The story of Marvin Gaye

A preacher's son in Washington

Marvin Pentz Gay Junior was born on the second of April 1939 at Freedman's Hospital in Washington, D.C. His father, Marvin Gay Senior, was a minister in a small and strict church called the House of God. His mother Alberta cleaned houses in Maryland and Virginia, because her husband rarely held a job for long. The family's first home was a run down public housing project in the Southwest Waterfront, an area Marvin and his friends called Simple City, half city and half country. He was the second of four children, with sisters Jeanne and Zeola and a younger brother, Frankie. By the age of four he was singing solos in church, with his father sometimes at the piano.[1] [2] [3]

Home was not a happy place. The House of God kept a Saturday Sabbath and a strict code of conduct, and Marvin Senior ran the house the same way. Marvin's sister Jeanne said that from about the age of seven well into his teens, her brother's life was a series of brutal whippings, handed out for things as small as a misplaced hairbrush or coming home a minute late. Marvin later told his biographer David Ritz that by twelve there was hardly a part of his body his father had not bruised. His mother said her husband never wanted the boy and even claimed he was not his. Marvin believed that without her comfort and her praise for his singing, he might have taken his own life as a child.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Music became his way out. At eleven he sang Mario Lanza's Be My Love in a school play, and the reaction convinced him he could sing for a living. At Randall Junior High he became the star of the glee club, and at Cardozo High School he joined doo wop groups like the Dippers and the D.C. Tones. His heroes were doo wop acts like the Moonglows, along with Clyde McPhatter, Ray Charles and Little Willie John, but he also dreamed of singing like Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole. His father, who by then was drinking heavily, often threw him out of the house. In October 1956, at seventeen, Marvin dropped out of school and joined the United States Air Force to get away.[1] [2] [3]

The Air Force was a disappointment. Instead of working on jets he was given menial jobs, and he soon clashed with his sergeants the way he had clashed with his father. He later admitted that he pretended to have a mental illness to get out. He left in 1957 after about eight months, and his sergeant's parting review said Airman Gay could not adjust to regimentation or authority. Back in Washington he formed a vocal quartet called the Marquees with his good friend Reese Palmer. Bo Diddley took an interest in them, co wrote their only single, Wyatt Earp, and got them a deal with OKeh Records. The record went nowhere, but Marvin had started writing songs of his own.[1] [2]

From the Moonglows to Motown

The break came from Harvey Fuqua, leader of the Moonglows, one of the doo wop groups Marvin had idolised as a teenager. In 1959 Fuqua rebuilt his group around the Marquees, billing them as Harvey and the Moonglows. They recorded for Chess Records in Chicago. Marvin sang his first lead vocal on a song called Mama Loocie, and the group worked as session singers behind Chuck Berry on Back in the U.S.A. and Almost Grown. The Los Angeles Times later quoted a historian who said Fuqua was not the best singer in the Moonglows but was their real leader and architect. Fuqua saw something special in the quiet young man from Washington, and he became Marvin's mentor.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Life on the road came with its own lessons. Touring the chitlin circuit, Marvin began smoking marijuana, a habit he kept for the rest of his life, and the group was once jailed on drug charges in Beaumont, Texas, on the way to a show. In 1960 the group broke up, and Fuqua took Marvin with him to Detroit. There Fuqua worked with Anna Records, a label run by Anna and Gwen Gordy, sisters of an ambitious young songwriter and producer named Berry Gordy. Fuqua married Gwen. Marvin, barely twenty one, began flirting with Anna, who was seventeen years older than him, and according to his brother Frankie they were living together within two months.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Fuqua introduced Marvin to Berry Gordy, whose new company Motown was growing fast, and sold him half of his interest in the young singer. Marvin reportedly signed with Motown's Tamla label on the nineteenth of September 1960. His first dream was not rhythm and blues at all. He wanted to be a pop crooner, a kind of black Frank Sinatra, and his first album in 1961, The Soulful Moods of Marvin Gaye, was full of jazz standards. It flopped, like his first few singles. Around this time he added an e to his surname, turning Gay into Gaye. When he found out Fuqua had sold part of his contract, their friendship cooled for a while.[1] [2] [3] [4]

While his solo records failed, Marvin earned his keep behind the drum kit. He played on sessions for the Miracles, the Marvelettes and the blues singer Jimmy Reed, and in 1961 he went on the road as the Miracles' drummer. He drummed on Little Stevie Wonder's Fingertips, and as a writer he had a hand in the Marvelettes' Beechwood 4 5789 and Martha and the Vandellas' Dancing in the Street. Motown tried to polish his stage manner. He was told to stop singing with his eyes shut, because he looked as though he was asleep, but he refused to attend a Detroit charm school the label used, something he later said he regretted.[1] [2]

