Fifty years ago, Marvin Gaye's masterpiece

May 21, 2021 9:52 PM

Today is the 50-year anniversary of Marvin Gaye's album for the ages, "What's Going On?" If you are only familiar with the title track or with Marvin's other material, put this on today: :Spotify: --"Marvin Gaye’s ‘What’s Going On’ Is as Relevant Today as It Was in 1971"

Tyina Steptoe, Smithsonian Magazine:

""Gaye produced “What’s Going On” himself – a revolutionary act at Motown. The result is a painfully beautiful protest album from first track to last.

The opening lines of the album are sung softly, yet urgently: “Mother, mother, there’s far too many of you crying/ Brother, brother, brother, there’s far too many of you dying.”

Lyrics grapple with the effects of the war on families and the lives of young men sent overseas. The next song follows one of those young men home to a nation grappling with an unemployment rate of 6%. “Can’t find no work, can’t find no job, my friend,” Gaye laments on “What’s Happening Brother.”

The album’s final track conveys frustration: “Makes me wanna holler how they do my life … this ain’t living, this ain’t living.”


In between, we have everything from an exploration of faith to the environmentalist anthem “Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)” concluding with the refrain “How much more abuse from man can she [the earth] stand?”

Yet “What’s Going On” expresses hope. Gaye repeats the affirmation “right on” – a phrase distinctly grounded in black urban vernacular – throughout the album and on a song bearing that name. We first hear this phrase on the title track, “What’s Going On.” Gaye affirms “Right on, brother” to men who respond in kind at different points in the song. The call and response communicates a sense of shared concern, shared struggle, and shared redemption – an ethos Gaye took from the gospel tradition that informs his musicality.

This call and response is repeated in “Wholy Holy,” with Gaye utilizing a multitracking technique to layer two versions of his own vocals:

We can conquer (yes we can) hate forever (oh Lord)
Wholy (wholy holy, wholy holy)
We can rock the world’s foundation
Everybody together, together in wholy (wholy holy)
We’ll holler love, love, love across the nation""


More roundup of media related to the anniversary:

'We Can Rock The World's Foundation': 1971 And Black Music In Revolt

How Marvin Gaye’s ‘What’s Going On’ Changed the Sound of R&B Forever

Half a Century Later, “What’s Going On” Is More Relevant Than Ever

50 things you need to know about Marvin Gaye's What's Going On

50 years after Marvin Gaye asked, 'What's Going On?' America still searching for an answer 

posted by nakedmolerats (25 comments total)

I weirdly have a bootleg of the quadraphonic mix of this album, which was apparently only ever released in Japan. But it's revelatory, spreading out the mix and letting you hear the elements more clearly.

This album feels to me to be at once one of the most admired and most ignored concept albums of the 70s. I hope people can listen to it because of the anniversary and hear how truly great it is. A gesamtkunstwerk of albums, truly.

Also, if you search for Quad Mix on Google, you get results that aren't at all related to music.
posted by hippybear at 10:01 PM on May 21, 2021 [4 favorites]

It's a remarkable work -- somehow very of its time and yet still so depressingly relevant today. I mean these lines were written 50 years ago but would you be surprised if they were written yesterday?

Crime is increasing.
Trigger happy policing.
Panic is spreading.
God knows where we're heading.

Oh, make me want to holler
They don't understand

The songwriting, vocals, and production are all top notch. This is an album that deserves its reputation and I agree with hippybear that if a few people are moved to discover it (or renew their acquaintance) because of the anniversary that can only be a good thing.
posted by Nerd of the North at 10:09 PM on May 21, 2021 [3 favorites]

If you haven't seen it (and even if you have!) there is clip of a rare live performance with Marvin Gaye and iconic Motown bassist James Jamerson.

Also Donny Hathaway's brilliant cover makes a nice tribute for the 50th anniversary, although of course we are about the original today.
posted by thelonius at 10:36 PM on May 21, 2021 [6 favorites]

When I was a teenager a friend subscribed to Mojo Magazine. As a burgeoning music nerd, I borrowed her copies when she was done with them. They had a big Marvin Gaye article when I was about 17 or 18. After reading it I went and bought What’s Going On and it was just as great as the article promised (not, for me, always true of albums championed by Mojo). I must have listened to it a bajillion times, which is a conservative estimate, over the next decade until I lost my copy, along with a carry case of my other favorite albums.

I haven’t listened to it much since, same goes for the other albums in that carry case, but I feel I can still play the whole record in my head. What an amazing album, from beginning to end.
posted by Kattullus at 11:32 PM on May 21, 2021

Mother, mother
There's too many of you crying
Brother, brother, brother
There's far too many of you dying
You know we've got to find a way
To bring some loving here today, yeah

Father, father
We don't need to escalate
You see, war is not the answer
For only love can conquer hate
You know we've got to find a way
To bring some loving here today, oh (Oh)

Picket lines and picket signs
Don't punish me with brutality
Talk to me, so you can see
Oh, what's going on (What's going on)
What's going on (What's going on)
Yeah, what's going on (What's going on)
Oh, what's going on

Mother, mother
Everybody thinks we're wrong
Oh, but who are they to judge us
Simply 'cause our hair is long?
Oh, you know we've got to find a way
To bring some understanding here today, oh-oh...
posted by fairmettle at 2:41 AM on May 22, 2021 [5 favorites]

Having been living in Marvelworld... where does it sit vis-a-vis Trouble Man?
posted by sixswitch at 3:10 AM on May 22, 2021

It’s the one before Trouble Man. Personally, while I think Gaye barely released a dud song, What’s Going On is his pinnacle as a recording artist. But that may be because it was my first introduction to his work.
posted by Kattullus at 3:33 AM on May 22, 2021

Bonus beats:

Amerigo Gazaway's remixed/mashed-up Yasiin Gaye - The Departure.
posted by transitional procedures at 3:39 AM on May 22, 2021

It was a revelation at the time and has stood as a pinnacle ever since. But it is such an excruciatingly sad pinnacle given the circumstances of his childhood and of his death.

