“Berry Gordy and I put our heads together, 2011 (Motown the Musical).”
This is my favorite photo of me and Berry, whom I never called “Berry.” He was either “Chairman,” “Mr. Gordy,” or eventually, “Boss.” Calling Berry by his first name was not something the people in his inner circle tended to do. Occasionally it would fly out of someone’s mouth, usually someone stopping by who assumed more familiarity than had likely been bestowed, and you could feel the energy sucked from the room as all else assembled held their collective breath to see how it would be received. Usually, Mr. Gordy’s eyes would light up with impish glee, the old boxer called into the ring to spar against one more unsuspecting victim. He would play the rope-a-dope with his intellect, and the knock-out blow would be swift and deadly. Few saw it coming. I learned a lot from watching that. Berry Gordy was easily the smartest man I ever met.
This photo represents a hard-won first year of work on what would become Motown The Musical. The first draft that we accomplished together. Someone suggested we put it on our heads, as a symbolic gesture. Our collaboration had not started so collegially.
I was the (next to-) last in a long line of writers with far better credits than I, who had attempted to wrestle the Motown/Berry Gordy story and legacy to the ground, and ultimately, lift it to the stage. The job was as much to listen to Mr. Gordy and what mattered to him, and to place that ahead of what mattered to me – but to still deliver a show that would work well enough to succeed on Broadway.
My first six weeks were terrifying – every day I went to work at the big mansion in Bel Air expecting to be fired, as had all those who had come before me – and every day I wasn’t I chalked up as a victory. Finally, it was time to deliver some pages.
Marvin Gaye as a character in the musical was not central for Mr. Gordy, but I felt very differently. So I wrote six scenes, a Marvin Gaye arc, all based on anecdotes lifted from not just his book, but from the research I had done in other books and articles (an essentially verboten method to Team Gordy). One scene that existed nowhere was the moment that Gaye told Berry he was leaving Motown. I figured that must have happened. So I wrote it.
As Charles Randolph Wright (the director) sat beside me reading Gaye, and I sat behind my computer reading Berry Gordy to Berry Gordy, my heart was in my mouth. The words I had put in the Marvin character’s mouth were excoriating to Mr. Gordy, and a stand-in for all the complaints of all the artists who had ever left him, sued him, or betrayed him. When it was all over, I looked up to see the Chairman’s astonished face – that anyone would have had the unmitigated gall to confront him in such a way. The rest of Team Gordy sat around the table in shock, and with a very familiar collective holding of breath.
“None of that happened…” Mr. Gordy began, as my dreams of hearing my first words on Broadway crashed to the pit of my stomach, “… and ALL OF IT IS TRUE!”
And I knew I would be back at work the next day, and likely every day thereafter.