by Jan Gaye
“I don’t think so. They were beautiful ladies but they were aggressive women. Marvin doesn’t go for the aggressive type. He likes ’em shy. He likes ’em demure. That’s why he likes you.”
“When he sang with them, though, he made you believe that something real was happening between the two of them.”
“That’s because he’s a great singer, and great singers are great actors. Marvin could sing any song with any producer. That’s another reason why he had that long string of hits in the sixties. He could take tunes written by, say, Holland-Dozier-Holland, the hottest of the Motown producers, and reshape ’em to fit his style. That’s what happened with ‘How Sweet It Is.’ Same thing with Smokey Robinson. Smokey wrote ‘Ain’t That Peculiar,’ but he’ll be the first to tell you that Marvin made it his own. Marvin knew how to work with that Motown machine.”
“But I’ve heard him say how much he hates the business. He’s always talking about Motown’s heavy hand in dealing with their artists.”
“Marvin’s a rebel, Jan. You got to understand that. He’s Aries the ram. A hardheaded motherfucker. Hates authority. Hates being told what to do. Natural-born contrarian. So on one hand, you got a cat who wants to make it, a cat who sees the hit factory working overtime and isn’t about to miss out on his share of the good shit coming off the assembly line. And on the other hand, you got a man who’s been fighting father figures his whole life. He told me how he defied his own daddy, only to get these bad-ass whippings. He also told me how he got thrown out of the air force ’cause he wouldn’t obey orders. So here comes Berry Gordy, father figure supreme. Berry’s a controller. He’s got to be. He’s got to herd all these stray cats running around Motown. He’s the fuckin’ boss. But please, do not try and boss Marvin Gaye. It might work for a little while, but then it’ll blow up in your fuckin’ face. That’s what happened when Marvin did What’s Going On.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“All hell broke loose. It was the end of the sixties and Marvin was fed up being produced by Holland-Dozier-Holland and Norman Whitfield. He was gonna produce himself. He wanted to do more than turn out hit singles. He wanted to do a whole concept album. That meant turning the whole system upside down. It caused a revolution. You see, Berry—the dictator who actually put a portrait of himself as Napoleon over his fireplace—is essentially a producer, and so the company was a reflection of him. Producers ran the show. Producers wrote the songs and then decided which artists would sing ’em. Then the producers ran the sessions in the studio. Marvin saw that as ass-backwards. He felt like the artist, not the producer, was king. When he did What’s Going On, it was a palace revolution.”
“It was so different from anything else he’d done.”
“He wanted to paint on a bigger canvas. He had a concept. The idea came from his brother Frankie, who’d been over in Vietnam where he wrote Marvin letters about the horrors of the war. That broke Marvin’s heart. He looked around the country and saw all this devastation. So he took out his musical brushes and started painting the picture. He was creating a landscape. He wasn’t thinking about hit songs. He was just thinking about telling it like it is. Berry didn’t get it. When he heard it, he said it’d never sell. This was coming after Marvin had all those big hits with Tammi Terrell. More than ever, Marvin was looked on as the love man. That was all about romance. But What’s Going On was all about reality. Berry said, ‘I ain’t putting it out.’ Then Marvin said, ‘Fine, but I’ll never sing another fuckin’ note for you again.’ Berry had no choice. He released it, and the world went crazy. The world finally saw Marvin for the genius that he is. Berry had to eat his words. The producer was no longer king. Marvin the artist was king. You probably already know this, Jan, but after Marvin made his Declaration of Independence, Stevie Wonder joined the revolution. He followed Marvin down that same road—first with Where I’m Coming From, and last year with Music of My Mind. Stevie said, ‘I’m producing myself, singing my own songs, doing it my own way.’”
“And everything you’re doing in the studio now,” I said, “all these songs about love and sex—where are they coming from?”
“You don’t have to ask me that, Jan. You already know the answer. The man’s in love.”
8850 Cattaraugus
Marvin’s place was a $160-a-month furnished one-bedroom apartment on Cattaraugus Avenue, an anonymous-looking street in the lower-middle-class neighborhood of Culver City, a quarter mile away from Hamilton, the high school that I attended. It was shockingly plain. Apartment 1010.
