Dad was a little nervous about whether our accommodations would be okay,

which surprised me until I realised the Motown people had picked the hotel.

We weren't used to having things done for us. We liked to be our own bosses.

Dad had always been our booking agent, travel agent, and manager. When he

wasn't taking care of the arrangements, Mom was. So it was no wonder that

even Motown managed to make Dad feel suspicious that he should have made the

reservations, that he should have handled everything.

We stayed at the Gotham Hotel. The reservations had been made and everything

was in order. There was a TV in our room, but all the stations had signed

off, and with the audition at ten o'clock, we weren't going to get to stay

up any later anyway. Dad put us right to bed, locked the door, and went out.

Jermaine and I were too tired to even talk.

We were all up on time the next morning; Dad saw to that. But, in truth, we

were just as excited as he was and hopped out of bed when we called us. The

audition was unusual for us because we hadn't played in many places where

they expected us to be professional. We knew it was going to be difficult to

judge whether we were doing well. We were used to audience response whether

we were competing or just performing at a club, but Dad had told us the

longer we stayed, the more they wanted to hear.

We climbed into the VW, after cereal and milk at the coffee shop. I noticed

they offered grits on the menu, so I knew there were a lot of Southern

people who stayed there. We had never been to the South then and wanted to

visit Mom's part of the country someday. We wanted to have a sense of our

roots and those of other black people, especially after what had happened to

Dr. King. I remember so well the day he died. Everyone was torn up. We

didn't rehearse that night. I went to Kingdom Hall with Mom and some of the

others. People were crying like they had lost a member of their own family.

Even the men who were usually pretty unemotional were unable to control

their grief. I was too young to grasp the full tragedy of the situation, but

when I look back on that day now, it makes me want to cry - for Dr. King,

for his family, and for all of us.

Jermaine was the first to spot the studio, which was known as Hitsville,

U.S.A. It looked kind of run-down, which was not what I'd expected. We

wondered who we might see, who might be there making a record that day. Dad

had coached us to let him do all the talking. Our job was to perform like

we'd never performed before. And that was asking a lot, because we always

put everything into each performance, but we knew what he meant.

There were a lot of people waiting inside, but Dad said the password and a

man in a shirt and tie came out to meet us. He knew each of our names, which

astounded us. He asked us to leave our coats there and follow him. The other

people just stared through us like we were ghosts. I wondered who they were

and what their stories were. Had they travelled far? Had they been here day

after day hoping to get in without an appointment?