I Love Detroit - Motor Citys Burning BBC 4 by Rob Moss

The title sounded fantastic. ‘Motor City’s Burning’ – ‘A documentary looking at how, during the 1960s, the blue collar Midwestern city of Detroit became home to a musical revolution that captured the sound of a nation in upheaval’ and  ‘Detroit from Motown to the Stooges’ to quote the BBC’s own promotional blurb. Surely this would be a detailed examination of the circumstances that created one of the most influential musical styles in popular music – ‘The Motown Sound’?  The title implied that some scrutiny of the causes and effects of the 1967 Detroit riots would feature in the programme too. And wouldn’t the BBC, an institutional universally respected and admired, with a substantial budget provided by the British taxpayer, be able to gain access to unique footage, interviews and other journalistic extras that would create a truly ground breaking, and long overdue, assessment of an essential era in a unique age?



Adherents to the genre could almost predict the content. A brief history of Detroit, tracing its initial role as a fur trading settlement in the 18th century to the arrival of Henry Ford at the beginning of the 20th century and the creation of the automobile industry, the important role the city played in the escape of slaves from the South during the 19th century, the strained race relations that dogged life in the city throughout most of the 20th century as huge numbers of black families migrated north, and the affluence of the post war period, culminating in the 1960s, that spawned a generation of superbly talented and creative people in and around Detroit. This would be followed by an assessment of the social and cultural landscape around the city in the 1950s, and how this impacted on Berry Gordy Jnr. A brief description of Gordy’s family background, writing career and musical grounding would provide an insight into how he set up his business operation, and, perhaps more importantly, who was involved in the earliest recording sessions and organizational structures he put in place.

Musicians and producers like Paul Riser, Richard Wylie, Robert Bateman, Andrew Terry, to name a few, still live in Detroit and could have been interviewed. Gordy himself would possibly have cooperated, as would important figures like Mickey Stevenson, who acted as Motown’s A&R Director from the early days, and many others who were closely associated with the company in a variety of different roles. They are not difficult to locate. A closer inspection of the other studios and rival record companies that sprung up after Gordy’s initial success, the emergence of theatres, nightclubs and bars that evolved into a vibrant social scene, and the local media support, including radio, television and print, that fuelled the ‘musical revolution’ would have all provided a much clearer understanding of how the entire city s pride and participation was interlaced with Motown’s phenomenal success. The 1967 Detroit Riots became a pivotal point in the city’s recent history, and could, if done properly, have been the subject of a separate documentary. Its effect was destructive, debilitating and long lasting. Gordy’s decision to move his operation to Los Angeles in the early 1970s also had a demoralising effect on the city. He would later regret it.

In reality ‘Motor City Burning’ is a poorly planned, lazily researched, inaccurately focused hotch potch of images and sound bites that distorts historical events, omits crucial facts, misrepresents significant issues and belies the achievements and accomplishments of many talented individuals. It is produced with a biased focus that many people, familiar with the history and development of black music, have come to expect from so called ‘professionals’ in the music media, who display a condescending, patronising disdain for most forms of black music, choosing, instead, to focus on what they believe to be the true font of musical, creative genius – the white, frequently drug induced, ‘rock’ performer. And this is exactly what happens in this programme. Instead of a detailed, focused appraisal of the rise and reign of the music produced predominantly by black people in Detroit over longer than a decade, we get an over emphasized misrepresentation of the relative success, merit and historical significance of two local white bands who achieved limited exposure for a much shorter period – MC5 and The Stooges. They receive a disproportionate amount of coverage considering their minute role in the history of the city’s music. In a programme lasting just under an hour, interviews with former members and their cronies last for over a third of the time. There is even a hint that the ‘ …musical revolution that captured the sound of a nation in upheaval.’   alluded to in the blurb, could actually be them. Ridiculous. No other white performers are even mentioned even though locals Bob Seeger, Mitch Ryder, The Reflections, Del Shannon, The Shades of Blue, Bill Haley, and even Sonny Bono, were of far greater significance.

 This programme was obviously produced by someone who neither adequately knew the subject well enough, nor appeared to care – such was the historical inaccuracy and factual distortion throughout. John Lee Hooker was erroneously represented as the sole influence on aspiring black performers and musicians in the pre Motown days, even though he wasn’t even from Detroit and was only one of many blues, jazz and gospel performers who collectively shaped the local musical environment. He became popular with white musicians and their audiences in the 1970s, which probably explains his exaggerated presence in this piece. The coverage of Berry Gordy’s rise to prominence recycled the time ravaged highlights taken straight from the Newsround archives, complete with a BBC radio sound bite from 2000 where he apparently confirms the pop press’ pet criticism against Motown – that it was a glorified conveyor belt system based on the automobile assembly line. Insulting and incorrect, and probably more indicative of his PR skills than his original intent. The laziness and lethargy of the researchers became clearer as the oft shown footage of Martha & The Vandellas ‘Nowhere to run’ was clumsily represented as some kind of seminal moment in Motown’s development, which it clearly was not. One can almost imagine the instructions in the pre production meeting. “We haven’t got much footage and we’ve got no inclination to find any new stuff, so you’ll have to contort and adapt what we’ve got to the story you choose to tell. Use your imagination. As long as MC5 and Iggy are prominent. It won’t matter about the Motown bit and no one will realise, or care, anyway.” One of the Supremes was interviewed. She suggested that the artists had some kind of input into the material they were given to record, which is risible. It is now well known that Diana Ross’ intimate relationship with Berry Gordy had more of a bearing on the Supremes’ subsequent choice to receive the best of the HDH material, rather than their singing talent. Many believe that The Marvelettes, The Velvelettes, The Monitors or The Elgins were far superior.

