I said, "No, I'm serious. I've got a check for you. Come over!"
Our worst fear was shooting in the winter in Detroit. And we wound up getting worse than our worst fear: we wound up shooting in the worst winter in Detroit in a quarter of a century. It snowed every day for a month and a half, and some days it was 14 inches, and some days it was half an inch. But the upside was that it looked beautiful all the time. Every morning, you started out with a clean white sheet, all over the city.
Ed: I think the producer said that "God was the art director" on the audio commentary of the DVD.
Allan: Yeah, exactly. But one night, from the weight of the snow, the roof collapsed, and wiped out half of the equipment on the stage. I remember when we were shooting Chaka Kahn's version of "What's Going On", I had water dripping on my head. And I'm playing electric guitar! So I'm sitting there thinking, "Well, so should I take a chance dying, or should I call it off?" And I thought, "You waited 11 years, you might not get the chance again!"
Ed: Now, two of the Funk Brothers were in poor health during the filming, right?
Allan: Yeah--both of the drummers. A bunch of them were in poor health, and they still are, but they just play. But "Pistol" Allen had lung cancer, and unfortunately, died right after filming was complete. Uriel Jones needed a quintuple bypass. He had it right after we finished filming.
Ed: And yet, both of them played astonishing well onstage.
Allan: Oh yeah, because they knew they'd never get that chance again. They were willing to die, if need be, to get their stories out. They knew that this was it; they'd never get another chance.
Artists and Repertoire
Ed: How did you choose the songs and artists for the movie?
Allan: There were some differences of opinion between the director and I, but we had to have a certain amount of predictable big hits. Because, to the older generation, you take a song like "My Girl", and it's been overdone. But a lot of young kids haven't heard "My Girl", and have no idea what tunes like that are all about.
But by the same token, for the older crowd, I didn't want to do what I refer to as the "bar mitzvah-wedding medley", which is "Dancing In the Streets", "Heat Wave", "My Girl". I didn't want everything to be predictable; I wanted to get a couple of nuggets in there like, "My Baby Loves Me", and some of the lesser-known songs.
Article comments
1 - Philip Walker
I read that Allan slutsky was writing a biography of Junior Walker - is this true.
Please let me know
Regards
2 - Mac Diva
Barry Gordy did work on a car assembly line in Detroit briefly. It was sometime between his prize fighting career and when he penned his first hit for good friend Jackie Wilson.
I think the Motown assembly line myth is somewhat cliched. There is too much variation in how Motown acts sound for it to be really true. Phil Spector's wall of sound is more formulaic. As was Philadelphia International Records' sound later. What Gordy did was organize. He made acts fit a fairly rigid schedule of recording and performing. Some of the best, such as Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye, rebelled. They were not suited to regimentation.
The last word I had on the Funk Brothers was that they have fallen out with their 'discoverers,' i.e., the men who brought them out of obscurity. Litigation was in progress.