“This is my place,” Marvin explained. “Anna lives with little Marvin at her sister Gwen’s place in Beverly Hills.”
Little Marvin, age seven, was Marvin III, the son that he and Anna were raising.
The apartment was in a plain low-rise complex just off the Santa Monica Freeway. Not a hint of luxury. The living room had a hideous gold couch and a couple of worn easy chairs. The bedroom had a record player and a king-size bed facing a television. The decor didn’t disappoint me. I couldn’t have cared less. In fact, I was impressed that a superstar was content to live in such an unimpressive flat. I loved that he lived so close to my school. But mostly I loved that he had brought me to his domicile. To someone else it might have seemed dreary. I saw it as Marvin’s secret hideaway. Even if he lived in a cave, it would be Marvin’s cave. It would be a wonderful cave.
I knew it would be a fabulous evening: I saw that Marvin was in a playful mood. There was no doubt that he had brought me there to make love. That was what I wanted. There was no part of my mind, body, or soul that did not want to please him. I wanted to excite him. He had already excited me—just by choosing me. I was prepared to do what I’d done the other night, but I was hoping for more.
We relaxed in the living room. We kissed on the couch. The kisses aroused me, stirred him. We moved to the bedroom. Marvin handed me a huge wooden box that contained several ounces of pot.
“Could you roll us a jay, babycakes?” he asked politely.
“Sure,” I said, seizing the opportunity to demonstrate my sophistication. Separating seed from stem, I worked quickly. I rolled a fat, tight joint and handed it to him.
“Beautiful,” he said, lighting up and sucking in the smoke before passing it back to me. I inhaled deeply. The rush came fast.
Marvin loved his pot, and so did I.
Marijuana is an aphrodisiac. Marijuana is a buzz. Marijuana is a giggle-producing intoxicant. Marijuana puts a sensuous filter between you and the rest of the world.
Marijuana was a day-and-night part of Marvin’s life. He lived high. I saw nothing wrong with this. My mom lived high on pills. My dad Earl lived high. Good weed was seen in the same light as good coffee. It was the fuel that kept us going, kept us mellow. Good weed seemed harmless. Because it heightened the senses, good weed was welcomed.
We got good and stoned. I lost some of my self-consciousness about my body. I’d been told Marvin liked women with big behinds. That left me out. But at least I had a full bosom. The more I smoked, the better I felt about myself.
We were laughing at a funny cartoon flickering across the television screen. We were embracing. We were disrobing. Slowly. His shirt. My blouse. His lips on the nape of my neck. The soft hair on his chest against my bare breasts.
I wanted him to want me, to enter me, to consume me.
When he did, for the first time in my life I knew what it meant to make love.
We pressed against each other as though this would be our last time, even though it was just the beginning.
I don’t know why, but the lovemaking made me cry. The deep pleasures, the thrilling satisfaction, the look of love in his eyes.
The world was made new.
“You’re my girl,” he whispered in my ear.
There was nothing I could say.
The world was wonderful.
The world was less perfect when, a few hours later, I walked into the living room to discover a man sleeping on the gold couch. I rus
hed back to the bedroom to tell Marvin.
“Don’t worry, sugar,” he said, “that’s only Abe.”
“Who is he?”
“My man.”
That designation meant that Abe was a glorified assistant whose only job was to cater to Marvin’s every whim. Later, sometimes he’d call him “my servant” or “my butler,” names that would crack me up.
Abe ran Marvin’s errands that included, most importantly, maintaining his weed stash. Occasionally Marvin would send him out for a gram or two of cocaine. Heroin was never on Marvin’s menu, although heroin was Abe’s thing. He was, in fact, a junkie. Learning this put me on alert. I remembered Mom’s junkie friends, many of whom were thieves.
Despite his habit, Abe was accommodating and personable. Yet his presence bothered me.
“How long is he going to be here?” I asked Marvin.
“He lives here.”
