By Brad Dison

The Four Tops were one of the most commercially successful pop music groups of the 1960s. The members of the Four Tops, Levi Stubbs, Renaldo “Obie” Benson, Abdul “Duke” Fakir, and Lawrence Payton, were propelled to stardom with their hits such as “Baby I Need Your Loving,” “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch), “It’s the Same Old Song,” “Reach Out I’ll Be There,” “Standing in the Shadows of Love,” “Bernadette,” “Ain’t No Woman (Like the One I Got),” and many more.

In 1988, the Four Tops, still with its original lineup, released an album of new material called “Indestructible.” To promote their album, the Four Tops went on a world tour. The album proved more successful in the United Kingdom than in the United States, and by the end of the year had climbed into the UK Top 10. By the third week of December 1988, the Four Tops were homesick.

They had completed their live shows and had one more contractual obligation to fulfill before they could return to their homes and families in Detroit, Michigan for Christmas. On December 21, 1988, they went to film two of their songs for the British music television program called Top of the Pops. The Four Tops had planned to film both songs, their number one hit from 1966, “Reach Out I’ll Be There,” and their newest single “Loco in Acapulco,” at the same session. They were so sure that they would film both songs at the same session that the Four Tops had already purchased four first class tickets for Pan Am’s flight 103 which was scheduled to depart London’s Heathrow Airport at 6:00 that evening.

The producer of Top of the Pops had other ideas. “Loco in Acapulco” was scheduled to be broadcast on the following day, December 22, 1988, and “Reach Out I’ll Be There” was scheduled for New Years Eve. To make it appear that the songs were filmed at different times, the producer required the Four Tops to wear different suits for each performance and the stages would be decorated differently for each performance.

The change of suits required only a few minutes, but the stage transformation would take several hours. Despite their best efforts to persuade the producer to film both songs in the same session, which began with friendly requests and progressed into a cursing match, the producer would not budge. He held their contract. They had no choice but to film one song on December 21 and return the following day to film the other. This meant that they would have one less day to spend with their families during the holidays.

The homesick Four Tops’ anger had not diminished that evening when Pan Am Flight 103 took off without them. At 7:02 p.m., as Flight 103 was flying over Lockerbie, Scotland, a terrorist’s bomb exploded in the baggage compartment beneath the first class section of the airliner. All 259 people on the jet and 11 people on the ground perished in what has become known as the Lockerbie bombing.

This article is dedicated to the 270 people who lost their lives in that disaster. Had the Four Tops gotten their way, that number would have been 274.