Originally Posted by
TheMotownManiac
all but a select few had moved on from mary wilson by 1980. I think very very very few people cared if she got a recording contract or not. That was proven by her Motown album, which garnered very little interest, even though it was high profile in the bars, and in record stores. Sam Goody, had a poster in a couple stores in St. Louis, and in the more gay, friendly, independent stores there was an album cover on the wall that was a little bit bigger than a regular album cover. It had a chance to take off enough to gauge interest in her, and there was very little. Not enough for Motown to want to do a second album, and they needed income. Nobody outside of that little niche cared at all until after her book came out, and she made diana to be a monster, and she the victim of the monster. she did a beautiful job of building her brand, but still not enough to get a deal and I really don’t think anybody was losing sleep over it.
and, although I understand why, she did what she did, diana really miss played her hand during RTL. She should have been forthright with the press from the very beginning stating something to the effect that she had absolutely nothing to do with the deals that Mary and Cindy had with the promoters because she felt it would be cleaner that way. When the 20 million fable reared its ugly head, Diana should’ve just come out and said that’s a lie, it’s absolutely nothing like that, it would be impossible to do if it was like that and show her contract. That would’ve taken the wind out of Mary’s sails, and the public would understand why diana did not want to tour with her after making up such a big load of crap . Instead, diana came out of it looking very badly. but I didn’t see much of a backlash at radio city. She’s recognized as a national treasure, and being treated as such deservedly.