Diana Ross was said not to have hit every note when she took the stage at Glastonbury in June - even pop divas struggle at 78 - but her song selection was praised as impeccable, including, of course, some that Lamont Dozier co-wrote once wrote the Holland brothers for her and the Supremes: You Can't Hurry Love, Baby Love, Stop in the Name of Love.

That much "Love" can only come from a man who named his first singing group The Romeos when he was fifteen in high school, before turning to making a living as a shoeshine boy on Chicago's streets.

It was only later that he became a millionaire, according to the rules of the American dream.

Whether the dream came true at the time when Dozier, starting in 1962, screwed together hit after hit on the Motown assembly line with Brian and Eddie Holland, for Martha and the Vandellas, Marvin Gaye, the Four Tops and the Supremes, can be doubted - label boss Berry Gordy needed every dollar for himself, and money was at stake when the songwriting trio Holland/Dozier/Holland left and sued Motown in 1967 at the height of their success.

The three must have thought themselves irreplaceable and invulnerable when they took on the hit machine Motown.

After all, they were perfectly capable of competing for first place in the charts with hysterical fidget pop for the Supremes or symphonic soul for the Four Tops from the Beatles and the whole British pop invasion.

How did that go?

A few years ago, Lamont Dozier told me how the three of us crowded around the piano before breakfast, forgot coffee and donuts, shuffled major and minor keys, brought piccolos into play, wanted to pitch vocals to seemingly impossible heights: three Midas, thrice infallible.

Except that Gordy was able to drag out the lawsuits endlessly, so that in the fast-moving pop business, soon nobody could really remember Holland/Dozier/Holland.

It was not until 1973 that the two labels Invictus and Hot Wax, which were intended as Motown competition, were able to release their first and then smaller hits.

Teenage pop music had changed, soul became funk and then disco, the wonder boy Lamont Dozier became a slightly plump, melancholy-looking older gentleman who offered his production ideas and songs to the new pop stars like Alison Moyet, Phil Collins or Mich Hucknall, with occasional success, a Grammy, an Oscar nomination, but also with long dry spells and strangely random solo records.

As with many of the great songwriters and producers - let's say Phil Spector, Mickie Most, also Quincy Jones - three or four years of world domination are followed by three or four decades of complete helplessness and even self-parody.

I will never forget how Lamont Dozier, who died on Monday at the age of 81, sat behind Bösendorfer in the Bayerischer Rundfunk studio and meticulously, with great tenderness and also sadness, dissected and explained his old Motown compositions.

So much love.

Thank you Romeo