E-mail a friendSmokey Robinson
airdate August 18, 2009
William "Smokey" Robinson is known for his falsetto voice and has recorded more than 35 Top-40 hits. But with more than 4,000 songs to his credit, he's also one of pop's most influential songwriters. His writing and producing talent was critical to the Motown label's early success, and his songs can be heard on film and TV soundtracks. His latest release, "Time Flies When You're Having Fun," is original material recorded the old-fashioned way—with a band in the studio. Robinson is also a 2006 Kennedy Center honoree.
Motown legend reflects on the loss of Michael Jackson and what it was like speaking at his memorial. (1:55)
Full interview. (25:09)
Smokey Robinson
Tavis: I'm always pleased, honored, humbled, to have Smokey Robinson on this program. All this year, as you know, we've been featuring conversations with great Motown legends as we celebrate the 50th anniversary of this great American institution known as Motown. But before there was Marvin or Stevie or even the Jackson 5, there was a guy named William "Smokey" Robinson. Along with the Miracles, Smokey helped put Motown on the map with their first number one single back in 1960.
His new CD is called, appropriately, "Time Flies When You're Having Fun." Here now, some of the video for the new single, "Don't Know Why."
[Clip]
Tavis: When I first heard this song on the radio, Smokey, from you, three things went through my mind almost immediately. Number one, what an honor it must be to have Smokey, with all the songs he's written, cover your song. (Laughter) That's the first thought. Norah Jones is somewhere, grinning ear to ear. You got Smokey Robinson, one of the greatest songwriters of all time, covering your stuff, number one.
The second thought I had was - not that there was any doubt about this - but when I heard your cover of it I was like, Smokey's still got it. Smokey has still got it.
Smokey Robinson: Well, thank you.
Tavis: And the third thought I had was why, of all the songs you could have covered, why you chose that one.
Robinson: I'm a song lover, man, and some songs just give me that impact when I first hear them, and that was one of those songs. Before I even knew what it was about, I heard it, I loved the melody, I loved her take on it - they had sort of like a calypso kind of version of it for her. And it just got my attention right away.
And then after I learned what it was saying, it's such an abstract love song, man, it's so abstract, I just loved the song. And I'm a song lover, man. I've recorded a lot of songs that are not mine.
Tavis: When you hear a song like that, of any song, and you decide that you want to cover, you want to record it, tell me more about Smokey's process. We know about your process as a songwriter - we'll talk more about that in a second - but what's your process when you decide you're going to cover this song for putting your own flavor on it?
Robinson: Well, that's what - I have to do that first. I hear it over and over and over again, and then I decide how would I want to sing this song if I was singing it? And I do that first, and then I get together with my conductor, my pianist, a guy named James Pappas - we call him Demetrius - and there's two guys, in fact - a guy named David Garfield, they're both keyboard players, and David Garfield, in fact, worked on this one with me. And we just get an arrangement together, go in the studio, and knock it out.
Tavis: Because you're such a genius and I'm always trying to learn from these geniuses, I hear what you did with the song, but take me back to when you were working on it and again, it's a process question - what did you think you had to do with it to make it work, to put your own thing on it?
Robinson: I just thought I had to do it the way I felt it, and not try to copy the record.
Tavis: What's that mean, practically speaking? Changing keys, changing tempo -
Robinson: Oh, yes, of course I had to change the key. My key is lower than her key. And I changed the tempo, because I heard it - for me, I heard it slower, ballady, rather - hers is kind of like up-tempo, but I heard it for me slower and like a ballad and tried to make it sweet. And so that's what we tried to do with it.
Tavis: What's it mean for you to be putting out - what does it mean, number one, and did you plan it this way, to put out another record in the 50th year of the Motown celebration?
Robinson: It just happened that way. Because I was just working on it to get it together to put it out, and I was doing it the old-fashioned way. I was in there and I actually - my CD that came out before this one was a CD of all standards, and it was like I had planned on recording that one live and never got around to doing it.
