After the Dance: My Life With Marvin Gaye

by Jan Gaye

  With the living quarters upstairs and with a closet here or a bathroom there, there was always someplace for the kids to hide—and sometimes the adults. It provided us, and those that we knew, a second home. The windows upstairs had two-way glass that allowed us to look down from our bedroom and see who came and went. It always made for interesting conversation. We knew who was hitting on who, who had the drugs, when to hide if there was someone we didn’t want to see, and when to go down and greet any new arrivals.

  Once people got there, they didn’t want to leave, especially if we were having one of our celebrations. We would go all out, having food, drinks, drugs, celebrities, music, music, and more music.

  I threw a party for Marvin in 1977. It was one of the best parties ever. Muhammad Ali; Cecil Franklin, Aretha’s son; superagent Phil Casey; superproducer Leon Ware and his wife Carol; Don Cornelius; Richard Pryor; Jet photographer Ike Sutton, who became a dear friend; Jayne Kennedy; Smokey Robinson; Thomas “Hollywood” Henderson; Azizi Johari; Denise Nicholas; and many other stars came to enjoy a great party. At this particular party, we let the kids hang out for a little while, even though they were only two and three. Marvin had finished “I Want You,” and his massive hit “Got to Give It Up,” which we played whenever we wanted to get people moving. Before the party really got going, Nona insisted on showing off her dance moves to anyone who would watch. “Got to Give It Up” was playing and she went to work! She jumped and bumped, hooped and hollered, went into a spin at one point and fell on her bottom. Never missing a beat, she spun around on the floor, jumped up, making the fall a part of her dance. She was pleased with her performance. We laughed, clapped, and cheered for her. Being a big ham, she wanted to do it all over again, but it was time for her to head to bed. My mother arrived to pick Nona up and take her to her house to get some sleep.

  Stevie Wonder showed up that night and we gave him a tour by describing this and that. We took him up to our living area. Stevie knew acoustics so well, with his heightened senses, that he stood in the middle of the room and said, “Wow! I’m digging the surround sound.” He instinctively knew that the room was round. I was amazed by his perceptibility.

  Even Slim ended up working at the studio for a while. He would primarily hang with my brother Mark and Marvin’s brother Frankie, who took care of our day to day. It was nice having family around. There was a lot of laughter, pranks, and good times. One of my favorite occasions was Marvin wearing his pyramid hat. He said it made him smarter and made it easier to create music. It looked ridiculous but he swore by it.

  “Don’t touch Daddy’s pyramid,” he would tell the kids.

  Of course that made them want to not only touch it but throw it about, bend it, and put it on each other’s heads.

  The studio was next door to a health food store where we were always finding interesting items like the pyramid hat or biofeedback machines. Marvin was way ahead of the times when it came to natural health and metaphysical concepts. He taught me a lot about vitamins, or “mins” as he called them, and herbs for every ailment. He read Back to Eden and bought numerous copies to give away as gifts, convinced that he knew how to live forever.

  He would also read Edgar Cayce to me. Marvin scared the shit out of me with stories about Cayce, Virginia Beach, and how we should all move there to survive the end of the world—one of his favorite topics. The more I cried out in fear, the more he laid it on. Then he would do his best to make me laugh. It didn’t always work, though. He was incredibly hip and smart, open-minded, and forward thinking.

  Jane Fonda was another star drawn to Marvin. One day she came bouncing into his Sunset Boulevard studio looking like a little girl in a candy store. I was there when he played her some of his new music. Afterward, she talked of plans to start up an aerobics center. Would he be interested in investing? He was. I was afraid, of course, that his interest had more to do with Jane than with her aerobics. The two had engaged in super-intense eye contact.

  A week or so later, Jane invited Marvin to see the space that she had rented on Robertson Boulevard. He decided to take me along. The center was impressive—gleaming wood floors, expansive mirrors, bars along the walls. Marvin thanked the assistant who showed us around and then asked when Jane would be arriving.

  “I’m afraid she won’t be,” the assistant said.

