Gordy G 7049 (B), February 1966

B-side of Get Ready

(Written by Smokey Robinson, Bobby Rogers and Pete Moore)

Tamla Motown TMG 557 (B), April 1966

B-side of Get Ready

(Released in the UK under license through EMI/Tamla Motown)

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The A-side here, the incomparable kinetic thump and clatter of Get Ready, had been (in many ways) a most out-of-character outing for the Temptations’ outgoing primary writer-producer, Smokey Robinson, to give to the group. Here on the flip side, it’s a whole different story. Underneath the last Tempts 45 Smokey would ever helm, on one of the last times we’ll meet the combination of group and guru here on Motown Junkies, we find perhaps the most in-character Smokey number the Temptations ever recorded. I close my eyes, I think of this song, and invariably it turns into Smokey himself singing it instead; ironic that Fading Away comes bundled with the Temptations single that ended their working relationship with Smokey forever, because right at the end of that partnership, more than any other Smokey/Temptations joint, is a song that sounds more like the Miracles than the Miracles themselves.

Now, it’s not entirely accurate to say this is an artefact from the last days of that relationship. Although it’s true we’ll never get another Smokey-led Tempts 7″ here on Motown Junkies, there were still album tracks and shelved cuts left in the barrel, a rich seam of high quality material for Motown to mine periodically for B-sides, and that’s what happened here; the album this resides on, titled Gettin’ Ready despite the title track turning out to be a notorious flop (by Motown’s own standards) on the pop charts, wouldn’t appear in stores until the summer of 1966.

In that sense, Fading Away, cut the previous summer, a full a year before the album appeared, is both a blast from the past and simultaneously a harbinger of things to come. Still, it’s more astonishing to me that despite Smokey writing this in not only his own vocal range and something like his own timbre, working closely with his Miracles bandmates and filling the song with typical Miracles cadences and lyricism and imagery, the Miracles themselves never actually recorded this one in their own right.

It’s hard to understand why, really, although we can make some wild guesses if you’re in the mood for conjecture; the very out-of-the-blue choice of a pumping R&B dancer as the A-side wasn’t completely without precedent even in the Smokey era of the Temptations’ stellar success, but just as the other superlative Motown male vocal group, the Four Tops, were moving into softer territory and away from their harder-edged R&B roots, and Motown seemed to be deliberately moving each group into the other’s territory (if not necessarily actually trying to get the two groups to outright swap places, as their intertwined story would remain far too complex to reduce to simple binaries) through the choice of material released to radio, the intention surely wasn’t for either of them to start usurping the territory already staked out by the Miracles. This most Smokey-like of Smokey’s Temptations songs might, in the hands of the actual Smokey, have been too on the nose.

TWO SIDES TO EVERY STORY (AND EVERY 45)

It’s more understandable, once that idea has taken root, why Motown would put this on the B-side here, seeking to pair something as white-hot as Get Ready with another gorgeous slower number, showing their fans the Tempts were still the same lovestruck balladeers they knew and loved. There’s even a lush orchestral breakdown, banks of beautiful strings sweeping the bridge along wordlessly, shining brightly full of treble to match Eddie’s high vocal, winter sunlight piercing through the heartbroken shrug of the lyrics, conjuring up memories of the feel – if not the mood – of their biggest and most beloved hit.

But if the concept was meant to be a sort of hedging of bets, harking back to My Girl and pairing off a new, funkier and harder-edged Tempts sound on the A-side against the smoother, softer harmonies and finger clicks their fans knew and loved, it didn’t really work commercially; white radio may have run a mile from Get Ready, but those stations and DJs didn’t necessarily embrace Fading Away instead, at least not to the extent that it made any kind of impact on the charts in its own right.

That hedging of bets doesn’t just extend to showing off (or, at any rate, reminding fans of) the range of the Smokey-led Temptations in terms of material; it’s also striking that across the two sides of this 45, we get two very different cuts both led by Eddie Kendricks. The Thin Man’s soaring, wounded falsetto had added an unexpected frisson of tension between the confident, even aggressive lyrical attack on the A-side and the singer’s voice, bringing in the other Temptations as much as emotional backup as vocal support. Here, although the harmonies on the refrain are lovely – and, again, more than a little reminiscent of the Miracles – Eddie’s voice stands alone, hurt and resigned. Across the two sides of this single, we get the very best of Eddie’s vocal abilities, hitting high notes in the chorus that he’d only grasped for in the shaky early days of the group, and I could listen to it all day.