Motown's reluctant hitmaker

The breakthrough came in 1962, when Marvin reluctantly tried something grittier. Stubborn Kind of Fellow, which he co wrote with producer Mickey Stevenson and George Gordy, had a raw, shouting vocal, with backing singers who would soon become Martha and the Vandellas. It reached the R&B top ten that autumn. Hitch Hike followed in early 1963 and gave him his first pop top forty hit, even starting a dance craze on American Bandstand. Then came Pride and Joy, his first pop top ten hit, which he said he wrote because he was head over heels in love with Anna. On the eighth of June 1963, Marvin and Anna Gordy married in Detroit, and he became Berry Gordy's brother in law.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

Now Motown's best writers lined up for him. Holland, Dozier and Holland gave him Can I Get a Witness, which, according to Eddie Holland, he recorded in a single take after hearing it just once, with the Supremes singing behind him. Their How Sweet It Is to Be Loved by You reached number six on the Hot 100 in January 1965. Smokey Robinson then wrote I'll Be Doggone and Ain't That Peculiar, which became Marvin's first two number ones on the R&B chart, each selling a million copies. Eddie Holland called him the most versatile singer he ever worked with, able to take a rough rock and roll song far from his natural voice and make it his own.[1] [2] [3]

Motown also found he was a natural duet partner. His first chart album was Together, with Mary Wells, in 1964, and in 1966 he had a top twenty hit with Kim Weston called It Takes Two. Rumours linked him romantically with his partners, but Marvin and the singers all denied it, and Weston called their friendship strictly platonic. Meanwhile he kept chasing his crooner dream with albums like Hello Broadway and A Tribute to the Great Nat King Cole, which sold poorly. A live album recorded at New York's Copacabana was shelved in 1967 after Marvin and Berry Gordy fought over who would control it. It stayed in the vaults for nearly forty years.[1] [2] [3] [4]

At home, the marriage was volatile from early on. David Ritz later wrote that Anna could be physically and verbally abusive to her younger husband, and that by the start of the seventies Marvin was fighting back. The couple could not have children together, so they adopted a baby boy born in the mid sixties to Anna's sixteen year old niece, Denise Gordy, and named him Marvin Pentz Gaye the Third. The couple even staged a fake pregnancy, and Motown's publicity presented him as their natural son. Marvin only confirmed the adoption years later. He had also started using cocaine in his early Motown years, at first rubbing it on his gums because he struggled to snort it.[1] [2] [3]

Tammi Terrell and the Grapevine

In 1967 Motown paired Marvin with a young singer from Philadelphia named Tammi Terrell. It was Harvey Fuqua's idea, after Kim Weston left the label. Their first song together, Ashford and Simpson's Ain't No Mountain High Enough, was built from vocals recorded separately and blended afterwards, yet it sounded like two people falling in love. It was followed by Your Precious Love, If I Could Build My Whole World Around You, Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing and You're All I Need to Get By. Marvin was shy and hated performing live, and Tammi gave him a new confidence on stage. The two became extremely close friends, though both always said they were never lovers.[1] [2] [3] [4]

On the fourteenth of October 1967, the pair were performing at Hampden Sydney College near Farmville, Virginia, when Tammi collapsed into Marvin's arms on stage. Doctors found a malignant tumour on the right side of her brain. She had suffered from migraines since childhood. She kept recording between operations but could never perform live again, and over the next two years she went through many surgeries, ending up in a wheelchair, losing her sight and her hair. She died on the sixteenth of March 1970, aged twenty four. Her mother barred nearly everyone from Motown from the funeral in Philadelphia. The exception was Marvin, who gave a tearful eulogy as their song You're All I Need to Get By played.[1] [2] [3]

In the middle of this sadness came Marvin's biggest hit yet. Norman Whitfield recorded I Heard It Through the Grapevine with him in early 1967, pushing him to sing higher and rougher than he liked, which led to an argument. Berry Gordy blocked its release, and Gladys Knight and the Pips had a smash with their own version first. Marvin's recording was tucked away on his 1968 album In the Groove, but disc jockeys played it so much that Motown had to put it out as a single. It hit number one on the Hot 100 in December 1968 and stayed there for seven weeks, becoming the biggest single in Motown's history up to that point.[1] [2]

Marvin could not enjoy it. Consumed by Tammi's illness and a failing marriage, he said the success did not seem real and that he did not deserve it, and he described himself as a puppet, Berry's puppet and Anna's puppet. He stopped touring. In 1970, holed up in a Detroit apartment, he tried to shoot himself, and was stopped by Berry Gordy's father, known as Pops. He grew a beard, lived in sweatsuits, and even tried to become a professional footballer, training in the hope of a tryout with the Detroit Lions. The team said no, fearing an injury would wreck his music career, but he became good friends with the players Mel Farr and Lem Barney.[1] [2] [3] [4]

