Lamont, good morning. On behalf of our members, my staff and myself, not to mention the entire human race, I'd like to present you with the Living Legend Award for making our world so wonderful. [Standing ovation]
Thank you. Thank you so much. You all are responsible for this. Thank you so much.
I'm just so thrilled to have you here. I don't know how many of you guys know this, but six or seven years ago we had Lamont here on the Hit Songwriters Panel. When we played his montage he got a standing O like you guys just gave him, and I saw him start to tear up. I looked out at the audience and there were a thousand people in the audience wiping tears from their eyes. This is a man who created music that is known all over the globe. You would have to be in the remotest village to have not have heard your music. It's mind-blowing to me. Do you ever wake up and pinch yourself and think, "Look what I've done"?
You know, I used to, I guess, when I was younger. When I was in my teens, I used to feel that because I wanted that acceptance. I guess I wanted to prove something to my mother and my family, because she wanted to put me in a factory or in the armed services or something-not that that's not a good thing. But I said, "No, you don't understand. I'm gonna buy you a house one day." And she said, "Boy, just get your behind into a job at the factory." Being in Detroit, everybody went to the factory, you know. And I said, "You don't understand, Ma. I've got a callin' on me." Seriously, she just thought I was talkin' stuff, and when my first thing started to happen, that look on her face was like, "Who is this kid? I brought this kid into the world." And I'm lookin' at her sayin', "I told you, didn't I?" Those were some proud moments.
I never pinched myself. That was short-lived, I should say, that ego thing, because stuff was coming so fast and so often-so many hits-that it became scary. I mean, oh my God, what is this? You know what I mean? Everything that you touch seemed to go straight to #1.
You must have touched a lot of everything. I want the audience to hear this. This is the short version: You have had 54 #1 hits with the songs that you wrote while you were with Holland-Dozier-Holland; you have had 13 #1 hits in a row with the Supremes...in a row! Plus a 30-year solo career, which has earned you a nod as the Best New Male Pop Vocalist from Billboard; you did the collaboration with Phil Collins on the soundtrack for "Buster" that got you the Grammy, a Golden Globe, a Brit award, and an Oscar nomination; and, most recently, you received the USC Thornton School of Music's highest honor, the Thornton Legacy Award, and now, the Living Legend Award.
My wife and I had dinner with Lamont and his wife Barbara. Barbara, are you over there? Stand up for a second. I want you guys to see that there is a great woman behind every man. She is such a sweetheart.
Yeah, we've been together 33 years.
It's so funny. At dinner the other night I noticed that it's like Lamont lives on another planet and is not aware of himself, because he is so unbelievably humble. It's mind-blowing. How old were you when you wrote your first song?
Well, I wrote my first poem, which was called "A Song," when I was 11-years-old. I was in a school called Edgar Allen Poe Elementary, which was apropos. There was a woman there-I must mention her name-her name was Edith Burke. You talk about school teachers. School teachers are the most important thing in our lives as a society to help our kids develop into, hopefully, good human beings. She kept my poem-which was called "A Song"-on the blackboard for at least 30 days. Usually, she would change it every week, but nobody had anything that she thought was as poignant as this poem from an 11-year-old kid that expressed or talked about the inner workings of a song, and what effect it had on mankind. You know, hell and the savage beast, and all of that, making people do things they ordinarily wouldn't do. Because the song was so deep and what I said was so strong-and for an 11-year-old kid to feel like this or know this and not even have lived that long-she thought it was worth keeping on the board that long. And when she did that, she started a songwriter. She made a songwriter out of me.
Did you ever have the opportunity to tell her that?
No. I wish that she were here. I don't think she's still with us, but every chance I get I try to throw her name out to show people how important school teachers are to me and to all of us. They should be paid more and appreciated more. [Applause]
I'm sure her payment also came in the form of watching you be so successful in your career.
At school, there was another guy there named Mr. Lindenbaum. He was my trainer. He wanted me to become a track star until he saw my name in Billboard about Motown and the hits. He called me up and he was so excited. He wanted me to be a track star... I was a fast runner. In the neighborhood I was in, you had to be. So I could run, really run, but then I took a different route, you might say. Anyway, it is so gratifying to have...and continue to do what I do. I thank God every day for letting me put my name on his music. And that's how I stay humble.
