Lamont Dozier
Black Bach

Where God and wrong covers will be discussed.

Because it's true that you should never judge a record, nor a book, by its cover, but this one – damn it – this one is really ugly!

The first time I saw this cover was in a big record store in my city and it elicited a shrug and a scoff from me. I know I was foolish, but I was young, too young – this is the only excuse I can offer – because this is adult stuff, and I was still chasing after the bad and ugly, the experimenters, the weirdness, the dropouts; damn how young and stupid I was.

But, in the end, we all ride through life like Ringo Kid in “Stagecoach,” and like him, we all deserve a second chance.

And my second chance came in a small record shop in Amsterdam. It was there that I saw it again, and damn, by then I was a bit more grown-up and savvy, and well the name Lamont Dozier should have told me something, damn it I was in Holland! Holland! WAKE UP IDIOT: Holland-Dozier-Holland!

Because that's how it works: God – who is black and sings Soul – loves us and puts us on the right path, guides us, shows us the way. But then there's always Free Will, that thing where He tells you: “here, do this,” “go there” etc.; but in the end, it's always you who decides what to do, and thus you are ultimately responsible for your own mess-ups. So it was up to me to do the math: to remember that King didn't have the first name Goffin, or that Battisti wasn't named Mogol, or Jagger Richards.....

If I had stopped to think, if I had even gone beyond the title (because even naming it “Black Bach” wasn't exactly a stroke of genius! Perhaps only the artwork for Kraftwerk's second album is worse) maybe I would have tried to listen to it. And then maybe the first notes of the opener “Shine” would have been enough for me, that piano ostinato followed by a sneaky guitar and then – boom – a burst of strings that preludes to a rough and sexy voice (not to mention everything that happens afterward), or I could have listened to “Rose,” so warm and sinuous, or anyway any of these ten chic pieces to understand that it wasn't the cheap Disco version of Beethoven's “Fifth” by that jerk Walter Murphy, as I – may the Lord forgive me – had recklessly thought. So I walked away with a bootleg (recorded badly) of T. Rex that now lies at some girl's house whose name I don't remember where I must have taken it to make an impression.

“Black Bach,” as I would discover only years later, is the second solo album by Lamont Dozier, in 1974 our Lamont decided to follow up on his debut “Out Here on My Own” from the previous year which, let's be honest, didn't exactly make a splash. But can you say no to someone who wrote things like “Baby love,” “You Can't Hurry Love,” “Reach Out I'll Be There,” “Nowhere To Run” (and we could go on for a long time)? So Berry Gordy gives him carte blanche, Motown had moved less than two years earlier from the gray of Detroit to the sunshine of Los Angeles, and Lamont has at his disposal the Californian studios of ABC. Our man doesn't need to be told twice and he exaggerates: he calls in orchestral players, backup singers, an unspecified number of musicians, giving free rein to all the ideas, even unlikely ones, that come to his mind. And down come the elephantine and baroque arrangements, studio tricks, obese rhythm sections (now the title makes a bit more sense!), not unlike a black Brian Wilson wrestling with his “Smile.” But Lamont is not Brian Wilson, and in the end, he maintains control and when the record is ready nothing is out of place (except, unfortunately, the cover and title): the album is a masterpiece, perhaps a minor masterpiece, (that is, it's not a “What's Going On” or a “There's A Riot...”), but still a masterpiece. Only hardly anyone notices, for instance, the album wouldn't be reissued on CD, if I'm not mistaken, until 2010. But Lamont couldn't care less, he's sent fifty (I say 50!) titles to No. 1 in the USA, he can do whatever he likes. And in fact, the next year he makes another album “Love and Beauty,” and he will make more – eleven in all – until 2004.

But I had to wait a few more years to discover it, because God is good and loves you, but if you're stupid you have to pay. So I had to endure a few more years of Purgatory, with distorted guitars and bedroom anthems, bands with trombones and jackhammers, and ukulele poets, post-something and nu-whatever until the Lord – who is black and sings Soul – had mercy on this poor unbeliever and womanizer and gave me another chance.

It was at the home of a Swedish girl (yes Swedish) that I saw it again, she had breasts that sang odes to Heaven and a nose that was always Lent, but in life, it's important to decide what to look at, and that's how I looked (also) among her records and – damn! – he was there. What the hell was Lamont doing at Inga's, or Stine's, or Greta's place, (what the hell was her name?), I don't know, who knows who brought it there, because it wasn't hers: among her 7/8 records it looked like a book by Norberto Bobbio in the middle of the complete works of Federico Moccia. I only know that instead of putting it on, I kept talking, and talking, and talking......

So in the end, I was shown the door without even being offered a taste of the house special, while I'm sure that whoever brought that record over had been able to play the first half, second half, and overtime (and maybe even the penalty kicks), and that if I, maybe, had put on an “All Cried Out” or a “Wanna Be With You,” with their loose feel, who knows.

And what a finale that would have been! After all those years God (who is black etc. etc.) had made me find it there, ready to show me the light, and Inga, or Stine, or Greta and I would have sung His praises until dawn even though her nose – and my belly – reminded us that there is also Lent.

But no! Other years had to pass before after consuming records by Marvin Gaye, Martha Reeves, Four Tops, Supremes etc. I finally asked myself: “but who are these Holland, Holland and Dozier?”

In short, it took thirty years for “Black Bach” and I to meet, a thwarted love that, like all difficult loves, then lasts a lifetime. And then, after all these years and this push-and-pull, every time I put on “Black Bach” and the needle begins to scratch its grooves, a little story told in catechism comes to mind:

A very devout guy finds himself in the middle of a flood, climbs onto the roof and begins to pray. After a while, his neighbor takes out a dinghy and, before leaving, invites him to escape with him, but the guy tells him no, he knows that God will save him and there's no need for the dinghy. So the guy begins praying again until a boat passes by. They call him from the boat but he – “thanks, but it's not necessary: God will save me” – and so they leave. He resumes praying until a Civil Protection helicopter arrives, but once again the holy man prefers to rely on God and sends away the helicopter; he resumes praying and this time the flood wave comes and takes him away. The guy, arriving in Heaven, goes to God and humbly, but with a determined tone, asks why He had not saved him, what mistakes had he made? Why had the Lord done nothing? God looks at him surprised and says: “what do you mean I didn't do anything! I sent you a dinghy, a boat, and even a helicopter......”