  I wondered whether that was because she had been told that I was there. In any event, I was relieved. Marvin didn’t invest. I’m not sure he ever saw Jane again.

  But he did see Dyan Cannon, famous for rooting on the LA Lakers from her floor seat at the Forum. When friends told me of the rumor that Marvin had been hanging out with Dyan at the Forum Club, I grew alarmed and confronted him.

  “We both love the game of basketball,” he said. “That’s all there is to it.”

  “But why am I learning about this through friends? Why didn’t you tell me you were seeing her?”

  “I’m not ‘seeing her,’ as you put it. I’m just hanging out with her—and only once in a great while. It’s an innocent thing.”

  “And not an affair?”

  “A friendship, yes. A love affair, no.”

  When it came to Marvin and other women, I was always on guard, especially as he escalated his divorce war with Anna. As those wars threatened his emotional and financial well-being, Marvin became more vulnerable. He refused to retreat or listen to reason. He also grew more hostile. When he faced the prospect of losing all his material possessions, he responded with, “Après moi, le déluge”—“After me, the flood”—the foreboding words allegedly ascribed to Louis XV. Marvin saw himself as a king about to lose his empire. But rather than alarm him, the prospect of ruin excited him.

  He was further excited by the notion that I might be unfaithful. It took me a long time to understand why. Why would a man who had declared his love to me with the most romantic words—and the most romantic music—want to see that love tarnished and broken?

  Why design drama that would lead to heartbreak? Why ask for chaos and confusion?

  I was deeply confused when Frankie Beverly drove to the ranch in Round Mountain to meet with Marvin about an upcoming tour and, once again, Marvin forced me into a situation calculated to both tantalize and traumatize.

  Just as Marvin went out of his way to avoid sex for the weeks preceding Frankie’s first trip, he repeated the pattern with the second trip. He did this to play on my insecurities.

  When Frankie arrived, I was filled with uncertainty about my attractiveness. I was ashamed of my post-baby body. Marvin used my insecurity to further upset me.

  What seemed unreasonable, though, was when Marvin told me that he had reserved two rooms at a nearby motel in Redding—one for Frankie and one for me.

  “Why in the world would you do that?” I asked.

  “I want you to be comfortable, dear,” he said. “I’ve got work to do.”

  I argued that it was a weird arrangement. I saw it as a setup.

  “I need to be alone,” was all Marvin kept saying.

  A few hours later, Frankie and I were checking in to the motel when we discovered that Marvin had arranged for us to have adjoining rooms.

  Not an hour passed before Frankie knocked on my door.

  “Can I come in?”

  I hesitated. I was aware of his desire for me. And I couldn’t deny that I also desired him. I wanted to be desired. I wanted to feel that, despite Marvin’s recent rejections, I was a woman men found sexy. Frankie was a sexy man. Our relationship had been flirtatious from the start. At the same time, I had no intention of sleeping with him.

  “Sure,” I said matter-of-factly. “Hold on.” I unlocked the adjoining door.

  Frankie was standing there, all smiles.

  “D-d-d-do you want to smoke a joint?” he asked.

  “I was just rolling one. Come in.”

  “Well, this is w-w-w-weird that we’re neighbors. But I’m glad you’re next door.”

  “Me too,” I said.

 
We both tried to play off our awkwardness.

  There were two beds. He sat on one. I sat on the other.

  Before we could do any talking, though, there was loud banging on the door. It was Marvin telling me to open up.

  My heart started pounding as Frankie dropped to his hands and knees and crawled back to his room. Marvin’s knock got louder.

  With Frankie back in his room, I opened the door to let Marvin in. He looked around suspiciously.

  “I smell weed,” he said.

  “Of course you do. I just smoked a joint.”

  “Where’s Frankie?”

  “In his room, I guess.”

  I tried to lighten the mood and act like Marvin was the crazy one. He finally relaxed and stayed for an hour or two. When he left and went back to the ranch, he took Frankie with him. I was relieved to see them both go.

