Just Read It

Where to start with this post? First of all it goes without saying that Marvin Gaye is one of my all-time favourite artists. I’d always loved his music, and when I discovered the ‘What’s Going On’ album as a teenager, he became one of my first serious crushes. Even though he had been dead for about 15 or so years, 18 year old me was like he can get it.

I can vaguely remember as a child when he died, though I didn’t really know who he was at the time. But I do remember my first musical introduction to him by way of two seminal ads shown in the UK. The first being the iconic Levis ad featuring Nick Kamen and the California Raisins ad, both of which used ‘I Heard It Through The Grapevine’ as the backing track.

Given the its lyrics, it’s odd to me that ”I Heard It Through The Grapevine’, would be used to advertise jeans and an apparently popular, if rather boring, snack. Gaye is singing about the pain of finding out through other people that his lover has betrayed him with another man. There is a rawness to his voice, that makes the song deeply personal, unsurprising because at the time his marriage to Anna Gordy was rocked by rumours of infidelity, which was only one of several problems in the marriage.

But this song like many, highlights Gaye’s ability to translate or channel the emotions he felt into his music. Whether it’s the intimate sensuality of songs like ‘Let’s Get On’ and ‘Sexual Healing’ or the broken plea for love and understanding in ‘Piece Of Clay’, or the pettiness of the ‘Here, My Dear’ album, you feel what he is feeling. I find myself asking the same questions he is asking, wondering about the story behind the music, and continuously thinking the complexity of the man that is Marvin Gaye Jr.

Stubborn kind of fellow

I say complex, because Marvin Gaye was a very complex man. The way he could fuse the sacred and the profane to make something beautiful and precious, always threw me as young girl growing up a pentacostal church. As such I always felt an element of transgression when I listened to some of his later music. But at the same time the more I listened, and the more I read about him, the more I began to understand a litte more about him.

Marvin Gaye was not an civil rights activist in the same vein as Curtis Mayfield or Nina Simone. The constraints of his contract with Motown prohibited him from expressing what he really thought about racial and social justice. And I imagine the fact that he was married to Berry Gordy’s sister, Anna, didn’t help either. But in 1965, after the Watts Riot, he asked himself “With the world exploding around me, how am I supposed to keep singing love songs?”

His feelings intensified following conversations between him and his brother Frankie, who had returned from three years of service in the Vietnam War. He said:

“I didn’t know how to fight before, but now I think I do. I just have to do it my way. I’m not a painter. I’m not a poet. But I can do it with music”.

He told Berry Gordy that he wanted to record a protest song, to which Gordy, ever the protector and gatekeeper of ‘The Motown Sound’ replied, “Marvin, don’t be ridiculous. That’s taking things too far.”

But Gaye being a ‘stubborn kinda fellow’ to coin a phrase, persisted and after recording ‘What’s Going On’, went on to record the album of the same name.

‘What’s Going On’ was originally inspired by Four Tops singer Obie Benson, who had witnessed an incident of police brutality during a protest, leading him to write the song. His fellow Tops did not want to record it as they felt it was a protest song, so Benson gave it to Gaye, who tweaked and enriched with his own lyrics and composition, giving us the classic we have today.

The song describes the point of view of a Vietnam veteran returning to America to witness hatred, suffering and injustice. It opens with a soundbite of a homecoming party of a soldier being reunited with his family. Then comes the soulful jazz of the saxaphone, followed by Gaye’s opening lines:

Mother, mother
There’s too many of you crying
Brother, brother, brother
There’s far too many of you dying
You know we’ve got to find a way
To bring some loving here today, yeah

The song is a study of contrasts. One minute you have this party atmosphere complete with cheerful chatter in the background. Then this soulful, jazzy and laid-back chill of the music which belies the elegiac potency of the lyrics, as Gaye moves into the chorus describing protests and accompanying brutality:

Picket lines (Sister) and picket signs (Sister)
Don’t punish me (Sister) with brutality (Sister)
Talk to me (Sister), so you can see (Sister)
Oh, what’s going on (What’s going on)
What’s going on (What’s going on)
Yeah, what’s going on (What’s going on)
Oh what’s going on

What’s interesting to me is that Gaye is not asking the question ‘what’s going on?’ He’s not asking for an explanation, as there is no question mark either in the song or the album title. Rather he’s telling us what’s going on in the troubling world of 1970s America, summing the concept of the whole album.

With everything going on in his personal life and the world — his drug addiction, troubled marriage, the loss of his singing partner and close friend, Tammi Terrell, the Vietnam War, the atrocities perpertrated by people each day — this song, and indeed the album, is Gaye’s plea for a new of relating to one another.

Father, father
We don’t need to escalate
You see, war is not the answer
For only love can conquer hate
You know we’ve got to find a way
To bring some loving here today, oh (Oh)

The verse above always has me in my feelings because I think of Gaye’s relationship with his father, Marvin Gay Sr, which did indeed escalate and resulted in his death – a horrible foretelling maybe? But the verse is also directed towards authority figures, the Establishment as it were, who were choosing war over peace. Gaye wanted them stop choosing violence and embrace love and compassion.

What’s Going On

In it’s entirety, the album is cyclic begining with ‘What’s Going On’ and ending with ‘Inner City Blues (Makes Me Wanna Holler) which segues back into ‘What’s Going On’. It’s one of Marvin Gaye’s most personal of albums, marking a significant departure from the kind of music he made as part of Motown’s assembly line.

In addition to the Vietnam War and civil rights protests, Gaye’s introspective lyrics also explore themes of drug abuse, poverty and even ecological issues, long before awareness of the human impact on the environment became mainstream.

As such it’s almost impossible to listen to ‘What’s Going On’ without listening to the rest of the album, because it tells a story. It gives an insight into Marvin Gaye himself – his thoughts, his feelings, and his struggles. All of which is set against this backdrop of a very bitter, painful and significant time in history. Gaye gives his all on an every song. His biographer, David Ritz said on the sleevenotes of the 1993 re-release of the album:

This is sacred music. From the opening riffs of the kicked-back alto sax, sounds flow like a sensual stream of consciousness. For all his sincere complexity, Marvin’s message is startingly clear: love before it’s too late… It still stands as a monument, a masterpiece that has grown in stature. The issues raised are more relevant today than ever; and the sheer pleasure of listening to these thirty-five minutes of flawless music affords a satisfaction, a heavenly high, that has only intensified with time.

David Ritz, 1993

But I think it’s best summed up in Marvin Gaye’s own words in an interview with Rolling Stone:

In 1969 or 1970, I began to re-evaluate my whole concept of what I wanted my music to say … I was very much affected by letters my brother was sending me from Vietnam, as well as the social situation here at home. I realized that I had to put my own fantasies behind me if I wanted to write songs that would reach the souls of people. I wanted them to take a look at what was happening in the world.

Marvin Gaye

And he certainly did write songs that reached the souls of people and made them take a look at what was happening in the world. Even today, in our post-pandemic times ‘What’s Going On’ is still so, so relevant which says a lot about the state of our nations, but also gives us reason to keep on fighting against injustice and embrace love as Marvin sang so eloquently.

Listen to ‘What’s Going On’ here:

Sources:
What’s Going On (Marvin Gaye Album) – Wikipedia
What’s Going On – Genius lyrics
What’s Going On (song) – Wikipedia
Marvin Gaye – What’s Going On | Lyrics Meaning and Song Review by Adam Mc Donald