MARVIN GAYE: SEXUAL HEALER MAKES OUT JUST FINE

MARVIN GAYE: SEXUAL HEALER MAKES OUT JUST FINE

JIM FELDMAN

I never consciously decided that Marvin Gaye is my favorite male singer. Like the unassuming rhythms and casual grooves of his early records ("Stubborn Kind Of Fellow" and "Pride And Joy," to name only two), like the smooth insinuation of his late-'60s monster hit, "I Heard It Through The Grapevine," like the almost subliminal power of his 1977 disco smash, "Got To Give It Up," and most of all, like his subtle, seemingly offhand vocals, the fact of Marvin Gaye's primacy in my personal pantheon sneaked up on me.

On occasion, Marvin Gaye did knock my socks off immediately and permanently. I don't need to be threatened with that oft-mentioned, metaphorical gun: Marvin & Tammi's "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" is my all-time favorite record, as it has been since its release in the spring of 1967. Apotheosizing the boy-girl duet, Gaye and Terrell's loose, direct, and exclamatory (catch Gaye's "Whooo" near the beginning of the last verse) vocal interplay made writers Ashford & Simpson's impossibly romantic notion— that love can survive the end of the affair—seem like a sure thing. Then, in 1971, Gaye released his precedentsetting masterpiece, What's Going On. This album marked a milestone in Gaye's career. For most of a decade, Gaye had been a consistent hitmaker, either solo or in tandem with Mary Wells, Kim Weston, or Terrell. Gaye was recognized as a fine pop-soul stylist, and he also had co-written a few of his hits, as well as Martha &

The Vandellas' "Dancing In The Street." And in fact, in 1969, he produced and co-wrote labelmates the Originals' two big hits, "Baby, I'm For Real" and "The Bells." But ultimately, Gaye was a singles artist, and his records were romantic fluff—albeit great fluff. So nobody was prepared for such a dazzling, personal artistic statement as What's Going On, which Gaye co-wrote and produced.

Eschewing romantic themes, he expressed a broad social concern; at the same time, he revealed himself to be a sophisticated songwriter and producer. What's Going On's conceptual and musical unity and its sheer reach firmly established Gaye as an important album artist. It's a brilliant album—his best. And a fixture on my top ten LP list. (I'm a list-maker; I can't help it.)

So I guess I've known for a long time how much I admire Marvin Gaye. But any lingering uncertainty (I'll be honest:

I wasn't too thrilled with his last two Motown albums, Here, My Dear and In Our Lifetime) was laid to rest one day late in the summer of 1982. I was lying on the roof, catching some rays, when the phone rang. (Answer: I'm on the top floor and I've got a very long extension cord.) I said "Hello," to which my friend from Columbia Records § replied, "Thank God you're there.

Listen to this." With that, she stuck the ^ receiver next to the speakers of her stereo, and for the next four minutes, I listened to the most beautiful record I'd heard in many, many years. As soon as it ended, she said, "Isn't that the greatest record you've ever heard?" Obviously, any hyperbole was a result of her extreme enthusiasm, but, you know, she may have been right.

Marvin Gaye did it again. "Sexual Healing" was a magnificent record, incorporating an astonishing number of pop contradictions. Gaye exalted sex at the same time that he stripped it to its basics. Guileless and seductive, he reached out to his lover, baring his need, his vulnerability, his desire in varying voices—he came on, crooned, suggested, pleaded, whispered, always certain that in sex there is fulfillment. The record was calming and danceable,its rhythms were relaxed and had an undercurrent of tension.

Starting with What's Going On,

Gaye's albums have essentially been private musings transferred to vinyl for public consideration. But he doesn't insist on his point of view and he doesn't preach. Indeed, of Motown's three great male artists (Midnight Love, which includes "Sexual Healing," was Gaye's first post-Motown record), he is musically the least outgoing and demanding. Stevie Wonder tends to make grand pop gestures, and Smokey Robinson evinces supreme selfconfidence in his high-romantic gems— even in the clarity with which he draws love's losers. But Gaye doesn't really bother with traditional pop structures and conventions; he offers instead rhythmic interior monologues that entice rather than overwhelm or grab you with a hook. Not surprisingly, Gaye appears uncomfortable onstage; perhaps he needs the vinyl'distance between himself and his audience in order to relax and, in a sense, expose himself.

Gaye fit perfectly into Motown czar Berry Gordy's crossover plans. The son of a Washington, D.C. preacher,

Gaye sang and played the organ in his father's church until, at 1 7, he joined the Army. When he got out of the service, he landed a spot in the last version of Harvey Fuqua's Moonglows, one of the most successful of the '50s doo-wop groups. (Fuqua went on to become an important Motown producer and writer; among his many dual credits was Gaye and Terrell's "If I Could Build My Whole World Around You"; he was also the production advisor on Midnight Love.)

In 1961, Gordy made Gaye one of the first Motown artists after hearing him sing with the Moonglows. While all of the early Motown acts managed to bridge the gap between R&B and pop, Gaye's natural quality and his versatility encouraged Gordy to present him as not just a pop-soul singer, but as a possible successor to Nat "King" Cole and Sam Cooke. Among his first several albums were A Tribute To The Great Nat King Cole and Hello Broadway, and his singles from 1962-1966 balanced controlled sensuality and romantic grace.

Motown's first-rank writers and producers—Holland-Dozier-Holland, William Stevenson, and Smokey Robinson (and the Miracles)—kept Gaye on the charts consistently, starting with his first hit, "Stubborn Kind Of Fellow" (which Gaye co-wrote and on.which Martha & The Vandellas sang backup), in late 1962. His solo hits in this four-year period included "Hitch Hike," "You're A Wonderful One," "How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)," "I'll Be Doggone," and "Ain't That Peculiar," and they're all classics. Perhaps best of all was Holland-DozierHolland's "Can I Get A Witness," which contained a joyous dose of gospel spirit.

