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SXSW keynote: Smokey Robinson
Smokey Robinson wants to be Beethoven. Or perhaps Mozart. Either way, it’s good.
Coming from almost anyone else, such a statement would rank as wildly presumptuous hubris. But when its uttered by the Motown titan whom Bob Dylan once called America’s greatest living poet, one tends to pay heed.
Citing the classical giants as he addressed a crowd at the Austin Convention Center during his SXSW keynote address Thursday morning, Robinson said that his goal was to make music for the ages. Making chart-topping pop music hits was the least of it.
“Lately, I’ve been loving classical music, Mozart and Beethoven,” said the still-devilishly handsome 70-year old hitmaker. “And I think how wonderful that this music is 300 or 400 years old, and we’re still listening to it. I want to be Beethoven, I want to be Mozart—I want people to be listening to those songs (of mine) 300 years form now. That’s my goal.”
As a songwriter, he faces a formidable task: “There are no new ideas, there are no chords, words or notes. Within the framework of what’s already there, I’ve got to try to say it differently. I’ve got to say ‘I love you’ differently than anybody has ever said it.”
In a wonderfully illustrative series of vignettes (skillfully guided by veteran journalist Dave Marsh), Robinson recounted how, as a teenager with his pre-Miracles group, the Matadors, he encountered a young Berry Gordy at a Detroit talent scout cattle call. Gordy, who had written Jackie Wilson’s biggest hits, saw something in the hungry young man with a loose leaf notebook crammed with 100 self-penned songs.
“I probably sang about 20 songs for Barry that day,” he recalled. “But the only two songs he liked were the only two that made sense. I could rhyme stuff, but my second verse had nothing to do with the first verse, and the bridge had nothing to do with either one. It was like five songs in one! And he pointed that out to me. He was very patient. He said, ‘I liked the fact that I could not discourage you.’
“He was very instrumental in teaching me to write songs professionally. He said, ‘I want you got go home and listen to songs, and they hang together.’ That’s how I learned to write songs.”
Even a seasoned half-century veteran like Robinson is flabbergasted by how much the music industry has changed in the last few years. “Is there a circle that’s more than 360 degrees?” he marveled. As an artist who is putting out his own new release (“Time Flies When You’re Having Fun”) on his own label, he’s having to confront his own learning curve.
“There’s a lot more to putting out a record now; it’s so much more complicated. It’s a tough fight out there…I thought you just record it, you put it online and get it in a few stores and that’s it. That’s not it!”
Still, he had timeless advice for the striving young artists who haunt the halls of the Convention Center during SXSW.
“I would tell you first of all to thicken your skin. Show business is a life of hard knocks. You see the glitter and the gleam of it (but) there’s always a lot of doors being closed in your face, a lot of ups and downs. I’ve been doing this for 50 years and still today I go through my ups and downs because that’s part of this life.”
Stressing that his life has been blessed, Robinson said, “My life has been a bunch of peaks and valleys, but when I’m in a valley I’m striving to get to the next peak, and I use the valley as a lesson.”
Secondly, he added, with a gleam of amusement in his eye, “I would tell you not to take yourself too seriously. If you think you can sing, I’m gonna take you to my church on Sunday. There will be people there who can blow you out of the water … If you think, man, the world knows me now, and they can’t possibly do without me — don’t kid yourself. You didn’t start this and you are not going to finish it.
“If you reach your goal in any form or fashion, be thankful … if you get a break, use it and count your blessings.”
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