  Less than a month later, Marvin invited Frankie and Maze to open for him in Atlantic City. As usual, Marvin dreaded the event. His performance anxiety had reached new heights. To beat back the fears, he got high and was nearly two hours late to the venue.

  Finally, we got into the limo. The driver sped along the highway while Marvin insisted that I twist him yet another joint. Something didn’t feel right. I sensed imminent danger.

  “Hurry, my man,” Marvin urged the driver. “Do whatever you have to do—but get us there in ten minutes.”

  “We’re a half hour away, sir,” said the driver.

  “Not if you throw caution to the wind,” said Marvin. “I’ll pay the speeding ticket. Just press on. Hit it, man, hit it hard!”

  In response, the driver went crazy, as if being chased. He floored the pedal and started speeding at what felt like a hundred miles an hour, swerving from lane to lane and barely avoiding one collision after another. We were scared to death. I was certain that Marvin and I would both be killed. I tried to tell the driver to slow down, but fear blocked my words.

  And then it happened.

  The limo crashed head-on into a telephone pole.

  I was thrown into the front seat. As I was carried out of the car, I moved in and out of consciousness. Marvin, unhurt, was by my side.

  “You have to stay alive, baby,” Marvin was saying. “You can’t go. You can’t leave me. I want to marry you. I want you to be my wife. Do you hear me? Please, Jan, please say yes. Please marry me.”

  The timing of this, still another proposal from Marvin, was definitely strange. It came when I was suffering a concussion. At the same time, I was happy to hear the words. I was happy to accept his proposal. And then, hearing the siren of the arriving ambulance, I passed out.

  When I awoke, I was back at the hotel. Marvin was still by my side.

  “You’re here, dear,” he said. “You’re safe. You survived. Our love can survive anything. God was watching over us. You said you loved me. You said you’ll marry me. Say it again.”

  I said it again before falling back into unconsciousness.

  When I awoke a few hours later, Marvin was holding my hand. He gazed deep into my eyes and said, “I knew God wouldn’t take you from me. I knew he couldn’t be that cruel.”

  Later that night I learned that the driver had been killed on impact. The news broke my heart. I thought about this tragic loss of life and his grieving family.

  “It could have easily been you,” said Marvin. “Or me. We were spared. God spared us.”

  The concert was canceled. Frankie Beverly never got to open for Marvin Gaye.

  Repeating his proposal to me over and over again, Marvin concentrated on making me happy. It was now Marvin who wanted me for himself, Marvin who insisted that I come with him on his tour of England. He insisted that I be with him every minute of every day; I must vow never to leave him; I must believe him when he said that—despite all the delays and legal complications—he will have his divorce from Anna; he will create comfort and bliss; he will be sweet; he will be true; he will honor and safeguard me; he will love and protect our precious children; he will make our life heaven on earth.

  He will.

  He will.

  He swears he will.

  Family Love

  At the start of the seventies—before Marvin had left Detroit, before his marriage to Anna had fallen apart, before his move to Hollywood, before his meeting me had thrown him into a romantic obsession that deepened by the day—Marvin sang, “Father, father . . . there’s no need to escalate.”

  The escalation, of course, referred to the Vietnam War, but he was also talking about brutal battles fought with his own father.

  “Mother, mother,” he sang to the mothers who had lost sons overseas, but he was also singing to his own mother, who had struggled to protect him from her husband’s cruelty.

  “Brother, brother,” he sang to his brother Frankie and to all his brothers, black and white, brown and yellow, who opposed the tyranny of a heartless establishment.

  “Love your mother,” he sang. “Love your father. Your sisters, your brothers.”

  From the day I met him, I had seen Marvin as a man whose capacity to love was matched by his need to be loved.

  As much as he fought his father, he also sought the man’s love; he sought to reconcile the friction in his family by buying homes and cars for his parents, by keeping his sisters and brother close, by trying to re-create the very thing he lacked as a child—a happy home life.

  And yet a happy home life is exactly what eluded him.

