The Beatles get in touch with Motown

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Surprisingly, in December 1965, a press release was put out by Al Abrams of Motown saying that George Martin had made tentative enquiries to see if Motown’s hit-making team of writer-producers Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier, and Eddie Holland (Holland-Dozier-Holland), currently riding high with a run of hits for both the Supremes and the Four Tops, would write the Beatles’ next single. If true, it was an unusual move, as the Beatles had never released covers of other people’s songs as singles—Holland-Dozier-Holland were their closest competitors as commercially successful songwriters, and they would inevitably have had to record in Detroit. Lamont Dozier told me while I was researching this book that the call came from Brian Epstein rather than Martin and was a general inquiry about collaboration rather than about a single, and that after the songwriting team showed interest, the subject was never raised again.

In 1983 he had been more expansive. “We were supposed to do an album along the lines of The Beatles Meet Holland-Dozier-Holland, but Berry Gordy refused to do it. We were going to write each other songs and perform them but we couldn’t put it together because we were primarily known as writers and I don’t think Berry wanted to disturb that.”

From “Beatles ’66: The Revolutionary Year” by Steve Turner

Last updated on November 29, 2023