SHADES OF GAYE
TROUBLED PAST BEHIND MARVIN'S MUSIC Marvin Gaye was shot and killed by his pentacostal minister, cross-dressing father in 1984. He was 44 years old.

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May 7, 2008 -- MARVIN Gaye, arguably one of the more beautiful men who ever picked up a microphone, was also one of the most gifted, most introspective and most troubled. "American Masters'" latest profile, "Marvin Gaye: What's Going On," brings back not just the genius at his craft, but the whole story behind the man who had the world at his fingertips and then was shot dead by his own father.

The profile begins with the startling fact that Gaye's father, a brutish Pentacostal minister and cross-dresser, regularly made young Marvin get naked as a young boy so he could whip him! Gaye, in turn, became obsessively attached to his mother, who tried to protect him. It was his mother who told him - through the darkest of times - that he'd be a great star one day.

As Gaye grew into a young man, we learn, his father's harsh criticism of his choice of music stayed with him. When Motown was in it's infancy, he got work there as a studio musician who sometimes sang. Mary Wilson of "The Supremes" recalls that since he always wore a straw fedora and dark glasses, no one ever realized that he looked like a god.

When he was 21, he married Anna Gordy, Berry's older sister (she was 36) and his career just happened to take off at the same time. Although Berry, a former factory worker, ran Motown like a factory - everybody had a job - Gaye wanted to do things his own way. And he did, although by his own admission in an interview clip, things would often get very physically violent between them.

Even when touring with the Motown stars, Gaye had to be the biggest star. When he was on the same bill with Stevie Wonder, who was a child then, he'd fume at the tour manager, "Don't let that blind little sucker go on before me again!"

All of that was before he met a 16-year-old and fell in love her when he was a 34-year-old married man. After a few years of marriage, drugs and debt that left him broke, he ran off to Hawaii and lived in a milk delivery truck. He made a comeback with the brilliant "Sexual Healing" and was almost OK. But according to Gladys Knight, she knew at his last concert where he stripped down to his underwear that "We'd lost him at that point." His end came when he attacked his dad for abusing his mother and his father took out a gun and shot him twice. Then with his mother looking on while the son was down, he shot him again.

Great music, terrific interview clips of Gaye and interviews with the most influential people in his life add up to a great profile of the brutal life of a brilliant man.


"American Masters

Marvin Gaye: What's Going On"

Tonight at 9 on WNET

I'm watching right now. Very interesting.
[Edited 5/7/08 18:35pm]

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