Marvin Gaye

The Full Biography

Marvin Gaye. Singer. The Washington choir boy who made Motown tell the truth, then left a catalog that outlasted the house that killed him.

This is his story.

The image most people still carry is a man at a microphone in a knit cap, or a 1971 suite that asks a nation what is going on, or a 1982 single that made the word healing sound like a body. What the still cannot show is Marvin Pentz Gay Jr. of Washington, D.C., an Apostolic household with a violent father, an e added to a surname, a stubborn decade inside Berry Gordy’s machine, a tax exile on the Belgian coast, and a death in Los Angeles on April 1, 1984, the day before he would have turned forty-five.

He was born on April 2, 1939, in Washington, D.C., to Marvin Pentz Gay Sr., a minister in a House of God church, and Alberta, who kept the rooms that the sermons did not make safe. The household was music and fear in the same kitchen. The boy sang. The father hit. That is the first pressure, and it does not require a tour. He added an e to the name when the records began — a small distance from the man whose name he had been given. In the late 1950s he sang doo-wop with Harvey Fuqua’s Moonglows. Fuqua brought him to Detroit. In 1961 he signed with Motown’s Tamla label. For a stretch he was as useful behind a drum kit, on other people’s sessions, as he was at a microphone. The door the public still uses is the voice. The first job was the shop.

Stubborn Kind of Fellow (1962) announced a singer who would not stay polite. Pride and Joy. How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You) (1964). Ain’t That Peculiar. The duets made a second career inside the first: Mary Wells, Kim Weston, then Tammi Terrell — Ain’t No Mountain High Enough (1967), Your Precious Love, Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing. Terrell collapsed on stage in 1967 and died in 1970. He did not treat that as a publicity weather. He treated it as a room that had gone quiet. In 1968 I Heard It Through the Grapevine went to No. 1 and stayed. Motown had its prince. The prince wanted a different job.

He has said that What’s Going On came from what he saw in the street and from his brother Frankie’s return from Vietnam. Berry Gordy did not want a protest album from a man the label had taught America to desire. Gaye refused the next polite single until the suite existed. In 1971 Tamla released it: a unified set about war, police, poverty, and the earth, voices stacked on voices, a saxophone that sounds like it is weeping on purpose. The title song is a civic object. The album freed him. It also freed a kind of soul record other singers were then allowed to make. Let’s Get It On (1973) returned the body to the center without taking the conscience back. I Want You. Got to Give It Up (1977). Here, My Dear (1978) made a divorce into a double album and handed Anna Gordy, Berry’s sister and his first wife, the most expensive letter in the catalog.

Trouble Man (1972) was a film score that behaved like a private weather: a wah-wah, a mutter, a man walking a city at night. Let’s Get It On (1973) put the body back at the center without taking the civic suite off the shelf. “Come Get to This.” “You Sure Love to Ball.” “Distant Lover,” live at the Oakland Coliseum in 1974, became the concert object people still file under longing. I Want You (1976), with Leon Ware, is almost all atmosphere and almost all desire. “Got to Give It Up,” cut for Live at the London Palladium in 1977, went to No. 1 as a studio party that does not end. Here, My Dear (1978) made the divorce from Anna Gordy into a double album and handed her, in a settlement the lawyers could actually enforce, a share of the thing itself. “When Did You Stop Loving Me, When Did I Stop Loving You.” The catalog includes the decree.

In Our Lifetime (1981) was the last Motown album, released while he was already on the run from the tax bill and from himself. The Internal Revenue Service arrived with numbers that touring could not cover. He went to Hawaii, then London, then Ostend, a Belgian North Sea town, under the eye of the promoter Freddy Cousaert, who wanted him working and clean enough to work. Out of that exile came Midnight Love (1982) and “Sexual Healing,” recorded away from Hitsville, released on Columbia. The single sat at No. 1 on the R&B chart for months. Two Grammys in February 1983 — Best Male R&B Vocal and Best R&B Instrumental — the only competitive ones he would live to hold. He sang a slow national anthem at the NBA All-Star Game that same month. He appeared at Motown 25. The comeback was real. The house waiting in Los Angeles, on South Gramercy Place, was still the house he had been born into, moved west.

If you cannot find peace within yourself, you will never find it anywhere else.Marvin Gaye

The 1960s singles are a shop that already knew how to sell him. “Stubborn Kind of Fellow.” “Hitch Hike.” “Pride and Joy.” “Can I Get a Witness.” “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You),” Holland–Dozier–Holland’s bounce. “I’ll Be Doggone” and “Ain’t That Peculiar,” Smokey Robinson’s writing. “It Takes Two” with Kim Weston. Then Tammi Terrell: “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” “Your Precious Love,” “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing,” the 1968 duet Motown filed under being enough. She collapsed in his arms on a Virginia stage in 1967 and died in 1970. He pulled back from the road. “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” already a Gladys Knight record, went to No. 1 in his version in 1968 and stayed. “Too Busy Thinking About My Baby.” “That’s the Way Love Is.” Motown had a prince who could move units. The prince wanted a different job.

