What was the problem?
Authoritative symbols. Regimentation. Having to do what mortal man tells you to do. I couldn't take the idea of authority.
So you left the service and joined the Moonglows.
Harvey Fuqua was the founder and organizer. We were a little group in Washington called the Marquis. Could have named ourselves the DeSades, but.. .what happened was he heard us on a talent show. We were proteges of the Moonglows, we sounded so much like them, so he disbanded the other group, kept a couple original members, and a couple of us, and we went on the road. Which was not fate, it was meant to be. I'm supposed to be in show business. That's that. Some guys are supposed to be doctors, This is this. I was born for this.
After the Moonglows...
I was a musician. I played piano and drums. I played drums for Smokey Robinson for about six months, on the road, I played drums on all the Marvelettes recordings and on several of Smokey's, and several of my own. So I made my living initially as a musician when I left the group.
And you were under contract with Motown?
Yes. In those days-no, there were no contracts. You sorta paid musicians what you wanted to pay them. Five dollars a side.
Really?
Yeah. If you took eight hours on one side, that was five dollars. You sweated and ached and played. But you were young, and your eyes were full of love and show business and music. And you were having fun and getting money for it. So if they paid you a dollar, it was OK.
When was this during Motown's history?
That was a couple years after I signed.
Did the Supremes do some backup on some of your songs?
Yeah, they were background singers. They were a group but they had a different name.. .the Primettes.
They were into the same thing you were-signed but also doing sessions.
Everybody helped everybody. I played drums for everybody, sang background, I helped everybody with their notes. They brought me songs and they helped me. There would be a gang of us, fifteen or twenty of us down there, trying to get a hit. Somebody'd play drums, someone else'd pick up some bells...you would all come to work every day. I should probably also mention the Andantes. They have been around a long time. And the fellows who make up the group that's called the Originals. At that time, the Tempts and Stevie Wonder would always lend a hand.
What did Stevie do?
He played instruments and everything. He would be very instrumental ...Stevie's blessed. Very much so. And he has been that way since he was a child, able to hear music rapidly and bring it to being very rapidly. He amazed everybody.
Motown had you recording with various women. Your first was with Mary Wells, second was Kim Weston, and Tammi Terrell was third.
I went a year and a half without recording between recording with Kim and Tammi. It was my choice. I'm a moody person.
You had a hit with Kim, "It Takes Two."
Yeah, right. They cut us probably with the express purpose of furthering my career, and, of course, getting Kim out into the public eye. They cut us to put out a single and entitle the album Take Two.
How long was it before you, by yourself, had a hit? The press releases give the impression it was quite immediate.
It was over a year. Berry recorded me right away because he was fascinated with my voice. He also tried to record me the way I wanted to be recorded-as a jazz singer. I wanted to get into the top echelon of show business without paying all the dues. Which I ultimately had to pay.
What kind of tunes were they?
Stuff like "How High the Moon." Oop-shoop-de-doop. Oo-wee, baby. Stuff like that. I was cutting everything.
How about that Hello Broadway album [1964, following the first string of hits, and featuring "Days of Wine and Roses," "My Way," "Hello Dolly "]? Was that your idea or Motown's?
Sort of mine and theirs. Partners in crime on that one. Some of those things were my fault. They were. "Keep him happy ...hey, look, do it, it's his money."
You had to pay studio costs.
Well, all artists do, generally, have to pay for all those sessions. Boy, did I cut up a lot of money. So I got locked in; that was the way.
Have you enjoyed an independence at Motown?
No, I have not. I have not. I just happen to be a very loyal person. I can't help it. If I were with Pipsqueak Records, I'd still probably be with Pipsqueak Records. You know the type.
Seems like you stand apart, though, from the other acts, the so-called "Motown Sound. "
Only because I demanded it be that way. Only because I'm an individual, and I demanded that I be treated as an individual and not as cattle. My position and my independence has gotten me into a great deal of trouble in the past, but I've managed to overcome it because my convictions are honest.
What kind of trouble?
I don't know. Attitudes... towards me...publicity. But I have no problems today.
