Not Fade Away: A Backstage Pass to 20 Years of Rock & Roll

by Ben Fong-Torres

  "It's just some ideas, some stuff I put together," he says, warily. "It sounds like a bunch of crap. I can't explain it.

  "I'm not a Hal David.. .but I cry when I hear some of Gershwin, and Rhapsody in Blue, because I know the guy really felt it when he wrote it. And it wasn't his hand that did it; it was God's hand, and it was written for him...and I'm under the impression I'm gonna do something like that."

  Marvin's steak and Kool-Aid are in front of him; for an instant he is a child again. He bows his head, murmurs a blessing, and begins chomping, mouth open on the upchew. He read the news today, and boy, is he hurt. He didn't see his name among those nominated for the Grammys.

  He would've liked a Grammy, he says, to add to his tableful of trophies and plaques and gold records and laminated Cash Box charts in the den. He sprinkles some LaChoy soy sauce on the steak. "I like trophies-I mean little things like Oscars and Grammys, little things like that."

  Why would you be hurt if you didn't get a Grammy or get nominated?

  Because... it's human to get hurt if you feel you deserve something and you don't get it. I've swept several awards this year, but I really want the Grammy. Not that I'm not happy with the others; I'm just cocky...or selfish, maybe that's the word.

  Well, you've got to be an egotist, don't you, to put your ideas out for millions of people?

  I hate to think that, to have that kind of ego, though. Terrible, terrible, it's worse than power. It gets you in worse trouble. My ego is going to cause me to get knocked out, too. I have just enough ego to think I can go in there at 32 years old and win the heavyweight championship, defeat Smokin' Joe [laughs].

  You think you're big enough to be a football player?

  Umm, the question is, is my heart big enough? 'Cause there're a lot of little guys out there playin' ball. I never got a chance to play. My wife says I'm running around here trying to prove that I'm a man. She's probably right. I happen to think it's because I'm a sports nut. I play everything, even played ice hockey the other day. Can you imagine a black man playing ice hockey? [laughs] They were all kidding me. "Jeez, you're going to be the first black hockey star in America."

  Why do you always put yourself on a professional level? Can't you be happy just being an amateur football player? Or an amateur boxer...

  No no no. That's the ultimate. And I....

  But you already have close to the ultimate in music.

  That's what a friend told me, she said, "You're already probably one of the great young voices, musicians around town. Do you have to be the black George Plimpton also?" And I just told her, "Yes, I do." Quite frankly, yes.

  George Plimpton... he's an actor in many ways.

  But my thing is different. I'm going to use my knowledge, and my body, to defeat some guys, that's all. Because I think I'm as good or better. Just 'cause I'm a singer has nothing to do with it.

  You've got to be on some kind of battlefield, right;

  That's right. And with the best. And if by some miracle I defeat them, can you imagine the feeling that'll be? That's worth all the agony and pain. And what is life anyway-except, I mean, really.. .you get up the next day and you say, "Well, better be careful because I may catch..." or...Why not be bold? And so I get mine out there. So, "What a stupid thing to do." So what? It's what makes you happy in life, and to pursue it, I think, is brave and a wonderful thing. I don't care what people say. I just want to pursue what makes me happy.

  I've been competitive all my life. I've never had a chance to exercise my competitiveness through athletics, of course, because my father loved, I imagine he overloved me, if that's possible.

  He sheltered you...

  Quite a bit. Yeah, he thought I would get hurt because I was kind of a frail kid...But getting back to where my heart is...it's hard to explain. It just means something to me. I just want to say that I bested you, at a physical game or a mental contest, football or chess. Just for the thrill of it. But what I enjoyed was controlling myself when I was behind. And I think, 'Now am I going to be a chicken and just fall away or am I gonna muster myself together, swallow my spit and really get down and win?' If I come up from behind and win like that, it's a fantastic feeling; I get chills all over.

  Did your father teach you a different kind of idea, of what getting ahead, what satisfaction, could mean?

