{"id":255149,"date":"2021-05-21T03:03:32","date_gmt":"2021-05-21T00:03:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/marvin-gayes-whats-going-on-turns-50-secrets-behind-the-hit\/"},"modified":"2021-05-21T03:03:32","modified_gmt":"2021-05-21T00:03:32","slug":"marvin-gayes-whats-going-on-turns-50-secrets-behind-the-hit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/marvin-gayes-whats-going-on-turns-50-secrets-behind-the-hit\/","title":{"rendered":"#Marvin Gaye’s ‘What’s Going On’ turns 50 \u2014 secrets behind the hit"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Marvin Gaye’s ‘What’s Going On’ turns 50 \u2014 secrets behind the hit<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

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Marvin Gaye famously sang that \u201cwar is not the answer\u201d in his signature protest song \u201cWhat\u2019s Going On.\u201d<\/p>\n

But for the late Motown legend, football was the answer to help lift him out of a deep depression after the 1970 death of Tammi Terrell \u2014 his frequent duet partner on hits such as\u00a0 \u201cAin\u2019t No Mountain High Enough\u201d\u00a0 \u2014 and into creating \u201cWhat\u2019s Going On,\u201d his classic album that was released 50 years ago on May 21, 1971.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was during a time when he was trying out for the Detroit Lions and being a football player,\u201d said David Ritz, author of 1985\u2019s \u201cDivided Soul: The Life of Marvin Gaye,\u201d <\/a>the definitive biography of the singer. \u201cHe was a good athlete, and he had this notion of wondering if he could turn pro, but I\u2019m not sure he had the chops. But he certainly had the drive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ultimately, his would-be teammates stepped in. \u201cThey told him, \u2018Hey Marvin, we\u2019re crazy about you, but go home \u2018cause we don\u2019t want to hurt you.’\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, Gaye went on to become such good buddies with Detroit Lions players Lem Barney, Mel Farr and Charlie Sanders that they \u2014 as well as Detroit Pistons basketball Hall of Fame player Dave Bing \u2014 teamed up to provide background vocals on \u201cWhat\u2019s Going On,\u201d the song that inspired and introduced Gaye\u2019s masterpiece album, which last year Rolling Stone ranked at No. 1 on its list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.<\/p>\n

\"The
Marvin Gaye\u2019s 1971 classic album \u201cWhat\u2019s Going On\u201d turns 50 on Friday.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But \u201cWhat\u2019s Going On,\u201d the song was actually born out of an experience that co-writer and Four Tops member Renaldo \u201cObie\u201d Benson had witnessing an incident of police brutality. He later collaborated with Motown songwriter Al Cleveland to fine-tune the track before submitting it to Gaye, who as Ritz puts it, \u201cMarvin-ized\u201d it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, Marvin loved the idea, but he added his own lyrics to it,\u201d said Ritz. \u201cMarvin took over the song.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the song was met with resistance from Motown Records head Berry Gordy<\/a>, who thought it was too political for his label\u2019s resident loverman. \u201cGordy thought Marvin had worked hard to create an image of a sex symbol, a singer who women adore,\u201d said Ritz, who, in addition to interviewing Gaye in the \u201970s and early \u201980s, also co-wrote his 1982 hit \u201cSexual Healing.\u201d \u201cAnd he didn\u2019t like the idea of Marvin going that far afield. But without Gordy\u2019s app<\/a>roval they put out the single, and the single hit. And when the single hit, of course Gordy changed his mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thus, a concept album revolving around the single \u201cWhat\u2019s Going On\u201d was born, with Gaye taking his first shot at producing his own material \u2014 a groundbreaking move for Motown\u2019s Hit Factory.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe extended the song to a full suite of songs,\u201d said Ritz. \u201cMarvin was excited because it had proven that he was right, that the public would accept something very, very different from him.\u201d<\/p>\n

The album\u2019s other hits included \u201cMercy Mercy Me (The Ecology),\u201d which found Gaye getting woke about the environment a year after the very first Earth Day.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s very prescient,\u201d Ritz said. \u201cHe was very, very concerned about the proliferation of nuclear energy, but he had never sung about it, and so somehow this landscape \u2026 was large enough to accommodate his thoughts about environmental catastrophe.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then there was \u201cInner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler),\u201d one of three tracks co-written by James Nyx Jr., who \u2014 very much understanding the struggle of the \u201chave-nots\u201d \u2014 was once a janitor at Motown.<\/p>\n

\"Marvin
Marvin Gaye shined as a performer.<\/figcaption>
Alamy Stock Photo<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In addition to taking you to consciousness, \u201cWhat\u2019s Going On\u201d also took you to church with songs such as \u201cGod Is Love\u201d and \u201cWholy Holy.\u201d But Gaye himself had a conflicted relationship with religion that would contribute to his minister father shooting him dead during a family altercation in 1984.<\/p>\n

Sadly, the \u201cWhat\u2019s Going On\u201d lyrics \u201cFather father, we don\u2019t need to escalate\u201d proved to be prophetic. \u201cThey did escalate,\u201d said Ritz.<\/p>\n

While Gaye has been dead for 37 years now, the music \u2014 and the message \u2014 of \u201cWhat\u2019s Going On\u201d live on.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s sad that the problems are still the same problems,\u201d said four-time Grammy nominee BJ the Chicago Kid, who dueted with Gaye<\/a> on a \u201cWhat\u2019s Going On\u201d remake to celebrate the song\u2019s 45th anniversary in 2016. \u201cBut I thank God that something has truth to meet with truth to kind of fight it.\u201d<\/p>\n

And, BJ said, today\u2019s R&B artists are \u201cstill trying to chase\u201d the best-selling Motown album of all time after five decades: \u201cWe still tryin\u2019 to figure out the recipe 50 years later.\u201d\n <\/p><\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#Marvin Gaye’s ‘What’s Going On’ turns 50 \u2014 secrets behind the hit” Marvin Gaye famously sang that \u201cwar is not the answer\u201d in his signature protest song \u201cWhat\u2019s Going On.\u201d But for the late Motown legend, football was the answer to help lift him out of a deep depression after the 1970 death of Tammi…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":255150,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/05\/marvin-gaye-5.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[106542,59877,30487,97819,106648,73951],"class_list":["post-255149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-5-20-21","tag-berry-gordy","tag-football","tag-marvin-gaye","tag-motown","tag-the-70s"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255149\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}