Detroit 67: The Year That Changed Soul

by Stuart Cosgrove

Detroit67 is the story of the city of Detroit in the most dramatic and creative year in its history. It is the story of Motown, the breakup of The Supremes and the implosion of the most successful African-American record label ever, set against a backdrop of urban riots, escalating war in Vietnam and police corruption. The book weaves through the year as counterculture arrives in Detroit and the city's other famous group the proto-punk band MC5 go to war with mainstream America. The year ends in intense legal warfare as the threads that bind Detroit together unravel and leave a chaos that scars the city for decades to come.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, History, Biography, Counter Culture, 20th Century, Race

452 pages, Paperback

First published January 30, 2015

About the author

Scottish journalist, broadcaster and television executive. Worked as a journalist on the NME and The Face magazine during the 1980s. Was at Channel 4, London from 1994 to 2015, serving as Controller of Arts and Entertainment and then Head of Programmes (Nations and Regions).

Reviews

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is 1967 in Detroit and the year starts out with the city hunkered down under heavy snow. In this month by month history of the city, author Stuart Cosgrove, takes us through a place, and people, in crisis. It is a year of Vietnam protests, of social unrest, rising crime rates, growing social awareness, riots, violence and police corruption. It is the year that ‘the Supremes’, the most successful girl group at Motown, become ‘Diana Ross and the Supremes.’ It is a year seething with tension and resentments…

Cosgrove takes the Supremes, and the unrest at Motown, as the central point of this book; with Motown as the focus from which all other stories and issues weave and intersect. Berry Gordy’s attempts to make Motown popular across the country, and, indeed, across the world, often looks like ‘selling out,’ to the more socially aware in the city. As he attempts to get his acts to record a tribute album to Walt Disney, or gain places on major television shows, his acts are crumbling under the pressure of incessant tours, shows and work. His control has helped create an empire, but there is dissent in the ranks and he is, frankly, not dealing with the issues among his songwriters or acts. Some resent being shunted aside for bigger names, while Gordy pushes his head more firmly into the sand. In the Supremes, founding member Florence Ballard, is resentful of Gordy’s pushing Diana Ross into central place.

This is a very human book. The conflict within these pages is political, but it is also very personal. Gordy and Ross were having an affair and Florence Ballard felt side-lined and personally humiliated. There are other members of Motown in this book, many linked by romances, affairs and family relationships, which made for a tangled and unhappy web, which is danger of unravelling by 1967. Ballard is in self destruct mode at this point – drinking too much, arguing with the other members of the group (you feel for Mary Wilson, stuck between her and Ross), signing legal agreements without any real advice, that she will later regret, and with no real plan for the future – for her future.

Along the way, and interspersed with the story at Motown, are the wider stories surrounding the city. Of hippies, drugs and social unrest. The summer in Detroit saw violence on the streets, which culminated in the notorious ‘Algiers Motel Incident,’ during which Detroit police officers and National Guardsmen, executed three black teenagers in a soul-music hangout. It is easy to see how those in Detroit saw the ethos of Motown, trying hard to get their music into the mainstream, as out of step with the current mood. We hear of guitar band MC5, of John Sinclair and the Steering Committee and of young band, The Dramatics, who find themselves tragically caught up in the horrific events at the Algiers Motel.

This is a fascinating portrait of a city, at a certain time, and of the people affected by the events of a momentous year. This is the first in a trilogy and I will certainly be reading the second, “Memphis 68: The Tragedy of Southern Soul.” A proposed third instalment is to be set in Harlem in 1969. Excellent music and social history, with Cosgrove showing a real passion, and sympathy, for those he writes about.

[Jaclyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

If I based my reviews on content this should have been a four - five star rating but I base them on the joy I feel while reading and the eagerness I have to dive back into that world regardless of if it’s fiction or non-fiction and I felt like I was just plodding along with this like I was reading a text book. So rich and informative but ultimately weighed down. I now know way too much about The Supremes, they’re used like a thread running through with all the turbulence happening around them and I don’t think it was a strong enough tether....but then, I don’t really enjoy The Supremes. I enjoyed the sections dedicated to Marvin Gaye and the civil unrest, I liked the way the activism is humanised but centring on real people and their plights, it just didn’t resonate with me as a whole.

