At Motown Records these days, they’re talking about the “new Jacksons.” That’s the word on DeBarge, a group of siblings whose latest LP, In A Special Way (like their last one, All This Love), has been certified gold. It’s hard to ignore the comparisons between the Jacksons and DeBarge. You hear them from DeBarge’s management. You hear them from Motown executives. Your read about them in the black teen magazines and the rock press. Even the group itself acknowledges them. “We agree with the comparisons,” says skinny, soft-spoken Eldra “El” DeBarge, the group’s twenty-two-year-old leader, producer and star performer--the Michael Jackson, if you will, of the pop-soul quintet. “We’re very impressed. Whatever we did to get that comparison, I want to keep doing that.”
“As a matter of fact, we’re getting a house built right next door to Micheal Jackson’s,” deadpans twenty-four-year old Mark “Marty” DeBarge.
“And Marty promises to burn his hair,” says El, laughing. “Wait, don’t write that!”
The four male members of Debarge are seated backstage at Los Angeles’ Universal Amphitheatre; absent is older sister Bunny DeBarge, 29, who is missing the groups current tour because she is pregnant. Sitting in on the interview is one of DeBarge’s three managers, the head of publicity from Motown Records and several members of DeBarge’s road crew. There seems to be some concern that a member of DeBarge might slip up, somehow embarrass himself of Motown.
Motown Records, after all, is not exactly casual when it comes to an artist’s image. The label had a reputation for sending acts like the Temptations, the Supremes and the Jackson 5 through an in-house charm school during the Sixties, and since DeBarge appeals to a teen and preteen audience and has hit big with simple, sweet paeans to puppy love (“I Like It,” “All This Love”), Motown certainly doesn’t want anything to tarnish the group’s wholesome image.
Thus, the members of DeBarge have had to have numerous discussions about their image with Motown honchos.
“From a business standpoint, Motown Records was very concerned,” says El, “because it’s just bad business to look bad--in any kind of way--when you’re trying to build a career.”
What did Motown say to the band members?
El thinks for a moment. “Let me see. Specifically? Things like, ‘Who wants to be bothered with the dope scene?’ Having wild parties and hanging out and things like that. Acting really ridiculous. I mean, I wouldn’t even want that for myself or for anybody else in my family.”
Perhaps Motown has little to worry about. DeBarge--El, Marty, James, Randy and Bunny--come from a religious family. While growing up in Grand Rapids, Michigan, they sang gospel at the Bethel Pentecostal Church, where one uncle, James Abney, leads the choir, and another, the Reverend William Abney, is pastor. Before the glitter of Hollywood caught their eye, a career as gospel singers was explored (there are plans to eventually cut a gospel record). All these years of singing together account for the gorgeous vocal blend that gives DeBarge its unique sound.
Growing up in Grand Rapids wasn’t easy for the DeBarge kids (there are ten brothers and sisters in all). Their mother is black and their father is white, a situation that put them in something of a racial Twilight Zone. While in grade school, they were taunted by their classmates. “Remember that song ‘Half-Breed’ that Cher song?” asks twenty-year-old James DeBarge, the youngest member of the group. “I can’t stand that song. And she’s right about the words she sang: ‘Half-breed , that’s all I ever heard’--’cause that’s all I ever heard.”
The siblings moved to Hollywood in 1978, hoping to fulfill their dream of a record contract with Motown Records. They though they had a good chance because two of their older brothers, Bobby and Tommy, were signed to Motown at the time as part of a funk group, Switch, which was managed by Jermaine Jackson.
But getting Motown’s ear wasn’t so easy. Jermaine didn’t listen to the demo tape they gave him, so El and Bunny were forced to corner him at the Motown offices. “We came to a meeting that Jermaine was having with Switch,” recalls Bunny during a separate interview a few days later. “When they came out of the meeting, El started playing the piano and he said to me, ‘Come here.’ So I just started singing, and Jermaine and his wife began to listen.”
“He was astounded and overwhelmed,” says El.
A few months later, DeBarge had a contract with Motown. Berry Gordy Jr., the label’s founder, made the group his special project and worked with El on his song writing.
“Everybody has a message to tell, but when it comes down to a song, there are different ways you can tell it,” says El. “Mr. Gordy told me I should make my songs simpler, more straightforward. Don’t trust people to figure out what you’re trying to say. Just say it exactly like you mean it, and there’s no other way it can be taken. If you mean I love you, say I love you. If you mean I hate you, say I hate you.”
On it’s current tour, DeBarge is performing live for the first time. In L.A., where the group opened for Luther Vandross, DeBarge demonstrated that they can deliver the heavenly harmonies that highlight their records. Though the other brothers’ choreography was a bit shaky, El came across as a spectacular dancer and singer, and, at least judging from the teen screams, a sex symbol. “I feel good,” says El, about the screeching girls. “I look forward to it. If it didn’t happen, I’d wonder why.”
Backstage at the Universal Amphitheatre, the brothers are asked why they write songs only about love. El laughs. “I don’t know. I’m trying to figure out a way to hate women, man.”
“Love makes the world go round,” says twenty-five-year -old Randy. And James adds, “That’s just to let everybody know we’re not gay.”
They all laugh.
Written Michael Goldberg for Rolling Stone Magazine, April 1984
Transcribed for the web by www.thedebarges.blogspot.com
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