What! My heart sank. Sensing my discomfort, Marvin reassured me that Abe would not be a nuisance. His job was to make Marvin’s life easier. He promised that, in his words, “Abe will be like a ghost.”
On every level, my life became more intense. It was all about Marvin, Marvin, Marvin.
The explosive power of our sexual union was incredible. We made love at every opportunity, night and day. We knew every inch of each other’s bodies. We never used birth control. It was clear that Marvin wanted me pregnant—and I did nothing to prevent that.
Beyond the sex, there was a pervasive spiritual component. The spiritual component changed everything.
Two weeks before meeting Marvin, I was a bored high school junior, bothered by an increasingly depressive atmosphere at home.
Two weeks before meeting me, Marvin had been struggling to complete an album on which he’d been working for nearly three years. Estranged from his mother-figure-mentor-wife, he’d been living the life of a bachelor.
Now I had never been less bored or depressed; now Marvin had never been more motivated to work. For both of us, the darkness had unexpectedly lifted.
People around us were skeptical. People were saying that the difference in age would do us in. For a thirty-three-year-old married man to start up with a girl barely seventeen was scandalous. But scandal excited Marvin’s rebellious spirit. Besides, there were no practical barriers to get in our way.
If I had come from a conventional family, there could well have been a problem. But Mom was hardly a conventional woman. Earl Hunter was hardly a conventional dad. And my biological father, Slim Gaillard, the rogue bebopper, was the least conventional character of all. In short, I was free to do whatever I wanted to do. And there was nothing I wanted to do more than be with Marvin Gaye every second of every day.
I was hardly the only one who harbored this feeling. Marvin projected the kind of übercool calm that made everyone want to be with him. He loved to laugh. He had a wild and sometimes corny sense of humor, especially after smoking a good joint. If he was in the studio, you wanted to run over and catch a little of his mellow—whether he was singing or just hanging. You didn’t mind if he told the same joke over and over. You wanted to kick back with him and hear him, in his easygoing way, talk about the parables of Jesus or the foibles of Berry Gordy or his own foibles when, back in Detroit, he decided to quit singing to try out for the Detroit Lions football squad. Marvin took himself very seriously but, then again, he didn’t take himself seriously at all. He talked about his regard for Bing Crosby and Perry Como, singers who were relaxed beyond reason. Marvin moved at a slow but steady pace that made it easy for you to scale down your all-too-nervous rhythms.
Between Marvin and myself, the rhythm of romance quickened. I was in the studio all the time, watching Marvin work his magic. He needed to see me, needed to touch me, needed to sing to me. He said that my presence awakened his spirit. He said that my beauty brought out his beast.
I found beauty and excitement in his sexual beast. I experienced it as a gentle and patient beast, even as his passion for making love quickened my own desire. We couldn’t stay away from each other. Every night he fetched me in either his maroon Lincoln or his moss-green Cadillac. When he couldn’t wait till nighttime, he began picking me up in the afternoon at school.
One day he arrived at Hamilton High behind the wheel of a snow-white Bentley. When I spotted him in the car, I ran to greet him. We embraced.
“Let’s just take a drive,” he said.
“Fine,” I agreed.
I could feel that he was in a reflective mood. After we’d gone a few blocks, he began talking about his recent past and his decision to abandon Detroit. It took a while. He told me that after Berry Gordy, Diana Ross, Smokey Robinson, and all the others had made the move west, he was the last to leave. The least likely man to follow the pack, Marvin resisted Anna’s argument that he needed to stay close to Motown. He described how last year Berry Gordy had turned Diana Ross into a movie star, casting her as Billie Holiday in Lady Sings the Blues. The movie was a triumph; Diana was nominated for an Academy Award. With Anna’s prodding, Berry could do the same for Marvin. But none of that was going to happen in Detroit. Hollywood was the place.