[Gilbert Merciez · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too many inaccuracies

Wrong street names, calling the Sheraton Cadillac the Sheraton Chrysler. One of the characters in the book was described as living next to the Hamtramck Poletown Assembly Plant when it wouldn't be built for another 15 years. Claiming Jimi Hendrix burned an American flag when it was actually his guitar. Hendrix never burned an American flag. Numerous grammatical mistakes. I haa

[Aoife Brown · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5/5

When the women in this book disagree Cosgrove describes them as ‘bickering’ or ‘bitching’, whereas the males are ‘bulls locking horns’ -eye roll-

The word ‘quixotic’ is also massively overused, but apart from that this was enjoyable.

[Girard Bowe · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good sociological/musicological look at Detroit in 1967. A corrupt and prejudiced police force set off a summer of riots, and the music reflected a political pushback. The musical focus is on Diana Ross & The Supremes. The group was beset by internal strife, caused in part by Berry Gordy's relationship with Ross. Cosgrove does a good job conflating the changes in music with contemporaneous events. I look forward to reading Memphis 68 and Harlem 69.

[Moira McPartlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have been a fan of Motown my whole life (almost). This account of 12 months in Detroit which heavily features Motown is a fantastic epic. Part biography part social history, Cosgrove has taken the music, racial tension and issues around the war in Vietnam and threaded them together to create one of the most interesting and fully researched books I've read in a while.

[Alan Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Detroit 67:The Year That Changed Soul is an excellent month-by-month chronology of the momentous political and social events which took place in the city in that year. Stuart Cosgrove hangs his history on Motown, the fantastically successful Hitsville USA, which was in 1967 rocked by internal events which mirrored those in the city of Detroit and the wider USA. He concentrates largely on the breakdown within The Supremes and the ousting of Florence Ballard but also covers the sacking of David Ruffin from The Temptations, Holland-Dozier-Holland's divorce from the label and the achingly sad story of Tammi Terrell.

Cosgrove is a very talented writer, particularly when covering the soul music he clearly loves, both the Motown artists and those in the wider Detroit soul scene. He is less convincing when writing about the emerging garage-rock scene and the MC5 - and Jimi Hendrix did not burn the American flag at Woodstock; he didn't need to, his incendiary rendition of the Star Spangled Banner was protest enough against the ongoing Vietnam war. But the book is largely successful and reads at times like a thriller. The sections detailing the murders of 3 black youths and the torture of others by Detroit police officers in the Algiers motel are harrowing.

1967 was the year that Motown began the move away from Detroit to LA and became less the purveyor of 'the Motown sound' but it led to the more overtly political and social commentary of Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder and the Norman Whitfield era Temptations. I am really looking forward to Cosgrove's take on the southern soul scene in his follow up, Memphis '68.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

very enjoyable account of Motown and Detroit

[Jeff Howells · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most engrossing micro history books I've read. This one focusing on not just a particular year but a specific city. Detroit in 1967. The book takes a chronological month by month approach, starting with an extremely wintery January. Unsurprisingly the music of Motown looms large, the main core of the book is the story of The Supremes...teetering on the edge of implosion as we count down to Florence Ballard being ousted from the group. There are also occasional glimpses of the Detroit rock group the MC5, but this is very much a Motown - and an Afro American story.
The author Stuart Cosgrove says right at the start that he didn't want to pick sides in the book - and his achieves this, however it's very difficult to come to the conclusion that Ballard was more sinned against than sinning. Arguably the original leader of the group & possessing a better voice than Diana Ross it was sadly inevitable that she would be marginalised once the relationship between Ross and Motown boss Berry Gordy took hold. By the end you think more of Ballard, less of Ross and just think Gordy is weak.
The book builds up to the riots that engulfed the city during the summer the city effectively being under siege with the National Guard on the street. It paints a horrifying picture of the police & national guard being at best trigger happy & at worse corrupt where a number of innocent people were needlessly (most notably the Algiers Motel executions, shortly to be a film directed by Kathryn Bigelow).
That's not to say that there wasn't looting - largely a result of the dire economic straits the city was in - but it is clear that the people who were supposed to be enforcing the law stepped a long way over the mark.
By the end of the year Ballard had left Motown, Tammi Terrell had collapsed on stage and one of the main drivers of Motown's success - the writing team of Holland -Dozier - Holland had begun legal proceedings against the company. Whilst there were further high points for the company & more great music to come, the Detroit heyday was coming to an end, as Berry Gordy looked West.

[Tanya Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent and informative book that details the history of Detroit in this pivotal year against the backdrop of the story of Motown, with a particular focus on the implosion of The Supremes and the racial identity of the Motor City in 1967.

