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.
You'll get lots of opinions on him, many bittersweet. to add to Notes comments; He also re-purposed the songs he owned so he could make more $$. How many people from Motown recorded 'I heard it through the Grapevine'? They were told to.
At the height of it Mr Gordy owned most of the city block they were located on, and newly signed acts had to attend 'school' in other buildings to learn how to act like a star. I don't remember how they paid for this.
As Notes mentioned, they owned the access to the radio programmers, which itself turned into a game. Radio management would make rules like no more than three songs from a given label per hour .. so Barry just made new labels. Same studio, same musicians, same printing press, new label. He did create a pretty amazing business from the few hundred he initially borrowed to get started.
He then left Detroit and headed to LA to make movies like the Wiz.
The old studios are still here in Detroit and being maintained by a foundation (not Mr Gordy). The foundation has received generous donations from the likes of Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney, and now survives on tourist money. Stop in and see some history while it is still available.
I do not work here, but the benefits are still awesome Make your sound your own!
Let me add to rharv's comments. If you are a recording geek and in the Detroit area, you owe it to yourself to go to the Motown museum which is where most of the hits were made.
When we cut some demos at Motown, we did it at the newer downtown studio, not Hitsville or as the other musicians called it, "The Snake Pit".
Named for all the wires laying on the ground, the musicians seemed to prefer the snake pit to the new studio. They said it had better sound and more soul.
We cut some instrumental tracks, were paid scale for them, and if they were ever used, I never heard them.
Anyway it was great being treated as a peer by the likes of the "Funk Brothers" (although nobody ever called them that that I heard), Marvin Gaye, Jr. Walker, and others.
I look back and am a little disappointed that we didn't get the deal, but I can't blame the lawyers who were negotiating for us. I was 19 or so at the time, and definitely couldn't have done any better. So rather than regret, I try to remember all the excitement and the good things that were happening to me back then.
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