DISGRACELAND - Marvin Gaye: Father, Father There’s Far Too Many of Us Dying

Episode Date: September 25, 2018

Marvin Gaye was born into a God-fearing home to a sweet, wholesome mother and crossdressing, philandering, pentecostal preacher father who ruled his children with an iron fist. Despite his tense upbringing, Marvin Gaye found his calling—music—and used it as his ticket out of his repressive home life. He chased away his shame and followed his muse to the top of the charts; through a sea of cocaine and sex, becoming one of the biggest and most gifted entertainers of all time before sinking into addiction and depression and ultimately winding up back at home with his parents. This was a move that would prove to be more devastating than any of his volatile sexual relationships and more deadly than any drug he’d ever taken. To see the complete list of contributors, visit disgracelandpod.com This episode was originally published on September 25, 2018.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis. The stories about soul singer Marvin Gay are in scene. He slept with more women than Will Chamberlain. He did more cocaine than John Belushi and Richard Pryor combined. He ate acid with Bootsie Collins and George Clinton. He could dunk on Jesse Jackson.

And he was born into a god-fearing home to his sweet, wholesome mother, and cross-dressing, philandering Pentecostal preacher who ruled his children with an iron fist. But despite a strict upbringing, Marvin Gaye was able to find his calling, music, and use it as a ticket out of the repressive inner-city blues he was raised in. Marvin Gaye was immensely talented.

He was also paranoid, dangerous, and borderline suicidal. He barricaded himself in his Hollywood Hills home behind his AK-47. and his attack dogs. He took a knife to his wife's throat. He did enough drugs to put a thoroughbred in the ground. But through it all, he made great music. That music got played you at the top of the show.

That wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Melotron called Fox Trot Moving Piano Low, MK1. I played you that loop because I can't afford the license for footloose by Kenny Loggins. And why would I play you that specific slice? of bacon-esque sans-mesina cheese, could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on April 1, 1984. And that was the day that Marvin Gay

rose his hand to his father and consequently brought about his own demise. On this episode, Fox Trot Moving Piano's, Bacon-esque cheese, cross-dressing dads, shame and betrayal in Marvin Gay. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland. The sound of his feet in women's pumps, putting pressure on the old wooden stairs, pumped out the sound of shame, the trail. How could his old man do this?

His father, for God's sake. The rest of the family stood by, pretending not to be bothered by the sight of their patriarch, ascending from his second floor bedroom in their home in Washington, D.C.'s simple city neighborhood. But how could they not? There he was the man of the house, Marvin Gaye Sr., wearing a polka. dress, fake pearls around his neck, the aforementioned pumps, and a crooked wig from crowns that he had no doubt picked up from one of the church ladies he preached to on some days. Young Marvin couldn't stand it, but there was nothing he could do about it.

His father was going to do whatever the hell he wanted to do, and if that meant wearing ladies' clothes at the breakfast table on a Saturday morning, or retreating behind his bedroom door with fat-bottomed women from church, while his wife, Marvin's mother, busy to yourself with making their home downstairs, and so be it. There was nothing anyone could do about it. Marvin Gaye Sr. was going to do whatever the hell Marvin Gaye Senior wanted to do, because polka dot dress or no polka dot dress, he was still the man of the house. But it was bad, real bad.

Bad enough Marvin's last name was gay, but now, with the rumors spreading around the neighborhood that his preacher dad was some sort of homosexual cross-dressing freak, Shit, Marvin could barely show his face out of the house without some neighborhood kid starting something. So for young Marvin gay, this meant one fist fight after another, but Marvin could hold his own. And in some way, this helped. It made him feel like he was proving something to himself, to his father, that he, while even just a boy at the time, wasn't betraying his manhood, like he believed his father was. Betrayal, it was a constant, unspoken theme in the gay household. and their father, a one-time Pentecostal preacher,

preached strict adherence to the Lord's way, and any deviation from that heavenly path was seen as a betrayal and met with strict, oftentimes violent discipline. But somehow, in 1950s America, to Marvin's dad, dressing in women's clothing, was not a deviation from the heavenly path. Progressive? No. More likely extreme hypocrisy. And like I said, Marvin Gaye's senior did whatever the hell he wanted to do.

