 |
OUR MOTOWN RECORDING HERITAGE
- Chapter 2 |
April 10, 2002
ISSUE |
|
|
|
Our
Motown Recording Heritage - Part 16 |
|
MAKING A GAY RECORD? |
By Bob Dennis |
|
|
|
|
When
Holland-Dozier-Holland left Motown, they were all under exclusive
writing contracts with Motown's publishing company. In the
industry, half of the money goes to the publisher and the other half
goes to the writers. H-D-H's publishing company (Gold Forever
Music) became the publisher of all new (post-Motown) releases. H-D-H used
the opportunity to develop other song writers. They could
suggest, coach, as well as pick-apart and reject elements in the new songs
from their
publisher role, taking no writing credit but still making as much money as
they did earlier with Motown. Ron Dunbar, lead writer on
the multi-platinum song "Band of Gold" put it this way: |
|
They helped to develop, by coaching and by directing the writers and
producers that they were "mentoring," and I was one of those people so helped in
development. I was given certain projects to write.
Band of Gold was one of those projects and I came up with the
title "Band of Gold" first. My partner, Edith Wayne, and
I wrote the lyrics according to how the track was and used the
melody structure that we got listening to the track. I was
part of the "in-house" team that was being developed at the
time. It wound up being a heck of an opportunity for
newer writers, like myself and to some other people in getting their
careers developed. When I say "newer" I mean
people that had some experience but nowhere near the success
of the HDH team. I was a great treat to be under the
umbrella of H-D-H. |
|
|
When the final master was done, the H-D-H quality
control team said, "Wait a minute - the tune's too long to get good
air-play." Ron's reaction was, "What do you cut?" which
brought a response from Brian Holland of, "Here, I'll show you."
Originally, as an engineer at Motown, Brian got a reputation as
"King" or "Second only to BG" at cutting down time on a tune with a
razor blade for better airplay acceptance. Ron's reaction
to the edit was negative, even though the edit was flawless. Brian told Ron, "You gotta cut it there
and that was the way it got released. |
|
Because of Brian's edit,
"Band of Gold" got it's needed airplay and became a smash platinum
hit. It also got un unexpected boost from another source that
many credit as starting the tune's huge success. That other
source was the Gay Community. |
|
The
tune's story is about a young lady that was abandoned by her husband
on their wedding night before consummating their marriage and all
she had left was a "Band Of Gold." The lyrics have the woman
wanting the man to come back and "love me like you tried before."
In the bridge of the song it was made clear in the lyrics that she
had rejected her husband - not that he tried to love her and somehow
failed. But the bridge lyrics were on the editing floor, and
the Gay Community interpreted the released tune a little bit
differently. And it was a smash that has sold in excess of 5 million
records in the original sales and those of various cover versions of
the tune. |
|
Copyright © 2002, by
Robert Dennis, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED |
Published in Recording
Engineer's Quarterly and Alexander magazines with permission |
USE OF THIS ARTICLE SUBJECT TO USER AGREEMENT |
|
|
|
|