[Nicole Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

The books was so interesting! Filled with all the greats of Motown and ties with the social and political situation of the 60s. I gave it 4 instead of 5 because the last 2 chapters got a bit dry. Otherwise it was a fantastic book!!! I highly recommend it if your into history, music, or Motown.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stuart Cosgrove’s soul knowledge has always been mightily impressive, and Detroit 67 demonstrates his ability to use popular music (mainly Motown in this case) as a microcosm of, and a fulcrum around which major societal change is taking place in real time. As Detroit burns to a screaming soundtrack of MC5, the inner politics and possibly unwitting abuses of Hitsville are a neon-lit mirror to the violent upheavals going on in the streets and projects. A five-star tome, its rating reduced by 20% for its series of unforgivable teeth-grinding typographical and proof-reading gaffes.

[Jean Hardee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very thorough history, and I'm a sucker for any sort of joint musical and social history. But - some bits of the writing annoyed me. Also some quite questionable justifications of clearly terrible behaviour by label owners / police / musicians clearly abusing their power

[Danielle Lynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Forgot how into Motown I was into in high school, I learned so many new things, I’d definitely reread this.

[David Canford · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author must have undertaken an incredible amount of research to give us this engrossing story of Detroit in 1967. Although from Scotland, he reflects the enduring love affair Britain has for African American music. The book is set against feuds at Motown and the city’s deteriorating social situation. Add in the background of the Vietnam War and the disproportionate number of casualties being suffered by African Americans, rampant poverty and racism, and you had an explosive mix leading to the infamous riots of that summer and summary executions by some of the city’s overwhelmingly white police force.

I have always loved Motown. It’s a large part of the soundtrack of my life. What I hadn’t appreciated until reading this book, was just how ‘gritty’ things were for the recording artists. Despite being world-famous, it appears they didn't make much money and had punishing schedules.

A large part of the work deals with the frictions within Motown’s most successful act, the Supremes. They were without doubt a phenomenon. The first African American act to make such a massive impact on white America and the world. The author manages to avoid the usual narrative of blaming Diana Ross for the group splitting. Plenty of male groups have done so and the one enjoying solo success isn’t pilloried as she was. Why? Sexism maybe? And despite claims that Florence Ballard had a better voice, she sounded like plenty of other singers. Only Diana Ross had a unique sound. Berry Gordy probably knew that the group, although still at their peak in 1967 wouldn’t stay at the top for much longer. That’s what happens in the music business. So his strategy to single out Diana Ross and make her into a solo star was a wise move. Albeit, it seems the way in which he handled the matter was poor.

The author also delves into the internecine feuds amongst other acts such as the Temptations and Martha and the Vandellas, and the departure of Holland - Dozier - Holland in 1967. The trio had written so many of Motown’s hits that it seemed the company's continued success could be in real danger. The author explains how it turned out to be a positive thing, enabling other writers to finally get noticed and encouraging some of the singers such as Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder to write their own material.

The sad irony brought to life by the book was that while Detroit had achieved world renown for its music, in reality it was dying. Jobs were disappearing as were tax dollars needed to maintain public services as white people moved out to the suburbs.

Just when it seemed that the Civil Rights movement might achieve what the Civil War never did, equal opportunity between the races, was Detroit 67 the moment when in retrospect that possibility began to unravel? Even though the Civil War ended slavery, there have been many backlashes against African American progress. A hundred years ago the Jim Crow laws were already well entrenched, disenfranchising African Americans. After the Civil Rights gains of the 1960s, it was and still is the mass incarceration of African Americans, giving the USA the dubious distinction of having by far the world’s largest prison population. The widespread prohibition on former prisoners voting, and other measures, such as Georgia shutting down voting stations in certain predominantly black areas, seem aimed to ensure that the black vote can never get so big as to upset the status quo, especially in the Southern States.

If you are interested in this era or just like the Motown sound, I recommend this book to you. The author has written two sequels, Memphis 68 and Harlem 69.

[Malcolm Walker · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first book I have read by Stuart Cosgrove and the first book I have read about Motown and the 1960s soul music industry. I have read many autobiographies of musicians from David Crosby through to Robert Wyatt and Rob Halford, and plenty of biographies of musicians too, from Jimi Hendrix to Nico with plenty of artists in between, including many of the books written by former 'Record Collector' magazine editor Pete Doggett.

