MARVIN’S RAPTURE

Last weekend, while most of the media was squandering airtime, cyberspace, and columns of print on the lunatic end of the world prediction of a fringe religious figure, I observed them all fail to give anything like equal time to one of the few things I can think of that actually argues for the existence of a God. Last Saturday may have been the day that the crazies thought the world would end, but to me the most important thing about May 21, 2011 was that it was the 40th anniversary of the release of Marvin Gaye’s album “What’s Going On.” To the extent that I believe there’s anything beyond us here on earth, after our lives are done, it’s because “What’s Going On” exists.

Consider this. A heart-broken, depressed musician overwhelmed with sadness at the death of his singing partner and friend retreats from the world – vowing to never record or perform again. Eventually, he begins working on new music, but the owner of his label won’t let him release it, fearing that it is too political and inaccessible to sell. The musician keeps working on his music, hoping for the chance to make a grand statement about the world around him. After some months, the label owner agrees to release one song as a single. The song becomes a huge hit. The label owner then demands that the musician complete the entire album as quickly as possible in order to follow on the success of the single. The musician spends 10 days fulfilling his vision, recording most of the rest of the album during that time. The album is then mixed in Detroit, when he is not present. He rejects the mix, and takes the tapes back to LA where the album is mixed to his satisfaction. The album is released on May 21, 1971 and becomes a landmark.

That, in brief, is the unlikely story of “What’s Going On.” Marvin Gaye, stricken with grief over the death of Tammi Terrell, envisions and then executes a masterpiece that goes beyond anything ever done at Motown and sets a new standard for soul music. Everything I’ve read says that Gaye conceived the album as a single piece of music and had to fight to record it that way, and that everyone involved with the project, from Gaye himself to the Funk Brothers and members of the Detroit Symphony who played on the album, knew they were involved in something special and strove for greatness. Whether you want to call it miraculous, the product of divine inspiration, or merely the work of a genius who managed to dip his toe into our pooled Jungian unconscious at the right time, it is, quite simply, the best album ever made. I’m sure there are good arguments for other works, but you’ll never convince me that any album was better suited to its time, has held up better over forty years, or can match the near-seamless beauty of “What’s Going On.”

It’s important to note that the album’s title isn’t followed by a question mark – because Marvin wasn’t merely asking, he was telling. He was looking around at the world, at his neighborhood and his community, through the eyes of friends, family, neighbors, and vets returning from Vietnam, and describing what he saw. Unlike the album’s music, the scene was not pretty: war, drug addiction, environmental devastation, and children in need of saving.

What makes his vision so poignant is the sense of loss. Throughout the album, Gaye longs for lost community, touching on the familiar in the hopes of building or re-building relationships. “Will our ball club win the pennant? Do ya think they have a chance? . . . And how in the world have you been?” he asks in “What’s Happenin’ Brother.” At times, his plea is so simple it almost hurts, as in “God is Love”: “Oh don't go and talk about my father/God is my friend (Jesus is my friend)/He made this world for us to live in, and gave us everything/And all he asks of us is we give each other love.” For Gaye, the foundation of the community he seeks is communication: "Talk to me, so you can see/ Oh, what's going on.” Music, art, working together, acknowledging our equality and equal holiness before God are the means by which Gaye urges us to come together, underlined by the reminder “Oh, you know we've got to find a way/To bring some understanding here today.”

This striking vision of knitting together a community as tight and seamless as the musical tour de force that is “What’s Going On” gives the album much of its staying power. Forty years later, not much has changed. Endless war in Asia? Check. Oil polluting the oceans? Check. Grinding poverty and dying cities? Check and check. We are not saved. And yet, “What’s Going On” still motivates me.

One of the incredible things about the album is that every aspect of it is near-perfect, including the cover art. I continue to be blown away by the power of the photograph on the back cover. In it, Gaye stands in a backyard, wearing a suit and raincoat, near an old swingset, with broken toys stacked behind him. It is raining, and the place seems to be abandoned. His face conveys the most incredible look of sadness and frustration that I have ever seen.



He turned that sadness and frustration into the greatest album ever recorded. Now, 40 years later, it’s still our turn.