Motown Records founder Berry Gordy Jr. believes “the truth is a hit if you make it entertaining.”
So it is.
His successful record label, whose signature sound changed American pop culture during the civil rights era, is celebrated in the hit “Motown the Musical,” which returns to the Hollywood Pantages Theatre from Tuesday through Feb. 12.
“Our idea with the music was to bring people together,” Gordy says. “That was our original idea over 50 years ago, and it’s still the same today.”
“Motown the Musical” tells the Motown story through Gordy’s eyes. The show is based on his autobiography, “To Be Loved: The Music, the Magic, the Memories of Motown,” tracing the founding of the Detroit label in 1959 with an $800 loan from his family to the music careers he launched.
There’s also plenty of drama in and out of the recording booth.
Gordy’s love interest, Diana Ross, and many other Motown’s acts at the top of the hit parade are characters in the show including Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder and Smokey Robinson.
“Motown the Musical” includes more than 40 classic hits, from the Temptations’ “My Girl” to Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell’s “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.” In addition, the mogul offers several new songs.
According to director Charles Randolph-Wright, the musical is an extension of what Motown was and is today.
“Motown is a movement,” says Randolph-Wright, who also helmed the show when it opened on Broadway in 2013. “It crosses every barrier, and I think what it did musically, what it did on television and film (when he brought Motown to Los Angeles in the 1970s), now is happening in theaters.”
In fact, the director was up until 1 a.m. with Gordy making tweaks to the script based on audience response.
“Actors sometimes fall into the trap of saying something funny, and the audience laughs at it; so they keep adding to it, but it’s not really the story,” Gordy says. “We have to go back to the story and make that as entertaining.”
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