He was the powerful male head of a family who ruled his household with violence, fear, and intimidation. His family was petrified of him and thus powerless to do or say anything about his behavior, however hypocritical and embarrassing. Now, ain't that peculiar. But the contradictions didn't stop there. Despite his own sins, father, as he was called, tried his best to discipline out any secular and therefore sinful interest from his kids.

Going to the movies on a Saturday to see Disney's Lady in the Tramp, a betrayal of God, reading Charlotte's Web, a betrayal of God. And singing in a street-corner-du-op band as young Marvin was at the time, definitely a betrayal of God. But Marvin loved music, and he was good at it, he knew it. If hearing his voice bounce off the walls of the church on Sundays didn't prove it, then the looks he was starting to get from young and old women alike sealed it. Gay.

My ass, he thought. Women loved him. How could he be gay? He wondered. And that shit wasn't hereditary, was it? Besides, was his dad even gay? Despite the women's clothes and his marriage to Marvin's mom, he was openly sleeping with other women. So young Marvin Gay, to clear up any confusion, added an E to the end of his name, just like Sam Cook before him, and followed his golden voice from the street corner serenades of Washington, D.C., to Hitzville, USA, and the hit factory known as Motown Records. Motown was great for Marvin. And there was much to learn from Motown's rich stable of musical talent. The Miracles, Martha and the Vandellas and the Temptations. Plus, Barry Gordy, Motown's founder and leader, was a genius, modeling his studio and record label after the neighboring General Motors Auto Factory in Detroit. Gordy through Motown, pumped out hit after hit after

hit with his assembly line approach to record making. How's songwriters like the Holland Dozier Holland team composed the lyrics, the melodies, and the music, and the house studio musicians, the funk brothers, laid down the tracks, and contracted stars like the Supremes and the Four Tops came in and sang the vocal. Finally, genius producers like Norman Whitfield and the five-tool player Smokey Robinson saw the track through to completion, mixing it, and readying it for the pressing plant, airwaves, the record stores, and ultimately the record shells of young Americans, both black and white, everywhere.

Motown in the early 1960s was the place for black musicians. Motown's success at the time was unrivaled and its unofficial title of Hitsville USA was no stretch. Marvin Gay couldn't have found himself in a better place. He broke in as a studio musician, but quickly made his vocal talents known and cracked the charts with the hit single, Stubborn Kind of Fellow in 1962.

He followed it up with subsequent hits, hitchhike, pride and joy, can I get a witness, and more. and in no time established himself as one of Motown's biggest stars. June 21st, 1963, Chattanooga, Tennessee's Memorial Auditorium, the Motown label's Motor Town Review, was in town to put on a show. The Temptations, Little Stevie Wonder, Mary Wells, Martha Reeves, and the Vandellas, and at the top of the build, Marvin Gay.

It was showtime, but the headliner was nowhere to be found. Martha Reeves knew what was up. Marvin's stage fright had probably gotten the better of him again. She scurried about the backstage looking for Marvin and found him huddled in a corner near the exit, almost with one foot out of the door, literally. He was shaking, hunched over, smoking a cigarette, sweating, on the verge of a panic attack.

He couldn't do it again, he told her. He couldn't go on stage. The band wasn't ready. Of course they are, Marvin. They always are, Martha told him. He wasn't ready. You're a star, Marvin. You were born, ready, baby.

Martha reassured him. The crowd wasn't right. There was going to be empty seats. Marvin, it's a packed house, just like it is every night, and everyone in there is dying to see you perform. Marvin thought to himself that all these things may have been true, but regardless, whether the band was in tip-top shape, whether the house was packed,

and whether or not the crowd was dying to see him, none of that will keep the rumors for being whispered. The rumors that Marathon was. Marvin Gay was, well, gay. Marvin couldn't stand them. It was just like the old neighborhood, except it wasn't his dad's cross-dressing that was stoking the rumor mill about his sexuality.

