Motown’s supreme songwriter created some of the biggest hits of the 1960s
When Lamont Dozier was stuck for a new song, he would seek inspiration by picking a fight or even breaking up with his girlfriend of the moment.
‘‘I’d do it when I hit a wall or if I couldn’t come up with the right feelings for an appropriate lyric and needed the spark to write about love or unrequited love,’’ he said. ‘‘I got away with that for quite a while.’’
If that seemed tough on the girlfriend, as a creative stimulant it worked like a dream and Dozier’s fractured love life provided the inspiration for some of the greatest songs of heartbreak of the 1960s.
Writing with the brothers Brian and Eddie Holland, the trio’s songs were recorded by the Supremes, the Four Tops, Marvin Gaye, the Isley Brothers and countless others on the Motown label.
Between 1962 and 1967 the Holland-Dozier-Holland team wrote and produced more than 250 songs that came to define the Motown sound. A dozen went to No 1 and the hits that bore their writing and production credit included Where Did Our Love Go, Baby I Need Your Loving, How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You), Baby Love, This Old Heart of Mine, Reach Out I’ll Be There and You Keep Me Hangin’ On.
Typical of Dozier’s methods was Stop! In the Name of Love, one of three No 1s for Diana Ross and the Supremes in 1965. ‘‘I was a bit of a playboy at the time and this girl caught me with another girl,’’ he recalled. ‘‘She was screaming and carrying on and I tried to calm her down saying, ‘Please stop, in the name of love’ and that’s how the song was born.’’
Where Did Our Love Go, a further No 1 for the Supremes, was the result of another Dozier break-up, as was You Keep Me Hangin’ On, a 1966 chart-topper on which Ross sang ‘‘You don’t care a thing about me/ You’re just using me.’’
Needless to say, Dozier’s girlfriends were not best pleased when they found out how they were being manipulated. But it gave the songs a visceral quality, which, when married to the classic Motown four-on-the-floor beat, was irresistible.
Other songs of unrequited love, including the Four Tops’ hit Bernadette, were inspired by memories of a girl whom Dozier had idolised at elementary school. ‘‘She was my inspiration for a lot of songs for years,’’ he said. ‘‘She didn’t know I even existed but I had this crush on her and dreams about her and wishing and hoping she would be my girl.’’
Bernadette was also the inspiration for the Supremes’ hit I Hear a Symphony. ‘‘It was a feeling I had as a kid. Whenever she was around, I felt uplifted and heard music – and every time I sat at the piano to write an unrequited love song I resorted to feelings I felt for her.’’
The triple-decker Holland-Dozier-Holland credit appeared on dozens of Motown hits but the three songwriters all had specific roles. Eddie Holland was a tunesmith and Brian Holland wrote lyrics, but Dozier, who has died aged 81, was ‘‘the ideas man’’ and the only one who wrote both words and melodies.
‘‘We were a factory and that’s why we were so prolific,’’ he said. ‘‘We had this work ethic that kept us glued to the grindstone coming out with this stuff. We were relentless. We were in the studio 18 hours or more a day.’’
There was no time for ‘‘writer’s block’’, which he dismissed as ‘‘just an excuse for being lazy’’. Yet the work rate took its toll, and led to divorces for both Dozier and Brian Holland. ‘‘It was just too strenuous for them [the wives]. They took a hard hit and I can’t blame them at all,’’ he said.
They also fell out with Motown boss Berry Gordy over the division of the spoils. ‘‘We figured we’d made millions and millions of dollars for the company and we should be compensated a little better than we were getting,’’ Dozier said many years later.
When the trio left and started their own label, Invictus, Gordy sued them for breach of contract. As a result they were unable to use their own names and adopted the pseudonym ‘‘Edythe Wayne’’ on their writing and production credits, which included Freda Payne’s 1970 No 1 Band of Gold and Chairmen of the Board’s Give Me Just a Little More Time. The lawsuit was not settled until 1977.
By then Dozier had moved on again without the Holland brothers. As a solo singer he released nine albums between 1973 and 1983. He then reverted to writing and producing and, after moving to Britain in the 1980s, he co-wrote Phil Collins’ No 1 Two Hearts for the film Buster and collaborated on songs for Alison Moyet, Eric Clapton and Simply Red.
His first marriage to Elizabeth, a pianist who worked for Motown, ended in divorce. His second wife, Barbara (nee Ullman), predeceased him last year. He is survived by seven children.
Lamont Herbert Dozier was born in Detroit. His singer father, who auditioned unsuccessfully for the Ink Spots, was not around and he was raised by grandparents.
An aunt who played the piano instilled a love of music and he grew up on a diet of classical music, Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals, Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole.
As a teenager, he had such a way with words that friends paid him to write poems to their girlfriends, which they passed off as their own. By 16 he was singing in a doo-wop group called the Romeos and was headhunted by Gordy. ‘‘I was initially signed as a singer but he wanted me to write and produce for other artists, because a lot of them didn’t write their own songs,’’ he recalled.
He regarded the label’s employees and artists as a family ‘‘because, growing up, we all went to the same churches and sang in the same choirs’’ and he was writing a song called Forever for Marvin Gaye when Brian Holland walked in. Dozier was stuck for a bridge and Holland helped out. The partnership was completed when he suggested adding his brother Eddie as a lyricist.
The trio’s greatest success came with the Supremes, for whom they wrote and produced 10 No 1s, but their songs were recorded by almost every Motown artist.
‘‘We liked classical music and we liked gospel music and it was just a perfect blend,’’ Dozier said when asked what made H-D-H the only 1960s hit-making team to rival Lennon and McCartney. ‘‘We put our heads together and we very seldom disagreed.’’
‘‘We were relentless. We were in the studio 18 hours or more a day.’’
Lamont Dozier on his partnership with Brian and Eddie Holland