  Outside of the feeling that I was trying to express to you, the only other feeling close to that would come when I had my moments with God as a child-or the Spirit, as we called it. And the Spirit as it manifests itself through my mother and my father in church and the other-as we called them-brothers and sisters. It wouldn't happen all the time, but sometimes my mind would get fixed on a certain... dimension, I guess. I could see things and sense things, and feel the kind of happiness that I don't get now, quite frankly. That I really miss. God was very good to me as a child, and I'm a very blessed individual.

  What's Going On was my first production ever. I conceived every bit of the music. I hate to brag and everything about this, but I had no musical knowledge, I can't write music, can't read music. But I was able to transmit my thoughts to another person, and David Van DePitte, through the graces of God, had enough talent to be able to receive it and put it on paper for me. He is fantastic, and he did the horns and the strings on the "Inner City Blues" track for me.

  I thought at one time that I would take off and go to school and learn to write music, because as I listen to composers like Gershwin...I mean I'm awed by him, that he wrote all his music himself. You know, I can go around all day and say, "Hey, dammit, I composed that album," and Dave can come back and say, "No you didn't, I wrote it," and I'm going to take it to a judge and say, "Well, I thought it," and he'll say, "Wait a minute, well, who wrote this music?" Dave Van DePitte. Well, you get it; it's yours. But I'm gonna learn how to write music, so I can do it. Why? Because I want all the credit.

  Did you get to a point where you thought, wait, I'm singing everybody else's ideas?

  No. Singing other people's ideas is good because you owe them that service, in a sense, because they can't sing it. I feel in that sense I'm like.. .who was the piano player who played everybody's stuff? Franz Liszt. Like a guy who writes a symphony wants to hear what it sounds like, he'll go get Franz Liszt to play it for him. Because he's a great pianist. So a guy writes a piece of music, and he says. "Well, hey, listen, I can't sing this but I know it's beautiful, and you're the guy I want to sing it," so in that respect singing other people's ideas is a trip, and a good one. But I can't be on that kind of trip all the time because I got some highways to ride up myself.

  You were thinking about this before What's Going On?

  I felt that had I gone to school in the last couple of years, right now I could take a pencil and just put ideas down. And I can hear instruments. Once I learn an instrument I can create new instruments. I have a theory, like that stuff I played for you. There has to be another dimension. Why are there cracks in the keys on the piano, for instance? There's some music in those cracks. Why couldn't there be another musical system in fact, a whole new system that I could invent. And why is it that when something is out of tune, it's not music? It's still a note.

  I'd like a bunch of those sour notes to make into a symphony.

  There's been a change, affected by dope, and I wondered...

  You think I use dope, do you? This morning, in fact, probably. You thought I was floating around somewhere. [laughter] Could have been drunk, you know.... Well, I enjoy ...I think that if you know yourself and if you're in control of yourself, narcotics can be used in moderation, if you want to. I happen to be an individual, and if I choose to do something then I do it with full knowledge of what I'm doing, with the full knowledge of my body and its capacity.. .I'm a very careful person, I've always been, I was a careful teenager, and when the crowd was having a ball I'd drink my limit. I've only been drunk once in my life. And I had to get drunk one time to know what it was like. I do some things of course, but I don't think that marijuan
a is...I like grass, you know. I don't like booze.

  You decided at one time that you didn't like booze. When did you make a choice about grass?

  I've been open to grass since I was a kid. I've also been open to alcohol, cigarettes, uppers and downers, heroin, cocaine, but I mean, you know ...I dug all of them too. But what I dig and what's good for me are two different things.

  What gave you that kind of control, do you think?

  Wanting to live.

  What's your wife's reaction to you? Have you always been this way?

  Well, the thing about this is it's very dangerous because, what the bell, the Police Commission or somebody reads this copy and he said, "Jeez, man, that Marvin Gaye, I didn't know that about him or nothing. I think we'll watch his mail or I think we'll snoop around a little bit, see if we can get a sensational bust." That's our society, how people get promotions. A guy like me has to be very careful, and it's a shame, because I'm not doing anything to anybody.

  It seemed to me that there was a particular turning point that led to What's Going On.