Having conceded that, by 1965, Motown had become ‘The Sound of Young America’ in terms of the continued and consistent national success of its productions, the programme then made the most absurd statement of all. In a fatuous attempt to link the civil unrest of the time with the (apparent) aspirations of young activists, it stated that “Berry Gordy’s manufactured pop was not the sound of young black Detroit.” and then switched the focus to The Great March to Freedom, that had taken place in the city a full two years earlier, in 1963! Bizarre. This was the first in a bewildering tangle of contradictions, misinterpretations and flawed renderings that characterized the piece as a whole. Two union people then appeared, to state that they, as representatives of their organisation, had always loved the music made by Motown, but that it didn’t have a lot in common with their causes. What did they want Berry Gordy to do? Re write songs that would be more accommodating? ‘Stop (work) in the name of love’ perhaps or maybe ‘Get ready (to strike)’ A brief description of the 1967 riots was followed by a seemingly unrelated interview bite that asked locals if they hated, or would like to murder, white people, and a general agreement from several interviewees (white and black) that Motown music brought people together in apparent love, peace and harmony. Strange. And the weird and wacky statements just kept on comin’. “Music was profoundly affected by the riots.” has no basis in truth. Despite Martha Reeves’ assertion that ‘Dancing in the street’ became an anthem for the riots and was written by Marvin Gaye with the event in mind, which couldn’t have possibly been true as it was written and first recorded in 1964, the riots had no direct effect, whatsoever, on the style or nature of the songs Motown were recording at that time. Smokey Robinson did record a song, while the riots were occurring, called ‘I care about Detroit’ which spoke of civic pride and urged restraint and was played regularly on local radio in an attempt to calm the situation, but that was it. The programme didn’t mention this incidentally, as one might expect. It was suggested that the Supremes ‘Love child’ was written with the riots (and the ‘free love’ mantra) in mind, but this was also untrue. The riots were cited as a major influence on the creation and content of Marvin Gaye’s masterpiece, ‘What’s going on’ but this is, again, inaccurate. It was written over four years after the disorder, in 1971, and focused on the Vietnam War, and the critical social issues of the era in which it was composed. One of the most misleading statements contained in the piece concerns Motown’s departure from Detroit. “Finally, beginning to diversify in the wake of the riots, Motown would leave Detroit.” Nonsense. Berry Gordy’s decision to move to Los Angeles had everything to do with his interest in making movies and nothing to do with diversification (whatever was meant by that), as was suggested. One significant event that did take place after the riots was the departure of the Holland/Dozier/Holland writing team from the company, but this didn’t merit any mention on this programme – even though their absence left a massive creative void that was never adequately filled.

The greatest failure of ‘Motor City’s Burning’ however, lay in the numerous errors of omission – and there were many. Very little historical or cultural background was provided, either in the introduction or throughout, and this is crucial to a documentary of this kind. There wasn’t even a map to show where Detroit was situated in relation to other major U.S. cities. Key figures like Della Reese, Jackie Wilson, Aretha Franklin, who grew up in the city, were omitted completely, as were members of the most successful group of musicians to EVER record music – Motown’s session musicians, now collectively known as the Funk Brothers. Not a mention. And these are individuals who played on more hits that reached number one on pop charts all over the world than Elvis Presley, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and The Beach Boys COMBINED! Nothing. Incredible. Dr. Martin Luther King was featured in the section about civil unrest and the struggle for change without any mention of the fact that Berry Gordy created a separate label (Black Forum) at Motown to release all his major speeches on record, along with many other prominent black leaders of the time. On a similar theme, the role of the Black Panther party was discussed. Not with former members of the party itself, but with members of MC5! How difficult could it have been to have found just one ex member who could have recounted his experiences in those tumultuous times. Of the 43 people killed in the riots, 33 were black, yet a white person was interviewed. The implication that the riots were some kind of political uprising by sections of the black community against social deprivation and racial oppression received enthusiastic endorsement, even though many people at the time and since, black and white, saw it as nothing more than lawlessness and disorder. This latter point was not made. And so it continued. Of the possible topics outlined at the beginning of this critique, none were included. This so called ‘documentary’ remains a poor piece of journalism that is unworthy of the subjects it intended to cover. It could have been so different.