Smokey Robinson Recalls Wild Late Nights at Motown Records: 'Our Wives Would Come to Get Us' (Exclusive)

Smokey Robinson's still got it.

The legendary music man, alongside best friend and longtime collaborator Berry Gordy, helped change the course of entertainment and American society with Motown Records. Now he's back with his 24th album, Gasms.

"I have never lost my zeal for music," the star, 86, tells PEOPLE in this week's issue, sharing stories and pictures from throughout his iconic career. Of the suggestive new album title, "I did that because I wanted the controversy," he says with a laugh. "I want people to go, 'What's he talking about? I gotta hear it!'"

Back in the '50s and '60s when Robinson was a young singer-songwriter in Motown's act The Miracles, he was busy penning R&B classics for his group, like "You've Really Got a Hold on Me," as well as for others, like the legendary "My Girl" for The Temptations.

In the process, he was helping make history — and progress. "We became really popular at the height of the Civil Rights movement," Robinson explains. Once while traveling to shows down South, "We got shot at on the bus for trying to go to the bathroom at a gas station. If you were Black you were in the Civil Rights movement whether you wanted to be or not."

Early on, at the label's shows in the South, "There was a rope barrier between White people and Black people. Eventually, after about a year and a half of Motown, they started to come together. We would go down there and see Black girls with White boyfriends and Black boys with White girlfriends," he says. "Music is something that breaks down barriers."

When he and his fellow Motown acts, like the Supremes and Marvin Gaye, weren't performing and pushing the world forward, they were having a blast back home in Detroit.

"We did everything together," he recalls. "We went on picnics, went to each other's houses for dinner. You could be on the road for two months and you get home and the first place you want to go is Hitsville [Motown's headquarters], because everyone who is in town is over there."

Between poker games, ping pong, chess and more, the star says there was so much fun to be had, they almost didn't know when to call it. "I was married," says Robinson whose wife at the time was Claudette Rogers, from whom he split in 1986. He's been married to fashion designer Frances Gladney since 2002. "Those of us who were married, if we weren't home at 2 o'clock in the morning, our wives knew where we were. They would just come right down to get us, like 'Come home!'"

The fond memories will be with him forever, and he is forever grateful. "I feel so blessed that I have been able to live a life that I absolutely love and earn a living doing it," says Robinson. "I thank God every day."

For more on Smokey Robinson's life and times, pick up this week's issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands everywhere Friday.