![marvin gaye anthology record marvin gaye anthology record](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VVOihMZDLqo/VIW5Z9PouVI/AAAAAAAABGU/VlH3_gE26yM/s1600/front%2Bcopy%2B6.jpg)
![marvin gaye anthology record marvin gaye anthology record](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71r7INMPWyL._SL1107_.jpg)
Berry Gordy was unimpressed with the jazz influences on the sound and considered Gaye’s scat singing to be old hat. Musically, it looked back to move forwards. That small feint of punctuation alters the whole mood of the album. He added the breezy chatter, and insisted that the title was a statement not a question.
![marvin gaye anthology record marvin gaye anthology record](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/y2k_3NAOZn8/maxresdefault.jpg)
Gaye made the song into something more like a story. Gaye, though, was intrigued and according to Benson added lyrics of his own, while spicing up the melody. The rest of The Four Tops were less enamoured with Benson’s venture into social commentary, and an approach to Joan Baez reportedly went nowhere. It was Benson rather than Gaye who wondered what was going on, working up the song with Motown writer Al Cleveland (the co-composer of Smokey Robinson’s “I Second That Emotion”). The song was prompted by a police attack on protestors in San Francisco, witnessed by Renaldo “Obie” Benson of The Four Tops. It’s worth noting too that the title track came first, and it wasn’t written with Gaye in mind. But taking it literally underestimates the scope of what Gaye achieved. He was depressed, and had toyed, fruitlessly, with the possibility of becoming a football player.įrankie’s experience is channelled directly in “What’s Happening Brother?”, and it is possible to view the whole album as a concept piece about a bewildered veteran taking stock of America on his return. Gaye himself was disillusioned with celebrity, and – as he told one interviewer – life in general. His brother Frankie had returned from the Vietnam war, a changed man. Gaye was grieving the tragic death of his singing partner Tammi Terrell. His tempestuous marriage to Anna Gordy (the sister of Motown boss Berry) was one obvious complication. But some understanding of Gaye’s state of mind is instructive. The biographical influences on Gaye’s writing are perhaps less pertinent after 50 years of hindsight. What’s Going On is also profoundly introspective. It is unusual for a protest record, in that its tone is not of anger or accusation. All the stuff.īut What’s Going On isn’t designed to be read. Gaye touches on conflict, prejudice, unemployment, drugs, ecology and other poignant details of “a world that is destined to die”. Reading through the lyrics now is to acknowledge that 1971 never went away. Who are they to judge us, simply ’cos our hair is too long? War is hell, when will it end? When will people start getting together again? Are things getting better, like the newspaper said? What’s been shaking up and down the line? Who really cares? Who’s willing to try to save the world? Who is to blame? After a polite introduction – what’s happenin’? – he moves on to thornier questions. What was on Gaye’s mind? Nothing particularly trivial. Many of them inhabited the part of the Venn where the personal and the political overlap, a voguish idea in the late-1960s, and the seed of what later became identity politics. Some of these were personal, some were political. ORDER NOW: Paul Weller is on the cover in the latest issue of Uncut.The album is a religious thing, but also an inquiry into the notion of faith. At the same time, its rhythms, and the timbre of Gaye’s voice, reach for something universal a kind of peace, the reassurance of timelessness. Structurally, it has the shape and logic of a sermon, sounding both urgent and relevant to the turmoil of the moment. Fifty years on from its initial release, Marvin Gaye’smasterpiece still sounds like an argument wrapped in a dream.