So I said, “I'm going to record it live in the studio.” So, Tavis, I got all the people in the studio at the same time, which is unheard of in today's record market. Today, people record - because you're recording on a computer (unintelligible) Pro Tools, basically - and people who play and sing on the same record don't even see each other.
Tavis: In different countries sometimes.
Robinson: Yeah, yeah, in different countries. (Laughter) Different times - especially different times. And one guy's there at 4:00 and another guy comes in at 6:00, and like that. So I said, “Hey, I want to go back to the old way and record it with everybody being there at the same time.” Because when I first started, man, if you weren't in the studio, you weren't going to be on that record.
Tavis: Right. (Laughter)
Robinson: You know what I mean? You missed that one. If you weren't in the studio while it was being recorded, you just were not on it.
Tavis: Yeah, so (unintelligible) you better be on time.
Robinson: Yeah, you know what I mean? Absolutely. So I just want to do it that way because we had a ball, man. It's like doing a concert in the studio, because everybody's playing and feeding off of each other and getting feeling from each other, and we had a great time, man. Stop, eat some lunch, get back. (Laughter)
Tavis: How do you feel, though - I want to get inside of you. How does it feel, though, for you to still be relevant, to still have the pipes, to still be able to do this 50 years after Motown started?
Robinson: I am blessed. I'm absolutely blessed, man, because, see, I tell people when your job is something that you absolutely love and you earn a living doing what you absolutely love and you can't think of anything that you would rather do with your life, that's a blessing. So I'm blessed, man.
And to be around for 50 years, which is way, way, way beyond my wildest dreams, but it goes by overnight, and especially when you're enjoying yourself. That's why I called this CD "Time Flies When You're Having Fun," because that's exactly how I feel about my life, man.
Time flies when you're having fun. I can't believe that we're celebrating the 50th anniversary of Motown. That seems like about maybe two, three years ago, when Berry came to say, "Hey, man, I'm going to start me a record company." I said, "Okay, cool." (Laughter) And he sat us down. There were five people there that day. I saw Berry on here too.
Tavis: Yeah, I got a clip I want to play for you in just a second.
Robinson: Yeah, and I want to clear up something -
Tavis: Okay, hold up, hold up, there. Hold up.
Robinson: He said - no, he - (laughter) said that he could beat me at something. But don't even buy that. (Laughter)
Tavis: What Smokey - I'm going to jump in here. We've had Berry Gordy on two or three times. We did a two-night special with him earlier in the year, he came back on around the sad time of Michael Jackson's passing, which I want to talk to Smokey about in just a second. But Berry was saying that he wanted to be and thought he was at one point a better songwriter than Smokey, and as time went on, Smokey got it. Smokey just came and got it.
Robinson: Well, you see - Berry's my best friend, man, and so I was saying that when he started Motown, man, that day, there were five people there. There was him and four other people, and we were there and he sat us down and he said, "Okay, I'm starting this record company, and we are not going to just make Black music. We're going to make music for everybody. We're going to make music for the world. We're going to make music with some great beats and great stories, and we're always going to make quality music."
So that's what we set out to do. And to think that Motown - as far as I'm concerned, Motown is a once-in-a-lifetime musical event, because nothing like that had happened before then. I doubt seriously if anything like that will happen ever again.
Tavis: Never.
Robinson: But when I first met Berry, man, prior to him starting Motown, I considered myself to be a songwriter. I had been writing songs since I was about five years old, man.
Tavis: Five?
Robinson: Yeah, yeah, yeah, five.
Tavis: Wow. (Laughs)
Robinson: The first song that I ever wrote that anybody other than my mom and me heard, I was six years old and I was in a school play in elementary school, and in the play I was Uncle Remus. You know Uncle Remus, the old Black folklore teller?
Tavis: Absolutely.
Robinson: Told all the kids how the animals got to be like they are, why the pig had the curly tail, why the zebra had stripes, all that? So I was Uncle Remus, and my auditorium teacher had this little melody that she was playing on the piano at the beginning of the play while we were rehearsing it, and at the end of the play.
