Okay,heres a question 4 all u Marvin Gaye fans; I just bought a CD of his called His Greatest Hits released by Going for a song(?) not sure of the year.It is a compilation of live tracks which I don't think are from the same concert.The last track is Sexual Healing and about 8mins 6secs into the song he says something like;
"should I do this?"
"you think I was talkin 'bout Prince or somethin?"
"Y'all ought to be ashamed of yourselves!"
"should I do it?"
...then the crowd give a big cheer.
When and where was this?
And WHAT was he doing?!
There is mention of a Grammy broadcast and a concert at the Radio City Music Hall in 1983 and an appearance on Motown's 25th Anniversary TV special on the CD's inlay card but it doesn't actually say whether these recordings were from any of those.Does anyone know if they were?
Also,was he really taking the rip out of Prince or did he respect him?
Your replies would be grreatly appreciated.
Of course,a year after this MG died

Good question...

Hope someone has an answer! Im intrigued...

I don't know what he was doing specifically, but it's pretty well documented that Marvin had a bit of a problem with Prince. Marvin felt like he'd done "sex vs religion" thing first and that maybe Prince didn't give him enough credit. Now Marvin was on drugs again at this time and wasn't exactly in the best of spirits, so you have to cut him a little slack.

skipper said:

He was dropping his trousers, which he did at the end of all his 1983 shows. Read David Ritz's "Divided Life". Percussionist on that tour was one Sheila E.

Wow,thanks 4 your replies,i didn't know any of this other than Sheila had played drums 4 him.

Read the David Ritz book.

He feared MJ & Prince. There's this quote about him saying "There's this dude with a high voice like me calls himself Prince. Doesn't he know I'm the ONLY Prince?".

Harlepolis said:

i wish Marvin was still here....

It's so sad when you see footage of him dropping his pants. It's just so desperate and unnecessary.

Justin1972UK said:

Yeah...

He didn't have to do that.

He was a class act....

crack kills.

i'm too young to remember marvin at the height of his career but i get really sad when i look at his story. so much brilliance, so many things to say and a bright mind from which to say it, ruined by drugs and self indulgence.

Justin1972UK said:

I've never seen that. I'd like to see it, actually.

Justin1972UK said:

And demeaning too, but I think it was in keeping with the deep-seated self-loathing and insecurity he carried with him throughout his life.

sallysassalot said:

Marvin was unstable too and the coke simply pushed him way over the edge.

There's a docu on DVD called "Troubled Man - The Last Years Of Marvin Gaye" that has the footage of Marvin stripping during "Sexual Healing". He really didn't have to go there.By the time he did that tour, he was so strung out on coke and the demons and vultures crept back into his life.

Nothing shocked me about him but the fact that he was a women beater.

Harlepolis said:

what!!! This is news to me...

missfee said:

That is true! I read it in his biography, Divided Soul, that one night he was on stage and his then-wife, Anna Gordy was disturbed by something Marvin did on stage and she said something to him backstage and in his dressing room they were fighting. Same thing happened with his second wife, Janis when they were on vacation in Hawaii. She got mad at him and he started to hit her until he suffered a nervous breakdown and wanted to kill her with a knife, but he didn't. I think that happened when he was promoting the Here My Dear record in 1979. If you all haven't read that Divided Soul book by David Ritz, pick that one up immediately:

silverchild said:

my mom has that book, i'll have to find time to read it. damn i thought that since he had seen his dad beat his mom while he was young, that he swore he wouldn't do that, guess i got confused about the facts somewhere down the line...

missfee said:

I think it was just the coke and weed that got doing some of the weirdest things in his career like domestic abuse. But the thing that really got me was that he was somewhat undergoing sexual confusions when he was younger because his father was doing feminine things like wearing womens clothes sometimes and when Marvin was younger he was called a "faggot" because he was doing feminine things at school. Another thing that I didn't know was that he was occasionally stage frighten after Tammi Terrell's collapse on stage back in 1968 or '69.

I never trusted that book, Divided Soul by David Ritz. The circumstances between David Ritz and Marvin Gaye are shady, this guy was just a reporter from Rolling Stone at the time, interviewing Marvin from time to time, but he wasn't a friend of Marvin, and he showed up uninvited and unwelcomed at first in Belgium, but Marvin let him stay.

To prove my point, the fact that people still believe his father wore women's clothes, his late brother disputed that myth. the story about the infamous show in London in which Marvin "snubbed" Princess Margaret by showing up hours late. This book played it up as if Marvin didn't give a fuck. But in fact, several musicians playing with Marvin that night said it wasn't the case at all. Behind the Legend DVD tells the story. The real story behind "Sexual Healing" regarding David Ritz alone cast doubts, he's a good writer, and he did give inspiration to the idea of Marvin being sexy and his music being healing, but he never co-wrote the lyrics.

Not to say that Marvin was a saint, because he wasn't, but who in Rock N Roll was. But you don't want to hear from the mouths of people who barely knew the man, I would rather hear stories from the people who knew him for a lifetime, not for a few days.