Everything's everything

I've got Marvin Gaye on my mind since watching the PBS American Masters documentary on him earlier in the week. The hour-long show had some good interviews with people like Gladys Knight, Smokey Robinson (who, as my partner pointed out, is looking more and more like Lena Horne as he ages), and author Nelson George. Gaye's personal problems, primarily his lifelong inability to please his father, a cross-dressing preacher, were covered in detail, and a lot of concert footage was shown, but missing was any deep examination of his music, what made it different and great.

Gaye is mostly identified with make-out music (the opening few notes of "Let's Get It On" seem to have penetrated the DNA of modern Western humankind as shorthand for seduction, almost to the point where the song is funnier than it is sexy), and "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" has been selected by at least one critic as the greatest pop song ever--and even constant overplaying on oldies radio hasn't blunted that song's dark, paranoid power. But for me, Gaye's classic work is the album What's Going On. Released in 1971, it was seen as a collection of protest songs, and Motown's chief, Berry Gordy, thought it would be a bomb, but it was a huge hit which produced three top-10 singles.

Listening to the album now, I don't hear it so much as protest music but as an album of soulful laments about a wide range of troubles and concerns: not just war but crime, pollution, poverty, drugs, race relations, religion, and family. Few solutions are offered, except turning to God and loving one another, but the sorrow and despair expressed in the music and vocals are truly cathartic. Individual songs such as "What's Going On" and "Mercy Mercy Me" are real classics, but the album should be listened to as a whole, as most of the songs segue together to create a whole experience. Some songs, like "Save the Children" and the seven-minute jam "Right On," even have segues within them, as a driving funky beat will suddenly slow down into a section dominated by lush strings--much of the album has the "song cycle" feel of side 2 of Abbey Road. Mention must be made of the great work of the backing musicians, Motown's Funk Brothers, who veer from funky to jazzy at the drop of a hat, and the fine work of the unknown arranger who made the orchestral sections so intense and effective.

The album climaxes with the brilliant "Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)," which is basically a recital of problems mentioned in previous songs : "Inflation, no chance/To increase finance/Bills pile up sky high/Send that boy off to die." But the hopeful inflections of both voice and music which sweeten the album aren't to be found here until the very end when, after a guttural scream, the song shifts into a brief reprise of "What's Going On" and Gaye finishes with a beautiful, shivery howl of despair. That moment, so beautiful and so sad at the same time, always brings tears to my eyes. I'm glad to have seen the PBS special if only because it sent me back to this album, which I hadn't listened to in its entirety in years. Now I may check out "Here My Dear," his divorce/revenge album from late in his career which was a flop but which some critics now claim is a masterpiece.

Oh, yeah, the title of my post is kind of a dedication to my old grad-school friend Tom McLean who pointed out to me the repetition of the line "Everything's everything!" in amongst the party-atmosphere chatter that runs through the title song; now I can't hear that line without smiling and thinking of Tom.