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Mercury Rev’s Jonathan Donahue on The Temptations’ Ball Of Confusion

The Temptations
Ball Of Confusion (That’s What The World Is Today)
(Gordy single, 1970)

Jonathan Donahue (Mercury Rev): “The perception of Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong’s lyrics is amazing. If someone had written that today we’d all be nodding along in agreement and the music matches it perfectly. It has a genuine timeless quality; not an old-timey quality like listening to Sinatra, but timelessness. It’s very relevant right now. They’re not talking about ‘Baby, baby baby, baby’ or rebelling against their parents or projecting some sad melancholic sort of archetypal data; this is a very specific point of view, and one that doesn’t take any sides, and to see the five guys in the Temptations up there in their uniform fuchsia jumpsuits singing those words in a very brotherly way without a fierceness to it, well that’s the best thing about it, they’re just saying how it is. It has that universal quality that allows you to reflect yourself rather than stamp an issue or an opinion on your forehead.

“I first heard it in the second or third grade, I tuned into it on AM radio. In the Catskills where I grew up there was no latent glam rock scene or punk rock scene bubbling, there was only American music on the radio. There was no genre classification; it was played alongside Terry Jacks’ Seasons In The Sun, Yummy Yummy Yummy and Black Sabbath’s Paranoid. There was no background to say this is this, it was just a part of music, a part of rock’n’roll. You couldn’t tell what they were – rockers, hippies, soul men – you didn’t know where they fitted in.”

Read great pieces about the 100 Greatest Motown Songs in this month’s MOJO magazine.