Marvin Gaye - The Prince of Soul

Deep religious faith and an extremely refined sensitivity were the forces that drove Marvin Perez Gay (the "e" was later added to avoid any understandable misunderstanding) to devote himself to music. Born in Washington D.C., the son of an apostolic pastor, it was during his father's services that he understood what "the essential joy of music" truly meant, as he once recalled. Even more than other giants of soul, Marvin Gaye was perhaps the most emblematic of the artists who embodied the very essence of soul music. That is, the clash-and-embrace between the pure spirituality of gospel and the commercial vocation of the record industry. Throughout his life and career, he always sought inner purity. First that of simple feelings, as in his duets of the Sixties. Then that of absolute values for all of humanity, as he sang in "What's Going On". Finally, in "Let's Get It On", the purity of feeling and physical pleasure gave rise to the most sensual metaphorical clash in soul music. All of this with a voice that, behind the memorable falsetto, concealed a tormented need to sing of love in all its various guises.

Between the ages of 16 and 20, during which he also joined the US Navy, he formed his first groups: the pop outfit the Rainbows, then the doo-wop group the Marquees. Finally, he met Harvey Fuqua, leader of a group in search of a new voice, the Moonglows.

What mattered was the deep friendship that bound the two men together, and Fuqua's advice. Among other things, he urged Gaye to leave the group and head to Detroit to record some tracks. But there was another person who mattered enormously to Gaye's life and career at this point. Actually, two people. Shortly before moving to Detroit, Marvin married Anna, the sister of Berry Gordy, who in 1959 founded and ran a new black-music record label based in Detroit: Motown. Originally conceived by Gordy as a workshop for gifted artists rather than "voices" chasing the record market, it soon became, thanks to the staggering sales success of artists like Diana Ross & The Supremes, Martha & The Vandellas, Stevie Wonder and the Jackson 5, the inevitable reference point for African-American soul music, including its most chart-friendly incarnation. It was at this point that the Stax alternative emerged, with Otis Redding as its flagship artist.

His earliest work for Motown in the early Sixties already revealed a velvet-voiced performer who captivated audiences with a finely crafted repertoire of romantic pop. The falsetto vocal technique that made him immortal wasn't merely technical; it was also a spiritual need, a search for a "purity" that was not just vocal but also one of content. Among his very first songs, worth recalling are the swing-inflected "Pride and Joy", the gospel-tinged "Hitch Hike", and one of his first duets, "Wherever I Lay My Hat", with Martha & The Vandellas.

Telling of Motown's inevitably commercial bent was Gordy's plan to launch Marvin Gaye as a Nat King Cole-style entertainer. Not only that: recognizing Gaye's natural gift for singing love songs, he repeatedly paired him with Motown's female performers - besides Martha, also Mary Wells, Kim Weston, Diana Ross, and above all Tammi Terrell. The chemistry between Terrell and Marvin was extraordinary. The late Sixties were the golden age of the duet, and among the era's most important duos, Terrell and Marvin's was certainly capable of delivering music of the highest quality. Among their most famous songs, now Motown classics, are the near-homonymous "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" and "Ain't Nothing Like The Real Thing". Even in these duets - much more rhythm'n'blues than simply soul - one can already sense that spontaneous suffering that would define the masterpieces of the Sixties, though always concealed behind the seemingly angelic calm of his falsetto. Clearly, this shift did not happen overnight.

A memorable preview of the themes that would define "What's Going On" came in 1968, when Gaye recorded, on his own, the classic "I Heard It Through The Grapevine". A masterpiece of simplicity. The use of percussion and clarinet created a sound that was archaic yet, for its time, innovative. What matters most, however, is the theme of a man losing every certainty he once held, as he furtively senses that his girl is thinking of leaving him for another. Metaphorically, it's the theme of a change underway in society, one that no one knows where it will lead.

By the end of the Sixties, the nickname "Love Man" that had been pinned on him was starting to feel confining. Gaye could no longer see himself solely as the refined, romantic performer he had embodied up to that point. The world was changing. The hippie era. 1968. Vietnam. Marvin was a sensitive man, always searching for inner purity, so the simple romantic love he had sung about so often now became something more complex. The sudden death of Tammi Terrell from cancer in 1970 also contributed to his decision to abandon easy love songs. And so did his brother's departure for the war in Vietnam.

As mentioned at the beginning, Gaye was also one of the artists who had to reconcile his personal spiritual needs with more material, commercial demands. If he was able to completely change register and themes in the Seventies, it was only because the massive successes of the Sixties had made him rich and famous, and thus able to gain total control over his own output. Staying within Motown's ranks, only Gaye and (partly) Wonder were capable of achieving this.

In 1971 came What's Going On, his absolute masterpiece and the manifesto of Seventies soul. Even before Wonder's "Songs in the Key of Life," it marked a reversal of direction in black music. At the heart of the record is no longer the joy of living, but the terror of change that is too violent and too sudden. Why is all this happening? What's going on? ("What's going on") Gaye asks himself, without false rhetoric. And no rational answer does much to ease the doubt and anguish. Only religious faith, spirituality and the search for inner purity manage to loosen fear's grip. The record is steeped in religious faith. The song "God Is Love" leaves no room for doubt. It's full of ideas and far-reaching references to the condition of society's "weakest": the very young who will be the adults of tomorrow in "Save the Children," or Black Americans in "Inner City Blues." Or industrial pollution — one of the first songs ever devoted to the subject — in "Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)." An album that was, and still is, ahead of its time in the issues it tackles.

