by Jan Gaye
I was trusting that Marvin’s sentiments were genuine. From both his public and private statements, I was feeling his resolve. The children wanted to see their dad. The children wanted to see their mother and father together. For all that had happened before, I was predisposed to accept Marvin’s attitude. He was contrite. As the author of a new suite of songs, he once again cited me as his primary muse. No wonder I was drawn back to the center of his world.
Once I arrived in Europe, I saw that world was changing. In terms of Marvin’s management, there had been a profound power shift. During the course of making Midnight Love, Marvin had grown insecure and called for Harvey Fuqua, one of his original mentors. Marvin had come out of Fuqua’s Moonglows in the fifties. It was Harvey who had brought Marvin to Motown in the early sixties. Marvin had long looked at Fuqua as a benevolent father figure, an experienced writer-producer who understood the nuances of the studio.
Marvin’s close bond to Harvey threatened Freddy Cousaert. Fuqua quickly replaced Cousaert as Marvin’s main man. Making matters worse for Freddy, Harvey had arrived with his girlfriend, Marilyn Freeman, who began to function as Marvin’s manager. Freddy saw the handwriting on the wall. He feared that his days were numbered.
That’s why Freddy worked so diligently to keep Marvin in Europe. In Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands, where Marvin had worked on Midnight Love, Cousaert was on home turf. He knew the languages. Here he operated from a position of strength. I heard him argue loud and long for Marvin’s permanent residence in Ostend. At one point, Cousaert convinced Marvin to make a down payment on a comfortable country home just outside the city limits.
“To go back to America,” Cousaert contended, “is to lose everything you’ve gained here. The pressures there are too much to bear.”
“The money is in America,” Fuqua counterargued. “Your fans are in America. We’ve cut a hit album, and the only way to really cash in is to work it at home. That means media interviews, touring—the whole bit.”
Marvin’s siblings took Harvey’s side. They wanted their brother back in America. They wanted him to put his show back together and take it on the road. They wanted to be in his show. They needed money. Marvin living on another continent had not bettered their lives.
The CBS executives also wanted Marvin back in the USA. Publicity-wise, it would be far more effective to launch the record from America. The pressure on Marvin was intense.
“I want to stay in Europe,” he told me one night at the Brussels Hilton after we had slept together.
“The kids and I want to stay with you,” I said.
“I want you to,” said Marvin, all smiles. “I need you to. Isn’t it funny how things turn around? We needed to get this divorce out of the way so we could find each other again.”
These were the words I wanted to hear, confirmation of his commitment to finally doing the right thing.
Midnight Love was the name of the new album, and the midnight talks between us revealed the extent of his equivocation. He wanted to stay in Europe. He wanted to maintain a distance between his present and his past. But he wanted a comeback hit. He suffered with indecision about whether to follow his instincts and live a quiet life in Belgium or put all his efforts behind the release of the new record.
“I’ve decided to definitely stay,” he finally declared one afternoon. Marvin and I, along with the kids and the management team, were traveling through the Netherlands, where Cousaert had arranged interviews for Marvin to introduce the album to the northern European market. Afterward, we planned to travel to Paris, Rome, and London before returning to Ostend. Marvin’s plan to remain abroad, enthusiastically supported by Cousaert, gave him a measure of peace.
Riding around Rotterdam, everyone was happy—even thrilled—when “Sexual Healing” came on the radio while we were passing through, of all places, the red light district.
“It’s going all over the world,” Marvin predicted. “It’s touching people’s hearts—and touching people in other places.”
We laughed. It was a moment of healing and happiness.
Yet the ending of his final European foray was neither healing nor happy. I learned that Eugenie was also in Rotterdam, claiming it was Marvin who had called for her. Marvin denied this. But he did not deny her access to his suite.
This was just another version of the same scenario I had seen a dozen times before. Marvin not only created a dangerous form of domestic drama, he thrived on it. He liked hearing me and the other woman call each other names, just as he liked the vicious competition that he had fostered between Fuqua and Cousaert.
In a haze of highs, Marvin and I were back at it, bickering, blaming, and bemoaning the fact that we had even tried to revise a relationship mired in such deep vitriol.
Then came dire news from Los Angeles: Marvin’s mother had been diagnosed with bone cancer and required a risky surgery. It would happen in a matter of days.
“Marvin is petrified,” I told my mother when I called her to say that we would all be flying back to LA from Rotterdam the very next day. “I’ve never seen Marvin so frightened. He’s afraid he’ll never see Alberta alive again. He’s traumatized. It breaks my heart to see him like this.”
Just like that, all European plans were scrubbed. Harvey Fuqua was emboldened. Cousaert saw that he was defeated. Knowing Marvin as he did, Freddy realized that once Marvin landed in a place—as he had landed in Hawaii and London and Ostend—he remained there for a very long time. The chances of Marvin returning to Belgium were remote.
At Rotterdam the Hague Airport, Marvin, the kids, Harvey Fuqua, Marilyn Freeman, and I boarded the plane, leaving Cousaert behind. Marvin’s great European adventure came to a tumultuous conclusion. To calm his fear of flying, Marvin drank heavily as the plane winged its way across the Atlantic. I watched him fall into an uneasy sleep. I also glanced at Marilyn, another manager who thought she could control Marvin. I thought, Lady, you need to go away; you don’t stand a chance.