  As it turned out, he had created three homes: one was the sprawling suburban home in Hidden Hills; a second was the secluded studio home in Hollywood; and the third was the enormous old house he bought for his parents on Gramercy Place in Mid-City LA.

  As time went on, he went from one home to another, seeking solace in one family even as he ran from the other. When he was suspicious of me, he ran to his mother; when the presence of his father chased him from his mother’s house, he ran to the studio that, from time to time, was being supervised by my brother Mark—Slim’s son who’s seven years my senior—Marvin’s brother Frankie, or my father Slim. When he grew angry with Slim, when he felt that his sister Zeola was pressing him too hard to employ her as a dancer or his brother Frankie was pressing him too hard to sponsor his career as a singer, he ran back to Hidden Hills.

  On any given day in Hidden Hills, I might see George Clinton and Bernie Worrell shooting hoops. They were the funk geniuses who loved Marvin as much as he loved them. The three of them loved to get high on acid.

  On any given day in the Sunset studio, I might see Rick James with his protégée Teena Marie. Like all the young soul stars, they idolized Marvin. More smoke, more coke, more high times all around. The studio had a magic all its own.

  On any given day in the house on Gramercy Place, I might see Bishop Simon Peter Rawlings, a fellow minister of Father Gay, who had come all the way from Kentucky to read Scripture to Marvin. Marvin loved the man. I witnessed their prayer sessions, which went on for hours.

  On one afternoon in Hidden Hills, my mom showed up with one of her friends, an engaging black man named Ernie Barnes. Ernie was a fabulous painter. In addition to his artistic talent, he had also once been a pro athlete. As a young man he was drafted by the NFL’s Baltimore Colts to play on the same team with Johnny Unitas and Big Daddy Lipscomb. With his own dreams of playing professional ball, Marvin was enchanted by Ernie’s stories.

  He was also enchanted by Ernie’s most famous work—an enormous panorama of black couples dancing sensuously at a neighborhood nightclub. The great painting had been used in the background of the television series Good Times. Marvin had long loved the work and wanted to know how this particular image came about.

  “When I was kid,” said Ernie, “I wasn’t allowed to go to dances.”

  “Me either,” Marvin chimed in.

  “So when I snuck around and peeped through the window of the local juke joint, I got my first look at the sin my folks never wanted me to see. And I loved it. A lifetime later I remembered tha
t scene and painted it. I called it Sugar Shack, and over the dancers’ heads I drew a banner that says ‘WSRC,’ the soul station I listened to when my folks weren’t home.”

  “Sounds like we have the same story, brother,” said Marvin. “Mind if I play you something I just finished cutting?”

  “Are you kidding? Lemme hear it, man.”

  Marvin put on I Want You.

  Ernie was all smiles, his head bouncing to the groove.

  “You thinking what I’m thinking, Ernie?”

  “I’m thinking that the dancers in Sugar Shack look like they’re getting down to I Want You.”

  “That’s it, brother! That’s exactly it! As a musical artist, I don’t like anyone coming along to change what I’ve done. So I’m a little hesitant about asking you this. But, with all due respect, is it even remotely possible for you to add a little banner that says something about Marvin Gaye?”

  “You’re thinking of using it as the album cover?”

  “It’s beyond perfect. It’s so right I can’t begin to consider anything else. I really want it.”

  “A Marvin Gaye album without Marvin Gaye’s picture on the cover?”

  “There are enough pictures of me on my album covers. Your picture does what no other picture can do. It makes the music come alive. Will you give me permission to use it?”

  “Permission granted. And with much respect and love.”

  Marvin bought it along with several other Ernie Barnes works with football and basketball scenes. One especially sensuous painting called Circle of Love, depicting a couple lying on tousled sheets in tones of brown and purple, was absolute genius. It hung over our bed.

  A month later, when the first copy of the I Want You album with the Ernie Barnes cover was brought over to the house, I asked Marvin, “My mom has some pretty cool friends, doesn’t she? Don’t you love Ernie?”