But the all-consuming experience of "What's Going On" could not be repeated. So Gaye was almost forced to "reinvent" himself for the ironic interlude of the lyrics written for the soundtrack to "Trouble Man." Then, in 1973, came the other classic, **Let's Get It On**. Only through physical pleasure, it suggested, could absolute wellbeing be achieved. Happiness? Who can say. What's certain is the need to stress that word "possible." As always, Marvin Gaye questions rather than preaches; he is never dogmatic. Is the climb from pleasure to spirituality really possible? Despite less universal themes, unease still pervades this record, as in one of the finest love songs ever written by the king of Detroit soul: "Distant Lover." The studio albums he would release from then on were the natural continuation of **Let's Get It On**. **I Want You**, **In Our Lifetime**, and **Midnight Love** are, for this reason, still regarded today as minor works.

What strikes you enormously about these albums is how Gaye steered his performances toward a soulful sensuality. They are records charged, more than ever, with the most refined erotic atmospheres — as if the former seeker of deeper spirituality had been forced to settle for the pursuit of mere physical pleasure, as if he had given up the search for inner purity. Precisely because of this, unease and suffering emerge even more strongly, in a sense. These are not tired or late-career works. Who knows where he might have ended up, had he kept pursuing that search.

Unfortunately, though, the ending is a sad one.

On April 2, 1984 — the day before his 45th birthday — Marvin Gaye's father, who shared his son's name, shot and killed him following an argument most likely connected to an inheritance dispute. No one will ever be able to clarify the exact circumstances of the episode, since the man responsible for that mad act is also dead. With Gaye's death, soul music suffered a loss impossible to measure. And even though it could still count on Stevie Wonder, Motown itself was, in a sense, inevitably following him into the grave.

But the spotlight on Marvin will never go out: he remains forever one of the greatest icons of soul music. So much so that in 2019 came the long-awaited release of You're the Man, an album completed in 1972 but never released.

**You're the Man** could be called the "lost album" of the lord of soul, though it would really be more accurate to describe it as a "deliberately unfinished album." Between 1971 and 1973, Gaye in fact made a series of recordings with a "homespun" feel, experimenting with new sounds after the massive success of **What's Going On** — a record that, initially, even his own label hadn't been particularly fond of. How could he follow up a success so musically groundbreaking? And how could he eventually reach the kind of artistic and production independence that would ultimately take him away from the Motown sound for good and produce the masterpiece **Let's Get It On**? Gaye was still, in part, tied to the doo-wop *crooner* image the label had built around him, despite having just given his lyrics a militant turn, bringing together the tensions of politics, religion and African American culture under the banner of a refined, fluid, elegant and sensual soul sound.

The biggest problem surrounding the production and release of **You're the Man** was, in fact, twofold: on one hand, Gaye's own lack of conviction about the overall quality of the work; on the other, his increasingly heated clashes with the venerable Motown. These rifts were, above all, political in nature, with Gaye cast as an ecological, anti-establishment preacher while the label was immersed in the most rampant capitalism, riding the era's spectacular sales figures. **You're the Man** was thus born under a "bad" star, marked by irreconcilable tensions between its creator and the world around him. Setting aside the squabbles that kept it from being properly released at the time, the album stands as a compendium of the aftershocks of **What's Going On** alongside the strong pull of *blaxploitation*, which Gaye himself was chasing, at least in part, while stepping back from the orchestral sweep that had until then shaped his vision.

**You're the Man**, a collection of singles and demos, thus captures and preserves that process of refining a unique sound, offering a series of snapshots that immortalize the daily training of a boxer working toward the decisive match of his career. In this period, Gaye gave himself room to hone his studio songwriting process and, above all, the construction of his sophisticated, inimitable vocal architecture. At the same time, soul music's untouchable ace was busy writing the soundtrack for the 1972 *blaxploitation* film "Trouble Man" — following the celebrated efforts of Isaac Hayes with "Shaft" in 1971 and Curtis Mayfield with "Super Fly" in 1972, both directed by Gordon Parks — and was also drawn in by his brother-in-law Berry Gordy, Motown's boss, to make an album of duets with Diana Ross, "Diana & Marvin," which framed the twilight of a certain kind of black sound — accommodating, conciliatory and untouched by the socio-political tensions of the era.

The album also offers a survey of the sounds and genres stirring within the soul of the Washington, D.C. singer-songwriter, in a constant tension whose balance was dictated by his great instinct for the perfect pop melody. So we find the gospel of "Piece of Clay," the disco leanings of "I'm Gonna Give You Respect," the irresistible r'n'b of "Try It, You'll Like It," the pop of "We Can Make It Baby," the cinematic symphonism of "Symphony," the doo-wop of "I Want to Come Home for Christmas," and the activist soul of "I'm Going Home" à la Gil Scott-Heron, the syrupy ballad made for sunset listening ("My Last Chance"), and the sparkling, spirited harmonies of "You Are That Special One."

*Contributions by Maria Teresa Soldani and Giuliano Delli Paoli ("You're the Man").*

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