MUSICAL LEGACY
Gordy believes that “there could never be another Motown.”
“To have another Motown you’d need another perfect storm,” he said. “You don’t have the 1960s, the Civil Rights movement, Woodstock, a lot of things. It was a creative period in our history, that’s why there will be other companies, other things, but another Motown? How are you going to duplicate a Marvin Gaye, a Levi Stubbs, a Smokey Robinson, a Gladys Knight and the Pips, a Rick James?”
There may not be another Motown, but Berry Gordy isn’t done yet.
“One thing that shocks me a bit, is when I come to the Motown museum and see, ‘This is where Berry Gordy lived,’ and stuff like that. I want to say, ‘Wait a minute, that’s not me. I’m still a kid!’ Because I’m still feeling really great, the life I live, with the inspirations I have, the Broadway show, a new artist I’m handling …”
The music he’s already produced isn’t a museum piece either.
“It really is a rich record of what it felt like at that moment when things were beginning to change in the ’60s,” said Wayne State’s Herron. “It’s a part of ‘I have a dream,’ the marches, the boycotts. It’s an anthem about us rising to the highest levels. Motown music has so much exuberance, people feel it in their bodies, they need to move around. I play Motown for my classes sometimes, and these kids in their teens don’t have any geezer memories of it. Yet they still have to move when they hear it.”
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