Marvin Gaye

• 1. Introduction

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  On the 1st of April 1984, in a house in the Western Heights area of West Adams in Los Angeles, Marvin Gaye was shot twice by his own father. One bullet pierced his heart. He was pronounced dead at 1:01 p.m., one day before he would have turned 45. The man who fired the gun was Marvin Gay Sr., a church minister, and the weapon was a .38 Special handgun that Gaye himself had arranged to give him months earlier. This was the end of a life that began on the 2nd of April 1939 at Freedman's Hospital in Washington, D.C. Between those two dates stretched the career of the singer they called the Prince of Motown and the Prince of Soul. How did a boy raised in a strict Pentecostal household, beaten so often he later said he might have killed himself, become one of the most successful charting artists in Billboard history? How did a label that told its artists to avoid politics come to release What's Going On? And what happened in a seaside Belgian town that brought him back from the edge? These are the questions ahead.

• 2. Simple City

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  The Fairfax Apartments at 1617 1st Street SW were Gaye's first home, a public housing project in the Southwest Waterfront neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Many buildings there were small and in disrepair, lacking electricity and running water, and the alleys held one- and two-story shacks where nearly every dwelling was overcrowded. Gaye and his friends nicknamed the area Simple City and called it half-city, half country. He was the second of four children born to Marvin Gay Sr. and Alberta Gay, with sisters Jeanne and Zeola and a brother, Frankie. The family belonged to a conservative church known as the House of God, which drew its teachings from Pentecostalism and enforced a strict code of conduct. Gaye started singing in church at four years old, often accompanied by his father on piano. At eleven, a school-play performance of Mario Lanza's Be My Love drew encouragement toward a music career. The same household held terror. Gaye described life in his father's house as living with a king, a very peculiar, changeable, cruel, and all powerful king. His sister later explained he was beaten often, from age seven well into his teenage years. He felt that without his mother's comfort he might have committed suicide. At seventeen, in 1956, Gaye dropped out of Cardozo High School and enlisted in the United States Air Force, where his sergeant wrote in an outgoing review that Airman Gay cannot adjust to regimentation nor authority.

• 3. From Drummer To Star

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  After the Air Force, Gaye formed a vocal quartet called the Marquees with his friend Reese Palmer, and the group caught the attention of Bo Diddley, who co-wrote their sole single, Wyatt Earp. It failed to chart. Moonglows co-founder Harvey Fuqua then hired the group, renamed them Harvey and the New Moonglows, and moved them to Chicago, where Gaye sang his first lead vocal on Mama Loocie. In 1960 Gaye followed Fuqua to Detroit, and Fuqua offered him to Motown president Berry Gordy, selling half his interest in the singer. Marvin reportedly signed on the 19th of September 1960. He first chased a career in jazz standards rather than R&B, and spent much of 1961 doing session work as a drummer for the Miracles, the Marvelettes, and Jimmy Reed for five dollars a week. He added an e to his last name around this time. The turn came in 1962, when he co-wrote and played drums on the Marvelettes track Beechwood 4-5789. His first solo hit, Stubborn Kind of Fellow, followed that September, reaching No. 8 on the R&B chart. In March 1963 the dance song Hitch Hike carried him into the pop top 40 for the first time. Pride and Joy became his first top ten single on the Billboard Hot 100 on the 20th of July 1963. He also refused to attend grooming courses at the John Robert Powers School for Social Grace in Detroit, a refusal he later regretted.

• 4. Duets And Devastation

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  Tammi Terrell collapsed in Gaye's arms on the 14th of October 1967, during a performance at Hampden-Sydney College in Farmville, Virginia. Doctors found a malignant tumor in her brain, ending her career as a live performer. Her tumor would be operated on seven times. The two had built one of soul music's great partnerships, recording Ain't No Mountain High Enough, Your Precious Love, Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing, and You're All I Need to Get By. Terrell died from brain cancer on the 16th of March 1970, and Gaye attended her funeral. Her illness devastated him and pushed him toward disillusionment with the record business. Earlier duet work had paired him with Mary Wells on the 1964 album Together, his first chart album, and with Kim Weston on the 1966 hit It Takes Two. In December 1968, his recording of I Heard It Through the Grapevine reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and stayed there for seven consecutive weeks, selling more than four million copies. Yet Gaye felt the success was something he didn't deserve, saying he felt like a puppet, Berry's puppet, Anna's puppet. After Terrell's death he sought a tryout with the Detroit Lions football team, befriending Mel Farr and Lem Barney, though the team declined over fears of injury.