What's Going On

The song that changed everything started with someone else. On the fifteenth of May 1969, Renaldo Obie Benson of the Four Tops watched police attack anti war protesters at People's Park in Berkeley, California, a day later known as Bloody Thursday. Back in Detroit, he and the songwriter Al Cleveland shaped a song around what he had seen. The other Four Tops turned it down as a protest song, while Benson insisted it was really a love song about understanding. When he played it to Marvin, Marvin first wanted to give it to the Originals, a group he produced. Benson talked him into singing it himself, and Marvin reworked the melody and words, taking a share of the writing credit.[1] [2] [3]

Marvin had his own reasons to care. His brother Frankie had come home from military service in Vietnam, and the stories he told left both brothers in tears. Since the Watts riots of 1965, Marvin had been asking himself how he could keep singing love songs while the world exploded around him. When he told Berry Gordy he wanted to make a protest record, Gordy told him not to be ridiculous. On the first of June 1970, Marvin went into Motown's Hitsville studio and produced What's Going On himself. The saxophonist Eli Fontaine played the famous opening line while he thought he was only fooling around, and Marvin told him he goofed off exquisitely and sent him home.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The session was full of happy accidents. Bassist James Jamerson was found playing in a local bar, arrived the worse for drink, and played his part lying on the studio floor. Marvin's Detroit Lions friends Mel Farr and Lem Barney joined in the party chatter and backing vocals. Then engineer Kenneth Sands, asked to play back two of Marvin's lead vocal takes so he could choose one, accidentally mixed them together. Marvin loved the sound of his own voice answering itself, and layered vocals became his signature. Berry Gordy, though, would not release the song, reportedly finding it too political and too old fashioned. Marvin went on strike, refusing to record anything else until it came out.[1] [2] [3]

Motown executives Harry Balk and Barney Ales finally released the single in January 1971, reportedly without Gordy's knowledge. It sold over two hundred thousand copies in its first week, became the fastest selling single Motown had ever had, topped the R&B chart for five weeks and reached number two on the Hot 100. Gordy gave Marvin until the end of March to finish an album, and he recorded the rest of What's Going On in about ten days. Released in May 1971, it was a song cycle seen through the eyes of a returning veteran, touching on war, drugs, poverty, faith and the environment. Mercy Mercy Me and Inner City Blues also went top ten.[1] [2] [3]

That made Marvin the first male solo artist with three top ten pop hits from one album, and it made him Motown's first great auteur, a star who wrote and produced his own vision. NPR noted that his success forced Motown to give others, notably Stevie Wonder, the same artistic freedom. In 1971 he signed a new Motown deal worth a million dollars, said to be the richest ever for a black recording artist at the time. On the first of May 1972, Washington held a Marvin Gaye Day and gave him the key to the city. His father came to see him perform professionally for the first time, and Marvin said it was the first time he had made his father proud.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Let's Get It On and the seventies

In 1972 Motown moved to Los Angeles, and Marvin went too, writing and producing the soundtrack for the film Trouble Man. His next big project began as something quite different. Let's Get It On was first written with producer Ed Townsend as a religious song, then turned political by Motown writer Kenneth Stover, until Townsend argued it should be about love and sex. During the sessions in March 1973, Townsend brought along the daughter of a friend. Her name was Janis Hunter, she was seventeen, and her father was the jazz musician Slim Gaillard. Marvin, then thirty three and separated from Anna, was smitten. The title song, released that summer, became his second pop number one.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

Let's Get It On became the best selling album of his Motown years and turned him into a sex symbol, and critics have credited its title song with helping invent the slow jam. Yet his biographer David Ritz saw the record as a search to reconcile sex and faith, and writers have linked Marvin's guilt and anxieties about sex to the strict religion and beatings of his childhood. That same year he released a duet album with Diana Ross, though the two reportedly clashed in the studio. In January 1974, after four years away from the road, he returned to the stage in Oakland, a show so acclaimed it became a live album. For a time he was earning a hundred thousand dollars a night.[1] [2] [3]

Marvin and Jan moved in together, first into a small apartment and then a remote cabin in Topanga Canyon. Their daughter Nona was born in September 1974 and their son Frankie, nicknamed Bubby, in November 1975. Jan helped design his famous seventies look, a red watch cap and a beaded denim shirt. In November 1975 Anna filed for divorce. Musically, Marvin turned to the songwriter Leon Ware, whose demos Berry Gordy decided suited Marvin better than Ware himself. The result was I Want You in 1976, a lush, sensual album that Marvin said was informed by his love for Jan. Its title song topped the R&B chart, and the album sold more than a million copies.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

In the autumn of 1976 he played his first European tour, and his London Palladium shows became a double live album in 1977. Tucked on the end was a new studio track. Motown wanted a disco record, and Marvin, who thought disco lacked substance, wrote one about a shy man too nervous to dance. Got to Give It Up, recorded with a party atmosphere and with his brother Frankie, sister Zeola and Jan on backing vocals, went to number one on the pop, R&B and dance charts. He also turned a building on Sunset Boulevard into his own studio and nightclub, known as Marvin's Room, where stars like Diana Ross and Muhammad Ali came to party.[1] [2] [3] [4]

