The DeBarge family - El, Marty, Randy, Bunny and James, not to mention Thomas, Bobby, and baby brother Chico - were supposed to be Motown's follow-up to the Jacksons. But after a trail of dazzling '80s hits, behind-the-scenes drama threatened to bring the family down. From dating Latoya and Janet Jackson to allegations of sexual abuse and drug addiction - the DeBarge family has dealt with everything from prison time to AIDS. But even now, their music is still sampled by the likes of Diddy and Polow Da Don, and some of the DeBarges are trying resurrect their careers. Is it too late, though, to pick up the pieces? A story in four parts, from our October 2007 issue. Episode 3.
Etterlene Abney was 17 when she met the 21-year-old Army soldier Robert DeBarge at a Detroit skating rink. "At first I didn't think he would like me, because I was so dark," Etterlene recalls. "A white man with a black woman…we were a freak show." They were married in 1953, two weeks before he was shipped out overseas. Etterlene says she'd never known brutality in her life — until she wed. "Robert was very jealous," she said with a sigh, "and an extremely abusive father." They stayed together 21 years before divorcing in 1974.
"Bobby went through a lot of pain," says Chico DeBarge of his oldest brother. "My father sexually molested a lot of my brothers and sisters. You could hear that anguish in Bobby's music."
Robert DeBarge Sr. has a voice as dry as sandpaper. At 75, he's had three surgeries and breathes with the help of an oxygen tank. "She has the right to her opinion," he says of his wife's allegations of abuse. "I don't think that I was at all . . . I don't speak a lot against her becasue she's the mother of my children. There are a lot of things, for the sake of the children, some things are best for them not to even know." Now remarried, with one son who died in a car accident, he firmly denies abusing his children sexually or otherwise. "Ohh no, no no," he says, sounding shocked at the idea.
"That may be our fault," says Bunny, unsurprised to hear her father's denials. "We never made daddy stand up. I don't hate my father, but he has a way of blocking things out of his mind."
Robert Sr. was a trucker after leaving the Army. A religious man, he sometimes found time to play the piano. "I was musically inclined," he says with a laugh, "so the children couldn't help but be talented." Although he had split with "the boys' mother" by the time his children had moved to Los Angeles, he says he "wasn't tickled to death about it," preferring they further their education instead. He never thought Motown would treat them right. "I knew they would use them instead of being fair with them. Being in the limelight is a struggle," he says. "Here today, and gone tomorrow."
According to Bunny — who, like her mother is working on a book, ominously titled The Kept One
— the DeBarge siblings' experience with drugs started early. She tried
sniffing coke after the group finished its second album and eventually
became dependent on pills. "It was the '80s — doing drugs was the thing
to do," says Bunny, stressing that she never went to sessions high. "If
you weren't doing drugs, you weren't in."
By 1987, Bunny had left DeBarge and was in a free
fall. "I had no drugs to help me cover, no fame to hide behind," she
writes in her forthcoming book. (Bunny has since kicked her habit,
crediting her turnaround to her relationship with God). The following
year, Bobby and Chico were convicted, along with two other accomplices,
on drug conspiracy charges [see sidebar]. Chico's self-titled debut
album had been released just two years earlier, and he should have been
enjoying the success of his single "Talk To Me" (Motown, 1986).
Instead, both brothers found themselves in jail cells serving five-year
sentences. But the most tragic fall of all was Bobby's.
"Bobby was always very sensitive and withdrawn,"
says Williams, "and there was a lot of abuse at the hands of Mr.
DeBarge. Heroin became his main way to escape." Though he stayed clean
for a while, after the success of Switch II, Bobby began slipping. "He was back on drugs, and his ego was out of control," Williams says. "Bobby was going around saying, 'I'm Switch.'"
Maybe he didn't need the band to show off his musical talents, but Bobby did seek refuge at his former bandmate's California home after being released from prison in 1994 with the HIV virus ravaging his immune system. "Bobby's last years were hell," Williams says. "He was separated from his wife and kids, and acting paranoid toward everybody. Bobby knew his life was basically over." He moved back to Grand Rapids the following year, and his family checked him into a hospice. After riding the heroin horse since his teens, Bobby died from complications of AIDS on August 16, 1995 at the age of 39. Taking his big brother's death to heart, El would never be the same.
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