So, when you were first starting out, did you set out to change the world? When you were architecting the Motown sound, when you worked with Brian and Eddie, did you guys ever sit down and have the conversation, "Let's try and do something different," or did you just hook up and start writing and it just came out?
Brian and I teamed up first. Before he and I teamed up, he had already had a hit called "Please Mr. Postman" that he had written with his partner Robert Bateman-Robert Bateman was a neighbor of mine. I had just signed with Motown. Actually, I had already been with the Gordy family. I was with Gwen, Barry's sister, first, whose company folded. So, I just shifted over to Barry. Barry said, "Man, come over here. I need songwriters. Why don't you put your career on hold and help me write and produce, and help me get the company off the ground?" So I did that, and that's how it started.
After that happened, I teamed up with Brian Holland. He heard me playing the song "Forever," which I did for Marvin Gaye. He stuck this bridge in there and that became the beginning of the collaboration. A year or so later, and after so many requests... I was trying to do both, write music and lyrics. Brian is not a lyricist. He's a melody man, and also a great producer and a recording engineer.
So Eddie Holland said, "Look, man, I really don't want to sing anymore. If we got together, we could get more things out." We could become a machine within a machine, or a factory within a factory. So that's what we did. We teamed up. When I started a lyric or an idea, I would then pass it on to him [Eddie], while Brian and I were in the studio working on other things. We had our own assembly line goin'. By doing this, we were able to beat out the rest of the producers then and come up with more hits. Of course, a lot of them didn't like that because it was hard for anybody to get their songs out. But Barry (Gordy, founder of Motown records) was lovin' it, and he trusted us to do whatever. Eventually he would say, "Hey, you guys do what you want to do." He would come to us and say, "What are you guys putting out on the Supremes or the Four Tops?" He trusted us that much.
One of the things I try to push to our members a lot is collaboration, because two minds are often better than one. You get a different perspective on something. You've answered this question partially already, but when you guys collaborate, did you come into the room with a title, with one line of the hook, and was there some division of labor-which I guess you've already acknowledged-or was it just let the muse flow and whatever happened happened?
All of the above. You know, it could be a song title, it could be a melody or some type of idea for a song, or a situation, an idea I caught from the soap operas I watch every day-"All My Children" and "One Life to Live." Check it out.
So when you left Motown you had hits on your own-"Fish Ain't Bitin' " and "Trying to Hold On to My Woman." How did it feel for you? So much has been made about the three of you. What did it feel like when you discovered you could do this stuff on your own?
Well, we were together from '62 to '72, and I decided that it was time for me to get out of that box. Not that I was tired of collaboration, because when you get older you start to realize that we are all collaborating, you know. Life doesn't exist without collaboration. Once you get that in your head and realize that "I'm gonna do this on my own" is impossible. You do nothing on your own. Everything is a collaboration, whether you're getting it from God... Like the Bible says, "You take one step, I'll take two." Think about that. It is all a collaboration. Whether you want to do something by yourself, believe it or not, that's a collaboration going on, because eventually you have to take your stuff and give it to whoever has the power to promote it, the guys that work the record. It's hundreds of people that you are collaborating with-the DJs the promoters, the publicity people, and on and on. You don't do anything alone in any business, let alone songwriting. So, that's my sermon for today. [Applause]
I think most of us in this room would think that having had so much success early on, would have caused most of us to retire and move to an island somewhere. But you've kept writing and performing and producing on your own since '72. Right now you've teamed up with the Holland brothers again for a onetime reunion to work with them on the score for a Broadway musical. Do you want to tell the audience about that?
I've been chasing that Broadway thing for years. This opportunity came to me through a guy named Paul Lambert and his partner Jonas Nielson, who are first time producers. They had this feeling-or this love affair-going on in their minds for Holland-Dozier-Holland doing the music to this idea they had for The First Wives Club, which is based on the movie. They called me up and asked if I would be interested in doing it, and I said, "Of course." I've got about three or four musicals warming up in the bullpen, so this was a door-opener for me. They said that one thing they wanted was for me to re-team with ex-partners, the Hollands, and I said, "Of course, whatever it takes." So, we got together and talked about it, and I said, "Don't worry about it. I'll take the lead and you guys just jump in whenever you feel something."