  I imagine I'm going to live a long time. I like to think I am, but I probably won't. And whatever hallucinogenic properties... whatever grass I've smoked or whatever booze I've consumed.. .in the back of my mind maybe I know that I won't live long. And maybe I also need those properties to see, because I cannot see if I'm like you. And if I'm not like you, you can't see me the way you see those who are like you. Consequently you're going to change how you are to try and see me. Probably during that course I'll be able to see you, and from seeing you I'll be able to know what I want to transmit into my music.

  Who do you conceive to be the people you're communicating to? Your audience could be straight.

  Who am Ito say whether they are straight or not? I don't know that either. All I know is what I know and what I feel I know is truth to me, and that is how I live.

  Where do you get your truth from?

  I don't know, I have a computer in my mind, and I compute things. Like I've computed you already.

  Do you think you're adapting your words to fit what you think I want from you? What this magazine might like? Are you that media-conscious?

  Uh, yeah. Yeah.

  And if I had said I was from...

  Life? I'd be a different kind of guy.

  Even from the morning on, from when you woke up?

  Yes. Yes. From when I came out. I'd probably be dressed differently. I mean you wouldn't even know me.

  Do you still think that you're being totally honest?

  Yeah. Because I would have not conceived it that way, I'm not laying down saying, "OK, tomorrow I've got Life magazine coming and I'm going to get up and put a suit on," not like that...but I do know there would be a difference. If you left now and another guy came in from Soul magazine I would probably be different, I'd probably talk to him differently because I would try to communicate to him the way I think I can communicate to him best.... But when you say totally honest, I think that's a mark against my...I would hate for anything hypocritical to be inferred. I think I am probably the most nonhypocritical person I know; I'm a chameleon. There's a difference. I happen to be able to adapt. But I'm always honest in whatever adaption I take.

  What if Life asked you what I did, about doper,

  I would have said exactly what I told you-another way.

  What if they said just, "Have you tried marijuana?"

  I would say, to Life magazine... depending on how I was rolling at the time with the interviewer, and that has to all be in it...I would have said "Yes." Plain and simple. Nothing behind it. And I wouldn't have gone any further. With you, it's different, I mean, we're talking. I don't care any more. I care only because it's a criminal offense, and you can get time for it, which is totally unfair and ridiculous.

  But what is it if I can't have a little variety in life? Life isn't interesting to me if a Life reporter comes in and I can't be something else. I've been an actor, too, and I enjoy being an actor. If there were a bunch of ballplayers in the room, you'd think I were a ball player. If there were a bunch of music professors in here, I could fit in very well.

  How about black radicals?

  Yeah, I would be one, sure. I mean I could be in here and you would not say, "Hey, there's a guy over there who probably isn't a black radical." I don't know if I would want to, in that situation, but I'm telling you I can adapt. I've done it many times when I've gone abroad, like to go South. I've become Southern in three days. I mean I start to walk and talk and feel like a Southerner. When I go to England, I become English. I even begin to talk like an Englishman.

  THE $45,000 MISUNDERSTANDING

  The next question was about the voicings on particular tunes, like "It Hurt Me Too" or "Sandman," where Marvin seemed to push more towards a vocal, emotional edge, as if inspired by Sam Cooke or Jackie Wilson.

  "That," he explained, "is my rock voice; I got all these voices, man," and he got up and strode to the tape machine. "Some things I could play you, you probably wouldn't believe." He set up the tape he wanted. "This is my white voice," he announced. "I figured, Another Johnny Mathis. Wow, the world would love me!' Boy, does he ever have a heavenly voice. But they wanted me to keep screaming, like on `Stubborn Kind of Fellow.'

  "That was then, this is now," and he puts on another tape. "Last year I wrote some songs for Sammy Davis, Jr., who at the time was coming to Motown. I just finished What's Going On, and everybody said, `Hey, man, Sammy's coming. Why don't you do some stuff for Sammy?' I thought they were asking me to do it. I felt so groovy about it. This is a guy I admire. To do an album with him. Wow. So I did all that, I wrote and wrote, just for Sammy. Which he'll never do, of course. Cost me $45,000. I have to eat that. Not that it's Sammy's fault.. .but executive bullshit. The tapes never got to him. Never even talked to him." [Davis switched to MGM shortly after his announced signing with Motown.]

