Song Lyric of the Day (Marvin Gaye, on Love and War)

“You see, war is not the answer For only love can conquer hate.”—Renaldo “Obie” Benson, Al Cleveland, and Marvin Gaye, “What’s Going On,” performed by Marvin Gaye on his LP What’s Going On (1971)

 

The Motown masterpiece What’s Going On, released 40 years ago today, emerged from personal and national cauldrons. In much of the prior year, Marvin Gaye slipped out of the music business, so distraught over the loss of dear friend and vocal partner Tammi Terrell that he not only thought of leaving the industry entirely, but even tried out for the Detroit Lions training season in a midlife attempt to become a professional football player.

In addition, the return of Gaye’s brother from Vietnam made the singer question the value of hits such as “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” and “Too Busy Thinking About My Baby.”

When Gaye finally returned to the studio, he was brimming with ideas for the most ambitious and challenging album of his career. While the music would blend jazz and classical elements into the now-familiar brand of Motown soul, the lyrics would cover all the churning discontents of the America of his day: the war, inner city poverty and hopelessness, the generation gap, civil rights, and the environment.

A decade before, Gaye had supplied one of Motown Records with one of its first two albums, The Soulful Moods of Marvin Gaye. But now label founder Berry Gordy Jr., normally a shrewd judge of material, dug in his heels against releasing his star’s latest offering, believing it would go nowhere. Not even friend and label exec Smokey Robinson’s assurance that Gaye was serious about his threat to leave the company could sway him.

In the end, what changed Gordy’s mind was something far simpler and familiar: the certain smell of a hit.

Someone leaked to a local DJ the single “What’s Going On,” even while Gordy remained adamant against its release. The song--started by Al Cleveland and Four Tops member Renaldo Benson, after watching the violent crushing of a demonstration, then completed by Gaye--began to be requested continually at the station. With everyone soon asking where the album was, Gordy relented.

Gaye’s self-produced LP did more than hit #6 on the album charts and spawn three top 10 singles, the title cut, “Inner City Blues (Makes Me Wanna Holler)” and “Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)”; did more than influence Stevie Wonder, Curtis Mayfield and other artists within the Motown fold in gaining creative control of their work; or, even a personal level, did more than move Gaye, formerly known best for his romantic crooning, onto an entirely new artistic plane.

No, Gaye’s smooth tenor, his mastery of a three-octave range, was put in the service of creative reconciliation, of bringing understanding to a divided country and his own fractured heart. The self-mastery he temporarily achieved was not long lasting (see, for instance, my prior post on his violent, unnecessary death at the hands of his father).

But, standing mere inches from a microphone, he gave unforgettable voice to issues that, two generations later, have not faded in urgency.