The first chapter, January, is the longest. It has a density of detail that makes the reader slow down to take it all in, but it is the scene setter chapter and chapters after that on are shorter. Even so there is a level of detail in each chapter where the best I could do was read between a third or half of a chapter at a time and then rest from the book until later. If I read any more than twenty pages in one sitting I found that the longer I read, the less I took in the the detail in the stories on the page.

The format seems simple enough, 12 chapters, 12 months, each chapter covers one month. What is started to be explained in one month becomes a more explosive story in the next month. In 1966, after years of hard graft, Motown was on the up and up. The Gordy family were a family of middle class entrepreneurs who through working their roster of artists hard had finally hit pay dirt. Berry Gordy was the hardest working, most business-minded of all his family. He called on many of his siblings businesses to support the Motown empire, as it was becoming, in the more humdrum aspects of supporting the packaging of music in 1967.

The hardest worked were the Motown artists, who had their own stage/finishing school to teach them the etiquette that projected that sense of entitlement that was part and parcel of projecting the corporate success of the Motown sound. All the artists, The Supremes, The Marvelettes, The Temptations, The Four Tops, Marvin Gaye, etc, worked punishing schedules touring and recording the songs that the house writing team, Holland/Dozier/Holland wrote and the house band The Funk Brothers recorded backing tracks for. In the early months other writers like Smokey Robinson and Marvin Gaye appear in the text, but more in walk on roles than being central to the growth of Motown.

I liked both the author's description of the songs of The Supremes as 'Bubble Gum Soul' and the depiction of how Florence Ballard, the original leader of The Supremes, becomes an early lightning rod for the corrosive pressure that Motown put it's acts under. Her backstory of suffering the worst a young woman could suffer as a teenager and survive, but then be made to be silent about it, is a retrofitted 'me too' moment of reclamation, as if women had always suffered this way at the hands of males who did not know what 'consent' meant.

This opens out briefly into a wider discussion about talented young women performers vs the men they attract. Where the men alternate between letting their wives work their talent autonomously, as their talent requires, whilst the men are caught between resentfully recognising how much their wives are their meal ticket and possessively wanting to see their wives as theirs alone. The men know that they cannot own the talent and voice their wives have-such a talent has to become the property of the world.

The morals/mores of the business men are generally to present an image of unity for the purpose of the businesses they run, but behind the scenes the men are pragmatically polygamous and secretive about their business means. That modus operandi applies whether the business is strictly commercial or whether the men run churches, which after all cannot run at a loss for long if they are to remain places of worship. The pressures to make a business work well in a highly competitive corporate environment very easily made men emotionally needy. The way that men, here black men but white men would behave exactly the same way, translate emotional need into sexual need whilst not recognising before they started them that their sexual affairs would be the path to them being divided and secretive towards everybody they knew, is surely telling. This is surely one of the oldest stories in history of business world that it does not like to tell.

The section where Etta james is quoted about what she, Florence Ballard, and Aretha Franklin all had in common and were never able to share could easily have been expanded to how talented women who marry discover, as only they can, how isolating marriage can be.

The nearer Summer gets the more the left wing/anarchist/rock and roll story of Detroit hots up. The tales of different biker gangs attacking each other and the police, even in the warm up episodes in the spring, make them the slow starter of the book.

The subterfuges within Motown that went on around getting The Supremes to be popular, which led first to Diana Ross becoming the lead singer in spite of her voice being thinner that Florence Ballard's voice, then making the group tour that hard that touring frequently made them all ill, left them very very tired, and finally drove Florence Ballard to drink and depression all seem uncaring at best. But then what empire was ever built on being caring? Mary Wilson's quote long after the meeting where the unstated consensus was that Florence Ballard would leave The Supremes was strange indeed, 'in those nine seconds [of the meeting where the decision that Florence Ballard should leave The Supremes] I saw nine years of hard work love and happiness fade away... With just one look at Flo I saw that dreams don't die, people just stop dreaming.'. For such a deep perception to land on one performer in one moment and for them to have to silently carry that must have been quite some burden. Let it be stated for the record that Diana Ross was incapable of such a searing and personally awkward perception. But then Ms Ross is still touring, and surely wearing fabulous wigs and gowns, aged 79 in 2023. I wonder how much success in old age is achieved not just through sheer longevity, and how much longevity is achieved through past dishonesty.

