The legendary songwriters run through their finest compositions – many inspired by their precarious love lives – for the Supremes, the Four Tops and more
‘I’m the kind of person who loves to be in a crowd and not get noticed,” says Eddie Holland, calling from a
golf course in
Los Angeles, where he is playing with his brother, Brian. Together with Lamont Dozier, the Hollands formed the legendary Holland-Dozier-Holland (HDH), the crack songwriting-production team whose songs for the likes of the Supremes, Martha and the Vandellas, the Temptations and Marvin Gaye made them, in Stevie Wonder’s words, “the foundations of Motown”.
They went mostly unnoticed compared with the stars, but seven years ago, a church minister convinced the siblings that, now they were in their 70s, it was time to tell their story. “He told me: ‘If you don’t write a book, someone else will, and they’re not going to write what you want them to,’” Eddie, 79, says. Thus, the Hollands have penned a revealing autobiography. Named after a song they wrote for the Vandellas, Come and Get These Memories shows how so much era-defining pop
music came out of Motown boss Berry Gordy’s small house and studios on 2648 West Grand Boulevard in Detroit.