Frankie and Nona were also sleeping, but I stayed awake. I studied the sweet faces of our children. I studied the sweet face of my former husband. Each face projected an angelic aura. I loved each of them with all my heart. I thought about the future.
What would happen to Marvin when he returned home?
What would happen to him if his mother did not survive?
In the aftermath of still another collapse of our romantic connection, what would happen to Marvin and me?
Could I live without him?
Could I live with him?
Hours went by. The drone of the jet engines kept me awake. The unanswerable questions kept coming, kept haunting me.
The plane landed with a thud.
Our weary group walked through the airport to customs. The bags were retrieved and the vans pulled up to the curb. Before Marvin got into his vehicle, he kissed the kids and turned to me.
“Pray for Mother,” he said.
“You know I will,” I promised.
“Now that I’m back, I don’t know what will happen.”
“I don’t either.”
“Are you afraid, dear?”
“Yes,” I answered honestly.
“I am too,” he said. “I’m very afraid.”
The Beginning of the End
A warm winter in Los Angeles.
Months had passed—months during which both Marvin and I had tried and failed and tried again to reconcile the irreconcilable.
It broke my heart when, instead of me, he asked Anna to accompany him to the shooting of the “Sexual Healing” video. I didn’t expect to be invited, but neither did I envision any kind of reconciliation between Marvin and his first wife.
I was back in Hermosa with the kids and my mom. Marvin was living between the apartment of his manager Marilyn Freeman, the apartment of his sister Zeola, and the Mid-City Gramercy Place home he had bought for his parents. His mother’s operation proved successful. She was recovering nicely. During this period of her operation and afterca
re, her husband was in Washington, DC, while her children helped her through her recovery.
It was January 1983 when Marvin called me with alarming news.
“Father has moved back to the house,” he said.
“Why would be leave DC?” I asked.
“And where was he when Mother needed him by her side?” asked Marvin.
“Did you ask him?’
“No,” said Marvin. “The less I say to him, the less I see him, the better. The fact is, I don’t want him back. I don’t want him living in the house.”
“Have Mother keep him out.”
“She won’t. I tried to convince her. Tried to show her that he doesn’t give a damn about her. But she keeps saying she’s the only one who understands him.”
“I think she’s afraid of him.”
“Maybe to a point. She’s a good Christian woman. She’s quick to forgive.”
“And that’s a good thing,” I said.
“Not when the man is unworthy of forgiveness.”
I didn’t disagree. The mere thought of Marvin’s father made me cringe.
“I want nothing to do with him,” Marvin asserted. “I don’t want to see him. I don’t want to go over there.”
“Then don’t. Have Mother come to you.”
“I’m trying. I’ve been trying for years to get her to leave him once and for all. I’ll not stop trying. Just like I’ll never stop trying to make it work for us.”
I sighed. It was hard for me to hear this. Hard for me not to buy in to his sentiment. Especially since I shared that sentiment. And yet history and reason argued otherwise. History and reason said that now, ten years after we’d first met, Marvin and I would not and could not find a way to work through the past issues. The pain was too great. We were both too willing to escape that pain, both too dependent on mind-bending drugs that blurred our vision and blinded us from clarity.
We were both overwhelmed with financial fears. I had a hell of a time getting money out of Marvin for basic essentials for me and the kids; Marvin still had the IRS at his throat and had been forced to agree to a long spring and summer tour. Promoter Don Jo Medlevine promised to help with the IRS if Marvin allowed him to book his tour. But a tour excited Marvin’s worst fears—fears of performing, fears of flying, fears of facing fans who he felt had lost their love for him.
The freebase pipe numbed Marvin’s fear. He agreed to tour.
The freebase pipe destroyed my judgment. I convinced myself that somehow Marvin would care for me and the children. I felt he spoke the truth when he came to Hermosa with words of apology and regret.
In the moment when he spoke those words, when he said, “I love you, Jan, I’ll always love you, I love my children more than life itself,” he meant it.
But then he was gone, drawn back to the madness of the Hollywood scene he swore he would avoid, drawn back into the life of mayhem. Yet in that life, he was viewed as a conquering hero. Endless articles trumpeted his comeback. “Sexual Healing” was an international hit, one of the biggest of his career. Midnight Love was being called a masterpiece.
“To be adored is not good for me,” he told me. “It injures my spirit. They are welcoming me as a sex god, but snorting and smoking this shit is killing me. If only they knew . . .”
“They don’t love you for your sex,” I argued. “They love you for your soul.”
He gave me a funny expression.
“Well, maybe some do care about the sex . . .” I said.
We both laughed. But the humor didn’t last. Marvin’s eyes narrowed and, out of nowhere, he turned paranoid.
“There are plots against me,” he said. “I know they exist. I know they involve your mother and dad. Your people want to see me dead.”
“No one wants to see you dead.”
“I need rest. I need prayer. I need you to tell me that you won’t hurt me.”
“Never. Not for a moment, Marvin. I’ve tried to stop loving you, but I can’t.”