And I said, "Ms. Campbell," I said, "Can I write some words for that?" She said, "Oh, yeah, go ahead, write some words." So I wrote some words and she let me sing it at the beginning and the end of the play. And my mom was there that night, man. You would have thought I was George Gershwin or somebody like that. (Laughter)
My mom called people she didn't even know, man. She just got the phone book and started calling people. (Laughter) "My son's singing, he wrote that." But I've always tried to write songs, man. So when I met Berry, Jackie Wilson was my number one singing idol, man. So I had all Jackie's records, and whenever I buy - even today, I always look to see who wrote the music, who wrote these songs and stuff like that.
So I knew about Berry Gordy, man, because he had written all the hits for Jackie. So we go to this audition for Jackie Wilson's managers, and they rejected us but we sang five songs that I had written rather than something currently popular, and so this young guy was sitting over in the corner.
And he looked like - I was 16 at the time, so I thought he was about maybe 18, 19 years old. He's sitting there; I see he's waiting to audition. So they rejected us and we went out and we were totally down, and he came up behind us. He said, "Hey, man, hold on." So I turned around. He said, "Where'd you get those songs from?
So I'm really dejected, man. I said, "Well, I wrote them." He said, "Oh, yeah, I liked a couple of your songs, man." So I'm thinking to myself, well, so what, man? (Laughter) You want to use my songs to audition or something like that? But I'm being polite. I said, "Well, thank you very much, man, I appreciate that." He said, "Yeah, I'm Berry Gordy."
And my lip dropped down to the floor, man. I must have stood there like this for five minutes. And then finally when I got myself together I said, "You mean you're Berry Gordy who writes the songs for Jackie Wilson and Etta James?" He said, "Yeah, that's me, man." Oh, man, what? You know what I mean? He made a mistake.
He said, "You got any more songs?" So I had a loose-leaf notebook with me with a hundred songs in it, man - at least a hundred. (Laughter) I said, "Yeah." I pulled out my little notebook. So he said, "Well, let me hear some of your songs, man."
So he takes me into this little room. Tavis, I must have sang 20 songs to Berry that day. I'm not exaggerating - 20 songs. He never said, "Okay, man, I'm tired, man, please, that's enough of your stuff. Okay, I've heard enough." Every song, he just critiqued it.
He just sat there like you're sitting there. And I got through singing, he said, "Well, man, you should have done this." Because I could always rhyme stuff. I could always rhyme stuff, but I would have five songs in one song, man. Because the first verse didn't have nothing to do with the second verse, you know what I mean?
Tavis: (Unintelligible) Just total dissonance.
Robinson: All down the line, just did some (unintelligible) stuff. So he made me see that, and he pointed it out to me, and he said, "No, man, right here you should have so and so and such," because he said, "There's a code to writing." He said, "Your songs have to have a beginning and a middle and an ending that tie in together.”
He said, "And even if you don't end it, you got to give people enough material or enough information that they can end it for themselves. But it's all got to tie in. I want you to go home and listen to the radio, see how people are writing." So I did. So he - I'd take him songs, he just taught me how to write songs professionally. And so I have to give critic where critic is due. (Laughter)
Tavis: So how does it feel after all these years then for Berry Gordy to admit that Smokey ended up being the better songwriter?
Robinson: Well, that makes me feel good, of course, because like I said, he's been my mentor and it makes me feel good, of course. Then see if he was going to be really honest, he would admit that I beat him at golf and ping-pong.
Tavis: I wasn't going to go there.
Robinson: Tiddlywinks, jacks - whatever it is.
Tavis: All right, you know what? Berry Gordy is not here, but since Smokey is feeling himself right about now, I want you to hear what Berry Gordy had to say about you and Michael Jackson. This is what your best friend, Berry Gordy, said not long ago on this program.
Robinson: I'm ready for this.
Tavis: Watch that monitor right there.
[Begin video clip.]
