopped thinking he was ready. At school, he started learning the guitar and the piano. One day, he told himself, he, too, would become a member of the Jackson 5. Janet was three years old, as cute and doe-eyed as Michael; she always wore a braided pigtail and played hopscotch in the alley, or sat cross-legged and clapped ‘patty-cakes’ with Randy. But that’s the extent of my memories of my little sister from our days in Indiana: she would make her presence felt when life eventually moved us to new pastures in southern California.

After Motown contracts were finally resolved and a new recording contract signed, the long-awaited call came from Mr Gordy, asking us to move to Los Angeles. It was time to claim our dream ticket out of Gary and truly enter the business for which we were destined.

Mother, Randy, La Toya and Janet stayed in Gary, packing boxes and preparing to rent out our home to a relative. But we headed west. Leaving our home-town wasn’t hard because we were leaving it for our dream. The only hard part was leaving Mother behind, but we knew she’d be following two months later so we felt okay to go.

JOSEPH TREATED US TO OUR FIRST colour television in 1969. I think he felt we had earned it this time. And that was how the move out West felt – like someone had turned the contrast dial, taking us from the bleak black-and-white of Gary to the vivid, vibrant colour of California. The drive from Los Angeles airport to Hollywood was a discovery in itself. For the first time we saw the towering, verdant palm trees, a cloudless blue sky, the bronzed people in tight T-shirts and flared jeans, and we smelt pines and freshness. It contrasted sharply with Gary. All we had ever known was the foul air of steel mill smoke with its smell of sulphur dioxide and polluting red-hazes.

At street level, Los Angeles felt alive. We had arrived in the land of milk and honey, and Michael and I hung out of the car windows either side, a cooling breeze in our Afros. We drove around Hollywood and saw homes barely hanging on to hills, and mountain ranges in the distance.

In those first few days of July 1969, we watched sunsets and went to the beach – all Michael wanted to do was ride the Hippodrome carousel on Santa Monica Pier – and we toured inland to find the best spot to see the Hollywood sign. We visited Disneyland and LA Zoo, and Michael fell in love with Mickey Mouse and the animals. We even managed a road trip to San Francisco.

Our first base was a playground for the music industry – the Tropicana Motel in West Hollywood. In those days, if you were music royalty, you checked into Chateau Marmont but if you were new in town, you stayed at the Tropicana – a white-painted, two-storey motor lodge built into a squared horseshoe, off Santa Monica Boulevard. It had a few bungalows in its grounds and a swimming pool, and the T on its front sign was a palm tree. We got excited about that. Palm trees were everywhere: there were almost as many palm trees as there were hippies.

We had a view of the Hollywood Hills from our room and all we did was swim. The motel was built into a slope, which meant the roof was only about 10 feet higher than the pool deck out back. Johnny Jackson fancied himself as an Olympic diver and was the first to climb up on to the tiles and show off: ‘Watch me! Watch me! I’m going to do a double somersault!’ We watched as – smack! – he belly-flopped with a splash. Johnny’s humiliation was our signal to join in and we took running jumps from the roof and dive-bombed, ass first.