The first thing you notice about Smokey Robinson is his eyes. They’re impossibly green, flecked with gold, and passed down by his French great-grandmother. They’re stunning. “Oh, gosh.” he says, bashfully. “Thank you very, very much.”
That’s the second thing you notice: he’s genuinely sweet. He greets you with a hug, insists you call him “Smokey,” and calls you “honey” in a gentle falsetto voice that’s lulled fans for more than 50 years in such Motown hits as You’ve Really Got a Hold On Me and The Tracks of My Tears.
Amazingly, at 69, Robinson’s voice is still gentle and smooth as demonstrated on a new album, Time Flies When You’re Having Fun. Featuring guest artists Carlos Santana, India Arie and Joss Stone, the title of the album is a headline for his life.
“I’m having a ball. I feel better than I did at 25,” he says. “My favourite part is doing the concerts because I get to see the fans.” It is apt then that the Motown legend is headlining the BBC’s Electric Proms series on Saturday at the Roundhouse in London. “I never ever do a concert for people; I do a concert with people. They’re singing the songs and having a great time, too.”
Which is very easy to imagine because just spending 90 minutes with Robinson is a great time. He’s got some kind of happiness mojo, the secret of which is hidden in his music. Spend a few days listening to such classics as Shop Around and More Love or ones he wrote for others – My Guy for Mary Wells and The Way You Do the Things You Do for the Temptations. You can’t help but be in a good mood.
With the lyricism of so much pop music today revolving around bravado, knowingness and irony, there’s little room for the kind of romantic vulnerability or daydreaming about a first kiss that Robinson specialises in.
“There are no childhoods any more,” says Robinson wistfully. And then, for the first time, there is anger in his voice. “Our kids are indoctrinated from the time they’re two years old with the news, the computer, advertising, every single, solitary thing. Our kids are brilliant – they’re not stupid. This stuff is touching them. It’s taking their childhood. They got too much information too fast. So…”
His voice trails off and he nods as if to say: “Enough about that.” But that – the preservation of innocence – may explain what makes Robinson tick.
There’s a hidden track on his new album, a jazzy version of I Want You Back, which was the first Jackson Five single to be released on Motown in 1969.
“I’d got the CD all pressed up, and then Mike died,” he says, his voice softening when he talks about the man he calls “my little brother”. “I didn’t want people to say he’s exploiting the fact that Michael died, so I didn’t even list it on the CD.”
Jackson never got a chance to listen to it. The two hadn’t spoken in a decade, and Jackson had increasingly isolated himself with a menagerie of “yes people”. Still, his death, Robinson says, was “sudden impact and totally unexpected”.
Both men, arguably, are the pied pipers of their generations, casting spells on fans with songs that embody a childlike sense of wonder and raw emotion. Women at concerts crumple into tears when Robinson sings Tracks of My Tears.
“Thank God for women!” he says earnestly. “You guys make the world go round.”
To understand what makes Robinson’s vulnerable, you’ve got to go back to and Detroit, Michigan, in 1946 when six-year-old William “Smokey” Robinson wrote and sang his first song, Goodnight, Little Children, in a school play.
“At that point, I became Cole Porter to my mom. She was in the audience nudging people, 'That’s my son!’ She had me singing on the phone to our relatives.”
When Smokey was 10 and on his way to school, his mother called him to her bedside and told him: “I want you to always be a good boy.” She died that afternoon from a cerebral haemorrhage and set in motion the recurring themes in Robinson’s music: women, devotional love, tragic loss.
On his new album, he sings a haunting cover of Don’t Know Why, the Jesse Harris track that Norah Jones made famous. “It’s a song about somebody who loves somebody,” he says. “It frightened them. They didn’t know what they’d have to give up of themselves to go and be with this person.” He heard it in the car one day and couldn’t get it out of his head.
When Robinson’s mother died, his older sister moved her family into the house, making it 11 children under one roof, three kids to a bed. At 15, Robinson formed the Matadors, a five-member harmony group later renamed the Miracles when singer Claudette Rogers joined.
By 19, Robinson had married Rogers (a union that lasted 27 years) and convinced his friend, songwriter Berry Gordy Jr, to start the Motown label. Robinson earned $5 a week writing songs. In 1960, at the age of 20, he penned Motown’s first million-selling record, Shop Around.
With the Miracles, Robinson scored 27 hits for Motown between 1960 and 1971, including Tears of a Clown, which went to No 1 in the UK first. He split from the band in 1972 to focus on his role as vice president of Motown and a solo career that garnered chart-topping hit singles Cruisin’, One Heartbeat, Being With You, and a Grammy Award in 1987 for Just to See Her. (Even a pop homage to the singer, ABC’s When Smokey Sings, topped the charts in the US and UK in 1987)
Since penning his first song at six, Robinson has been credited on more than 4,000 songs, covered by everyone from the Beatles to En Vogue, and was once described by Bob Dylan as “America’s greatest living poet”. In 1987, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
But darkness found him even under the spotlight. In the mid-Eighties, Robinson developed a serious cocaine addiction. “I was dead. It was over. I was a walking corpse. A skeleton,” he recalls.
He found God again (“I’m not a religious man, but I’m very spiritual”) and has been drug-and alcohol-free since May 1986.
Happily married for the past eight years to longtime friend Frances Glandney, Robinson’s ambitions are clearly still not at an end. “I hope one day soon to have a great role in a great movie. I’m not talking about the starring role or anything like that, just a great role in a great movie.”
Whether he gets his wish or not, Robinson’s unashamed love of romance will be his legacy to the world.
“When your lady’s coming over or your guy’s coming over,” he says with a puckish smile, “You can just put my record on and, um, go for it! You know what I mean?”
- Smokey Robinson and his band perform with the BBC Orchestra at the Roundhouse, London NW1, on Saturday. Time Flies When You’re Having Fun is out on Monday.
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