Berry Gordy: The public didn't know that. Insiders knew about it because it was on an album - it was a Smokey song called "Who's Loving You." And he did that early, and I said that would not be one of his first three or four songs because it was just - he was like 50 years of knowing about love. (Laughter) This man was saying - and I didn't say it in front of Smokey, but man, he was kicking Smokey's ass on that song. (Laughter) And he was putting so much passion in that, man.
[End video clip.]
Tavis: Smokey Robinson, what you got to say to Berry Gordy about that?
Robinson: No, I agree with him totally. (Laughter) I'm serious about that, man, because when Michael sang that song - now, "Who's Loving You" is about somebody who has somebody, who loves them. However, they don't appreciate it, so they do this person wrong.
Finally, the person leaves them, and then later on they're sitting around regretting that they did the person wrong and that the person left them, and now they're wondering who this person is with now, because they'd really like to have them back.
Now, that's a deep idea. Now Michael sang that song when he was 11, and when I first heard it, I had to play it again. (Laughter) I said, "Wait a minute - this boy's 11. How could he possibly feel a song like that?" But he sang it like he had lived that. He sang it like I had actually written it about him and somebody that he loved or something.
He was just incredible, and I said, “My goodness, how can he -“ and he sang so good, Tavis, till young people who hear me sing, because I sing it in person, who hear me sing it, a lot of them come to me and say, "Oh, you're singing Michael Jackson's song, huh?" (Laughter)
Well - so it's really amazing that at 11 years old he could have had that much passion. But Michael was an old soul, man, because when I first met Michael he was probably nine or 10, and he was old then. He was a young boy because he was a prankster and he liked to do pranks and stuff like that, like any young boy.
And I know that one of my great memories of him is the guy who was instrumental in bringing him to Motown, a guy named Bobby Taylor, who was one of our Motown artists, Bobby plays golf and I play golf, and Bobby and I were, like - all the Motown guys were arch-rivals at everything. We loved each other but -
Tavis: Very competitive.
Robinson: Very competitive, man. So Bobby and I used to go to the golf course and we would take Michael with us. Michael would be riding around on the cart with us. And don't let one of us miss a shot or hit the ball in the woods or something like that, because then Michael's going to tell us why we did it. (Laughter)
Now, he's like 11, he's never picked up a golf club in his life and he's going to tell us why we hit the ball over there. "Well, you should - your hand was -" wait, Mike. But he was a great young man.
Tavis: How surreal was it - we all saw you; the whole world saw you in a wonderful tribute to Michael at the service.
Robinson: Thank you.
Tavis: And a clean suit, by the way.
Robinson: Oh, right. (Laughs)
Tavis: That suit you had on.
Robinson: My wife is going to love you for that.
Tavis: You tell your wife - yeah, you tell your wife - yeah, there it is, right there. If that was my size I'd try to come to your house and steal it from you. It's a cold pattern in that suit.
Robinson: Yeah, she bought that for me.
Tavis: How surreal was it for you, standing there that day in that fine, tailored suit, doing a tribute to a young man who was younger than you?
Robinson: Tavis, I've had three deaths to affect me in the same way, because they were like sudden impact. Like totally out of nowhere, here I come. My wife called me that day, screaming and hollering, crying on the phone. "Michael is dead." "Wait a minute, no - Michael who?" "Michael Jackson - he had a heart attack."
"Wait a minute - no, no, no, no, not Michael Jackson, Michael Jackson. That's not who you're talking about." After I could talk, period, because the first thing was complete silence from me, because I could not accept that. My psyche would not accept that.
And I've had three deaths like that, man. Marvin Gaye - I'm driving home one day, I'm driving from the golf course and I got the radio on, and a guy comes on the radio and says - he interrupts the song I'm listening to and he says, "Soul singer Marvin Gaye has been pronounced dead on arrival at so-and-so hospital." I remember it like it was yesterday.
"No, he didn't just say that. He did not say that, okay?" So he goes on about it. So I'm thinking to myself well, you know what? This is April Fool's Day, so that's what this is. And I pull in the gas station, I call Anna, and before Anna said hello, she said, "Hello?" I said, "Hey, baby," and she knew it was me. She said, "Yeah, it's true." What? You know what I mean?