Marvin Gaye was always somewhere on the charts in these early years, and in 1 965, he had his first two #1 R&B hits, "I'll Be Doggone" and "Ain't That Peculiar," but he wasn't yet as big a star as such Motown artists as the Supremes and Smokey Robinson & The Miracles, in large part due to the unimposing nature of his records. But in 1967, he teamed up with Tammi Terrell (a recent Motown arrival), and it really was a match made in heaven, as was their relationship with songwriters Ashford & Simpson. I won't babble on about how great they all were together; it's enough to list the hits they had in less than two years: "Ain't No Mountain High Enough," "Your Precious Love," "If I Could Build My Whole World Around You," "Ain't Nothing Like The Real Thing," "You're All I Need To Get By," and "Good Lovin' Ain't Easy To Come By." (Ashford & Simpson also took on producing chores starting with "Ain't Nothing Like The Real Thing.") Sad to say, shortly after they teamed up, Tammi Terrell became illafter she collapsed onstage, Gaye didn't appear live for years—and she died in March 1970.

Riding high with Terrell, Gaye continued to release solo records, and at the end of 1968, he scored his first #1 pop hit with "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" (which topped Billboard's chart for seven weeks). Gladys Knight And The Pips had scored a major hit with the same song exactly one year before, belting it out fervently, but writer-producer Norman Whitfield (who generally worked with Knight and the Temptations) fashioned this version of the song as a slinky, slow sizzler (pardon the alliteration), and Gaye's calm demeanor was threatened by a heretofore unexpressed intensity. (According to some sources, Gaye's version was recorded before Knight's, but was held back because of his success with Terrell.) Four more similar GayeWhitfield collaborations followed, and two of them, "Too Busy Thinking About My Baby" and "That's The Way Love Is," were also major hits.

Tammi Terrell's death really blew Marvin Gaye away, and he has often said that turning inward to deal with the pain and the loss was the catalyst for him to redirect his artistic aspirations and create What's Going On. (Absurd fact: Berry Gordy was hesitant to release the album.) For the first time, Gaye took charge of his music: What's Going On was a private meditation on the social, economic, political, and ecological turmoil of the period; Gaye believed a renewal of religious faith was the essential step to finding a way out of our mess. But despite his anguish over what he saw, he internalized his observations in a gentle atmosphere of strings, with crisp brass and percussive punctuation acting as his conduit to the real world he was describing. What's Going On met with overwhelming critical and commercial approval; as important as it was to Gaye's career, it had an equally profound effect on the course of black music in general. Prior to its release, black artists, however fine their records were, hadn't really stretched themselves beyond the understood limits of the catchy single (yes, there were a few scattered exceptions; no, I don't count the

purposefully hip Whitfield-Temptations hits such as "Cloud Nine" and "Run Away Child, Running Wild," however well-meaning they were); over a year before Stevie Wonder's first serious artistic statement, Music Of My Mind, Gaye showed that blacks could work in the context of an album and confront society's problems without sacrificing any soul.

In 1972, Gaye continued his social commentary with the so-so single, "You're The Man," and he wrote and produced the soundtrack for the movie, Trouble Man. The title song was a pretty big hit, but it was all murky atmosphere and rather dull. Gaye, however, was only taking a breather, because in 1973, he released another major opus, Let's Get It On, an unabashed paean to fucking. The liner notes, which began, "I can't see anything wrong with sex between consenting anybodies," and titles such as "Let's Get It On," and "You Sure Love To Ball" specified the album's subject matter, and the intimate, erotic production situated it right in the bedroom with the lights turned way down. Gaye wasn't strutting his stuff, though; rather he was expressing the same faith in sex that he had in God.

Later the same year, Motown released Diana & Marvin, to cash in on the potential of the star pairing (and maybe to offset Let's Get It On's sexual frankness with some traditional boy-girl romanticism). As you would expect, the twosome sounded fine together, but the material wasn't very carefully chosen.

In 1974, Live was released; I've already told you that Gaye isn't too hot onstage; it's also got—yuck—a hits medley. 1976's / Wont You? Talk about tedium,if this was supposed to be another sex record, I'd like to know the last time producer Leon Ware actually got it on before going to the studio. Don't blame Gaye for this mess; he only co-wrote a few of the songs. But he did sing on it, even if he sounded like he didn't want to.

In 1977, another live album, in fact, three sides of live material. Go directly to side four—an 1 1:48 studio recording, "Got To Give It Up," an off-the-wall disco number that is both laid-back and irresistible; sheer bliss and, in an edited version, one of the strangest # 1 pop hits ever.

Okay, this is the way it was. By the late '70s, Gaye was faced with possible bankruptcy, the I.R.S. was hounding him, and his first wife, (Berry Gordy's sister) Anna, sued for divorce. Part of the divorce settlement was his 1978 double-album, Here, My Dear.

To get away, Gaye movea to Europe,1981 saw the release of In Our Lifetime, his contractual obligation to Motown. Some good songs, but no one can tell me his heart was in it. Which brings us to Midnight Love and "Sexual Pfealing." Gaye did almost everything on this album, and—well, you own it don't you? It was his biggest hit ever, and deservedly sopicking up where Let's Get It On left off, but drawing on the latest musical technology and infused with a reggae spirit.

What's next, Marvin? Although I don't need to ask, as I'm sure he'll let us in on whatever happens.