July and August become times in which it seems natural for the underclass of Detroit, particularly the black underclass, to riot, and for them and the Polish and Lithuanian and other minority nationality shop keepers to get caught up in cycles of unintended deaths becoming the cause of mass grief, which with another careless death-most of which start with a highly pressured police force-become yet another riot and orgy of shop looting until there is nothing to loot or buy. There is instead every reason to stay at home and watch the television new to discover by the most depressing means possible what has happened to a once thriving city. Even if what it was once thriving with was by official standards petty crime. The way the author wrote about Detroit in July and August 1967 I found to be unputdownable, alas much like the cyclic behaviour in riots, itself.

September tracks the further progress of The Supremes, to them becoming Diana Ross and the Supremes, and the increased detachment of Florence Ballard, where she hears clicks on the phone when she picks it up to answer it ringing. The September chapter also delves into the agent provocateur behaviour of the FBI in connection with the social activity in the soul clubs where the great mass of black Detroit citizens went for escapism from the grind of either working for the car factories direct or being dependent on the wages of car workers in the communities those workers lived in.

October features strongly the agent provocateur tactics used by the FBI in Detroit and the way that those tactics made worse some of the more criminal behaviour that was a hallmark of 1967, but also how campaigners used the courts to get landmark rulings limiting the FBI's tactics. But the main subject of the chapter is the short life of Tammi Terrell, which if anything like it happened in today's music business somebody senior in the record company would have been sued for negligence. She started as a performer with James Brown, who comes out of this story with far less of a reputation than if he were left unmentioned. Her misuse at the hands of men continued with David Ruffin, who was a man out of control who had made promises he could not keep to too many women, and with Marvin Gaye whose wife Anna Gordy was both insecure and jealous of how much her husband was effectively public property, in the business here father was in. The self evident discomfort Anna Gordy showed at the success, and the strong chemistry of, the Marvin Gaye/Tami Terrell double act was contradictory to say the least. When Terrell collapsed on stage, practically in Marvin Gaye's arms, it was a blow for the act, a blow for Motown who apparently resorted to some strange subterfuges with the recordings credited to the pair, and a blow to Gaye who was traumatised by the event. He stayed at home and submitted to the depression that was the obvious consequence of seeing the musical partnership that was once so thrilling literally stopped in it's tracks. It is easy to think now of men and mental health, but in 1967 men did not think in terms of work/life balance and mental health. The work ethic of the music business naturally over-drove performers.

If anyone had told me that the romantic and pharmaceutical intrigues that once made Fleetwood Mac's Rumours the success it was were also common with Berry Gordy's 1960s Detroit based Motown, and not only that but Motown were trying to be 'the good guy' in a music industry and wider culture where if there were good guys then they would only be truly good for a short period of time, the rest of their time would spent defending the the good name they made, then I'd want to read the evidence. This book is it. It could have been dedicated to Motown's talented losers, Florence Ballard and Tammi Terrell who dared to go where (good) angels would have feared to tread.

November continues the narrative arc of doom, where lawyers are scrabbled for, but the more they are resorted the more the original cause of Florence Ballard leaving The Supremes, a lack of personal support from Motown and a lack of financial transparency to underline the lack of care was buried under a further lack of transparency from Motown. How much the decline in Motown's reputation among artists, after it started out as the good guys, and the family firm artists could trust, is measured by the violent death of one particular lawyer, and a mounting collective resistance by former Motown artists to how Motown worked them.

December is a come down month, a place in the book where some loose ends get tied up and other loose ends are introduced that will open out in future. The biggest loose end is the abrupt end of the life of Otis Redding, aged 26, which was a shock to everyone who was part of soul music. The real change for Motown was laying the foundation of the move to Los Angeles in which the biggest part is the triumph of Diana Ross who is driven to be a star, but in my view she is not particularly likeable, even though when she was disliked those who disliked her got the blame/got pushed into the shade. Much more likeable was one of the future producer/arranger stars of Motown, Norman Whitfield, who was much more reliable as a guide to the near future of soul music from the perspective of writer/arranger/producer as expressed through the voices of The Temptations.

[Kate Parr · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a difficult one to review. I've given it three stars because the content was exactly what I hoped for, a potted history of Detroit through the lens of the music world, specifically black music. It was fascinating to have the relationship between music, politics, counter-culture and white-supremacy laid out and mapped out so intricately, but at the same time depressing to see that what we are fighting with now is exactly the same. So if you're looking for an understanding of 60s culture, using one pivotal city as a case study, this is a great book.

