Quote Originally Posted by marybrewster View Post
Wasn't Wayne someone that Mary brought in; someone non-Motown? For as little as the label seemingly wanted to do with the group, they still had their thumb over all of their doings.

What I wonder is, as each group member left, did Mary ring up Motown first and let them know? Or did she just go out and say ta-da, here is our new member. I think by JW, Motown was hoping the group would just go out to pasture. Then "High Energy" hit with MSC, and their ears perked up a bit.
through summer of 72, the group still had very strong bookings, sure Touch bombed but FJ had helped bounce back a bit. I think motown was still thinking there was at least some money to be made. but the JW turd sealed the deal. Bayou mentioned how upset jean was with the promotion dept, JW has mentioned the cover was dumb [[i'm using my words there), IGIMTM was the only single. did motown hear the album and was like "oh man this sucks" or what happened? if that was the case, why agree to release it? they had not problem sending Version 1 of HE back to be redone. i agree that changes improved it but Version 1 was still a solid album. lightyears better than JW. if they had so many problems that they wanted nothing to do with it, why didn't they say "this shit sucks - fix it or it'll go into the vault forever"

and yeah i have no idea bout where Wayne came from. mary then mentions that later in the year they switched managers again and that is where the Temps/Sup tour took hold. I think that means Shelley was managing them again? maybe this was a hope to revitalize the group by piggy backing off the more popular Tempts? but then they released this JW nonsense and dusted off the DRATS music?