Berry is a businessman and a songwriter.

We were courted by Motown in the 1960s. At the time Bob Seger had a number one record on Detroit radio, so Berry thought he needed some white rock and roll on his label to compete. (Nothing racist, nobody at Motown seemed to notice what color you were - just if you could sing/play or not).

We were his first choice.

We had been opening concerts for major headliners at the time and did some work for Motown as well. We had a manager who hired lawyers to negotiate a deal for us.

They started asking for 4¢ per record and 3 releases per year. Negotiations went on and on, 3¢, weeks later 2.5¢, more time passes 2¢ and then Motown quit talking to us and quit hiring us.

The Sunliners were Berry's second choice, they got the gig. Because Motown owns band names and didn't own the name "The Sunliners", they changed their name to Rare Earth under Motown ownership.

I don't know what kind of a deal the Sunliners got, but I doubt if they did any better.

At one time there were a half dozen or so touring groups for each Motown act that they could get away with (Temptations, Miracles, Four Tops, etc.). In an interview Smokey Robinson once said that if they ever had a complete Miracles reunion, they would need to rent a football stadium. Of course he was exaggerating.

So you decide. Motown was famous for not paying their stars any more money than they had to. But you could say the same for RCA Victor, Warner Brothers, Capitol, Columbia and the other big labels of the day.

Plus at the time, the record companies took inflated recording session costs, promotional costs, and distribution costs out of your royalties, so you had to sell a million copies or so before seeing any royalties.
Motown owned the name of your group, and all songs were published through Jobete publishing (owned by Berry Gordy). And the publisher usually made more money per record than the performer.

It was also common to put an in-house songwriter's name on the record, even if he/she had nothing to do with it - that way the record company would get half the songwriting royalties.

And back then, groups weren't into merchandising either; no T-shirt sales or anything else. It just wasn't done (or even thought of).

But they owned the game, and owned the program managers of the radio stations, so if you wanted to play, you had to play their game.

But without them, you didn't have a chance of getting out of the singles bars.

If your record went viral, and sold much more than the record company projected, you could negotiate a better deal for the next one. And if your were an automatic (your song would be a hit with little or no promotion), you could negotiate an even better deal.

That's the way it was in the late 1960s. I don't think Berry was any better or worse than the average big label exec.

Notes

Last edited by Notes Norton; 07/19/14 05:43 AM.
Bob "Notes" Norton smile Norton Music
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