His divorce from Anna was finalised in 1977 after a long, bitter case. To settle it, he agreed to hand over part of the royalties from his next album. Marvin planned a quick, careless record, then changed his mind and poured everything into it. Here, My Dear, a double album released in December 1978, laid out the whole marriage and its collapse in song. It flopped, and Anna was so hurt she considered suing him for invasion of privacy. Critics later hailed it as one of his best. Marvin married Jan in October 1977 in New Orleans, but the marriage was already strained by drugs, affairs and violence, and by 1979 they had separated.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Collapse and exile

By the end of the seventies Marvin owed millions in back taxes and was deep into cocaine. In October 1978 he filed for bankruptcy, and his studio was lost. He fled to Hawaii, where for weeks he lived in a bread van on a beach in Maui. There he swallowed about an ounce of cocaine in what he later described as a suicide attempt, less messy, he said, than a gun. A reunion with Jan ended with Marvin, high on cocaine and mushrooms, threatening her with a knife after hearing of her affair with Teddy Pendergrass. In 1983 he admitted to People magazine that he had menaced her with a knife and arranged for their young son to be taken from her in Hawaii.[1] [2] [3] [4]

A British promoter, Jeffrey Kruger, tracked him down through drug dealers and coaxed him onto a European tour in 1980. It ended badly when Marvin arrived late for a performance before Princess Margaret, and Kruger sued. With tax debts of around four and a half million dollars, and afraid he would be arrested if he went home, Marvin stayed in London, where he began freebasing cocaine. He reworked a shelved disco album into a spiritual concept record about the end of the world, titled In Our Lifetime with a question mark. Then one of his musicians, bassist Frank Blair, took a master tape of the rough draft to Motown's Hollywood offices without his knowledge.[1] [2] [3]

Motown remixed the unfinished album, dropped the question mark and released it in January 1981. Marvin was furious. He compared it to someone taking an unfinished painting from Picasso and adding a leg here and an arm there, and he vowed never to record for Motown again. He was at his lowest point when a Belgian promoter and longtime fan, Freddy Cousaert, offered him a place to stay in the coastal town of Ostend. The BBC reported that the two had met in a London nightclub. Marvin arrived in February 1981 with his brother Frankie and his girlfriend, the Dutch model Eugenie Vis. He admitted he did not even know where Ostend was.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Ostend saved his life, at least for a while. He cut back on drugs, jogged along the North Sea promenade, trained at a local boxing gym and went to church. His lawyer Curtis Shaw called the Ostend period the best thing that ever happened to him. In the summer of 1981 he toured Britain again, and two of his musicians, Odell Brown and Gordon Banks, stayed behind with him in Belgium. Record labels began circling. CBS executive Larkin Arnold won out, and it was later reported that buying him out of his Motown contract cost one and a half million dollars. On the twenty third of March 1982, Marvin's long relationship with Motown was over.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Sexual Healing and the comeback

In Ostend, working with Odell Brown, Marvin built a reggae flavoured groove on a Roland TR 808 drum machine, which appealed to him because he could make music without other musicians. In April 1982 the writer David Ritz, who had been working with him on his life story, turned up at Marvin's seafront apartment. According to Ritz, he saw sadomasochistic comics on Marvin's shelf and told him he needed some sexual healing, and Marvin told him to write a poem. The song was recorded at a studio in Ohain, near Brussels, with Harvey Fuqua back at his side and whispering the opening chants. How much Ritz really contributed would later be bitterly disputed.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Sexual Healing was released in October 1982, with the album Midnight Love following weeks later. The single reached number one on the R&B chart in just four weeks and stayed there for ten, a record for the chart that stood until Whitney Houston's I Will Always Love You in 1993. It climbed to number three on the Hot 100, topped the charts in Canada and New Zealand, and became the most successful single of his career. Midnight Love was the first album of his career to be certified platinum, and it later went triple platinum. In February 1983, Sexual Healing won him the only two Grammy Awards of his lifetime.[1] [2] [3] [4]

On the thirteenth of February 1983, Marvin sang the Star Spangled Banner at the NBA All Star Game at the Forum in Inglewood, California. With his guitarist Gordon Banks playing a backing tape from the stands, he turned it into a slow, soulful groove, and it is now remembered as one of the greatest performances of the song ever given. When the music channel VH1 launched on New Year's Day 1985, that performance was the first video it played. In May 1983 he appeared on the television special Motown 25, sitting at a piano to talk about the history of black music before singing What's Going On. It was his last television performance.[1] [2]

The comeback hid a collapse. On his Sexual Healing Tour, which opened in San Diego in April 1983, Marvin was freebasing cocaine and had started using PCP, which fed a growing paranoia. He wore a bulletproof vest, surrounded himself with armed bodyguards and became convinced someone was trying to kill him. He broke Barry Manilow's record for sold out nights at Radio City Music Hall, but his voice and health faded as the tour dragged on to its end in August. Jan joined him for part of it, and she later said that during an argument in a Florida hotel room he threw a pot of hot water over her. She never saw him alive again.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The last months