  As the backing track flutters in, Gaye shouts: "On me, now, this is no good. It isn't my image," and he proceeds to sing, oblivious to-or maybe encompassing-the children's din. It is "middle-of-the-road" music, strings and silky words straight out of films, cymbals crashing to say how lonely a man can be, never never never having had a sunny day.

  The second tune is even closer to Sammy, and as Marvin sings the line, "Will we meet again come next summer," he asides, "He's a romantic little guy, you know," and into: "and make love by the ocean/where it is fresh and warm and wonderful/and the tingle tingle tingle tingle tingle of your salty kisses..."

  Marvin climbs the scale effortlessly with eyes warm, gazing out the parlor windows at the Detroit stillness. He is too proud, now, to go to Davis with tapes in hand, and right now he's in a most expensive reverie. He tugs at a bit of whisker as he sings.

  "Happy Go Lucky" wraps up the live concert, and this one has a talk bit that Sammy could do in his roguish British way... "And my dahling, should I paht, I want you to keep those times neatly, in yaw haht...because happiness is where it's at..." Marvin claps hands, snaps fingers. Perfect! Kitsch as can-can!...But Sammy Davis, Jr.?

  "Well, I respect what I can sense and hear as truth. Nat Cole had one album where he was like super-on, and from this album I got tremendous respect for him. Same with Sinatra. One album. Even Tony Bennett, and Billie Holliday, especially Billie, the Lady Day album. I like Gloria Lynne. . .James Moody, Last Train from Overbrook. I could go on and on. There is always an album an artist puts out that stands `way out above the rest. What's Going On may be mine."

  A Marvin Gaye discography is not so impressive, at least on the surface, from a quick listing of greatest hits: "Pride and Joy," "Stubborn Kind of Fellow," "Can I Get a Witness," "You're a Wonderful One," "Hitch Hike," "I'll Be Doggone," "How Sweet It Is," "Ain't That Peculiar," "That's the Way Love Is," "I Heard it Through the Grapevine," "Too Busy Thinking About My Baby," and "What's Going On." With Tammi Terrell, in 1967 and 1968: "If I Could Build My World Around You," "Your Precious Love," "Good Lovin' Ain't Easy to Come By," "Y
ou're All I Need to Get By," and `Ain't No Mountain High Enough." And with Kim Weston, in 1965, "It Takes Two."

  But, of course, in there you've got work with the majority of Motown's major producers-Norman Whitfield back as early as `63 ("Pride and joy"), the longtime bread- butterers, Holland-Dozier-Holland ("How Sweet It Is," among others), Smokey Robinson ('Ain't That Peculiar"), and Nick Ashford and Valerie Simpson (the GayeTerrell sides). And these are songs with brilliant, gospel sharp points to them or, conversely, tender, tenor weavings with various women's voices: songs that had the Supremes and the Marvelettes as backup; songs that the Stones, Creedence, and Aretha Franklin would do.

  And yet, as we learned, Marvin is kind of subtotal when it comes to recall of the songs he's sung. All the music, or too much of it, at least, was lost under a general cloudy attitude about Motown. Seven years ago, he says, he could just go into Berry Gordy's office and talk. Now, there's executive protocol. He doesn't mind, of course, but... and Berry's his brother-in-law, and that's all there is to say about that. As for the sessions, specific songs notwithstanding, they were simply work. And often enough, he was a good worker. And there you have the discography.

  Was there ever an attempt to turn you into, say, lead vocalist of a group?

  Oh, well, there were many offers. But I'd had it as a member of a group. I sang with the Moonglows for two years, and that was enough. I was about 19, and I was just a member-first tenor. I sang one number during the show. We played clubs around Detroit, and that's where Berry heard us and me, when I sang my one song.

  You lived in Washington around this time?

  I didn't live anywhere. I wouldn't go home, I had no home. I was on my own after the service. I got an honorable discharge-a general discharge under honorable conditions.