I Second That Emotion

Worrywarts never learn. I didn’t even think to check for my handkerchief on my way to interview Smokey Robinson. I was preoccupied with what-ifs--mainly, what if the Motown legend maintained his performer’s polish and wouldn’t feel like opening up? All that worrying faded just before twilight when we were seated at a glass table in a room overlooking the back of Smokey’s Encino home. The grounds were green. So were Smokey’s eyes. The man who defined the Motown sound turns 58 this month.

Question: You must be living right, looking this good.

Answer: Thank you. I run at least five times a week and, see, also I’m a golfing fanatic. We go and play golf early, about five times a week.

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Q: Who’s we?

A: Robert Gordy, Berry’s brother; Mickey Stevenson, who was our first A&R; director at Motown; Michael Stokes, the guy producing the album I’m working on now; Harvey Fuqua [the Moonglows]; and we’ve even convinced Berry [Gordy, the founder of Motown] to get back into golf. We no longer want to play--we have to. And we’ve been together so long, we’ve played everything.

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Q: What do you mean?

A: I mean, in the early days of Motown you would find us playing pingpong every day in the studio itself. We had a fold-up table, and on any given day you could come down there and there’d be guys lined up against the wall holding paddles, waiting for their game. We played merciless pingpong, and then at night we would all go bowling and we all had our own shoes and bowling balls.

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Q: You’re getting plenty of exercise between the golf and running, you know that?

A: I run on a cushioned treadmill now. It gives with every step, and I have cushioned shoes that are built for people who need a soft landing--because I can’t do it outside anymore since, gosh, 1981-82, because it’s too damaging on the knees, you know. I had arthroscopic surgery on both my knees. I don’t even have any scars.

Smokey hiked up his pant legs to show the little “three dots and dashes” on his knees, and I want you to know the man’s socks matched his jade-green silk shirt.

And I ride the stationary bike, and I lift just a few light weights.

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Q: Golf’s the passion, huh?

A: You know it. And golf is a punishing, cruel game, and the reason that people love it so much is because you can’t blame anybody.

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Q: Blame them for a lousy game?

A: There are many days when I wish I could say, “Man, they defensed me so good today. Every time I got ready to hit my ball, they kicked it out of the way, they threw me down, they grabbed my club just at the right time.” You know they can’t do any of that, and they have to be quiet while you hit the ball. And the ball is just sitting there defying you to hit it where you’re trying to hit it to. A crazy game.

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Q: Do you sing on your own?

A: All day long. All day long. My sisters, they said that when I was a little boy, by the time I could talk, I was singing. My mom would get up at 6 o’clock in the morning and I’d get up with her, and I’d be singing at the top of my lungs, going through the house singing--wasn’t singing anything--just singing, and my sisters had maybe another hour to sleep and they would say, “Why don’t you shut up, Junior?” and my mother would say, “Just leave him alone. One of these days you’re gonna be sorry you told him to shut up.” I sing all the time. It’s just second nature or something, and I guess it’s a nervous habit.

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Q: Do you diet?

A: I don’t diet, but since 1972 I have not had any red meat at all, period. None. When I moved out here, I was still smoking a lot of weed, and Claudette always wanted me to stop that. [Now divorced, the Robinsons have two children, Berry, 29, and Tamla, 27.] A transcendental meditation guru in Detroit who taught Claudette how to meditate contacted the guy out here in Los Angeles, who called me--we’re gonna teach you transcendental meditation, and you’ll stop smokin’ weed--and they recommended that you do yoga, which I still do, and stop eating red meat.

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Q: What do you eat?

A: I love oatmeal. Oatmeal’s one of my favorites, and I may have a couple pieces of toast with it. I drink basically water and juices. I don’t drink soda anymore. I had what they termed an over-acid stomach. Every now and then I will have a ginger ale, but ginger ale is good for you, a stomach settler, actually. I’m not a lunch person. I eat a little chicken and turkey. Mostly I eat fish. Dinner, I’ll have fish and vegetables.

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Q: So in 1972 you left the Miracles, moved the family to Los Angeles from Detroit, took up yoga, stopped eating red meat and getting high.

A: Uh-huh. However, I went back to getting high and almost killed myself. I was a big weed smoker. I started smoking weed when I was about 19 or 20. I liked anything about weed. I never did heroin, but cocaine almost killed me. And I wasn’t snorting it. I never liked it by itself.

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Q: How were you doing it?

A: Break the rocks up and put it on my weed and smoke ‘em like that.

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Q: What about now? What’s going on today?

A: I have not had any drugs--I may have had some aspirin maybe once, tried to break a fever and I was on the road--but I haven’t had any drugs in my system at all, period, since May 1986, when I went and got prayed for, for the drug thing. And that was it for me. That’s been like somebody that I never knew was in here and who’s been re-released.

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Q: And this somebody is?

A: Jesus. Yeah. And, see, I knew Jesus before I even did that to myself. The beautiful thing about Jesus is that I tried to get away from him. He wouldn’t let me go, see, and that’s who I reacquainted myself with. Drugs don’t discriminate. You know, they don’t care. And here I was, a man who loved my life. And I looked up and I was dead.

Sometimes I’m frightened, you know? I love my life. I love what I do. I love people, you know what I mean? I am so blessed.

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Q: When did you see yourself as dead?

A: ABC was going to do a documentary on songwriters. They were going to use some film footage of me with the Miracles and then show a 12-minute interview with me. They cut the segment down to five minutes. So being the warped-state-of-mind person that I was at that time, I hated to see five minutes when they had said 12. So that night I’m looking at it, and here I come on the TV and, I tell you, that it was one of the worst moments of my life.

Smokey’s voice turned raspy, his eyes misty.

They were showing the film footage and now they’re showing the interview. . . . Sorry.

He broke off long enough for the lump in his throat to go away. I asked him whether he was OK.

And I was sitting there thinking, “I’m sorry that they showed me at all.” I wished they’d shown just the film footage and just used my voice because I looked like a walking dead person. My eyes were all protruding out of my head. It was absolutely horrible. And I was sitting there, and I was watching this--they should have never, ever showed me.

Smokey cried and wiped the tears with his hands. I couldn’t find the damned hankie. I helped myself to some tissues.

And I was raisin’ hell because they were going to do five minutes instead of 12 minutes of showing me. They shouldn’ta shown me at all. It was one of the worst things I ever remember in my life. And the next day I was gettin’ high again.

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Q: If I asked you to sum up the last 12 years--in one word?

A: Heaven.

Maybe that’s the word Smokey will use this time around when he watches ABC-TV’s (Channel 7) “Motown 40: The Music Is Forever,” a new four-hour TV special starting at 9 p.m. Sunday and continuing Feb. 19.