What's your normal Motown session?
Couple weeks. But not as a producer. As an artist it wouldn't take more than a couple weeks to complete a project.
As an artist you went into the studio and you were given fifteen songs or however many...
Sometimes that many. If I were a good artist. I would do good and not squawk. If I'm a bad artist, I go in and say, "Hey, I'm tired of doing-I mean, the ball game's on tonight and I mean really, I'd like to finish them, I know that you don't care about the ball game, but I really want to get home and watch it." And then they'd call up and say, "Hey are you kidding me with this guy, he did two songs, and he's talking about going home to see the ball game." And somebody calls up and says, "Hey Marv, uh, time is valuable and I mean..." and they make me mad, and I say, "Yeah, well, up your Auntie's Fanny and I'm off to the ball game and don't call me for the next session," and, "my contract will be up in three years, talk to me then," and...all that crazy temperamental jazz.
Tell me about "Grapevine." Was that an accident?
Um hmm. No, no it wasn't, "Grapevine" was a divine thing. It wasn't supposed to be anything.
You were, what, the third person to do the song?
Yeah.
Who chose the song?
Well, I didn't choose it. I was being a good artist at the time. They tell you, "Marvin, you gotta come in and do this tune, because this song is a good song for you and it was written by so and so, so come right in there and be a good guy and cut it, OK?" And that always bugged me. Generally I say go take your song and stuff it. But this particular time I said oh, hell, I'll be a good artist. But it was the Lord who was working and He knew I should have gotten to do it, so I did. And that's why it became a big hit. I needed the money, really, at the time. I was really a bad guy, and I needed the money...
How were you bad?
...Invariably, when you are a free-thinking person, one who feels he or she has something on the ball, and involved in a group of people who are in power, and you don't become part of the power or bend toward it, or...that's the problem right there, it was power against me, and I didn't like the feeling of being made to do something simply because a bunch of people said that this is what I should do, as though I'm a robot and couldn't think for myself or didn't know what I liked or disliked, and the biggest insult was that they always claimed they recognized me as talent, musical talent, but they never proved it by letting me do my own thing.
MARVIN SAYS HE HASN'T BEEN INTERVIEWEI) in a long time; and he won't again, after this one. Soul magazine, he said, pissed him off. He didn't say how, or when ...I'd guess it was around the time he went into seclusion, after Tammi's death. And I'd guess his anger had to do with Soul's publication of a letter knocking Gaye.
I kept saying you wouldn't print it if the editor's brother was the singer, and the letter said, "Well, I think the editor's brother is ridiculous and we hate his records and he should go and screw himself." You should have the right to print what people send in, but there should be some ethics involved. There should be a part where the guy says, "Hey, I don't think that should be prin
ted about Marvin because as I knew him, man..." What do I spend thirty-two years living a plain life for, not being caught doing something by anybody. I spent thirty-two years creeping around. I don't want people to know what I'm doing and everything. And so far so good. "Marvin, great guy, you know, wow, what a groovy cat"...which I probably am, but I'm not perfect. But at least I have enough respect-for people and my public-to not get hung up with these crazy headlines, "Marvin Knocks Up High School Girl" or "Marvin Involved with Sex Triangle..."
You have to have a healthy respect for people to be that way, and then all of a sudden some guy who's kind of hard on me because his old lady probably likes me or something like that, he doesn't particularly like my records and hasn't ever liked me-and I confess, you may not get everybody to like you, which is a tragedy because I really honestly wish everybody did like me, everybody in the whole world-and some guy writes in and says, "Well, we think Marvin's ridiculous" and...you'd be surprised how many people believe that-"Yeah, he really is. Why? Because I read it in Soul."
Once you get involved with trying to satisfy all the people, you're in trouble. There's no way to do it-your politics, your race, your music, your limitations, anything could be the stumbling point.. .Do you read reviews?
I don't read very many things, I don't read the charts. I don't know where my records are, I don't really care because I can't help them wherever they are...
When you put out What's Going On, though, did you start following it?
