“A beautiful bonfire”

I was asked by my old Beatles buddy, Tim Riley, to contribute something about Motown to his guest-edited special issue of American Music Perspectives, a scholarly journal. What I produced, which is accessible here, isn't overly scholarly; in fact, it might even strike you as readable. Focusing on the 1971 box set The Motown Story: The First Decade, which I've always been drawn to as an artifact, I realized that the story the box tells is also and inseparably the story of Diana Ross, "Ain't No Mountain High Enough," dreams that came true, and dreams that didn't.