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.The  marriage would endure for over two decades, with varyingdegrees of dysfunction, at times with and without the  under the sheetmusic, and the relationship mutated into something more like an ad-diction to mutually assured torture than anything resembling love.Which might account for why the passages about Gordy in her other-wise saccharine Secrets of a Sparrow read like an exercise in self-therapy,as if Ross was trying to ease Gordy withdrawal by striking a balance be-tween mandatory declarations of love and fealty and shooting daggersinto his hide.0306815867_ribowsky:6.125 x 9.25 4/22/09 11:06 AM Page 214214 THE SUPREMESThere was the Berry who  related to me and who  could see him-self in me, a man who inspired her to such inane cosmic jive as  thegreatest connection between Berry and me was our powerful life en-ergy. And there was the Berry who  behaved like a tyrant.heavilyjudgmental.discouraging, who was  very hard on us. She also hadno problem granting herself absolution for her pariah status by pin-ning the blame for it on Gordy. He played favorites, she wrote,  and[that] set up an unhealthy internal climate. She remembered hearinghim harpooning other Motown artists by using her as the poison tip,going into tirades like  Why can t you be more like Diana? She makesher plans, she works really hard, she rehearses all day long, she recordsall night.Why can t you be like her?The assumption, naturally, was that he was merely repeating whatshe had told him, and she could never convince Motown denizens other-wise.But she maintained her innocence. Comparing is a terrible thingto do in a family situation, she concluded. It produces crippling sib-ling rivalry [and] it became a very difficult situation for me. Those whocouldn t measure up to her meaning, everybody subsequently  turnednot only on Berry but on his chosen one.Missing from Ross s self-pitying tale of woe, of course, is that there sno room for her pre-success presumptions in which she, in effect, putthe company on notice that no one would be like her.Gordy only heldher to it without objection from her, at the time.But in the nuclear-driven Gordy, she had the cover she needed for plausible deniability. Iam quite clear, she stressed,  that I am not responsible for anybodyelse s success or failure.Not that the lesser Motown mortals had much sympathy; they dnever heard a word suggesting that Diana cared a whit about anyoneelse s fate.But Ross from here on in began to, as she recalled,  live un-der constant stress, manifestations of which would soon become evi-dent.Without pause, however, the beat went on.The next song from HDH was  Back in My Arms Again, early tracksfor which were cut in late December 1964 and completed with thegirls vocals in late February.Cutting it in the same quarter- and eight-note beats as  Stop! In the Name of Love, but with a freer, bluesiergait, HDH let s say with the Funk Brothers made Studio A rever-berate, buffing up a melody that was driven by a simultaneous line of0306815867_ribowsky:6.125 x 9.25 4/22/09 11:06 AM Page 215 BABY, JUST POUR 215Earl Van Dyke s nifty honky-tonk piano riffs and Ashford s vibes, whichin turn played off Mike Terry s honking sax, blaring trombones, andthunderous drum and bass lines.Eddie Holland s lyrics had Ross going beyond her usual pining,yearning, and burning; now she could strut triumphant and smug, ig-noring pleas to  break away from the boy I love and risk suffering the heartache he ll bring one day. Having  lost him once by listening  tomy friends advice, she adamantly swore that  it s not gonna happentwice. Most cleverly, the lyric identified the meddling friends, with How can Mary tell me what to do when she lost her love so true? AndFlo, she don t know,  cause the boy she loves is a Romeo. See, that s how girls talk, they put the blame on their friends forscrewing up their love lives, Eddie says. I always tried to write to thatkind of voice and attitude with those songs.Whether intended or not, it was a perfect match for Ross s attitude.On a more subtle level, it was even a mild homily of her  de-friendingof Wilson and Ballard, not that anyone perceived it that way, least of allMary and Flo, who saw it mainly as a welcome, and overdue, recogni-tion that they, too, were Supremes one that allowed them a taste ofthe acclaim Diana lived with 24/7.Released in mid-April with  Whis-per You Love Me Boy on the reverse,  Back in My Arms Again wasonly nine days later the lead song on Billboard s Spotlights page, itsbreakout so breakneck that the showbiz bible didn t have time to getthe title right calling it  Back in Your Arms Again  in pegging it a [h]ot follow-up to  Stop! In the Name of Love,  with  a strong lyricand powerful vocal performance pitted against a hard rock backgroundin full support.A winner all the way!Billboard seemed genuinely ready to swoon at just about anySupremes product by now.Just weeks before, it had boosted onto its Breakout New Albums page The Supremes Sing Country, Western andPop, the oddball mélange produced by Clarence Paul that had sat onthe shelf for a year before a belated release to cash in on the group spopularity (to no avail; it stiffed, on merit, rising no higher than No.79) one of three Supremes albums issued between March and July.The others were the intriguing We Remember Sam Cooke, covering hitsongs by the recently murdered soul singer (e.g.,  You Send Me, Chain Gang,  Twistin the Night Away,  Bring It on Home to Me, Shake ) which stalled at No.75 on the pop album chart but made itto an impressive No.5 on the R&B chart and the obligatory MoreHits, another compilation of hits and filler that would ring in at No.60306815867_ribowsky:6.125 x 9.25 4/22/09 11:06 AM Page 216216 THE SUPREMESpop, 2 R&B.And two more LPs were cut and cataloged a live albumand the other of Broadway show tunes called There s a Place for Us butboth were held back and never issued.The very listenable and marketable  Back in My Arms Again shotup the pop chart, almost too fast; it was in the Top Forty by early Mayand in the top spot on June 12, to be bumped after a week only by theequally meteoric trip of the Four Tops  I Can t Help Myself. With theCopa a month away, and riding a trail of five consecutive No.1 hitssomething achieved only by Elvis until then, in 1956 57 and 1959 61,and which the Beatles were working on en route to six in a row by early 66 the girls were called back into the studio to record another cur-rent ditty to coincide with the big gig.Reaching into the HDH barrel,Gordy came out with  Nothing But Heartaches, another winner butwith blemishes, one of which was familiarity.Indeed, the HDH-Supremes ballpark was in need of expansion.Though perfectly catchy power-pop, it left a somewhat tiring effect after one listen, as if it had beenheard because it was, in  Back in My Arms Again. Then, too, afterthe happy ending of  Back, the brooding despair of  Heartaches andits fatal-attraction lyrics  He brings nothing but heartaches / Ooh,nothing but heartaches / But I can t break away / Oh no, keep a lovinghim more each day  and the vision of Diana Ross  crying myself tosleep were downers.For once, a Supremes record wasn t a must-have; released in Julybacked with  He Holds His Own and hurriedly included on MoreHits, it didn t move onto the charts until after the Copa gig and peakedat a disappointing No.11 in late August [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]