Originally Posted by
StuBass1
Thanks Dvus… Having been somewhat close enough to observe some of this...and even had a brief discussion about David with the great Paul Williams shortly before his death...I'm led to believe that it was the Temptations themselves that grew weary of David's antics when he was with the group and perhaps led by Otis [[as was probably one of the accurate perspectives in the Temptations movie based on Otis's book), that , I'm sure with Berry's blessing, decided to part ways with David who always seemed to have things in a state of disarray and disruption within the group structure... Once the group decided to 86 David in favor of Dennis, now Berry was sort of stuck with David, and because of Ruffins unique talent, I'm sure Berry was determined to exploit that talent and use it to his benefit for fun and profit. Davids solo career started out with promise, releasing a couple of nice charted tunes, yet David was not really all in on promoting his career and I'm not so sure with everything going on at Motown, David was Berrys primary concern. At that point, Davids behavior and likely his reliability as a trusted performer in Berrrys stable of talent began to wane, and likely became more of a headache than an asset to Berry who was in the midst of big plans for his company, including the impending move to Los Angeles, and fretting over Davids antics was likely something Berry, being the astute businessman he was, just wasn't going to waste his time or energy on with a lot bigger "fish to fry"... At that point, David just became his own biggest obstacle to success in his solo career and went full on David... He just was not as important to Motown since the Tempts were doing quite well under the direction of Norman Whitfield with Dennis doing the lead tenors and David made himself highly expendable...Not the center of attention he seemed to view himself as when he was the show stopper in his Temptation glory days...Realizing that likely contributed to Davids downfall...
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