However, I prevaricated about the third star because it isn't that well written or edited. Cosgrove often uses words that sound right but actually don't mean what he thinks they mean. His writing is repetitive, as though each of the chapters was written in a vacuum and he doesn't sometimes know what the others chapters have told us. Also his holding up of John Hersey as a paragon of journalism, who subscribed to the 'new-journalism' style of fictionalised reporting suggests some of what has gone into this book may suffer the same need to dramatize instead of report factually.

All told, it was a good grounding in what was happening in both the Motown family business but also the wider world during 1967, but I wouldn't repeat verbatim anything in here without investigating other sources first.

[Phil Brett · Rating 3 out of 5]

Looks at the year in Detroit and synthesises the internal politics of Motown, the growth of civil unrest, the soul scene, police racism, opposition to the Vietnam War and the bust ups in the Supremes. It's quite a diverse brew and the contrasts sometimes work well, brimming with interesting detail. I'm interested in both the politics and the music of the era however the juxtaposition of the two is sometimes smoother than at others. I'm not sure that swiftly shifting from police torture and murder to jealous tiffs between Florence Blanchard and Diana Ross is always affective. Certainly, I do feel that sometimes there is too much repetition and detail of the latter to warrant the amount of space it is given. That said, I enjoyed the book and it did make me want to read more on many of the subjects raised here. I also will be going back to my Supremes records...

[Russ Spence · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is a very good book. Focussing on one year, 1967, in the city of Detroit, whilst concentrating on Motown records and the ousting of Florence Ballard from the Supremes, this also takes in the 1967 riots, the anti - war movement, the MC5 and a truly horrible case of Police brutality in a Detroit hotel, where several young men, some from a local soul band are beaten and executed in the wake of the riots whilst Police demand information on snipers that never existed. A number of historic legends are refuted, particularly in relation to how Berry Gordy ran Motown & if he had an actual plan to make his lover Diana Ross the main focus of the Supremes. It doesn't really end well for anyone, but is a thoroughly recommended read for anyone

[Bill McFadyen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed reading this book although there seems to be a few errors in the writing. Hendrix burned his guitar at Woodstock not the US Flag. The story of Motown , MC5 and the Civil Right Movement combined with the Detroit Police , the Vietnam War and the city riots is very well told. At times I thought I was reading pages from a James Elroy thriller.
Stuart Cosgrove is a talented guy .

[Mariner77 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just couldn’t finish it. Needed a ruthless edit as I found it verbose & repetitive. Sorry - had really been looking forward to reading it.

[Larry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Badly needed a better editor, but still very interesting take on Motown, the Detroit riot, and John Sinclair.

[Joe O'Donnell · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is one thing you could unquestionably say about life in Detroit in 1967: it wasn’t boring. Stuart Cosgrove’s account of that tumultuous year in the life of the city captures a Detroit sitting on a powder keg politically and racially, but also flourishing creatively. On the one hand, Detroit was perhaps the foremost global power in popular music, with the Motown label revolutionising the sound of Soul, and a vibrant counterculture finding itself supercharged by the arrival of LSD. Less pleasingly, Detroit was- as Cosgrove describes it – becoming “increasingly associated in the minds of Americans with urban decay, violent crime and social unrest” – endemic problems that would reach their culmination in the July 1967 riots that “changed the face of Detroit forever”.

The issue that I had with “Detroit 67” is that, such is the breadth of the areas it covers, there are at least 3 standalone books that it could easily form the basis for (on Motown & The Supremes, the riots of July 1967, and politics and policing in Detroit). In the bid for comprehensiveness, Stuart Cosgrove probably tries to do too much within this book. There are some sections of the book (the chapter on the July riots /rebellion being a case in point) where the tension is ratcheted up to breaking point, but Cosgrove then decides to abruptly cut away to detail the latest feud between various members of The Supremes. Cosgrove’s decision to cover the events of the 1967 month-by-month chronologically, rather than thematically, backfires and makes for a stodgier read than it should.

What is undeniable is that Stuart Cosgrove knows the history of Soul Music inside-out, and he is largely able to communicate this knowledge with clarity. “Detroit 1967” features a remarkable cast of characters, from the scheming Motown mogul Berry Gordy, to the ruthlessly ambitious Diana Ross, and John Sinclair – the visionary mad monk of the counterculture. And while the attention of the book does flit around unnecessarily quickly, “Detroit 1967” does contain some gripping set pieces (the horror of the Algiers Motel ‘incident’ during the July riots being the prime example). “Detroit 67” is painstakingly researched (I would argue it is almost over-researched to within an inch of its life), and it does offer a thorough overview of what Stuart Cosgrove describes as “12 eventful months that took Detroit to the very limits of its endurance and brought the music of the motor city to the verge of collapse”.

