Marvin's Still Going On

Father, father
We don't need to escalate
You see, war is not the answer
For only love can conquer hate
You know we've got to find a way
To bring some lovin' here today ...

He was sensitive and peace loving to a fault but also prone to fits of extreme despair and aggression. He was persistently torn between the blessed and profane, a duality that worked itself out in his music, which was often freighted with both emotional pain and sexual healing. He was, as his song goes, trouble man. But if nothing else, at its peak, Marvin Gaye's artistry represents that moment at which the bright sunshiny innocence of Motown soul metamorphosed into something much more sophisticated, socially conscious and adult.

His influence continues to be pervasive and profound. You can hear traces of him in artists like Prince, Maxwell, Stevie Wonder and Texas' Sharleen Spiteri. His compassion for and concerns about our chaotic world - he dared to ponder what's going on - are now part of the lyrical fabric of more serious-minded rap and hip-hop musicians like Ice-T and Public Enemy. Without him it would be difficult to imagine the once slick, assembly-line soundscape of black music evolving quite the way it did. Yet, Marvin was unique, a one-off. Nothing has sounded quite like his liquid sigh of a voice before or since. He was also an exceedingly romantic and attractive man whose sex appeal was never trivialized in the fashion of today's pop stars.

Born Marvin Pentz Gay Jr. (he later added the extra "e" in deference to his hero, Sam Cooke) in Washington, D.C., in 1939, he was eldest son of charismatic preacher Marvin Sr. Theirs was a contentious, at times often violent, relationship, one that would ultimately lead to the younger Gaye's untimely death in Los Angeles in April 1984, when Marvin attacked his father who was verbally abusing his mother. Gay Sr. pulled a pistol that, ironically, his son had given him just four months earlier, and shot Marvin to death.

During his brief lifetime, Marvin ran afoul of the IRS and lived in tax exile in Europe in the early 1980s. He endured two failed marriages - the first of which, to Motown founder Berry Gordy's sister Anna, led him to produce 1978's devastatingly revealing and contemptuously titled Here, My Dear, a painfully personal document of loss and betrayal, as a way for Marvin, then broke, to pay his divorce settlement. An honest and raw work, the album begins with Marvin chiding his ex: "This album is dedicated to you / Although perhaps I may not be happy / This is what you want, so I've conceded / I hope it makes you happy / There's a lot of truth in it, baby." The breakdown of his second marriage precipitated a near mental and emotional collapse.

Dubbed by biographer David Ritz a "divided soul," Marvin also suffered from a seeming paralyzing insecurity, a powerful cocaine addiction, depression (which was likely exacerbated by singing partner Tammi Terrell's sudden death from a brain tumor) and increasingly wayward behavior, declaring at one point he wanted to become a monk.

Despite his demons, Marvin not only altered the character of an established genre, but he also managed to produce some of the world's greatest popular music, soul or otherwise. And no album of his is greater than What's Going On. Released in 1971 after a year woodshedding, Marvin's iconoclastic conceptual classic is an exploration of the spiritual and the social, from ecological concerns to drug abuse to love of God. With its elements of jazz and classical music, What's Going On remains a remarkably fluid, ambitious and complex record, which, amazingly, was nearly held back from release. Motown head Gordy, more comfortable with three-minute love songs from the likes of the Supremes or the Temptations, was perplexed by What's Going On's intricate arrangements and sustained moods, saying he didn't fully comprehend the album's scope.

Ultimately, What's Going On was released, and when the title track hit No. 2 on the charts, as well as "Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)" and "Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)" reaching the Top 10, Marvin was vindicated as an artist, a visionary and a commercial force. Not only did the album lend Marvin his due credibility, but also it helped to free up artistic control for many black musicians creatively straightjacketed by Motown - Stevie Wonder, especially. Its farsighted approach forever changed the concept of what people had come to understand as soul music. Without a doubt, What's Going On could be classified as music of the soul.

And now, to mark its 30th anniversary, What's Going On has recently being reissued in a deluxe edition that features 24-bit remastering taken from first generation analog tapes, a well-annotated 28-page booklet with complete track and liner notes, full lyrics, a moving forward by Smokey Robinson and an extensive essay by Gaye historian Ben Edmonds. The album, which has already been issued on CD numerous times by Motown in various states of quality, also contains an additional disc that features alternate mixes, unreleased songs and live tracks from a momentous 1972 Washington concert.

If you are at all a Marvin Gaye aficionado, it's time to upgrade your collection. If you've never heard What's Going On - mercy, mercy me! - it's time to make this landmark recording a part of your life.

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