After the tour Marvin retreated to the house in the West Adams district of Los Angeles that he had bought for his parents. His mother was still recovering from kidney surgery. His father, a heavy drinker who had not preached in years, came back to the house in October 1983, and the two men could barely stand to be near each other. Marvin spent his days in a bathrobe, using cocaine and talking about death and suicide. Friends said he wore several overcoats at once and put his shoes on the wrong feet. After one quarrel his father called the police to have him removed. Marvin came back anyway, telling a friend he had only one father and wanted to make peace.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Marvin, convinced that someone might break in, had arranged for his father to have a gun, a thirty eight calibre Smith and Wesson revolver. His father kept it under his pillow. Marvin Senior had often told his children that he had brought them into the world and could take them out of it. His daughter Jeanne said he had made it clear that if any of his children ever struck him, he would kill them. A minister who visited the house later said the father had shown him the gun and said he was going to kill his son. According to Jeanne, four days before his death Marvin jumped from a speeding car in a suicide attempt, escaping with bruises.[1] [2] [3]

On the evening of the thirty first of March 1984, Marvin's parents argued over a misplaced insurance letter, and Marvin told his father to leave his mother alone. Around half past twelve the next afternoon, the first of April, the shouting started again. Marvin, in his maroon robe, told his father that if he had something to say he should say it in person, and warned him not to come into his room. When his father came in anyway to berate Alberta, Marvin shoved him into the hallway and punched and kicked him, following him into his bedroom. Alberta pulled her son away. Back in his room, Marvin told her he was packing to leave for good.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Minutes later, at about twelve thirty eight, Marvin Gay Senior came to the doorway of his son's bedroom with the revolver. According to Alberta, who was standing about eight feet away, he said nothing and fired. The bullet entered the right side of Marvin's chest and passed through his heart. His father stepped closer and fired again, and the second bullet hit Marvin's left shoulder. Alberta ran from the house screaming. Marvin's brother Frankie, who lived in a guest house on the property, found him on the floor and held him. Frankie's wife Irene found the gun under the father's pillow and threw it on the lawn. Marvin was pronounced dead at one minute past one, a day before his forty fifth birthday.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The news broke on April Fools' Day, and many friends at first thought it was a cruel joke. When police asked his father whether he had loved his son, he answered only that he had not disliked him. He claimed self defence and said he thought the gun held blanks or pellets. Four days later, more than ten thousand people filed past Marvin's open casket at Forest Lawn in Glendale, where he lay in a gold and white military style costume from his final tour. Smokey Robinson and Dick Gregory gave eulogies, and Stevie Wonder sang Lighting Up the Candles, a song he wrote for the occasion. Marvin was cremated, and Anna and his three children scattered his ashes at sea.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Aftermath and legacy

While he was in custody, doctors found a benign tumour at the base of Marvin Gay Senior's brain, and it was removed in May 1984. He was judged fit to stand trial for murder, but after the court saw photographs of his injuries from the fight, it accepted a plea bargain. On the twentieth of September 1984 he pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter, and in November he received a six year suspended sentence and five years of probation. In court he said he had been afraid of his son and wished he could bring him back. Alberta divorced him after forty nine years of marriage. Marvin left no will and died nearly two million dollars in debt, which his royalties later paid off.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The tributes came quickly. Diana Ross released Missing You, written by Lionel Richie, and the Commodores recorded Nightshift in honour of Marvin and Jackie Wilson. A year after his death, both songs were in the American top ten. In 1985 Washington began holding an annual Marvin Gaye Day. His mother founded a charity in his name to help people fighting drug and alcohol addiction, but she died of cancer in May 1987, before it opened. That same year he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, with Anna and Marvin the Third accepting on his behalf. A star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame followed in 1990, and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Nearly thirty years after his death, Marvin's music was at the centre of one of the biggest copyright fights in pop. In 2013 Robin Thicke's hit Blurred Lines, written with Pharrell Williams and T.I., drew comparisons with Got to Give It Up. When Marvin's children pressed for a settlement, the three writers sued them first, arguing that evoking the feel of an era was not copying. In March 2015 a Los Angeles jury found that Thicke and Williams had infringed Marvin's song, and his daughter Nona wept as the verdict was read. The award of about seven point three million dollars was later cut to five point three million, plus half of future royalties, and the verdict was upheld on appeal in 2018.[1] [2] [3] [4]

His family's story has carried its own pain. His brother Frankie, whose memories of Vietnam helped inspire What's Going On, died in 2001 after a heart attack, and his memoir came out two years later. Anna Gordy Gaye died in 2014, aged ninety two, long since reconciled with Marvin. Jan Gaye published her memoir After the Dance in 2015 and died at her home in Rhode Island in December 2022, aged sixty six. Nona became a singer and actress, appearing in Ali and two of the Matrix films. In March 2024 the BBC reported that a Belgian family held around thirty tapes Marvin had left in Ostend, with dozens of unheard demos, and that a legal fight over them was brewing.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]