[Kevin McAllion · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've always associated 1967 with football, given it was the year Celtic ruled Europe and Scotland became unofficial world champions. Now, thanks to this compelling book, I will also think of Detroit in flames and the equally combustible relationships that caused The Supremes to disintegrate.
Cosgrove paints a vivid picture of a city in the midst of chaotic change and while music provides the heartbeat, it's really an examination of American society.
The riots that erupt in Detroit are brought to vivid life and I found the circumstances both fascinating and shocking, especially the police attack on one particular hotel that essentially amounted to state sponsored murder.
Two musicians were among those who died, summing up how Detroit was a city built on music as well as the motor industry. The driving force in that was Motown and more specifically Berry Gordy.
But the book explores how Gordy's empire slowly starts to crumble, with Florence Ballard eventually dumped from the Supremes as Gordy's mistress Diana Ross is pushed forward as the star of the show.
When you factor in a major financial dispute with the songwriting team who produced some of Motown's greatest hits, and the brain haemorrhage that would soon claim Tammy Tyrrell's life, 1967 was a seismic 12 months in Motown's history.
Cosgrove tells the story, and that of Detroit in general, month by month and it's a device that works superbly, adding tension and suspense to the narrative.
The author's love for his subject matter shines through and you can tell how much painstaking research has gone into the book. As a lover of soul music, I found Detroit 67 fascinating but it has far greater general appeal and you don't need to be a music fan to enjoy this remarkable piece of work. Highly recommended.

[Marco Baroni · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an interesting although somewhat flawed experiment in mixing urban history and music writing. The book tells the history of Detroit in 1967 month by month, with a special focus on Motown, and especially the relation between Motown’s boss Barry Gordy and his flagship band The Supremes. The book is generally well-written (although often trying too hard to make the most mundane events sound trilling), fast-paced and at times harrowing, in its descriptions of racial tensions, police brutality and the fast decline of what was once considered a model city. There are also enough details about Motown and its history to keep the music fan entertained. Yet, ultimately, it is too superficial and sensationalistic to be taken seriously as a social history of the city, while there isn’t enough about Motown from a musical perspective to make sifting through its 451 pages worth the effort, if what you mostly care about is the music. Part of the problem is that, by 1967, Gordy and The Supremes were moving in a glamorous world of upper-class New York supper clubs and Hollywood celebrities far removed from the grit of downtown Detroit, making the Motown-focused and the city-focused sections completely disjoint. The attempt to include a parallel thread on rock band MC5 and its white hippie entourage makes the plot even more centrifugal, and while it’s clear that Cosgrove knows and loves soul music, his handling of Detroit rock is not nearly as convincing. Still, for all its flaws, it is an original and enjoyable book, and I will probably read the other two in the trilogy, about Memphis in 1968 and Harlem in 1969.

[ROGER · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stuart Cosgrove book about Detroit in the year of 1967 is just...INCREDIBLE!

Like many people all over the world, I have always recognised Motown as one of the most incredible american soul music that emerged in the 1960's. A music that was generally created for a white demographic of the american public. A music though, that with black american music artists was able to promote an incredible realality or rather a possibility of black- american music enterprise in an era where that could not even seem a possibility because America was segregated in racial lines.
I have NEVER truly come across a CLASSIC book written about Motown. I have read about moments about Motown Records in other books by music writers, but NEVER in as much depth of information as the way author Stuart Cosgrove has written in this book. I can only imagine that this book will become the definitive book in future about the life and creativity of credecords. Stuart Cosgrove ha also documented Detroit in the context of the year 1967, and the way he weaves his artistic prose from documenting Detroit at specific times in the month of 1967 and weaving back to the AME moments at Motown Records is Incredibly moving for the reader of this book. His prose is never technical,it is written in a way that THE WHOLE WORLD can truly understand. That is Stuart Cosgrove's GREATEST achievement with this book.
Quite frankly...This is for me, just one of the greatest biographical music books I have EVER read.