DANGER, HEARTBREAK DEAD AHEAD (…PROBABLY)

The lyrics are full of the sort of arresting imagery that was almost entirely absent from the A-side, Smokey not only memorably comparing a dying relationship to other things that petered out instead of going out in a blaze of glory – dissipating cigarette smoke, clouds on sunny days, half-remembered dreams, steam from a coffee pot – but also packing the verses with little vignettes of the protagonist’s life with their partner in The Good Days, kissing and making future plans, the days before doubt set in. The lyrical poetry on offer here is just beautiful, and another fine reason why the (apocryphal) quote from Bob Dylan about Smokey being the greatest poet in America sounded as though Dylan might have said it; it’s not just the lovely imagery, so rich and vibrant and true, capturing the whole history of a relationship in a handful of sketched lines. It’s also the way the perspective gently shifts as the song goes on; in the early verses, the Miracles set up the structure – give an example of something good from their past, then bring contrast by comparing it with something else that’s dying:

The feeling we used to get
Whenever our lips met
Like smoke from a cigarette, it’s fading away…

And it’s beautiful, and would be remarkable enough just on its own, because for all its many strengths Get Ready could never really be described as being poetic, certainly not in the way Fading Away is. But by the end, the thing’s been flipped:

Like smoke from a cigarette
A dream that you soon forget
Our love from the day we met, it’s fading away…

Like one of the things that’s dying, so goes our relationship. One of the things the narrator already airily compared his relationship to earlier in the song is now the real, tangible thing that forms the anchor for the metaphor; it’s the relationship that’s now become conceptual, that’s irrevocably fading away. And it’s so masterfully done that at no point do you question the fact we’re only hearing one side of the story, or whether the partner is on the same page (or, even, whether they’re going to be blindsided, devastated, by this declaration of fatalistic pessimism.) From the evidence actually provided in the lyrics, the partner might be about to walk in with a bunch of flowers and the new Miracles album. But I doubt it. This is Eddie’s show, Eddie’s pain. Smokey’s pain. Your pain. Our pain.

Damn, these guys are good.

END OF AN ERA

If I was to nitpick, and maybe I’m looking for excuses as to why this doesn’t get a 10, I’d say that the exit ramp from the three-line chorus isn’t quite as graceful and punchy as it could have been, and the chorus itself isn’t quite as polished as the rest of the song. The chorus – or at least the first two lines of it –

You’ve changed, and it’s showing, baby
You’ve changed, and it’s showing…

– has a fabulous chant-like quality strongly reminiscent of the crowd-pleasing sweep of Smokey’s similarly faux-euphoric The Tracks Of My Tears, and even the repetition adds emphasis rather than smacking of a lack of ideas. It sounds like it’s building up to a grand payoff, but unlike that more beloved Miracles song, the chorus here doesn’t quite stick the landing; the third line feels oddly truncated, “Where is our love… going?”, and even with an absolutely striking vocal hit on that last word, Eddie and Melvin combining yet again to powerful effect at opposite ends of the register, it’s almost like the song is a showjumping horse backing off tackling a fence. Having ventured into another Miracles-esque anthemic chorus, the Miracles themselves then didn’t quite know how to get back out of it again, and took a shortcut to get us back to the verses and that orchestral bridge.

But like I said, that’s nitpicking. Actually, the more I think about it, this is probably only a factor at all because the killer hook is all the chorus most songs would even need. If this also doesn’t have the stunning staccato My-smile-is-my-makeup riff from The Tracks Of My Tears either, it’s balanced out by that hook essentially being an earworm chorus in its own right. The three-line structure of the chorus follows the pattern already set by a similarly three-line structure in the verses; the narrator gives two lines of one image, and then contrasts it in line three with another image, before going back in each time to reinforce that chant – real example / real example / metaphorical example / it’s FADING AWAY!”, Eddie’s bros suddenly leaning into frame and surrounding that vulnerable falsetto in a warm cocoon of vocal reassurance (as well as an achingly lovely – faded! – repeated echo, …fading away…, right after), and honestly… even if you didn’t speak English, although you’d miss out on the beautiful way Eddie manages to sound out the smoke from a cigarette/steam from a coffee pot comparisons, you’d probably still be able to sing along to those two words. Something something something AND IT’S FADING AWAY.

One of the last Smokey/Temptations collaborations we’re going to cover here on Motown Junkies, but also, with no hyperbole necessary, one of the best. Strangely appropriate that the breakup should be marked by one of the prettiest breakup songs we’ve yet encountered from a male group, and so… here we are.

MOTOWN JUNKIES VERDICT

(I’ve had MY say, now it’s your turn. Agree? Disagree? Leave a comment, or click the thumbs at the bottom there. Dissent is encouraged!)

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You’re reading Motown Junkies, an attempt to review every Motown A- and B-side ever released. Click on the “previous” and “next” buttons below to go back and forth through the catalogue, or visit the Master Index for a full list of reviews so far.

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The Temptations “Get Ready”	Kim Weston “Helpless”