Today Marvin Gaye is remembered as the Prince of Motown and one of the finest singers who ever lived. When Rolling Stone rebuilt its list of the greatest albums of all time in 2020, What's Going On came out on top, replacing Sgt. Pepper. The BBC reported in 2024 that his music was streamed and downloaded around twenty million times a month, and that Ain't No Mountain High Enough had passed a billion streams. Washington renamed a park he loved as a teenager Marvin Gaye Park, and in 2021 Detroit renamed the street of his old family home Marvin Gaye Drive. Many biopics have been announced over the years, but as of 2026 none has reached the screen.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

The people around Marvin Gaye

Marvin Gaye and Marvin Gay Sr.. The defining relationship of Marvin's life, and the one that ended it. His father, a strict House of God minister, beat him throughout his childhood and, according to Marvin's mother, never loved him. Marvin bought his parents houses and gave his father a Cadillac, and felt he had finally made him proud at Marvin Gaye Day in 1972. But the old hatred returned when they lived under one roof again, and on the first of April 1984 his father shot him dead.[1] [2] [3]

Marvin Gaye and Anna Gordy Gaye. Berry Gordy's sister, seventeen years older than Marvin, ran Anna Records when they met. They married in 1963 and she inspired early hits like Pride and Joy. The marriage turned violent and bitter, and after a long divorce Marvin paid her with the royalties from Here, My Dear, an album about their breakup that she nearly sued over. They reconciled as friends, and after his death she helped scatter his ashes.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Marvin Gaye and Janis Hunter Gaye. Jan was seventeen when she met Marvin, then thirty three, during the Let's Get It On sessions in 1973. She inspired I Want You, sang on Got to Give It Up and bore him two children, Nona and Frankie. Their marriage from 1977 was wrecked by drugs, jealousy and violence, including a knife threat he later admitted. She called him the love of her life, published a memoir in 2015 and died in 2022.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell. Motown's most famous duet partnership produced Ain't No Mountain High Enough, Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing and You're All I Need to Get By. The two were very close friends, though both denied any romance. Tammi collapsed in his arms on stage in 1967 and died of a brain tumour in 1970. Marvin was the only Motown star her mother allowed at the funeral, and he often blamed himself for her death.[1] [2] [3]

Marvin Gaye and Berry Gordy. Motown's founder was Marvin's boss and, from 1963, his brother in law. They clashed for two decades, over a shelved Copacabana album, over What's Going On, which Gordy feared was too political, and finally over In Our Lifetime, which drove Marvin to leave the label. Still, they embraced at Motown 25 in 1983, and after Marvin's death Gordy took out full page ads calling him the greatest of his time.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Marvin Gaye and Harvey Fuqua. The Moonglows leader discovered Marvin in Washington, brought him to Detroit and sold half his contract to Berry Gordy, which briefly soured their friendship. At Motown Fuqua suggested and produced the duets with Tammi Terrell. When Marvin was struggling in Belgium in 1982, Fuqua flew over, and Marvin told him he had been too ashamed to ask for help. Fuqua helped produce Midnight Love and whispers on Sexual Healing.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Marvin Gaye and Smokey Robinson. Smokey wrote Marvin's hits I'll Be Doggone and Ain't That Peculiar, and Marvin once drummed for the Miracles on tour. In 2023 Robinson told The Guardian they were like brothers who hung out almost every day, and admitted they had used drugs together. He said his own worst bout with cocaine came after Marvin's death. He learned the news from the radio and gave a eulogy at the funeral.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder. Marvin drummed on Stevie's early records, including Fingertips, and taught the young star to play drums properly. Stevie helped write a song for Marvin's 1966 album, and he later credited What's Going On with pushing him toward political music, following Marvin through the door to creative control at Motown. At Marvin's funeral, Stevie sang Lighting Up the Candles, a song he wrote for the day.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Marvin Gaye and David Ritz. Ritz contacted Marvin after defending Here, My Dear, and began taping interviews for a biography in 1979. He tracked Marvin down in Ostend in 1982, and his remark about sexual healing became the title of Marvin's comeback hit. When Ritz was left off the credits he sued, ending their friendship. After Marvin's death he published Divided Soul in 1985, still the key source on Marvin's life.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Marvin Gaye and Freddy Cousaert. A Belgian promoter and fan, Cousaert found Marvin in a desperate state in London in early 1981 and offered him refuge in Ostend. Under his watchful eye Marvin cut back on drugs, exercised and went to church, and Cousaert set up his 1981 British tour. Sexual Healing was written in Ostend. Cousaert later insisted David Ritz contributed nothing to the song but its title.[1] [2] [3]

