As the popularity of Motown grew, it made sense to think about tours of the UK and mainland Europe for individual performers and also a Motortown-style tour of the UK and Europe for the Motown artists collectively.
The Supremes came in 1964, Mary Wells joined the Beatles’ UK tour in 1964, and Stevie Wonder was the first to visit, in 1963, at the end of performances in France, but the most important concerts came in 1965, when most of the main Motown acts joined forces to conquer Europe. It was the first time such a tour had ever been organised by Motown outside the USA.
The tour was arranged to coincide with the launch of the new Tamla Motown label in the UK, replacing the EMI subsidiary Stateside imprint on future Motown releases. The Supremes were entrusted with launching the new label in the UK with the release of “Stop! In The Name Of Love” on March 19th 1965. The tour lasted twenty-four days and involved shows at twenty-one theatres around the UK, with two performances on each show day. On the bill were the Supremes, Little Stevie Wonder, the Miracles, Martha & the Vandellas, plus the Funk Brothers backing band led by Earl Van Dyke. To catch the attention of non-Motown fans maybe, Georgie Fame & the Blue Flames were added to the line-up, as their hit single “Yeh Yeh” was at the top of the UK chart. The shows were compered by comedian Tony Marsh, who was well-known on the Northern circuit.
The tour began on Saturday 20th March, 1965, with two shows at the Finsbury Park Astoria in North London, which sold out. On Sunday, the tour bus took everyone to the Hammersmith Odeon in South London and subsequently on to cities including Bristol, Cardiff and Edinburgh. When Berry Gordy soon grew tired of travelling by coach on Britain’s medieval road system, he hired a limousine, in which the Supremes were invited guests. Everyone else stayed in the bus!
Sadly, the advertising for the show had not created much demand and many of the venues were at best half full. Ticket prices were also relatively high, starting at ten shillings and going up to seventeen and sixpence. The Rolling Stones had charged a maximum of twelve and sixpence for their 1965 Spring tour. In today’s terms, the tickets prices went from fifty pence to eighty-seven and a half pence. In 2023 values they would cost around ten to seventeen pounds fifty pence, or twelve to just over twenty dollars. That was high for the time, and may have put some potential buyers off.
In the cities outside London, very few people knew who Stevie Wonder was, and the Vandellas and Miracles had not had any significant impact in the UK. The Supremes and Mary Wells could point to UK chart success, with “My Guy” and “Baby Love”, but that was not enough to fill the venues, which must have been disheartening for the artists. Mary Wilson of the Supremes called their visit the ghost tour! Nevertheless the fans came away delighted to have had the chance to see and hear their favourite acts, with many of them booking more than one show.
The concerts in the UK were not recorded, but something of the flavour of these performances can be found on the recording made of the Paris leg of the tour which followed the visit to the UK. The concerts at the Olympia in Paris were filmed for posterity.
The UK tour seemed to be a commercial failure but there was another important element to the visit. The Motown artists had arrived on March 16th at London Airport (now Heathrow) and had been driven to the Cumberland Hotel opposite Marble Arch in central London. After the usual meetings with the press and day of photo opportunities, the group went off to the Rediffusion Studios in Wembley, West London, on March 18th to film a TV Special.
The TV show was the brainchild of UK singer Dusty Springfield and the TV producer Vicki Wickham, who were both great fans of Motown. Vicki Wickham was a co-producer of a regular Friday-night popular music show called Ready Steady Go, broadcast by ITV, for which Rediffusion held the London franchise. She had already been instrumental in getting Martha Reeves, Marvin Gaye, Kim Weston and the Isley Brothers on to the show. Now the plan was for a one-hour show featuring the Motown Tour members plus Dusty Springfield and also the Temptations, who flew in just for the Tamla Motown label launch and the TV Special, which was called “The Sound of Motown”. Springfield and Wickham were not very hopeful when they pitched the idea of the show to the bosses at Associated Rediffusion, but Dusty Springfield is rumoured to have threatened to pull out of all future editions of Ready Steady Go if they didn’t back the idea. The bosses agreed, provided that she was the host.
The show is a delight, with everyone full of exuberance and fun. The Supremes sang three songs, with a change of wigs and outfits for each one. They worked out the dance routine for “Stop! In The Name Of Love” in the dressing room with Paul Williams of the Temptations, who suggested the police-style hand gesture that has become famous. Dusty Springfield and Martha Reeves sang together and the Miracles closed the show with “Mickey’s Monkey”. The show was transmitted on April 28th, when the Motown folk were back in Detroit.
The impact of “The Sound of Motown” was significant. There were very few Black artists in the UK chart in 1965. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones had recorded covers of some of the Motown songs, but few people had heard the original versions or knew who had sung them. The sight on national TV of a large group of talented Black performers was unprecedented. So was the excitement of the music, the polish of the singers’ movements, the non-stop drive of the music and the dancers, and the sparkle of the outfits. It was a far cry from the rather sad style of their British counterparts. What a pity that it was filmed in black-and-white!
The launch of the Tamla Motown label gave new impetus to Motown’s sales in the UK, but things were still slow to build. However, over the next year, all the acts involved in the show had Top 20 hits in the UK. The tipping point came in Autumn 1966, when the Four Tops took “Reach Out I’ll Be There” to number one on the UK Official Singles chart. From then on, everyone knew about Motown.
