Song 89: What's Going On

I watched a couple of really interesting music documentaries recently – one was called ‘Hitsville’ and was the authorised story of Motown. One was called ‘Laurel Canyon’ and was about the Laurel Canyon scene of the late 60s/early 70s.

They were different kinds of docs – the Motown one had a lot of on-camera modern interviewees, whereas the Laurel Canyon one mainly had the recent interviews as voiceover.

They both told their stories pretty thoroughly though (while skipping some, though not all, the darkness in the tale).

The Motown one was a joy, while the Laurel Canyon one made me feel more uneasy.

I am a fan of a lot of the music from both scenes. They are both incredible stories. The old ham Crosby had the last word on the Laurel Canyon documentary, in comparing Laurel Canyon then to the Italian Renaissance and Paris in the 30s. Perhaps the Monkees are meant to be Michelangelo.

In any case, bearing in mind the odds and obstacles, the Motown story is considerably more remarkable – Smokey Robinson has a clear answer for why all that genius was able to come together – he says it was Berry Gordy.

Gordy and Robinson were the crux of the documentary – still best friends, interviewed together, exuding charm and joie de vivre (Gordy will have been in his late 80s when interviewed, Robinson his late 70s).

The idea of Gordy I’d had was as this money-obsessed domineering industry guy – he’s clearly so much more than that. I mean, he admits it was all about the business and the money, but I didn’t know he was himself the co-writer of hits from ‘Reet Petite’ to ‘I Want You Back’.

He’s known for pushing back at Stevie Wonder’s kaleidoscopic expansion in the 70s and at Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On. And he admits there’s truth in that, but, ultimately, those records were released on Motown – he backed down at the right time. Apparently, he hated the song What’s Going On when he first heard it, forbidding its release, but the A and R team sneaked it out to radio stations, it became a hit, and once Gordy saw that, he gave Gaye carte-blanche to release the album.

I always loved the song 'What’s Going On' – I remember singing it beyond woefully at karaoke once, flushed from the success of 'Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head', and not fully grasping the very different set of skills required.

I didn’t entirely love the album when I first heard it as a teenager – there were parts that seemed a bit naff. It really doesn’t sound so naff now.

Marvin Gaye is probably the greatest male pop singer in history – Sinatra, Presley, Buckley, Redding all at once – Diane Ross is also, I always think, a massively underrated singer. She obviously doesn’t have the power of Aretha Franklin or Tina Turner, but she’s a bit like David Bowie, in a way, in that, though the basic timbre of her voice is quite light, it rises to every occasion – she does justice to 'River Deep Mountain High', 'I’m Gonna Make You Love Me', finds something extra. Her duet with Marvin Gaye on 'You Are Everything' is one of the greatest.

It is mind-blowing watching the documentary – look, there’s Diana Ross, there’s Smokey Robinson, there’s Stevie Wonder, there’s Michael Jackson …

… maybe there really was something in the air …

A thing I always find amazing is that Prince, Michael Jackson and Madonna were born within 3 months of each other in states on the Great Lakes. I mean, it’s hardly the same street, there were 100s of kms between them, but still.

Just like the thing that amazes me about the Beatles is not, per se, that Lennon and McCartney existed, but that the third guy wrote 'Something', 'Here Comes the Sun' and 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps'.

But then again, the reason he wrote them is because he met Lennon and McCartney and George Martin.

So, you see, with Berry Gordy at the head, how Motown just sprouted more and more geniuses.

Motown is surely the most uncontroversial, undeniable force in popular music – I know no occasion not enlightened by a Motown song, no person I’ve met just doesn’t really like it.

Though, of course, lumping “it” together is way off – ‘Reach Out’ is so different from ‘My Girl’ from ‘ABC’ from ‘Livin’ for the City’ from ‘Heatwave’ from ‘War’.

You get these moments, well-worn but still thrilling, in music documentaries, where they talk about the construction of a song, the calm before the storm, and then you hear it, and the impact depends on just how highly you rate it and how bored you are of certain mythologies.

With the Motown doc, there were several moments like this, and with the Laurel Canyon one too, to be fair – however hackneyed the Crosby and Nash tall tales are, I still love that music – when they talk of the magic of when they first harmonised with Stills, I go, yep, fair enough.

The two scenes are not diametrically opposed – did you know Neil Young was briefly in a group signed to Motown called The Mynah Birds? The psychedelic soul of the Temptations, the 70s Stevie Wonder albums and 'What’s Going On' have plenty in common with the ideology of Laurel Canyon. Motown moved to LA at the end of the 60s, became a slightly different, but still magnificent, entity.

Dylan lingers in both tales – the first track on Motown’s first Chartbusters compilation is Stevie Wonder’s version of 'Blowin’ in the Wind'. His famous line about Smokey Robinson being America’s greatest poet is mentioned by John Legend.

Anyway, I had a crack at a Motown compilation and a Laurel Canyon compilation – the former has pretty clear guidelines, the latter is a bit all over the shop, in terms of what constitutes “Laurel Canyon”. I didn’t think about either for long.

MOTOWN

1. Heatwave
2. You Are Everything
3. I Want You Back
4. Love Child
5. Just My Imagination
6. What's Going On
7. Tracks of My Tears
8. What Becomes of the Broken Hearted
9. He's Misstra Know-It-All
10. Easy
11. Reach Out I'll be There
12. Ain't No Mountain High Enough
13. I'm Gonna Make You Love Me
14. Dancing in the Streets
15. For Once in My Life
16. War
17. Ball of Confusion
18. Hold On I'm Coming
19. This Ole Heart of Mind
20. My Girl

LAUREL CANYON

1. Alone Again Or
2. The Circle Game
3. Carry On
4. Daydream Believer
5. Make Your Own Kind of Music
6. Light My Fire
7. Suite: Judy Blue Eyes
8. Hot Burrito #1
9. California Dreamin'
10. For a Dancer
11. Fire and Rain
12. California 
13. You've Got a Friend
14. Desperado
15. Slip on Through
16. Simple Man
17. Old Man
18. Mr Tambourine Man
19. Our House
20. 7 and 7 is