| I was astonished, as I watched
the "Motown 25th Anniversary Special," on TV in 1983, to see Berry
Gordy Jr. say that the "Motown Sound" was built from "Rats, Roaches, Love,
and Guts." |
| The term "Rats and
Roaches" was a source of endless laughter among the Motown elite for several months
sometime around 1963, as a result of the following incident: |
| I was in charge of the
"Technical Engineering Department." I was the "Department Head." I
would wonder if I should hire anyone who was in the Navy. I finally did, when I hired
Lawrence T. Horn. Little did I know what lay "ahead." (The "head" is
the rest room on a ship.) |
| I was big on technical
documentation. We had a drafting board set up directly under the rest room outside the
studio control room door at the original Hitsville Studio at 2648 West Grand Blvd. The
engineering shop was in the basement. All this still exists at the Motown Museum in
Detroit. |
| One night, I was working late
in the evening on a drawing for some custom made chassis for a project, when I felt the
call for the rest room. I "tromped upstairs" (we were young and full of energy)
and as I was watching the "stream," I noticed a cockroach scamper past on the
floor. |
| About a year before, I had
developed a dose of clap during a period when I had been without sexual contact. The
toilet seat (at this Motown rest room) was unusually thin, and the tip of my penis had
brushed on the edge of the bowl from time to time. I concluded that my problem was caused
by the reality of the situation. I was living with my parents, and they had never had such
problems. |
| Naturally, I felt: If not
disgruntled, at any rate far from "gruntled" about this reality. I had been
feeling resentful about it ever since I had to pay the Doctor for the shots. |
| When I saw that roach, I went
into frenzy! Enough is enough! I ran downstairs and found an Ant & Roach bomb in our
chemical cabinet. With great satisfaction, I did an exhaustive job of spraying the
baseboard of the rest room! |
| I returned to work on the
drawing. Before long, a roach fell from the ceiling. The "clean out trap" for
the toilet was hanging overhead. I used to drape the power cord for the electric eraser
through it so that the cord would be out of the way. The roach seemed like it was drunk. |
| Before long it started raining
drunken cockroaches. At the worst point, there were so many that you could hardly see the
white surface of the drafting velum. Years later, I saw a movie called "Tails From
The Crypt," in which the actor E.G. Marshall played an eccentric millionaire with a
similar problem. |
| You can just imagine how I
reacted: I stormed into Berry Gordy Jr’s office the next morning with a vengeance;
and proceeded to deliver a speech like a passionate congressman about the horrors of the
"Rats and Roaches." I was really pissed off about the situation, and (I might
add) with reasonably valid personal good reason. |
| Berry always had an office full
of people whom I considered "The Peanut Gallery." When I finished, they broke
into endless hysterics: It took several minutes for the laughter to die down. Everyone was
unanimous about the "reality" of what happened: I had been totally naïve in
spraying. Anyone with any "street sense" would know that you should never mess
with the roaches. I was the laughing stock of Motown. It took months before the kidding
died down. |
| This incident set in place a
change in my attitude that amounted to less respect toward the company. Over the years, it
cost them a lot. Even so: when I compared my spending to the typical Motown pattern, I
felt that I was still reasonably thrifty. |
| After being humiliated by that
"Rats and Roaches" incident, I never felt personally responsible to Berry Gordy
Jr. for anything: I just "played the game." |
| I was astonished when, as I
watched the "Motown 25th," I discovered that the "Rats and
Roaches" incident had influenced his choice of words with such intensity. |
| Mike McLean |