• 5. What's Going On

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  The idea for What's Going On came from Renaldo Obie Benson of the Four Tops, after he witnessed police brutality at an anti-war rally in Berkeley. Gaye recorded his new composition at Hitsville U.S.A. on the 1st of June 1970, with Mel Farr and Lem Barney singing harmony vocals, the two football players later receiving gold records. Berry Gordy refused to release the song, calling it too political and fearing Gaye would lose his crossover audience. Gaye answered by refusing to record any other new material until the label relented. Released in January 1971, it reached No. 1 on the R&B charts within a month and sold more than two million copies. Motown artists had often been told to avoid political and social commentary. Gaye had been affected by the 1965 Watts riots, the 1967 race riots in Detroit, the Kent State shootings, the Vietnam War, and the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. He admired the Black Panther Party's free meals for poor families but rejected violent tactics, keeping his messages nonviolent. After an ultimatum to record a full album, Gaye spent ten days that March making What's Going On, his first million-selling album, which launched Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology) and Inner City Blues. The album composed its songs in a song cycle, segueing one track into the next, bringing the concept album format to rhythm and blues and soul. In 1971 Gaye signed a new Motown deal worth one million dollars, the most lucrative deal by a black recording artist at the time.

• 6. Creative Freedom

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  Let's Get It On arrived in August 1973, and its title track became Gaye's second No. 1 single on the Hot 100 that September. The album was later hailed as a record unparalleled in its sheer sensuality and carnal energy. By becoming one of the first Motown artists to break from the label's production system, Gaye paved the way for Stevie Wonder. He produced the soundtrack and score to the blaxploitation thriller Trouble Man, released in November 1972, whose title track became his fifteenth top ten hit on the Hot 100. A renewed Motown contract let him build his own custom-made recording studio. In October 1975 he performed at a UNESCO benefit at New York's Radio City Music Hall to support an African literacy drive, and was later commended at the United Nations by Shirley Temple Black and Kurt Waldheim. His album I Want You followed in March 1976 and sold over one million copies, and the 1977 live album Live at the London Palladium sold over two million copies thanks to Got to Give It Up, which charted at No. 1. For a time he earned 100,000 dollars a night for performances. He took the band Maze on tour and persuaded founder Frankie Beverly to change their name from Raw Soul. In December 1978 he released Here, My Dear, inspired by the fallout from his marriage to Anna Gordy and recorded with the intention of remitting part of its royalties to her as alimony.

• 7. Ostend And Comeback

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  On the 14th of February 1981, on the advice of music promoter Freddy Cousaert, Gaye relocated to Cousaert's apartment in Ostend, Belgium. He had fled the United States fearing imprisonment over back taxes that had reached upward of 4.5 million dollars, and his cocaine addiction had intensified. In Ostend he shied away from heavy drug use, began exercising, and attended a local church, regaining personal confidence. His attorney Curtis Shaw later called the Ostend period the best thing that ever happened to Marvin. The trouble with Motown had deepened when a master tape of his album In Our Lifetime? was stolen and the label remixed and released it on the 15th of January 1981 without his consent, even removing the question mark from the title. Gaye vowed never to record for Motown again, and on the 23rd of March 1982 the label negotiated his release. Signed to CBS's Columbia subsidiary, he wrote Sexual Healing at Cousaert's apartment in Ostend and recorded it in Ohain. Released in November 1982, it became the biggest-selling single of his career, spending ten weeks at No. 1 on the Hot Black Singles chart, the first R&B single since the chart's 1958 inception to hold the top for ten consecutive weeks. The album Midnight Love went platinum in December 1982. Sexual Healing won him his first two Grammy Awards in February 1983, presented by Rick James and Grace Jones, along with an American Music Award. On the 13th of February 1983 he sang The Star-Spangled Banner at the NBA All-Star Game at The Forum in Inglewood, accompanied by Gordon Banks playing the studio tape from the stands, a rendition since regarded as one of the greatest in the anthem's history.

• 8. An Enduring Voice

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  Gaye possessed a four-octave vocal range, and the writer Rob Bowman noted that by the early 1970s he had developed three distinct voices: a smooth, sweet tenor, a growling rasp, and an unreal falsetto. Eddie Holland called him the most versatile vocalist he had ever worked with, with one of the sweetest and prettiest voices you ever wanted to hear. After listening to David Ruffin and Levi Stubbs, Gaye said he developed what he called his tough man voice, explaining simply, I developed a growl. The accolades have continued long past his death. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted him in 1987, and in 1996 he received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Rolling Stone ranked What's Going On as the greatest album of all time in its revised 2020 list, after the album was chosen in 2003 for the Library of Congress National Recording Registry. His name lives on in songs by other artists, from the Commodores tribute Nightshift to Charlie Puth's debut hit Marvin Gaye. In 2015 a Los Angeles jury awarded his family 7.4 million dollars after finding that Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams had breached copyright by drawing on Got to Give It Up for Blurred Lines. On what would have been his 80th birthday, the U.S. Postal Service dedicated a commemorative Forever stamp at the Greek Theatre, a stage where he once performed.