Marvin Gaye and Frankie Gaye. Marvin's younger brother came home from Vietnam in 1970 with stories that moved both men to tears and helped inspire What's Going On, including the song What's Happening Brother. Frankie later sang backing vocals for Marvin and toured with him. He lived in the guest house at their parents' home and cradled Marvin as he was dying. He died in 2001, and his memoir was published in 2003.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Marvin Gaye and Diana Ross. The two Motown giants recorded the 1973 duet album Diana and Marvin, which became an international success even though they reportedly clashed in the studio. They remained friends, and Marvin appeared at her 1982 concert in Brussels. After his death, Ross recorded Missing You, written by Lionel Richie, in his memory. It topped the R&B chart and became her last top ten pop hit in America.[1] [2] [3]

Rare facts about Marvin Gaye

• Marvin drummed on Little Stevie Wonder's Fingertips and had a writing hand in Dancing in the Street. Before his solo hits, Marvin was a Motown session drummer. He played on the studio and live recordings of Fingertips, and he shares writing credit on Martha and the Vandellas' Dancing in the Street and the Marvelettes' Beechwood 4 5789.[1]
• As a Motown session drummer in 1961, Marvin reportedly earned about five dollars a week. While his early solo records flopped, he drummed for the Miracles, the Marvelettes and the blues singer Jimmy Reed. Accounts put his pay at around five dollars a week.[1] [2]
• His very first Motown single in 1961 was released under his real surname, Gay. Tamla issued his version of the standard The Masquerade Is Over in May 1961 as Marvin Gay, in a limited release. Soon afterwards he added the e.[1]
• Marvin sang backing vocals on Chuck Berry's Back in the U.S.A. With Harvey and the Moonglows at Chess Records, Marvin worked as a session singer behind Chuck Berry on Back in the U.S.A. and Almost Grown. His first lead vocal was on a Moonglows side called Mama Loocie.[1]
• When the Beatles first reached New York in 1964, they asked the disc jockey Murray the K to play Pride and Joy. Pride and Joy, co written by Marvin, was his first pop top ten hit in 1963. Martha and the Vandellas sang backing vocals, just before their own breakthrough with Heat Wave.[1]
• Phil Spector reportedly lost control of his car on Sunset Boulevard the first time he heard Stubborn Kind of Fellow. Spector was driving with the arranger Jack Nitzsche at the time. Released in July 1962, the song became Marvin's first hit, reaching the R&B top ten.[1]
• The Velvet Underground's There She Goes Again is based on Marvin's Hitch Hike. Hitch Hike, his first pop top forty hit, was also covered by the Rolling Stones in 1965. Johnny Marr has credited that Stones version as the inspiration for the guitar intro of the Smiths' There Is a Light That Never Goes Out.[1]
• Marvin first sang the Star Spangled Banner live at the 1968 World Series in Detroit. On the sixth of October 1968 he sang it before Game Four between the Detroit Tigers and the St. Louis Cardinals at Tiger Stadium, fifteen years before his famous 1983 version.[1]
• Two Detroit Lions football players sing on What's Going On, and Marvin gave them gold records. Mel Farr and Lem Barney befriended Marvin while he was trying to win a tryout with the Lions. They joined the party chatter and harmonies on the song and were later presented with gold records.[1] [2] [3]
• The friendly voice greeting listeners at the start of What's Going On belongs to Elgie Stover, who later catered for Bill Clinton. Stover was a Motown songwriter and one of Marvin's confidants, and he co wrote songs on the album. In later years he worked as a caterer for Bill Clinton and his Secret Service agents.[1] [2]
• The What's Going On cover was shot in Marvin's Detroit backyard, where a sudden burst of sleet turned his hair white. Photographer Jim Hendin took the picture, and art director Curtis McNair chose it for the drama the sleet added. Marvin himself insisted on the shot. In 2021 the street was renamed Marvin Gaye Drive.[1] [2]
• Sly and the Family Stone titled There's a Riot Goin' On as a reply to What's Going On. Sly's album arrived about six months after Marvin's. Variety also noted that John Lennon recorded Imagine about a week after What's Going On came out.[1] [2]
• The whole What's Going On album was recorded in about ten working days in March 1971. The title single had been cut in June 1970, but the rest came after Gordy set a deadline of the end of March. Sessions ran from the seventeenth to the thirtieth of March, and the album was released in May.[1]
• The Miracles recorded I Heard It Through the Grapevine first, in 1966, but Berry Gordy vetoed it. Gordy also blocked Marvin's 1967 recording as a single. Gladys Knight and the Pips released the first version, and Marvin's came out only after disc jockeys started playing it from his album.[1]
• A 1985 Levi's jeans advert put Grapevine back in the UK top ten, though the ad did not use Marvin's recording. The Launderette commercial, starring Nick Kamen, used session musicians recreating his sound. Its success led Motown to reissue Marvin's single with a Levi's logo on the sleeve, and it reached number eight.[1]
