I've discovered that Motown and Broadway have a lot in common - a family of wonderfully talented, passionate, hardworking young people, fiercely competitive but also full of love and appreciation for the work, for each other and for the people in the audience.

Money had never been the main thing for me. It's the legacy that was important.

Motown was about music for all people – white and black, blue and green, cops and the robbers. I was reluctant to have our music alienate anyone.

But once I saw them [Jackson 5 during audition], I rushed out with my video camera to start taping them because I knew that they were something so special, mainly because of the lead singer, nine-year-old Michael Jackson. And it was just so obvious to me that he was a star.

It's like losing a son because I loved Michael and Michael loved me. But you know, as when people grow up and they make their own decisions and they move forward, there's a distance, and I think that Michael in some cases might have gone too far with some of the things he was doing.

I have this ability to find this hidden talent in people that sometimes even they didn't know they had.

I'm a songwriter, that's what I love.