What’s Going On is a suite, not a slogan. “Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology).” “Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler).” “Save the Children.” “God Is Love.” A brother home from Vietnam. A street in Washington he would not pretty up. Berry Gordy did not want the album. Gaye held the next polite single hostage until the suite existed. It sold. It also changed what a Motown man was allowed to put on a second side. Let’s Get It On put the body back. I Want You almost dissolved the body into atmosphere. “After the Dance.” “Got to Give It Up” made a studio party into a No. 1. Here, My Dear handed a divorce to the catalog. In Our Lifetime was the last Motown album, already a man halfway out the door. The work is one man refusing to stay in a single room.

The shop before the suite included a drum kit. Tamla, 1961. Session work on other people’s hits. Harvey Fuqua’s Moonglows had been the door out of Washington. Anna Gordy, Berry’s sister, married him in 1963; Marvin III is their son. Janis Hunter married him in 1977; Nona and Frankie are theirs. The marriages ended. The booth did not. Friends from Hitsville describe a man who could be shy in a corridor and immovable on a take. Ostend and Columbia were the second shop. Freddy Cousaert kept him working long enough to finish Midnight Love on the Belgian coast. Two Grammys followed in 1983. The All-Star anthem followed the same month. That is the worker under the prince.

That is the turn, and it is easy to file as a tragedy that begins on April 1. The turn is 1971. A man the label had hired to be sweet forced a suite past the owner and made popular soul responsible for the news. A lot of Motown careers stay inside the hit. Gaye became a writer who would risk the hit to ask the question. Fond memory that keeps only Grapevine is a cleaned room. A pile-on that keeps only the last morning is a different cleaned room. The records are the life.

He married Anna Gordy in 1963. Their son, Marvin III, is in the file. He married Janis Hunter in 1977; their children, Nona and Frankie, had already arrived. The marriages ended. Friends from the Hitsville rooms describe a man who could be shy in a corridor and immovable in a booth. The children have had to share a father who is also a national hymn and a crime-page date. Both the hymn and the date are the life.

On April 1, 1984, in the Los Angeles house, after an argument that involved his mother, Marvin Gay Sr. shot him. He died the day before his forty-fifth birthday. That is the fact. The records are the life.

The later years

There were almost no extra years in the ordinary sense. The Ostend season and the 1982 singles are the second act that should have been a long third. Home, for that Belgian stretch, was a flat by the North Sea and a promoter’s rule: work, walk, stay clear enough to finish a take. Columbia, not Tamla, put Midnight Love out. “Sexual Healing” did the commercial work. “Midnight Lady.” “Rockin’ After Midnight.” He toured the United States in 1983 as a man who had a hit again and a body that had not agreed to the terms. The anthem at the All-Star Game in February is now its own civic object — a reading so slow the building had to wait for him. Motown 25 put him back in the family photograph. The Grammys that night were the only competitive statues he would hold while he could still walk to the podium.

He came home to the parents’ house on South Gramercy Place as if a childhood could be renegotiated by proximity. It could not. Alberta was there. Marvin Pentz Gay Sr. was there. The old Apostolic weather was there. Cocaine and sleeplessness were in the rooms too. Friends from the comeback tour describe a man who could still stop a hall and could not stop a night in that house. On April 1, 1984, after an argument that involved his mother, the father shot him twice. He died at California Hospital Medical Center, the day before he would have turned forty-five. The father received a six-year sentence and died in 1998. That is the crime-page file. It is not a metaphor and it is not the catalog.

Nona, Frankie, and Marvin III were the children who had to share a father who was already a hymn. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame took him in 1987, three years after the funeral. A Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award arrived in 1996. What’s Going On kept walking into decades that thought they had new troubles. The induction is a formality the albums did not need. The house on Gramercy Place is a fact the albums also did not need, and cannot erase.

After he was gone

Nona and Frankie and Marvin III remained. Alberta remained, for a time, inside a story no mother would have written. What’s Going On still walks into a decade that thinks it has new troubles. Let’s Get It On still walks into a room. Sexual Healing still sounds like a man who had seen the opposite of healing and was trying, for three minutes, to invent some. Every American soul singer still pays him a tax in falsetto and in nerve.

He came out of a Washington church kitchen, added a letter to his name, drummed on other people’s hits, made Motown a romance, forced a protest suite past the owner, wrote desire without apology, rebuilt a career on a Belgian coast, and was shot in Los Angeles by the man he had been named for. If you only remember the title song, you have the still. If you remember the e, Tammi, Ostend, and the 1971 refusal, you have him.

Portrait: Jim Britt (Motown Records publicity) · Public domain (PD-US-no notice) · via Wikimedia Commons

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