Today marks the 25th anniversary of Marvin Gaye’s murder. His Dad shot him. Remember? I remember there was a big deal when "Sexual Healing" was released. The Big Chill was still vivid in my mind…not an easy thing to remove as Baby Boomers like my parents played the piss out of that soundtrack…and Marvin Gaye was firmly attached to that record. Not in a good way, either.
Admittedly, “Sexual Healing” was pretty badassed, but I never fully appreciated Marvin until I began college and got to listen to a few of his records at the public radio station. I had a lot of time on my hands while running satellite programming on the weekends. A lot of it was spent listening to all those records I should have known about, through the cue speaker in the studio consol.
Suddenly, I understood how fucking up that shooting April 1st, 1984 was.
Years later, I’m looking for spare reel-to-reel tape for a stupid guitar overdub. I find an old reel at the radio station I’m working at and hope there’s enough oxide on it to capture anything. There is, but there’s an anomaly when I begin to play back the tape. On it, I hear the original radio report from 4/1/84-maybe the following day-announcing the death of Marvin Gaye. It goes into detail about the shooting, identifying the father as the man who pulled the trigger, and it leaves a very ominous tone when the report ends. It serves no place in what I’ve just recorded, but I leave the report on the reel anyway. On the final edit of the song, it begins with the report of Gaye’s death, immediately goes into guitar feedback, a steady bass drum beat, and then it’s followed by my stupid little song.
It was about cocaine.
Gaye did a bunch of cocaine in his lifetime.
Shit.
I may have been on to something after all.
Anyways. What’s Goin’ On? is the shit. Let’s Get It On is the shit. Go buy them. I remember once trying to impress this guy I worked with-a fairly substantial black man with a nice music background-by bragging that I had made love to my girlfriend while listening to What’s Goin’ On?
“You couldn’t find anything better?” he said.
“It’s Marvin!” I emphatically replied.
“I know” he said, “but when I think about making love to a woman, an album about saving the planet ain’t the first thing that comes to mind!”
1 comment:
Wow. You just took me back to that day in 1984. It was my first semester in IC and my Spanish TA told us about his death. That stupid Big Chill Soundtrack was played at every dorm party I went to that semester and I still can't listen to most of the songs from it.
"Ain't That Peculiar" is another great Marvin Gaye song that isn't quite as overplayed as some of his stuff.
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