Tony Turner was the road manager for the three former lead singers of the Temptations - David Ruffin, Eddie Kendrick, and Dennis Edwards - and worked with these living legends through thick and thin. Now he tells their story, the sometimes funny and often tragic events of their lives on and offstage. Onstage, the Temptations were electrifying. With Eddie Kendrick's seductive good looks, David Ruffin's irresistible voice, tight-jacketed outfits, and choreographed splits and flips to challenge even the great James Brown, the Temptations's performances always whipped crowds of adoring fans into a frenzy. Offstage, there was David Ruffin's hard-core drug use, Eddie Kendrick's fights with Berry Gordy, Motown's founder and president, and Paul Williams's 1973 suicide.
Here is the uncensored behind-the-scenes story of the Temptations, told with unflinching honesty by one who saw it firsthand. Tony Turner recounts it all: from the Temptations's first smash-hit records, "The Way You Do the Things You Do" and "My Girl," to David Ruffin's mysterious death and circus-like funeral. Deliver Us from Temptation reveals the group's feverish success, the illicit sex, the prolific drug use, the fall from superstardom, and the ultimately doomed struggle to reclaim their former status.
Deliver Us from Temptation dramatizes the Motown of the sixties - of big breaks and bitter jealousies, of imported champagne and mink-lined Cadillacs, of mutually destructive competition and temperamental stars. The author speaks frankly about the intrigues and intimacies within the Motown "family" - of Diana Ross and Smokey Robinson, of the Temptations's Otis Williams and Patti LaBelle, of Mary Wilson and Duke Fakir of the Four Tops. Was the tragedy of the Temptations due to some fatal character flaws, or rather was it Motown's fault that their fabulous success was cut short and never relived?
Tony Turner witnessed it all, and frequently pulled this talented, impossible group of men together to recreate the miracle that was their distinctive, chart-busting sound. David Ruffin warned the author to "keep family secrets confidential," others said that the truth would be too painful. This is the tragic and shocking story of the Temptations and Motown - a compelling and honest story of vanity, indulgence, and destruction told by an insider who saw it all.