Well, that was different. I didn't follow it then out of fear. I wouldn't read the charts because I didn't want to know if it were falling or...I didn't want to know, I didn't want anybody to tell me. People would call and say, "Hey, your record jumped twenty spaces... Wow..." in a voice that was sort of subdued. "Gee, that guy is really great, he said, `Oh, wow,' in a subdued voice, like it's really nothing." I get that all the time; I was ecstatic because I wanted it to do well, so badly, and I wanted it to even do better than it did.
You say you don't care, but still it's important to you to be number one.
Yes, very. It matters in sports and in music also. But I tell myself I don't care if I'm not number one, because that way I don't get my stomach all messed up, and my nerves and stuff.
Can you explain how What's Going On came about?
Just through trial and error-and experimentation. I do something and then I listen to it and say, "Wow, this will sound good on this." And I listen to that and say, "Wait, here I can put behind that, this," and then when I do that, I say, "Yeah," and this would sound good if I put some voices here in this spot, and when I did that, I listened and I say, "Wow, a couple bells, ding ding, here, and that's the way you do it, you build. Like an artist paints a picture, he starts slowly, he has to paint each thing at a time. You just can't say "wop" or "zap." A lot of guys go into a studio and try to have everything there and go zap! Instant track!
You're covering ecology, your own sense of religion, children, veterans of war, brothers on the street. How did all these begin to come together?
What you're trying to find out is am I really a genius or a fake. And I think I'm a fake. A lot of people ask me that same question. "Tell me this, how did you put that damn album together? A nut like you, I mean, really, explain that." And it kind of bugs me a little sometimes, but then I say, "I don't know: it just happened." It really did. It happened through divinity: it was divine.
What's Going On was your first album in many ways. It was a concept album. Did you see it as the beginning of a more serious work you're planning?
I really probably shouldn't answer that question, because it could be incriminating. That was a feeler, the way I see it. If you notice, I never stepped on anybody's toes, and I didn't intend to. Somebody said the other day, "That's a fine black album." I said, "Wait a minute. The word `black' is not in my album from the A side to the B side." I was very careful not to do any of those things.
It's a feeler for what?
Some of these guys go around and think they're crusaders, King Richards and everything, and I don't know if I've been knighted or what [laughs], and if I have, I may just try and save the world. What can I tell you? A lot of people don't want you saving the world. They like it the way it is. You gotta be careful.
Which ties back to the point of trying to satisfy everybody, making everybody like you.
You can't do that. But I'd like probably to become a little more explicit with my next thing. But then again people will start getting in little groups on you. And I don't want anybody taking my work and going off in little groups.
Your next album is going to be another feeler?
Umm...with longer fingers.
A little sharper. Maybe a scratch here and there.
Yeah. A little scratch. It would be nice if I could lead a million people out of despair, and I may try. I am really quite an evasive fellow on the subject-at the moment. It's tricky.. .1 just feel that I have creativity to burn, and I've been telling a lot of people that for a long time, but I'm just patiently waiting, dangling and saying, "Hey, if you just give me a chance to do my thing, I can really do something different." Then they hear it and say, "That's too different." Or "You can't do that because it just isn't done."
Was that the reaction to What's Going On?
Yes.
Was there any delay in releasing the album?
No delay. I needed a record and by this time, it was pretty much old hat that I was kind of a nut. And so the fact that this is what I'd come up with was right in line with me as an individual. "So this is what Marvin wants to go out next. Let's hear it. Oh boy! Well, it's got a beat, though, kind of groovy, but man that'll never-whew! Boy's really had it!"
ANOTHER BREAK: COME AND GET THESE MEMORIES
It's been four hours since we began; outside it's dark blue and bright white; inside the kids are noisier than ever, and another team of preteens, three neighborhood boys who sing together-with Marvin Gaye their main teacher-and call themselves Mother's Love-are itching to take over the carpet and do their version of the J-5 for us. We break. Gaye invites us to meet him at the King Solomon Baptist Church's recreation gym, where he's going to get in some boxing, and tomorrow we can finish up and take pictures.