“That’s comforting to hear. My heart believes you, but my mind does not.”
“Don’t listen to your mind.”
“I can’t listen to you anymore, Jan. I have to run.”
Marvin came to Hermosa Beach to see the kids. He took us for a ride in his car and said he wanted to play us a song he’d been working on. He was calling it “Sanctified Pussy.” I didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t want the kids to hear it. I told him that if he put it on, I was taking the children and getting out of the car. He backed off but started driving erratically, frightening Nona and Bubs. When he finally calmed down, he said, “I’m singing at the NBA All-Star Game tomorrow night at the Forum.”
“Great.”
“Not so great. I said yes, but now I’m saying no. I’m not ready. I don’t want to do it.”
“You will be great,” I assured him.
“I’ve worked up a funky rendition of the national anthem that will be special, but I’m in no shape to perform. I’m backing out.”
“I wish you wouldn’t.”
“I’m asking Luther Vandross to sing it for me.”
When Luther refused, Marvin changed his mind again and turned up at the game. As I predicted, his performance was flawless. He suavely and soulfully resculpted “The Star Spangled Banner” in a manner that was distinctly Marvin. I was proud of him. There was controversy about the liberties he had taken with the rhythm and melody—he sang the song as a gospel blues—but his version would not soon be forgotten and would eventually be considered a classic.
Ten days later, Marvin was also saying that he would skip the Grammys—he had been nominated for “Sexual Healing”—because he was certain that the forces conspiring against him would deny his victory.
“They want me to sing ‘Sexual Healing,’ but why should I do anything for the Grammys? They didn’t give me a Grammy for ‘Heard It Through the Grapevine,’” he told me. “Didn’t get one for ‘What’s Going On.’ Didn’t get one for ‘Let’s Get It On’ or ‘I Want You.’ I’ve been turning out records for over twenty years and still haven’t gotten one of those little statues. Why should I believe it’s gonna be any different this time?”
“Because it is different,” I said. “This is your time.”
“I’m not sure about that.”
“I am. Besides, Pie and Bubby want to go to the Grammys. You owe it to your kids to take them.”
“And let them watch me lose?”
“In their eyes, you’re a winner. To us you’ll always be a winner.”
At the last minute, Marvin did get it together and took his children to the Grammys. I was not invited and didn’t expect to be. We were in the middle of another nasty fight.
I watched the ceremony on television. Despite Marvin’s misgivings about his live performances, he sang “Sexual Healing” superbly. Not long afterward, it was time to announce the winner for Best Male Vocal Performance, Rhythm and Blues. The presenters were Grace Jones and Rick James. Marvin had not believed my explanation that Rick and I had remained close friends and nothing more. He spoke of Rick with contempt. I wondered what would happen if Marvin won and was called to the podium.
When he did win, I was ecstatic but also apprehensive about this televised meeting between Marvin and Rick. All I could think was, Holy shit!
As it turned out, the men exhibited nothing but love. Rick was charming. Marvin was charming. They greeted each other like old friends. Marvin spoke briefly about how long he’d been waiting “for an award such as this.” He waved to Nona and Frankie, who were shown on television. I wept with joy.
Later Rick told me the words that Marvin whispered in his ear: “Take care of her.”
A month later, it was the same song and dance.
“They want me to appear on this TV special, Motown 25,” said Marvin, “celebrating a label I left two years ago. Why should I?”
“Because you’re one of the most important Motown artists,” I said.
“But I don’t want to sing my old st
uff. I want to move on to the new.”
“Then why don’t you?”
“They’re saying it’s a look back at past achievements. It’s really a tribute to Berry.”
“Oh, boy. Can you do that?” I asked.
“I’m not sure. Motown released In Our Lifetime? without my permission. That was unforgiveable. On the other hand, Berry was the man who signed me. I hate to say it, but without Berry—and Anna—who knows what kind of career I’d have.”
“Then express your appreciation by singing a song. Sing ‘What’s Going On.’ Most people think that’s the best song in the history of Motown. It’d be beautiful to hear you sing it again on national television.”
“If I do agree, Berry is going to have to ask me personally.”
“I’m sure he will.”
He did. And Marvin accepted. His seamless performance of “What’s Going On” would have been the evening’s highlight had it not been for Michael Jackson. Michael had agreed to sing a medley of old hits with his brothers, but insisted on also singing his current smash from Thriller. Motown 25 was the night Michael sang “Billie Jean” and, for the first time, performed the moonwalk. Like the Beatles’ appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show two decades earlier, Michael’s rendition of “Billie Jean” became one of the most electric moments in the history of American television.
Afterward, Marvin was crushed.
“Berry let Michael have his way,” Marvin told me. “And Michael killed. He couldn’t have been better. But if he got to sing his current material, why couldn’t I? Why did I cave? Why did I let Motown dictate to me? They’ve made a fool of me.”
“You were wonderful,” I assured him. “You’ve never done ‘What’s Going On’ better. Everyone adored you.”
“No one will remember my performance. All that will be remembered from that night is Michael’s singing, Michael’s dancing. Michael is about to become the biggest star in the world.”