The Four Tops will be giving fans plenty of new projects — and possibly even new music — to reach out for in the near future. 

The venerable troupe was formed during 1953 in Detroit and, starting 10 years later, became one of Motown’s most prolific hitmakers, with hits such as “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch),” “Reach Out I’ll Be There,” “It’s the Same Old Song,” “Bernadette” and more. It’s been inducted into the  Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, the Vocal Group Hall of Fame and the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame.

The last of its original members, Abdul “Duke” Fakir, passed away during July of 2024, and since then the Four Tops front has been quiet save for continuing live performances by the current incarnation of the quartet — which includes founder’s son Lawrence Roquel Payton Jr. and longtime frontman Theo Peoples, a former Temptation. 

That starts changing this summer, however. 

A deluxe July 27 reissue of the 1966 concert album Four Tops Live! will begin an extensive campaign that will see more releases from the vault, a documentary, a stage musical and other endeavors tied to the group’s enormous heritage. “It’s really exciting,” Keith Hagan of Skylark Artist Management, who’s now working with the group, tells Billboard. “It was Duke’s wish for the Tops to continue; it was the wish of ALL of the original four for this to continue. There’s been some new organization, new restructuring as far as how do we honor the legacy of the original Tops but carry forward to what the current group is doing.

“We’re at the precipice of starting to do things. The live record is like the opening gun for us. You’re going to be hearing a lot more about the legacy and the future of the Four Tops. We’re looking at this as the first of many actionable items we’re hoping to take.”

Payton Jr. adds that, “I feel like we’re on the verge of taking the legacy to a whole other level. I really do. There’s a sense of renewal. We’ll always work in the spirit of what the Four Tops were, but we have talented people in the group — everybody writes, sings, plays a little bit. So what can we do to take this legacy into the future?”

Not The Same Old Song

Four Tops Live!, which was recorded during three 1966 performances on the Upper Deck of Detroit’s legendary Roostertail, hit No. 1 on Billboard’s R&B chart and No. 17 on the Billboard 200. The reissue was instigated by a discussion between Hagen and Universal Music Group, which owns the Motown catalog. The group was planning a special summer date (July 27) back at the venue — which hosted Motown Mondays performances back in the day — and thought it would be an appropriate time to revisit the album, which turns 60 in November.

“We discovered that Motown had recorded two and a half sets — on the first Motown Monday (Aug. 22) and then they went back and recorded on a Sunday three weeks later (Sept. 11) to fix some of the previous issues,” says reissue producer, Harry Weinger, a vice-president of A&R for Universal Music Enterprises. “What flowed out of that was setting up a spreadsheet to map out what was on the original album, what was worth keeping, what was only recorded once and had to be kept on the album, what else was there if we wanted to do an expanded version.”

The new Four Tops Live! — mixed and mastered by Drew Schultz, a former musical director and drummer for the Four Tops who’s now a Digital Media Curator for the Motown Museum in Detroit — features 22 tracks, including four previously unreleased songs. There’s also a bonus instrumental, “You Name It,” played by the Motown house band the Funk Brothers, who backed the Tops at these shows, along with alternate renditions from other performances. Fan will also get restored stage patter (name-checking other Motowners in attendance) by frontman Levi Stubbs and Scott Regen, a Detroit radio personality who hosted the Motown Mondays.

Regen wrote liner notes for both the original album as well as the upcoming reissue. Weinger penned extensive producer’s notes as well. Canned applause from the original release is replaced by actual reaction from the shows. 

Four Tops Live! will be released digitally by Ume and on vinyl by Barcelona’s Elemental Music. It includes all of the Top’ hits at the time — including the then-just released “Reach Out I’ll Be There” — and nods to its pre-Motown era with a show-opening rendition of George Gershwin’s “Fascinating Rhythm” and early mentor Billy Eckstine’s “I’m Falling For You.” The set also features the Tops covering the Supremes’ “You Can’t Hurry Love,” “The Girl From Ipanema,” the Beatles’ “Michelle,” The Sound of Music’s “Climb Ev’ry Mountain” and Tony Bennett’s “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.”

There`s also a vampy seven-and-a-half-minute rendition of the Pete Seeger/Lee Hays protest song “If I Had a Hammer,” during which Stubbs makes an unexplained mention of “a union problem here. These guys for some reason or other, they don’t like to play for colored performers” — likely making a joke about additional contract players on the gig. 

“What I hear incredible excitement,” Weinger says of the entire show. “You have these great artists at a real peak, and Scott Regen is really hyping everybody up. There’s just tremendous excitement.”

Payton Jr. was young and did not attend those 1966 concerts but remembers the group rehearsing for them at his family’s house, while the families of the Four Tops families and some of the other Motown artists had a special night at Detroit’s St. Regis hotel. “We were all running around the halls and stuff, but I remember it was a big thing … they were at the Roostertail recording,” he says. “I didn’t know until some months later they were actually making an album of it; that realization came to me was when (his father) brought the album home, and I looked at it and was like, ‘Oh, that’s the night we were at the St. Regis hotel!'”

Payton, who’s been part of the group since 2005, adds that the current Tops — which also includes Ronnie McNeir (since 1999) and Michael Brock (2024) as well as Peoples (1998) — plan to “do a couple special songs” drawn from the live album especially for the Roostertail return in July. The night will include a three-course dinner, VIP merchandise and a pop-up Four Tops museum on site. 

Headed Four (sic) The Future

Looking ahead, the Tops are planning a new greatest hits compilation that will include material from before and after the group’s tenure at Motown — including chart hits such as “Ain’t No Woman (Like the One I Got),” “Keeper of the Castle,” “Are You Man Enough” and “When She Was My Girl,” and possibly songs the later incarnation of the group worked on prior to Fakir’s passing. A stage musical that was also in motion at the time and is now being addressed again, along with a planned documentary. Hagan says the group is eyeballing potential producers and other creative partners for both projects, with no firm time frame in place yet. 

The Four Tops are also returning to Europe and the U.K. for shows during June and July, sandwiched by U.S. performances. (Dates available at fourtops.com.)

“Our goal here is to re-introduce and then introduce (the Tops) to a younger generation who maybe aren’t as familiar with the Tops’ monster hits as they should be,” he explains. “I feel very bullish that we can start to expand the Tops’ music and audience to a younger audience. The Beatles didn’t become the biggest band in the world by accident; there were people working behind the scenes (to produce) new documentaries, new release packages, to have things going on. We’re just trying to get some proper structure and solid ideas on the table.”

And Payton Jr says that the current Four Tops lineup is aiming to add to the catalog. 

“We are getting ready to make some” new music,” he confirms. “We have been in the studio … listening to other producers and songwriters and putting together some things now. It’s a pretty high bar to hit; what you do is just go in there and do the best you can, just like my father and them did. This is a new group here; we’re really just getting to know each other’s capabilities and what we can do carry the legacy forward and maybe grow it.”

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