The music legend has just released a fabulously filthy album. He looks back on his incredible life in songwriting, and his friendships with Marvin Gaye, Berry Gordy and Aretha Franklin
, in 2018, she was my longest friend I had who was still alive. I’d known Aretha since I was eight.”
Robinson started college. One day in class, he was listening to his radio when their single came on. “I went apeshit. I jumped up and ran out of class, and that was it for me. I said to Dad: ‘I want to quit college and try music,’ and he surprised me. He said: ‘You’re only 17 years old – you’ve got time to fail. If it doesn’t work out, you can go back to school.’”
What happened to them? “After we’d been seeing each other for a while, Diana said to me she couldn’t do that because she knew Claudette, and she knew I still loved my wife. And I did. I loved my wife very much.” Robinson has examined the complexities of love beautifully in his songs. But his understanding is by no means confined to sexual love. He talks about his love for his father; the brother-in-law who became his second dad; Aretha’s brother Cecil, who died at 50; Sam Cooke, who was 33; and Marvin Gaye, who was killed in 1984 by his father, aged 44. “I do miss them. I wonder what they would have been like were they alive today. Especially Marvin, man. Marvin and I were brothers, man.
Robinson tells me that one night he walked into a church, met the minister and told her everything. He went in an addict and came out free from drugs. It was a miracle, he says. “That was May 1986 and I’ve never touched drugs since.” In their earliest days, Robinson says, Motown’s acts played to segregated audiences – black kids on one side, white kids on the other. “We went back a year later and they were all dancing together. White boys had black girlfriends, black boys had white girlfriends, and it was all because of the music. We gave them a common love. So I’m really, really, really, really, really proud of that.
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