Marvin said that he knew, though, that he could never have written What’s Going On in Hollywood. Those songs carried the feel of hardcore urban Detroit. He had great affection for the Motor City. Yet fighting the freezing Michigan winters and facing the snowdrifts covering his front door, Marvin had to face another fact: he was, after all, concerned about his career. He cared deeply about increasing his visibility and popularity. In spite of his inherent shyness, his deep insecurities, and an almost crippling fear of performing, he was a fierce competitor. He had always wanted to be more than a star. He’d wanted to be the biggest star of all.
That drive was what brought him out to LA, where, as Anna predicted, he found success in the movies. He explained that it wasn’t in a starring role—that could well come later—but as a composer in his brilliant score to Trouble Man. Soon after arriving in Hollywood, he was asked to record a duet album with Diana Ross. Marvin had conflicted feelings about the project.
He said that he and Diana had always been friendly, but this particular partnership was problematic. In the aftermath of What’s Going On—with no less than three top-ten singles—Marvin’s stock had dramatically risen. He was finally recognized as an independent artist, not just another cog in the Motown machine. He neither needed nor wanted an outside producer. He also freely admitted that he was jealous of the attention that Berry Gordy lavished on Diana Ross. Initially, Marvin refused to do the record.
He explained how Anna’s bond to her baby brother, Berry, was ironclad. She wanted to help Berry realize a project that would help Diana. At the same time, Anna was convinced that a Marvin-Diana duet album made artistic and commercial sense for her husband. In the sixties, her singular ability to coax Marvin into the studio—especially during those times when depression had him down and reluctant to work—had proven effective. Like no one else, Anna could motivate Marvin. It took time, but she finally persuaded him to do this Diana Ross album. Marvin caved, but he carried his resentments to the sessions. He came in puffing on an outsize joint. A pregnant Diana refused to sing around the smoke. The vocals were ultimately done on separate dates. The production itself was old-school Motown—Berry Gordy and Hal Davis were the producers. Marvin made two demands—that he receive producer royalties and that his name appear before Diana’s. Both were summarily rejected. His job was to simply come to the studio and sing. Ultimately that’s what he did. To his ears, the results sounded dated—a sixties-style record out of step with the seventies, and sales of Diana and Marvin would be less than spectacular. Marvin would never do another album like it again.
He told me how the incident further fueled the tension between him and Anna. It was Anna and Berry who had connected Marvin with the William Morris Agency in the hopes of landing film roles. He was cast in two small films—The Ballad of Andy Crocker and Chrome and Hot Leather—but the parts were in
substantial and led to nothing bigger.
Now I could understand why Marvin saw his connection to Anna—and, in turn, her connection to Berry—as an impediment to his freedom.
“This Bentley is Anna’s car, not mine,” Marvin told me during the drive. “She loans it to me to remind me of her elegance and her power.”
I felt a knot of fear forming in my stomach. As Marvin drove in the direction of the studio, I stayed silent.
“What’s wrong?” he finally asked.
“You’ve never picked me up in this car before. I’m just not comfortable being driven around in Anna’s car.”
“Why?”
I was afraid of displeasing Marvin, but at the same time, I needed to speak my mind.
“It’s strange,” I said. “And also a little creepy. What’s the point of picking me up in a car that belongs to your wife? What are you trying to say? What are you trying to prove?”
Marvin offered only the slightest of smiles.
For the first time I saw how he derived some perverse pleasure in creating discomfort, for himself as well as for others.
The relief was always the music.
When we finally arrived at the Motown studio in West Hollywood, it was Marvin’s music that softened my discomfort. In Marvin’s world, his music made everyone and everything all right. His music consisted of many voices. Overdubbing those voices—stacking the vocals—was a technique he mastered while recording What’s Going On. He called it a spiritual exercise in harmony. Each of these voices was unique—a sweet falsetto, a tender midrange, a sexual growl, a bottommost plea. Each emanated from his heart, yet each represented a different part of his one-of-a-kind musical mind. Each contained pain. Each contained hope. If he could blend these different voices with such ease and grace in his music, surely he could blend the differences in his own personality.
“You look happy,” Ed Townsend told me when Marvin had left the studio to take a phone call in the office. “I see he’s in a good place. I hope he stays there.”