Ron White, the guy that I grew up with, knew him since I was 10 years old, was in the Miracles with me, Ron was one of my closest friends in life. So Ron had been going back and forth to the hospital because they found something was happening with his blood count, okay? So they hadn't kept him, but you know? So he called me one day, he said, "Okay, man, I'm going to the hospital. I'll be in the hospital for a few days."
He was still living in Detroit; I was living out here. He said, "I'm going to be in the hospital, they said they're going to keep me for a couple days." So I said, "Okay, man, you want me to come to Detroit, man?" He said, "No, man, I'm just going to the hospital, I'm not going to die." The next day, he was gone.
But when you hear something like Michael Jackson, that was just like somebody came and hit me in the chest with a two-by-four, you know what I mean? So for me to be - and I've spoken at all of their funerals. And for me to be standing on that podium that day looking down at a casket that holds the body of my little brother, Michael Jackson, is weird, man. It was weird just thinking that he's gone.
And he's not coming back, now - he's gone for good. And fortunately, I believe in the hereafter, so I know he's cool, you know what I mean? But however, for this plane, for this life that we're living here, other than the fact that he's going to live on and on and on and on forever because he was, I believe, the most electrifying, dynamic entertainer that I've ever seen in my life, and I've seen everybody, man.
And I used to think that about Jackie Wilson when I was a kid growing up. If you ever saw Jackie Wilson, man, Jackie Wilson was whoo, you know what I mean? But Michael Jackson, as far as I'm concerned, topped everybody. He innovated the deliverance of a song, you know what I mean?
Because his songs were not only audible but they were visual. Once you saw him do them, that put a whole nother touch on them.
Tavis: When you go through a process like that - Marvin Gaye, Ron, and now Michael - as you get older - and I pray you're here for a long time and still putting out great records -
Robinson: Wait a minute, man, am I getting older? (Laughter)
Tavis: You don't look like you're getting any older. You're still as handsome as ever, I can tell you that.
Robinson: Oh, I love you. Let me move over closer to you.
Tavis: And I still want that suit. (Laughter) I can get it tailored.
Robinson: I'm going to give you that suit.
Tavis: I can get it tailored to fit me, man. I can get it tailored to fit me. But when you come face-to-face with mortality in a Ron, in a Marvin, in a Michael, I know that time flies when you're having fun, but what does it speak to you, what does it say to you about how you want to live the rest of your time here, whatever that time is?
Robinson: It says to me to enjoy myself and to live with as little negativity in my life as possible. Something happened to me many years ago and I was actually on a bus, I was doing a tour in Canada and I was on a bus, and something happened that was real, real, real, real rank, okay? I won't go into what it was, but I was absolutely furious.
I was so mad, Tavis, until it felt like I could just have taken the bus and thrown it in the lake or something. It was that kind of mad. And I got back on the bus and I was just fuming, and it was like a voice spoke to me. I don't know if it was God. It spoke to me and said, "Hey, wait a minute - you know what? You know who you're hurting? Yourself, as long as you stay like this. Because the thing that you're mad about, the thing that's got you so upset, has already happened, and there is no rewind. You can't go back and make that un-happen. So now as long as you keep that fury inside of you, the more it's going to hurt you. The more you're going to suffer."
So for as short a time as you can stay upset when something upsets you, do it, because you're saving yourself. And that's how I look at life.
Tavis: See, he's a great philosopher, and that's why he is perhaps the greatest songwriter that ever lived - certainly one of them. His name - you know it well - William "Smokey" Robinson. He has a new CD out in the year that we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the label that he helped make great, Motown.
His new project is called "Smokey Robinson - Time Flies When You're Having Fun." Don't I know it? I can't believe this conversation is over. It was so much fun and it went so fast. Anyway, Smokey, I love you, and I'm glad to have you here.
Robinson: I love you, too, my brother. Thank you very much.
Tavis: Good to see you, man.
Robinson: It's always good to see you.
Back to August 18, 2009