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http://www.bbc.co.uk/6music/news/20060206_gaye.shtml


Interesting ....

Ohhhhhh that's gonna be complicated. So many facets to his life. Very dark story.

Has anyone read Divided Soul: The Life of Marvin Gaye by David Ritz, a music journalist and Gaye buddy for a (creatively dry) spell who ended up midwifing the song Sexual Healing (he apparently wrote the lyric)?

How is it? The book I mean, not the song (great tune and potentially great movie)

Haven't read it, Cabin but I am intrigued by the concept of midwifing a song   :D :D

Dennis mid-wifed 3 Manson tracks.

Brian Wilson needed a C-Section to give birth to Sail on, Sailor, several obstetricians attending

According to Ritz he suggested the concept of sexual healing to Marvin, which broke a writers block Marvin was suffering from at the time, and Marvin went on to create "Sexual Healing", with a little help from Ritz and Odell Brown his keyboard player. So that's how Ritz midwifed it.
Anyway I think it's a great biography, it's written right after the shooting of Gaye, so it's very much concerned with the relations to his father and mother, and takes a lot of it's point of departure in that relationship, but Ritz also knows and loves soul music and is good at putting Gaye into the proper musical frame. He has also cowritten biographies for other soullegends like Ray Charles, so he knows his stuff. He's sometimes a little too uncritical of some of Marvins records like "Here My Dear" and "In Our Lifetime" and I remember being a little disappointed with "Vulnerable", Marvins posthumously released jazzalbum, because it is praised so highly in "Divided Soul", but overall the book is pretty good.

Søren

Here My Dear is a scornful work. I can't help but love it.

Well, that's only cuz it's BRILLIANT ...

Yeah, there's some great stuff on it, but I think it could have done with a little editing and Ritz almost rates it as high as "What's Going On".

Søren

I prefer it to "What's Going On." That album is such ... A STATEMENT. It's perfect in every way, I guess, but what I like about "Here, My Dear" is that it's IMperfect. It's huge and sprawling, and too honest to be anything other than what it is. And its length means that you can revel in a prolonged, heartbroken state, if that's your thing, and if it is you want to stay in that zone. It's comforting. It 's a very candid album, too, which I think is what tends to trigger a prejudiced response in people. It's not as universal as "What's Going On." Very specific. He's talking directly to the woman who broke his heart, and he lays everything bare. Tends to make people uncomfortable. So WHY edit it?

Did you guys know that Anna Gordy Gaye almost sued Marvin for invasion of privacy after that album was released? I guess the fact that she received the royalties for it wasn't enough.

Both those albums are great, but I'm a Let's Get It On man.
For me, Just To Keep You Satisfied alone is as good as Going On and My Dear combined.

Have you bought the Deluxe Edition of Let's Get It On, Ian?

OH yes. On the day.
One of my most frequent plays. Never tire of it.

I love the extra material on that deluxe edition. So much stuff he threw away or didn't finish. Great instrumentals too.

You sensualist, you.

Wouldn't YOU be a Let's Get It On man if you had a girl as hot as Ian's?

Hey. I do.  ;)

Alrighty then.

This movie looks gaye.

Insightful post.

Another day, another biopic. It's a pointless venture and especially when Marvin's --or any artist for which they choose to diminish, for the life of a musician IS a simplified romance novel w/substance abuse, right guys?-- music gives you all you really need. Hollywood will never get it.

I just think some of it is a little weak, even though I understand that is was supposed to be this stream of consciousness thing

Søren