On Detroit’s west side, there’s a little house that transformed American culture and the music world at large.
And so the Motown Museum has become a go-to destination for visitors from across the globe, including celebrities who regularly flock to the place that took life as Hitsville, U.S.A., in 1959.
It’s not just Beyoncé, the Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, Bruno Mars, David Bowie and the other A-listers who have made the pilgrimage through the years. Unbeknownst to many locals, there’s a regular drumbeat of high-profile figures who head to 2648 W. Grand Boulevard as their must-do Detroit destination.
They’re musicians, actors, comedians, entrepreneurs, political figures and more, all drawn to Motown’s original recording studio, business headquarters and creative hub. There are few parallels in American music tourism.
The Detroit museum has been a mecca for everyone from Snoop Dogg to Metallica. Visitors gravitate to a spot that defines homegrown American musical ingenuity.
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Celebrity visits to Motown often happen privately, arranged in advance to avoid commotion. Beyoncé, for instance, has visited several times with no cameras in tow.
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“She’s not coming as a celebrity,” says Robin Terry, the Motown Museum’s chairwoman and CEO. “She’s coming as a private citizen who wants to take in this tour.”
Beyoncé acknowledged one of her Motown excursions during a 2016 concert at Ford Field.
“I just wanted to say thank you to Detroit for creating such incredible music,” she said following her afternoon visit to the museum with hubby Jay-Z.
But the Motown visits can also be impromptu — as with Usher, who seems to pop by every time he’s in town.
“Part of the fun of this space is you just never know who you’re going to see,” says Terry.
Either way, a trip to Motown has become a custom for touring artists when in Detroit. They seem drawn to it as a holy spot, the place where Berry Gordy and company brought Black music to the mainstream via the Supremes, Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson, the Temptations, Marvin Gaye, the Four Tops, the Jackson 5 and many more.
That Detroit legacy has been a calling card for decades, and Terry says “we see artists from every category make their way to this space for the inspiration they’re seeking.”
Andrew Lloyd Webber was drawn to the museum by the Motown costuming and choreography he loved as a kid watching “The Ed Sullivan Show” in the 1960s.
When Usher last stopped by, he told Terry: “I’m working on a new business venture, and I was looking for entrepreneurial inspiration.”
Jennifer Hudson was a recent visitor emotionally fueled by Motown’s music: “For her to stand in the footsteps of the giants whose shoulders she stands on meant everything to her. She was just moved and overwhelmed by that,” Terry says.
And there was Wynonna Judd, who spent hours in Motown’s Studio A in what Terry calls a spiritual experience for the country star.
McCartney was perhaps the most notable Motown Museum patron of all: In 2011, he visited the small Detroit studio that influenced so much of the Beatles’ music — and was inspired to fund the restoration of its Steinway grand piano.
Terry recounted a 2005 visit from actor-singer Tyrese Gibson. Inside the fabled Motown studio, he rubbed his hand across an instrument. “That might be dusty,” the museum chief told Gibson, warning him not to touch his white sweatsuit.
“He said, ‘Are you kidding me?’ and then he just rubbed it all over his bald head,” Terry recounts with a laugh. “It’s the allure of the culture, the allure of the authentic, the allure of the inspirational that I think brings folks here. They feel like, ‘Ahh, I’ve been there. I laid my hand there.’”
Contact Detroit Free Press music writer Brian McCollum: 313-223-4450 or bmccollum@freepress.com.