The Motown family stages a bittersweet reunion performance
Technically the 25th anniversary of Motown Records should have been celebrated nine months later in January 1984 but that was only one of several details glossed over in staging the landmark television special Motown 25 Yesterday Today Forever.Filmed before a rapturous live audience on March 25 1983 the Motown 25 special is perhaps best remembered for Michael Jacksons performance of Billie Jean which brought the house down and introduced much of the world to the moonwalk.There were other great performances that night too but there were also moments that revealed cracks in the joyous-reunion image that Motown chief Berry Gordy sought to portray.The most glaring breakdown in decorum came during what could have been the evenings greatest triumph the reunion of Diana Ross and the Supremes.
When Ross Mary Wilson and Cindy Birdsong performed together that night for the first time in 13 years they took to the stage with something closer to 20 years worth of unresolved resentment among them.Early in their performance of Someday Well Be Together as Diana slowly moved upstage Mary and Cindy had the audacity to keep stride alongside her.Diana turned around and angrily pushed Mary backa move that was carefully edited out of the later broadcast but which prompted Smokey Robinson and others to take the stage and form an impromptu chorusdemilitarized zone between the warring Supremes.The Battle of the Bands medley between the Temptations and the Four Tops was a much bigger creative success though the biggest individual names in the TemptationsEddie Kendricks and David Ruffinwere absent due to squabbling within the group leaving Melvin Franklin and Otis Williams as the only original Temptations on stage that night.
Also missing from the stage that night was a man whose name was then unfamiliar to all but the most obsessive Motown fans but whose contribution to the labels success was monumental.The late James Jamerson whose bass guitar formed the foundation of almost every great Motown record of the 1960s was in the building that night but as a paying member of the audience seated in the back rows.His own troubles with alcohol abuse played a part in his estrangement from the Motown family but so did a decades-long history of what he and fellow members of the Funk Brothersthe Motown backing bandfelt was a lack of appreciation and respect for their role in creating the famous Motown sound.
