Marvin and Marvin: a blood tie

Press, 10 August 1985, Page 19

Marvin and Marvin: a blood tie

The saga leading to Marvin Gaye’s murder had the inevitability of Greek tragedy — and has been ideally documented in David Ritz’s memoir. W. J. WEATHERBY of the London “Guardian” reports from New York.

The killing of Marvin Gaye last year by his father was one of the most shocking events of recent Show Business history. Not only was he a great popular singer in the class of Billie Holiday and Sam Cooke, but his violent death in the middle of a family squabble was the climax of a genuine Greek tragedy that has now been documented in detail.

The trial of Marvin Gay, senior (the singer added an “e” to his last name) did not bring out the complete story, partly because his father was found to have a brain tumour and pleaded no contest to a reduced charge of voluntary manslaughter. Now, some of the omissions have been filled in by Marvin Gaye's former friend and fellow song writer, David Ritz, in a memoir entitled “Divided Soul: The Life of Marvin Gaye” that has just appeared in the United States and will be published in Britain by Michael Joseph later this year.

David Ritz, who co-authored Ray Charles’s autobiography, planned to do the same with Gaye until they fell out over dividing the income from ‘Sexual Healing,” one of the singer’s last and most successful songs, which they wrote together. Based on long conversations with Gaye, his father, mother, brothers, sisters, and cousins, “Divided Soul” reaffirms the impression left by the brief trial — that Marvin Gaye and his father had been on a collision course for some time.

Gay, a minister at the time of Marvin’s birth, is described as a flamboyant, sometimes effeminate seeming man who liked to dress up in women’s clothes occasionally in his home. Marvin himself confessed to the same urge, but said he had no sexual interest in men and he had no evidence his father had. Both men seemed to have an ambivalent, almost Victorian attitude towards sex — a very powerful urge coupled with a conviction

that the desires of the flesh were sinful.

Young Marvin was regularly beaten until his teens and the protests and prayers of his mother made no difference. Despairing of pleasing him, the boy went to the opposite extreme and began deliberately provoking his father. It influenced his attitude for the rest of his life. He would seek affection through provocation of violence, “a perverse pattern of behaviour,” comments David Ritz, “which would literally kill him.”

He took up singing partly to win his father’s love, but his father was not impressed.

If it had not been for his mother’s support, Marvin said once, “I think I would have been one of those child suicide cases you read about in the papers.” With his great talent, his handsome looks, and immense charm, he was soon a successful performer, but an inner insecurity always seemed to upset every stage of his career. He seemed to need to prove continually he was not like his father. He even boxed regularly in a gym to give himself a very masculine image, and was continually worried about his sexual relationships with women. He seemed to live more and more in a vicious circle. Just as beatings caused bedwettings which then led to more beatings, so galloping insecurity led to drugs which then increased his insecurity until he developed an uncontrollable paranoia. It is hard not to see him trapped in a pattern of self destruction. In spite of the long history of antagonism between him and his parents, he went back to live with his parents after attempting to escape into exile in Europe, including Britain and Belgium, to get away from the tax authorities and people he owed money — and from histfjwn fate. He even gave his father the gun that eventually

killed him. For the last month of his life he was obsessed with the idea that someone wanted to kill him. He began to turn violent himself on drugs and he beat up a couple of women he was involved with. “He was a scared little boy,” his mother said. She persuaded him to get rid of his gun, only for someone to give him a sub-machine gun. Eventually in a row that involved both his parents over money, all his antagonism towards his father came out. Telling his father to leave his mother alone, he attacked him with his fists. Accounts vary as to how badly Gay was hurt, but he then returned with the pistol his son had given him and shot Marvin twice, and then tossed the pistol on the front lawn and waited for the police to come. Father and son had finally ended their often stormy relationship for ever.

“I am a man or I am nothing,” Marvin Gaye said towards the end when he was growing increasingly anxious about the waning of his sexual powers. The great singer of “I heard it through the Grapevine,” and “What’s going on” had begun to take “Sexual Healing” too literally. His last songs, as heard on the recent posthumous album, “Dream of a Lifetime,” were often much more explicitly sexual but with an aggressive, uneasy air. Mixed with the sexuality was the the ‘“divided soul” constant theme of salvation; as David Ritz describes him, it was never more obvious in his work than in these last songs. He saw himself, at the end of the road, ready to die, and although his father pressed the trigger, he did his best to set the scene.

“He wanted to die,” said his sister, Jeanne. If ever a life showed how important a secure childhood is, it is Marvin Gaye’s. His violent end was decided by his violent upbringing, and cr'y his great talent kept him alive Jo long, a day short of ft.