• On Got to Give It Up, Marvin played a glass bottle half full of grapefruit juice as percussion. He also shouted a greeting to his friend Don Cornelius, the host of Soul Train, in the song's party chatter, which was looped over and over to create a nightclub atmosphere.[1]
• Got to Give It Up helped inspire Michael Jackson's Shake Your Body Down to the Ground. Michael and Randy Jackson adapted part of Marvin's chant for the Jacksons' song, and Don't Stop Til You Get Enough borrowed his approach of percussion, falsetto and background chatter.[1]
• The cover of I Want You is Ernie Barnes's painting The Sugar Shack, later famous from the credits of Good Times. Marvin owned eight Barnes originals. Barnes added banners promoting the album's singles to the painting for the cover. The original was later bought by Eddie Murphy.[1]
• The Here, My Dear gatefold shows a Monopoly board marked Judgment, with a man handing a woman a record across it. On his side sit tape recorders and a piano, on hers a house, a car and a ring, with the scales of justice above. The front cover shows Marvin in a toga in a Roman setting.[1]
• In Our Lifetime was meant to end with a question mark, which Motown dropped until a 2007 reissue restored it. Marvin said removing it muted the album's irony. The 2007 expanded edition finally printed the title as he intended.[1] [2]
• Marvin persuaded Frankie Beverly to rename his band from Raw Soul to Maze. He took the band on tour as his opening act in the seventies. Beverly also played percussion on Got to Give It Up.[1] [2]
• In 1975 Marvin was commended at the United Nations after a UNESCO benefit concert. The show at Radio City Music Hall supported UNESCO's African literacy drive. He was commended by Shirley Temple Black, then ambassador to Ghana, and by Kurt Waldheim.[1]
• The Sexual Healing video was filmed at the Casino Kursaal in Ostend. Marvin wrote the song in a seafront apartment on the Albert I Promenade. Ostend later put up a statue of him, and bars he visited still show his photograph.[1] [2]
• Sexual Healing was the first major hit driven by the Roland TR 808 drum machine. According to CBC, the machine had been poorly reviewed when it came out in 1980. After Marvin's hit it became a cornerstone of hip hop and electronic music.[1] [2]
• Guitarist Gordon Banks had to work out Marvin's new drum machines and synthesiser, and Marvin nicknamed him Indicator. Columbia sent drum machines and a Jupiter 8 synthesiser to Belgium. Banks said Marvin, a fine pianist, soon played the Jupiter 8 as if he had used it all his life.[1]
• When VH1 launched on the first of January 1985, its first video was Marvin singing the Star Spangled Banner. It was his famous 1983 performance at the NBA All Star Game. The channel followed it with Diana Ross's tribute to him, Missing You.[1]
• Marvin acted in two films, playing a Vietnam veteran both times. He appeared in the 1969 television film The Ballad of Andy Crocker, starring Lee Majors, and in the 1971 biker film Chrome and Hot Leather.[1]
• Marvin was a cousin of the Wu Tang Clan rapper Masta Killa. The family link connects the Prince of Motown with one of the founding members of the New York hip hop group.[1] [2]
• Guitarist Gordon Banks said he was finishing music for Marvin's next album on the morning Marvin died. Banks said CBS wanted Barry White to produce that album, though Marvin refused. White said the two singers had also agreed to record duets together.[1] [2] [3]
• Duran Duran dedicated Save a Prayer to Marvin at an Oakland concert the day after he died. The performance was filmed for their concert video Arena. Several of Marvin's friends had at first refused to believe the news because it broke on April Fools' Day.[1]
• Stevie Wonder's funeral song for Marvin, Lighting Up the Candles, later closed his Jungle Fever soundtrack. Stevie wrote the song for the service in April 1984 and released a studio version on the 1991 soundtrack for Spike Lee's film.[1] [2]
• The title song of Marvin's first posthumous album began as a demo written for Sammy Davis Junior. Davis never recorded Dream of a Lifetime. The 1985 album of that name also featured Sanctified Lady, which reached number two on the R&B chart.[1]
• Marvin had a four octave range and developed what he called his tough man voice after studying David Ruffin and Levi Stubbs. Writer Rob Bowman said that by the early seventies Marvin had three distinct voices, a smooth tenor, a growl and a falsetto, and that What's Going On was the first single to use all three.[1]
• In 1968 Marvin gave his father a Cadillac as a peace offering. He had already moved his parents into a house in a middle class part of Washington. Marvin told Motown colleagues that his father still scolded him for singing the devil's music.[1] [2]
• A post office in South Los Angeles was named after Marvin in 2018. A bill by Congresswoman Karen Bass was signed into law that July. The United States Postal Service also issued a Marvin Gaye stamp in 2019, on what would have been his eightieth birthday.[1] [2]

Disputed stories

These stories are told often but the accounts don't agree. Here are the versions and who says what.