It was Marvin's on-stage vibe. He was a star and a sex symbol, sure, but he wasn't necessarily manly. Not exactly the pro football Jim Brown stud type. He had soft eyes. He was sensitive, a touch, effeminate, and to those who doubted his masculinity, Marvin's last name kind of said it all with or without the E.

And of course, there was the way he danced on stage at the Motortown Review. It was queer, peculiar to say the least. To think that there was a time when Marvin Gay, the smoothest operator of them all, couldn't dance, is almost unthinkable, but it's true. Go back in YouTube some of the early 60s footage, and you'll find a man trying to do the hitchhike, but instead doing the Elaine Bennis. No joke.

But all of that aside, there was what was inside Marvin. Was he gay? He didn't know for sure. No, of course he wasn't. He was one of the biggest sex symbols in the land. While on tour, they practically had to beat the women off of him with a stick. Plus, being gay just wasn't allowed. His dad would never have accepted it,

not to mention the closed-minded machismo culture back at Hitzville. In America, in the early 1960s, never. He thought his dad betrayed his own manhood by cross-dressing. Marvin never would. He was a man's man. So Marvin did what he thought he was supposed to do. He jumped up on stage and played the part. And when the show was over,

he jumped into the beds of beautiful women everywhere and played the part there too. We'll be right back after this word, word, word. Marvin leaned back in his chair and took a hit off the joint and then turned to his friend Smokey Robinson. Smoke, I'm gonna do it. Marvin, you're crazy, man. No, for real, I'm gonna do it.

Fuck Barry Gordy. I don't need Motown. I don't even need music. Marvin, you can't play football. You'll get killed out there. Besides, the Detroit Lions don't need no stoned soul singer playing wide out. You watch, Smoke, I'm gonna do it. Since the days of the Motertown Review, Marvin Gay had

had done almost as much for Motown as Motown had done for Marvin Gay. His single, I Heard Through the Grapevine, was a smash hit, number one on the charts, the R&B charts and the pop charts. The album he'd fought tooth and nail to make, What's Going On, an album he had complete creative control over, a protest album, was a massive smash, commercially and critically. Think about that for a minute. You're Marvin Gay. You're a part of one, if not the most successful hit-making machines of all time Motown Records

with a tried and true, campy-beat recipe for success, and you decide you want to do it differently. You decide you don't want to work with house songwriters. You want to write the songs yourself. You decide you don't want to be limited to house musicians. You want to use whatever musicians you want to use. And you want to produce the record yourself. and oh yeah, fuck that bubblegum baby love shit. It's the same old song.

No, you're going to make an album of protest songs. And you do. And you nail it. What's going on was a massive success by any creative or financial measure. But if the true measure of being an artist is taking risks to express yourself to give voice to others through what you create,

the Marvin Gay was to early 70s pop music, what Pablo Picasso was to 20th sense, century visual art. And still, Barry Gordy wasn't going to give Marvin what he wanted, a new contract in his own recording studio to continue making records his way. So fuck it. Marvin would quit the business altogether. He'd go play football in the National Football League for the Detroit Lions. A tryout was arranged, and Marvin wasn't terrible, but the coach had mercy and did Marvin a favor by not inviting him to camp. The thought of Dick Budkiss and Deacon Jones Teeing off on Marvin Gay was too much.

So Marvin continued to negotiate with Barry Gordy and ultimately got what he wanted. Two years later, Marvin emerged from his new studio with the long player, Let's Get It On. And it was a stunning creative achievement. Except the subject matter of this album wasn't social unrest. It was sex.

