MARVIN GAYE 1939 - 1984

MARVIN GAYE 1939 - 1984

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At about midday on Sunday, April 1, at an hour when, 30 years before, they would have been in church together, Marvin Gaye was shot and killed by his father, Rev. Marvin Gaye, Sr., over nothing much that anyone has been able to discern. Early reports said they fought over an insurance form; others suggested that Marvin interceded in an argument between his parents or that the dispute was over plans for Marvin’s birthday party—he would have been 45 the next day. Not that it finally matters, but I’d have a modest chance at reconciling my heartbroken confusion and anger with the immutable facts if there were something, anything to understand. Twenty years after the abr surd death of Sam Cooke, the only sense I can make is that Cooke’s work was exquisite and he’s been badly missed. So it shall be with Marvin Gaye. That’s the way love often is.

What millions of people surely understand is that the pop world has lost its supplest, most insinuating voice, and an adventurous, restless spirit. Marvin Gaye had 55 hits in slightly more than two decades. Some came in clumps: “Stubborn Kind Of Fellow,” “Hitch Hike,” and “Can I Get A Witness” in the early ’60s; “I’ll Be Doggone,” “Ain’t That Peculiar” and “How Sweet It Is To Be Loved By You” all in 1965; “I Heard It Through The Grapevine,” “Too Busy Thinking About My Baby,” “That’s The Way Love Is” and the breathtaking duets with Tammi Terrell in the late ’60s. Some, especially recently, were singular pinnacles: 1977’s “Got To Give It Up” and (it seems like only a few weeks ago) 1982’s “Sexual Healing.” Perhaps his most memorable — and historically important — recording was 197-1’s What’s Going On, a thematically and musically unified album which produced three Top Ten singles and smashed more molds than artists dream of filling. More groundbreaking LPs followed through the ’70s: Let’s Get It On, Trouble Man, Here, My Dear, all chronicling good times and badn infiltrating American lives.

But Marvin Gaye was more than the sum of his hit records. He was the Muhammed Ali of soul music—the prettiest, the smartest, the tenderest, the most unpredictable...the greatest. And though he was never a bona fide gospel star, as Cooke was, he brought more church feeling to pop, more gracefully, than anyone before or since. As he said himself in last year’s Motown 25 TV special, “.. .today is the result of yesterdays spent in wooden churches...” The tension between his gospel underpinning and his sexual appetites and political frustrations was, if hardly unique, always thrilling. What was entirely unique and often profoundly unsettling was the yearning, quixotic spirituality floating above Gaye’s work, looking down, finding little peace. His 22 years of success had made me sublimely happy, but probably not Gaye himself. In this light his death seems sadder still—almost a statesman, almost an icon, almost satisfied.

Millions will listen to Marvin Gaye’s music with deep pleasure for the rest of their lives. And so will I. But like Sam Cooke’s, his is a death without resolution. He will be very badly missed for a very long time. I’ve always said that if I could have just one wish it would be to sing like Marvin Gaye on “I Heard It Through The Grapevine.” Now, that wish would be for him to sing the song again.

Jeff Nesin New York City