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Monday, October 13, 2008
GIRL (WHY YOU WANNA MAKE ME BLUE)
The Temptations
Temptin' Temptations
Motown : 1965
[Buy It]
SINCE I LOST MY BABY
The Temptations
Temptin' Temptations
Motown : 1965
[Buy It]
YOU'RE MY EVERYTHING
The Temptations
The Temptations With a Lot O' Soul
Motown : 1967
[Buy It]
I WISH IT WOULD RAIN
The Temptations
Wish It Would Rain
Motown : 1968
[Buy It]
I COULD NEVER LOVE ANOTHER (AFTER LOVING YOU)
The Temptations
Wish It Would Rain
Motown : 1968
[Buy It]
JUST MY IMAGINATION (RUNNING AWAY WITH ME)
The Temptations
Sky's the Limit
Motown : 1971
[Buy It]
IS THERE ANYTHING THAT I CAN DO
The Four Tops
Second Album
Motown : 1965
[Buy It]
"Battle Song" (Part 4 of 4)
By Sean Howe
Excerpted from Rock And Roll Cage Match: Music's Greatest Rivalries, Decided; edited by Sean Manning; Crown Books; 2008
[Buy It]
More than anything, the Temptations could make exuberance contagious. True, many of their early songs - including "The Way You Do the Things You Do," "It's Growing," "You've Got to Earn It," and "Get Ready" - retain the stamp of their writer, Smokey Robinson; Eddie Kendricks' falsetto even sounds like Smokey's. But songs cut by the Miracles always had a hazy melancholy that the Temptations' voices (and handclaps, and, in person, the seven-step "Temptation Walk" routine) cut right through. And if "Girl (Why You Wanna Make Me Blue)" and "I'll Be In Trouble" seem ridiculously ebullient given their lyrics, well, ridiculous ebullience isn't something to sneeze at. The world needs to feel goofy sometimes.
The exuberance could also serve as an ironic twist - the joyful call-and-responses of "Since I Lost My Baby" underscore Ruffin's clouds-on-a-sunny-day plaint. In a sad-sack inversion of "My Girl" (the coda even quotes the earlier song's string arrangement), Ruffin leaps into the hopeful bridge section ("inclined to find my baby/been looking everywhere") and steers the course back to misery ("determination is fading fast/inspiration is a thing of the past").
And then there's the greater irony that hangs over so many of the songs: the unhappiness behind the scenes. The subject of the majestic, generous "You're My Everything" was the wife of lyricist Roger Penzabene. She repaid his generosity by compulsively cheating on him. He then wrote "I Wish It Would Rain," and, completing a tragic trilogy, "I Could Never Love Another (After Loving You)," before putting a gun to his head on the last day of 1967. David Ruffin, meanwhile, began riding in a separate limo to concerts, and was finally voted out of the group in 1968. "He was never comfortable in the Temptations," said his brother, Jimmy. "In his heart of hearts, he was a [solo] artist." But his solo career was only sporadically successful, as were attempts at sobriety. He died of an overdose in a Detroit crack house in 1991. Eddie Kendricks left acrimoniously in 1971, after repeated clashes with Otis Williams. Paul Williams, battling depression, alcoholism, and sickle-cell disease (he kept an oxygen tank backstage) also left the group in 1971; a year later, he sat in a parked car a few blocks from the Hitsville studios, wearing only swimming trunks, and shot himself in the head.
* * *
Liz is at her parents' house. Speaking with them, she's found herself in the peculiar position of alternately defending herself and defending Bill. She calls home every night to talk to the kids, and says she'll be home soon. On Tuesday, Liz starts crying on the phone, and tries to regain her composure before Andrea hands the phone to Phillip. But Phillip needs to go to the bathroom, and starts tugging on Andrea's arm, telling her to hand over the phone because he needs to pee and wants to talk first.
* * *
Soon we'll be married, and raise a family
In a cozy little home out in the country
With two children, maybe three
I tell you, I can visualize it all
This couldn't be a dream, for too real it all seems
The last song that Paul Williams and Eddie Kendricks sang on before leaving the Temptations, "Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me)," is without a doubt the group's greatest post-Ruffin recording. Kendrick's sad falsetto floats over swirling strings, horns, and the group's dreamlike legato backing.
* * *
"Oh how I hate to wake up, 'cause that's when we have to break up"
-"Is There Anything That I Can Do" (The Four Tops, 1965)
* * *
After the success of the Four Tops/Temptations team-up on the Motown 25 special, the groups record "Battle Song (I'm the One)"; it appears on the Temptations' 1983 Back to Basics LP. Really, nobody - not the Tops, not the Tempts, not the listener - wins. Sometimes a whole is less than the sum of its parts.
* * *
"If I've ever, ever dreamed before, somebody tell me I'm dreaming now"
-"Shake Me, Wake Me" (The Four Tops, 1966)
* * *
After Bill drops the kids off with Liz, he comes home and tries to continue with the Tempts. But he still can't shake the idea that Ruffin is just too in-control to be sharing any kind of grief. "I've been unfaithful, darling, I've caused you misery," he sings jauntily on "All on Me," with all the self-reflection of a sailor on leave. Bill finds his old cassette of Motown: 25 #1 Hits in 25 Years, gets in his car, and listens to "I Can't Help Myself" over and over. But every time he rewinds the tape, he hears the end of "My Girl," and David Ruffin's triumphal fadeout mocks Bill just like it did in the summer of 1983: "I've/ev/en/got/the/month/of May with my girl..."
This concludes the fourth and final installment of Sean Howe's "Battle Song." If you've enjoyed it, be sure to check out Rock and Roll Cage Match, on which you can find more info via the link at the top of this post.Labels: four tops, motown, sean howe, temptations
posted by Brian
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