Marvin Gay was a freak. And Let's Get It On brought out something else in him as a writer and performer. something the world hadn't seen in him before. A sea was storming inside of him. He'd been trying to hold back this feeling for so long, but now it was time to let the love come out. If Marvin couldn't improve his manhood on the football field,

then he would in America's bedroom. Let's Get It On was unapologetically horny, sensual, and smooth. No one was smoother than Marvin Gay. He'd always been capable of gripping listeners with his singing, at once, intimate, rough, vulnerable, dirty, and innocent. But when the subject matter was sex and only sex, well, his voice was a Spanish flytrap. An off record, and out on the town,

Marvin's sexual conquests were the stuff of legend. Everyone wanted him. And Marvin was down to freak. Despite an irrational jealous streak that was being fueled by increasing cocaine use, Marvin encouraged his girlfriend and later wife, Hunter to have sex with other men. And not just any other men. His young protege, singer Rick James,

and his biggest singing rival at the time, Teddy Pendergrass. A rumor was circulating that Marvin and Jan slept with Mick Jagger and his girlfriend, Jerry Hall, after a night out at Studio 54, and that he was sleeping with actress Margot Kidder, as well as with the girlfriend of Love Story actor Ryan O'Neill, while O'Neill was doing his best to creep on Marvin's wife, Jan. Marvin didn't mind these rumors.

They burnished his manly image. However, stories about Marvin's bisexuality, sex with Richard Pryor, sex with Marlon Brando, would not surface until years later. After Let's Get It On, the sex, the drugs, it was all becoming too much for Marvin. He was one of the biggest stars in the lamb, but despite the fact that the entire world wanted him,

Marvin Gay retreated with his wife into his cabin in the woods, on top of a mountain of cocaine and under a blanket. Marvin, put the knife down. I loved you too much, Jan. Marvin, take the knife away from my throat. Jan, this love is killing me. I beg you to provoke me. Provoked me right now so I can take us both out of our misery.

Marvin Gay was high as fuck and drunk on paranoia, a mix of psychedelic mushrooms, pharmaceutical-grade cocaine, and the recent realization that his wife, Jan, had taken him at his word that she should sleep with singer Teddy Pendergrass, and it had driven Marvin into a violent rage. But before things got all O.J. and Nicole, Marvin got hip and dropped the knife. Jan split with the kids

and Marvin eventually got himself ready for a world tour which was saying something because Marvin Gay hated touring he hated performing and by the late 70s and early 80s he'd managed to at least morph the goofy Elaine Benis dance moves into something passing his smooth on stage but Marvin's stage act as of late

was now bordering on a parody of himself high to the gills on cocaine nightly paranoid. It was something to prove. I'm not gay, Dad, I swear. Marvin, the ladies' man, reduced himself to stripping down to his underwear on stage to close out the show. If his natural talent, even in this drug-doubt haze, hadn't been so immense, it would have been pathetic, but somehow the show managed to stay on the rails. On stage, anyway. Offstage. Things were about as far off the fucking rails as they could get. Marvin's drug use would have made Keith Richards blush.

His blood type was cocaine, and his fear had him firmly in its grips. Fear of not being able to perform. Fear of his fans turning their back on him. Fear of the Lord's wrath. And all these fears weren't unfounded. Marvin's ability to perform was in question. His shows, because of his drug use, were suffering,

and not every show was a sold-out smash. And as for the Lord, well, Marvin going to be able to perform. as far back to his early Motown days, had always felt pangs of guilt, shame, for going secular and eschewing the Lord's path and for disappointing his father, the preacher. And of course, there was always the fear of the voice in his head, the one that questioned his manhood, his sexuality. To allay these fears on the road, Marvin traveled with two men to help him through the darkness, one his Coke dealer, the other his priest. Marvin's hotel suites would have one room adjacent for one and another adjacent for the other, and Marvin before and after his shows

would run back and forth between each to get high and then to seek the Lord's forgiveness. He was literally caught between heaven and hell. Something had to give. Marvin couldn't keep up with the madness. He was capsizing. After the sexual healing tour ended in 1983, Marvin retreated to the home he bought his parents in the West Adams District of Los Angeles. Now, living under the same roof with his domineering, judgmental dad, Marvin was a shell of himself,