Twelve minutes into the trip back across town, we're on West Grand Boulevard, and suddenly it's "I'll Be Doggone" and "Shop Around" and "Heat Wave" and "Jamie" and "Money" and "It's Growing" and "Fingertips." Dozens of Tamla/Motown/ Gordy memories evoked by the HITSVILLE USA house, Motown's first quarters, just a little white house, still looking like somewhere inside someone's fixing dinner. The surrounding houses along W. Grand, once held by the company, have been leased out by Gordy to various community groups at low rent, but the central property still holds a much-used recording studio.
Now, Motown Records is in downtown Detroit, just down from the half-circle central park, the Grand Circus. An unimposing, middle-aged, ten-story building, windows blued out and chromed. From Woodward Street you push through two heavy doors into an interim lobby, where a poster of Motown artists, all sketched into one light blob, is on display. A sign warns: DO NOT SIT ON LEDGE. The door inward is locked; a voice from the inside lobby is aired: "Pick up the phone, please." Shades of an impossible mission. You are checked out, registered, given a pass, which is taken from you by an escort, and led into the publicity office, a large, open room with baby blue walls, the gilded ceilings of long ago painted over by white, outshone by the chrome of contempo office furniture. And that is your Motortown Revue of today. (Plus, of course, a major office and studios in Hollywood.)
In the ghetto, Marvin Gaye is down to clean white T-shirt, track shorts, knit skull cap, and mid-ankle gym socks. He is lacing up his white shoes. He chats passionlessly with locker-neighbors. Outside, a light snow falls onto this school-like red-brick building. The gym has a high-school cafeteria ambience, high milky walls and harsh lights, but with the fights all around you-shuffling feet and beating leather and "WJLB, 28 degrees in the city, and he
re's Detroit Soul, the Naturals" out a transistor radio's tin-thin speakers on a ringside table. A young middleweight has just finished three rounds of fending off a red-shirted, blue-panted hulk, and his trainer is bulling, screaming at him, hoping it's loud enough so everyone can hear. Nothing more effective than a whole gymful of sweaty, smelly humiliation. "Quit then! You audda! You like a punchin' bag! You might's well give up. You ain't gonna fight. I don't have to keep fightin' for you! I gotta make you do everything you do. I'm tard of it." The trainer takes his knit jacket off and throws it up, behind him, onto a hook on a ringpost. He is a dramatic man. Big, angry Poitier eyes. Looks a little like Berry Gordy, Jr., in fact.
"He's right. It's a tough game." Marvin has come up to my side. "He's just trying to make it so you protect yourself. You've gotta be good." Later, the same trainer is like a Little League father; he lifts a 12-year-old off the ring. "Good work," he says, massaging the mild compliment into the boy's face. The kid comes up to me, I unlace his gloves, and he goes off to do some shadowboxing.
Marvin himself is doing just light training tonight, stabbing at the heavyweight punching bag, shadowboxing, slowly, methodically punching at his trainer's right hand, taking aim at the bare cupped mitt while, up on the ring, a pair of teenagers exchange flurries. Marvin's coach is John, the man with the bulging Poitier eyes, the gruff paternalism.
Marvin also wants to introduce some of the regulars.. .Joe Hanks, son of the middleweight champ, Henry Hanks..."and here's the one I own.. .Tommy Hanna. I think I can make him the next middleweight champion." In the ring, a motion-picturesque man, a touch of Italian in his makeup, dressed in brown trunks, striped brown socks, striped T-shirt, groin protected by something right out of Anthony Burgess... plastic, maybe... orange, for sure...Cockwork Orange, of course...
The next morning, Marvin is sullen when we meet him. Argument with the wife... something... has happened, and he's downcast. He will do some running in a while, and that'll help, but he needs more. Midway in our talk he looks off into a distance: "Today isn't a very interesting day. I have to find something to do, quick." But after our wrap-up, he poses for pictures with Annie and the kids, plays piano, sings, and, in the snow, runs, fast. He really does need to get out of the house.
Not Fade Away: A Backstage Pass to 20 Years of Rock & Roll Page 13