Then what happened was we got into a room and it was just like it was yesterday, you know. The muses came and the stuff started. The beats and all of the stuff, we started doing our thing. The music to The First Wives Club is just extraordinary. As you know, I don't brag about what it is that I've done musically, because I can't take the credit for it, like I say. But this was a holy experience to have all of the feelings revisited, that feeling coming back in that room when we started to write the music for First Wives Club, which will be out in July of next year at the Old Globe where we'll be testing out and getting all the bugs out of it before we go into New York.
When you walked back into the room with those guys - I know there have been some issues in the past that have been resolved and you guys still talk every now and then - so were there lots of hugs and tears?
Yeah, more or less. A little bit of both probably. But we've all grown up and we've gotten the issues out on the table that I had with Barry and with the Hollands. That's what I was saying about the collaboration thing. It's almost a must in anything in life, and you have to learn how to manipulate that in a sense. You have to realize that it's part of the work ethic of success and succeeding in life. Like I get up at 10 o'clock every day...
You write every day you were telling me.
Every day, seven days a week.
Can you imagine that? I don't know how much you're worth. I'm not going to ask you here, but your songs play every day all over the world. The performance royalties must be amazing. So, what is it that gets you out of bed and makes you write every day? Do you need to exercise that muscle? How do you stay fresh and current?
That's part of it. But it's down to you use it or you lose it. It's down to discipline. There's a work ethic that I have, thanks to my training at Motown, you might say. The guy who had the best number would get the release, that's how it started out at Motown. So you learned to be in there jabbing, punching away. You had to be on top of your game and work around the clock, and you don't take anything for granted. And I never throw anything away. What I do, and the way I work... Say I write a song on Monday. Or it might be three or four songs on a Monday and on Tuesday and on Wednesday. Then, I don't listen to those songs the rest of the week until the following Monday. Therefore, I can critique my songs more objectively. I can stand back a week later and say that it's either great or it's crap.
Do you know when you've written a stinker and should just drop it and move on?
Yeah. But I'm telling you something, there are no stinkers when you write. It may not be for that particular time, because I've had some really lousy things that I didn't like one year, but then I'll pick it up two years later down the line, and that song is the exact song that is needed for a movie theme or for something.
Do you literally save every one of them?
I save everything. I've got boxes and stuff all cluttered up in the attic and in storage. There have got to be at least 10,000 songs, to say the least. You're talkin' about, oh, 40 or 50 years of writing that I've collected since I was a teenager, you know. I try to keep everything... There's no way of keeping it in order, but, when you're looking for something, oh man, it's a doozey.
Why haven't you ever done a Lamont basement tapes retrospective, where you have someone who knows you and knows your music and dig through that stuff?
That's a great idea.
I'll take 10 percent. We'll talk. [Laughter] You've collaborated with one of my old friends, somebody I worked with a lot in the '70s, Eric Clapton-just a lovely, lovely guy.
A lovely guy, and a talented guy. We had great times writing some songs, two particular songs, for his August album-"Run" and "Hung Up on Your Love Again." Phil [Colllins, who produced and drummed on the album] called me when he was in town, and they were recording at Ocean Way on Sunset. He called me and he said, "Lamont, you got anything for Eric?" I said, "Wow." It kind of reminded me of the old days, because when I had ideas like [he sings] "How sweet it is to be loved by you," and I put that in my back pocket. Then Barry would come in and say, "Marvin's going out of town. Anybody got any songs, some stuff for Marvin Gaye?" And I said, "Not really." But in the back of my mind, one day I'm gonna come out with my own album, so I'm stuffin' my back pocket. "I don't have nothin' right now. Maybe I can work on something." And then after a while, he says, "Man, this guy's leavin' in a couple weeks and we still don't have anything." I said, "Shit." Because I'm thinkin', like, let somebody else come up with something. I'm keepin' this one for myself. Then I wind up givin' it up. I said, "Well, I got this little song." So I brought it out. [he sings] "How sweet it is..." "That's what I'm talkin' about!" Yeah, I know.
Please join us for Part Two of this interview next month!
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