reduced to being a high, insecure, paranoid little boy, and a mama's boy at that. Nothing had changed from when he was a little kid. Marvin still sought solace from his father's verbal abuse in his mother's arms, and father, as Marvin's dad was called, was still cross-dressing, still constantly on his back about his sinful lifestyle, doing drugs, betraying the Lord through the devil's music, etc. And Marvin felt the shame of it all. But however different in no matter the conflict, Marvin Gay and Marvin Gaye Senior had one thing in common. There need to be perceived as men. What we now call toxic masculinity was a cloud that hung heavy over the gay household. Marvin, eager to impress upon his father

his capacity to protect their family, gave father a 38-caliber Smith & Wesson. Marvin owned a few firearms himself, purchased because of his increased coke-induced paranoia. But arming his dad would prove to be a disastrous decision. April 1, 1984, Marvin heard his mother yelling in fear from down the hall. He could hear his father's voice shouting her down, and then his mother again crying out in pain. Father was beating his woman. Marvin's mom, something fierce. Marvin felt his eyes cross in anger.

His throat went dry despite the cocaine dripping from the back of his nose. His hands started to shake. His pulse started rapidly pumping blood to his brain, which was now a black box of shame and anger. He literally felt something in him snap as he rose out of his bed in just his bathrobe and beanie cap, the sound of his feet, hurriedly pounding the wooden floorboards of the upstairs hallways sent notice to father that this beating might not go unchallenged.

Just then, Marvin burst into his mother's bedroom and did what he'd been wanting to do his whole life. Beat the living hell out of his old man. That hell had it coming. That hell was an impenetrable cage that stole part of Marvin's childhood, stole part of his confidence, stole part of his identity. That hell was on the ropes. Marvin, in a blind rage, rained blow upon blow onto his father. until Marvin finally snapped back into reality.

He looked at father, crumpled on the floor. He'd be all right. But Marvin, Marvin, Marvin had that old feeling again, a mix of shame and betrayal. He headed back to his room, sank into bed and steeled himself for his coming depression. But he should have steeled himself for the coming storm that was the wrath of his father,

for in what seemed like an instant, Marvin Gay's dad was standing above him in his bedroom, looking down on the boy he'd brought into this world and the man he'd take out of it. His eyes were black like a doll's. You could smell the mean on him. At his side, in his hand, the 38 Smith and Weston that Marvin gave him. He took aim at his son, point blank. Marvin knew what was coming.

Deliverance. His father pulled the trigger. Two shots. One in the shoulder. One in the chest. Marvin Gay died. almost instantly. Sad and senseless.

But Marvin was free, free from the shame, free from the betrayal, free from the paranoia and the addiction. And there's a theory that Marvin Gay deliberately antagonized his father as part of some paternal suicidal death wish, knowing that his dad,

armed with the gun he'd given him, would be unable to let it go, and would finally do what the cocaine was unable to do. deliver Marvin Gay from the shame and the pain to set him free. And remarkably, Marvin Gaye's senior was also free. He pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and received what amounted to a slap on the wrist. Five years suspended sentence for killing, for killing his son. His whole life, Marvin Gay struggled with the shame of his father, the cross-dresser,

and the notion repeatedly reinforced by his father that Marvin, Despite his success, he was somehow an embarrassment. Somehow, he was someone who'd betrayed the Lord and betrayed his family by making a living in the devil's workshop as a secular entertainer. But in the end, it was his father who committed the ultimate betrayal, betraying the parental covenant, breaking the one rule every parent should follow until their dying breath to protect their children.

Shameful, some would say a disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland. Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at disgracelandpod.com. If you're listening as a Disgraceland All Access member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to disgracelandpod.com slash membership. Members can listen to every episode of Disgraceland ad-free.

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