[Chris Browning · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although not as naturally gifted a writer as Guralnick (he has a tendency to plump for an easy cliche), Cosgrove is a far more erudite and focused historian of soul music and particularly brilliant at effortlessly finding the context for seemingly disparate elements of Motown history. In many ways the book’s greatest strength - that absolute focus and ability to extrapolate it into a broader picture - is also the main weakness - that it sometimes has to hurry stories to an unnatural and forced end to complete the narrative strands of the book. But that does feel sometimes like a churlish criticism because Cosgrove goes to incredible levels to look at the social, economic, political, cultural and racial elements at play in Detroit 1967 and how they interact with each other. That the writing is sometimes a little stilted and the pacing a bit off is a very minor criticism for such an achievement as this

There’s also a very fascinating cameo with Rex Harrison and Diana Ross. And as such the book unexpectedly becomes as much a great history of soul music culturally as it does a wider story of the cultural shifts at play in 1967. That makes this book a surprisingly strong companion to Mark Harris’ extraordinary Pictures At A Revolution: an art form crackling under the disparate pressures of cultural change, with Motown unexpectedly being that rare thing, an upstart that is inherently very conservative. It’s a fascinating end that sees the studio looking towards Hollywood, and makes that Rex Harrison cameo feel like a far more telling presence than, say, a Sidney Poitier would

[Lolo García · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting times may spark interesting music, and no doubt that rough and convoluted Detroit witnessed the origin and impact of some of the best works of the 20th century and a legacy which still lives on... but I did struggle to find an interesting read here. Of course, the problem is not the raw ingredients: Please do dig into all these wonderful artists who left their imprint in the Motown sound (but you don't need neither this book nor my recommendation to do that!). The stories of The Supremes, The Temptations, Marvin Gaye, Tammi Terrell and many more need to be told. However, I have some issue with the way the 12 chapters (one for each month of the year) develop, rambling around endlessly about many random matters dragging so the narration, not sure if leading to or as a consequence of the scarce cohesion between such chapters. However, I did really get into the (sad) stories of Florence Ballard and Tammi Terrell (and to some extent Marvin Gaye's). I think I missed some more insight on these protagonists rather than all that rumble on local authorities, corrupt police force and such... Speaking of protagonists, of course I expected most of the spotlight on Motown, but it would have been great to know a bit more about MC5 and other, with mentions scattered here and there but never too deep.

So there's much to read and learn here, but do I wish I could have enjoy a bit more. It really took me some time to finish this. Now I got two more books by the same author, covering two different scenes and times, but I think I'll wait for some more time.

[Joe Plewes · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a good book and I wish it had been available when I wrote my dissertation on a similar topic in 2013! It's great at cultivating a picture of what Detroit was like in the sixties, and a good portrait of The Supremes, Berry Gordy, John Sinclair and more.

It does occasionally feel a bit plodding though, and using the Supremes as a the theme across the whole book doesn't always seem appropriate. The commentary of police executions of black people at the Algiers Motel is interspersed by paragraphs on Florence Ballard simply being replaced in the band, and that felt a bit jarring.

The month to month format also works wonderfully for some chapters but less well for others - October for instance, which follows Tammi Terrell, her on stage-relationship with Marvin Gaye and the horrendous behaviour of James Brown and David Ruffin lurches across a long timespan and across 67 itself. It occasionally loses the thread and timeline a little. Across a handful of pages the author uses the same Billy Wilson quote to describe Terrell twice, and later Eddie Holland replacing Mickey Stevenson as head of A&R crops up loads of times as if presented as new info. The last 100 pages felt like they needed tidying up a bit and there is quite a lot of repetition (including the use of some slightly unusual words!), so it doesn't surprise me to see a few reviews also referencing location errors.

But generally just minor issues I think across an enjoyable narrative - if you're interested in soul music, civil rights or America in the 60s it's worth a read.

[Gordon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not just a rehash of the old Motown history, it goes far beyond it in the details of the trials and tribulations of the company and its artists, producers and owners in the key year 1967. The book is also a sociological examination of the problems and chaos which hammered Detroit that year. Disruptive weather, racism in housing, police, services and media create a pressure cooker environment whcih explodes in the summer into riot and rebellion, made worse by the impact of the Vietnam war on the African American community coupled with the extreme violence of a police force mired in racism. There are so many parallels with today's events in the USA over 50 years later that the reader might despair that nothing will ever change or solutions will be found. And yet, in tdesire to find ways to advance beyond all these problems among so many of the people featured in this telling of the events of that one critical year. A recommended read.elling the story, Cosgrove finds life, energy, inventiveness and a