Motown Success
“A masterful stylist of sophisticated soul, Marvin Gaye helped promote the Motown sound throughout the 1960s,” NRR being dubbed “the Prince of Motown.” CM The Rolling Stone Record Guide called him “perhaps the most underrated soul singer of the Sixties.” CS Meanwhile Motown was the decade’s most successful label with about 65% of their releases reaching the Billboard Hot 100, a success rate four times greater than other label. CS
Gaye came to Motown under the tutetlage of [Motown founder] Berry Gordy, married the boss’s daughter, and worked as a session drummer and percussionist until he got his chance to shine in the spotlight.” JG Among his best performances was “the tumultuous ‘I Heard It Through the Grapevine,’ a record whose ramifications deserve their own book.” JG
Fighting the Motown Machine
“Motown Records – which introduced the concept of the assembly line to pop music – had no interest in giving its artists creative control, much less in venturing into territory that was explicitly political.” BN Gaye decided to record a song (“What’s Going On”) in late 1970 that the Four Tops’ Obie Benson brought him. Gordy refused to release it, “deeming it uncommercial” AM as well as “too philosophical and political.” RV
Gaye, “the label’s greatest pure vocalist,” TL responded by saying, “Put it out or I’ll never record for you again.” TB Gordy eventually caved. Gordy said, “I don’t think you’re right, but if you really want to do it, do it. And if it doesn’t work, you’ll learn something; and if it does I’ll learn something.” TB Gordy would later acknowledge, “I learned something.” TB
After the single met with success, Gaye “recorded the rest of the album over ten days in March.” AM “Finally free to speak his mind and so move from R&B sex symbol to true recording artist,” AM Gaye “produced the album himself with backing from the Funk Brothers, and presented it as a complete nine-song suite.” PM It “was far and away the best full-length to issue from the singles-dominated Motown factory.” AM “The soulster shattered Motown’s pop formula with his powerful social commentary on race, war and the environment.” UT
Social Commentary
His “self-written, self-produced, concept album” NRR was more than just a peak for Motown; “it was a transformative record of almost unparalleled effect.” CM It was “the most important and passionate record to come out of soul music” AM and “one of the defining albums of its time,” TL allowing Gaye to explore “deeply held spiritual beliefs and social commentary on cultural events of the day.” NRR It was “a State of the Union address from a President of Soul” TB and “gave him a road back from the wilderness in which he’d found himself following the death of singing partner Tammi Terrell.” TB
“What’s Going On is not a question. Marvin Gaye’s 11th studio album is a survey of all of existence” CQ that chronicled a multitude of societal ills” BN but as a “lament for the way things were rather than an angry protest, making the message both clear and difficult to tune out.” PM Gaye shines “a welcome spotlight on the reality of inner city life for black Americans” CS and “implores for the people of the world to take a look at the hate festering around them and attempt to make peace with each other.” RV
It is “told from the perspective of a Vietnam veteran returning home.” CQ “Gaye’s brother Frankie had returned from a three-year hitch in 1967.” AM“Gaye meditated on what had happened to the American dream of the past – as it related to urban decay, environmental woes, military turbulence, police brutality, unemployment, and poverty.” AM
“These feelings had been bubbling up between 1967 and 1970, during which he felt increasingly caged by Motown’s behind-the-times hit machine and restrained from expressing himself seriously through his music.” AM The resulting album is “perhaps the truest melding of social commentary and swooning musicality ever achieved – a triumph of substance and soul.” EW’12 Gayes’s “influence has been felt in music ever since. His album made it a civic duty of artists to acknowledge the problems of society, and conscious music has been forever better because of it.” RV
Vocal Prowess
“Your tour guide on this journey is one of the greatest vocal instruments ever to grace this good Earth..” CQ Gaye said that for What’s Going On, “I finally learned how to sing. I’d been studying the microphone for a dozen years, and suddenly I saw what I’d been doing wrong. I’d been singing too loud…One night I was listening to a record by Lester Young, the horn player, and it came to me. Relax, just relax.” TB
“Sometimes the lyrics hardly change, but even as he endlessly utters the same words…it never feels repetitive, the same way a waterfall never feels repetitive.” CQ “Alternately depressed and hopeful, angry and jubilant, Gaye…[delivered] the most sublime, deeply inspired performances of his career.” AM This was his “masterwork, the most perfect expression of an artist’s hope, anger, and concern ever recorded.” AM
Musically Ambitious
What’s Going On “not only kicked off an era of unprecedented social consciousness in R&B, it also introduced a whole new style of making records.” TL Gaye “was experimenting, trying to discover new ways to sing, emote, project.” JG He “overdubbed his voice multiple times, creating a one-man vocal group,” BN “amid a backdrop of horns, strings and conga drums” RV and layered “rhythm tracks into mellow, hypnotic grooves that made the hard-nosed message…utterly irresistible.” TL It was also “a soul album with jazz time signatures and classical instrumentation.” PM
The resulting sound “was like no other record heard before it: languid, dark and jazzy, a series of relaxed grooves with a heavy bottom, filled by thick basslines along with bongos, conga, and other percussion.” AM
“Fortunately, this aesthetic fit in perfectly with the style of long-time Motown sessionmen like bassist James Jamerson and guitarist Joe Messina. When the Funk Brothers were, for once, allowed the opportunity to work in relaxed, open proceedings, they produced the best work of their careers (and indeed, they recognized its importance before any of the Motown executives).” AM They also got actual credits on the album for once, after being identified only as “session players” on previous releases. TB
The Songs
Here are thoughts on the individual songs from the album.
“What’s Gong On”
“The title track is not only Gaye’s masterpiece, it’s one of the finest songs ever written. If I say, “You know we’ve got to find a way/ To bring some loving here today,” it might sound cheesy, but from Gaye it sounds like the trumpeting of a celestial being. His eye takes in “picket lines/ and picket signs,” police brutality, mothers crying, brothers dying, until there aren’t any words left. The song ends with a lyric-free vocal exploration, as if the things Gaye has seen have brought him past human utterance.’” CQ
“An improvisatory jam by Eli Fountain on alto sax furnished the album’s opening flourish.” AM
“What’s Happening Brother”
The narrator “finds a nation in turmoil on What’s Happening Brother.” CQ The song “takes the opening general themes of dissatisfaction and embodies them into a single man’s struggle. A Vietnam vet returns from war to find his town and his country turned upside down. ‘Say man, I just don’t understand / What’s going on across this land.’ He tries to grasp the changes in the community and the nation with equal zeal, but never quite finds out what's happening.” RV
“Flyin’ High in the Friendly Sky”
This song is about “some A+ drugs.” CQ
“Save the Children”
Save the Children is about “a system failing its most vulnerable populations.” CQ It captures the essence of the album in that it “describes a world of pain, but it also creates a feeling of deliverance.” CM Gaye “wonders what will become of the generations to follow his, there’s an uplifting sense of belief.” CM
“God Is Love”
As the title implies, this song is about “a strong relationship with God.” CQ
“Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)”
This is about “a natural world on the brink of collapse.” CQ
“Right On”
Right On “broke rules about what could happen on a soul record and not just because it sported a flute solo.” JG
“Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)”
“Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler) owes a great deal to Stevie Wonder’s ‘Living in the City,’ but manages to build upon that song’s magnificence. Gaye again employs congas, strings and multiple track harmonies, but this time the lyrics are more searing, cutting straight to his own pain. ‘Make me wanna holler / The way they do my life / This ain’t livin’, this ain’t livin’ / No, no baby, this ain’t livin’,’ he repeats perhaps in hopes that maybe it will no longer be true.” RV
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