Also, I would add the BBC Marvin Gaye: What's Going On Now to the list of media regarding.
posted by y2karl at 4:06 AM on May 22, 2021 [1 favorite]

I mean these lines were written 50 years ago but would you be surprised if they were written yesterday?

also these lines:

Woah mercy, mercy me, yeah
Ah, things ain't what they used to be (ain't what they used to be)
Oil wasted on the ocean and upon our seas
Fish full of mercury

But as a kid (I would've been eleven almost twelve when What's Goin' On showed up and yes, we heard it even in the deep Canadian suburbs), it wasn't the words from Mercy Mercy Me that hooked me -- it was the lush to the point of sumptuous aural magic conjured in the production and the performance. I do remember how easy it was for my high young voice to get lost amid the harmonics. It felt heavenly. Still does, I guess. That it ends up being a song about the horrors we're inflicting on our beautiful planet raises the stakes, of course. Which ends up reminding me of a Nick Cave lyric I heard for the first time in a long time a few weeks back:

I was just a boy when I sat down
To watch the news on TV
I saw some ordinary slaughter
I saw some routine atrocity
My father said, don't look away
You got to be strong, you got to be bold, now
He said, that in the end it is beauty
That is going to save the world,
posted by philip-random at 6:45 AM on May 22, 2021 [2 favorites]

You cannot overstate how fresh this album sounds 50 years after its release. An extraordinary recording by an artist firing on all cylinders.
posted by tommasz at 7:16 AM on May 22, 2021 [2 favorites]

The music analysis channel Polyphonic has a great video on the song’s anniversary:

”What was a singer supposed to do in the face of such pain and injustice? How could you sing love songs when the government was violently repressing its own people?”

posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 7:41 AM on May 22, 2021 [7 favorites]

The soundtrack of my college years and the 50 years since. This album, and Sam Cooke's "A Change is Going to Come" have become ineffably sad these days. Those of us born long ago grew up in the 50's and 60's thought the arc of history was finally bending towards racial reconciliation in the USA. The answers to the question "What happened?" are hard to bear.
posted by kozad at 7:47 AM on May 22, 2021 [2 favorites]

An astounding album.

Inner City Blues is the most essential track for me.

Rockets, moon shots
Spend it on the have nots
Money; we make it
Fore we see it; you take it
...
Oh, make me want to holler
The way they do my life (yeah)
Make me want to holler
The way they do my life
This ain't livin', this ain't livin'
No, no baby, this ain't livin'
No, no, no, no
...
Inflation no chance
To increase finance
Bills pile up sky high
Send that boy off to die
...
Hang-ups, let downs
Bad breaks, set backs
Natural fact is
Oh honey that I can't pay my taxes
...
Trigger happy policing
Panic is spreading
God knows where we're heading
Oh, make me want to holler
They don't understand


Three years after Gaye's What's Going On, Curtis Mayfield's Got to Find a Way came out.
Highly recommended to anyone who doesn't know it: Cannot Find a Way.
posted by snuffleupagus at 8:34 AM on May 22, 2021 [6 favorites]

For me, drop the needle at 3:11 in the maudlin "Save the Children", where it turns into

But who's willing to try
To save the world
That is destined
To die?

...thence to "God Is Love" and "Mercy, Mercy Me" - glorious end of side 1. Then, I like to play Trouble Man before moving on to Side 2, maybe because that's how I first heard these tracks on his Anthology?
posted by Rash at 9:16 AM on May 22, 2021 [2 favorites]

It's also the first major album on which bass player James Jamerson is credited. Here's a mix of "What's Going On" with just the isolated bass and vocals, which shows how central to the sound Jamerson's playing was. Genius.
posted by googly at 9:28 AM on May 22, 2021 [3 favorites]

Questlove and Motown's Harry Weinger play the individual tracks and talk about how they were recorded.
posted by fuzz at 9:46 AM on May 22, 2021 [6 favorites]

Back in 1971, my parents had a big old radio on top of the refrigerator. They liked to listen to the news while they were in the kitchen. One day I climbed up on top of the counter, and from there to the top of the refrigerator, where I sat down next to the radio and started turning the dial. I discovered 77AM-WABC, New York's Top 40 station, and fell in love with "What's Going On". I spent hours sitting up there waiting for it to come on, until soon I grew too big to fit under the ceiling up there.

I especially loved the fake-out fade at the end of the single, since I never wanted the song to end. The DJs figured out how to start talking over the first fade, and then get out of the way for the music to come back again, just a little bit more of that beautiful groove.

Even the political message resonated with me, since everyone knew that there was a war on and lots of violence in the streets, and it was easy for a little kid to understand that Marvin was saying "war is bad, we should love each other". It makes me both sad and happy to see that 50 years later, that message still seems relevant to people.
posted by fuzz at 10:34 AM on May 22, 2021 [6 favorites]

the fake-out fade at the end of the single

There's a single version!? Makes sense, but I never knew!
posted by Rash at 11:52 AM on May 22, 2021

Another thing I love about this album: the scat-like vocal flourishes and non-verbal embellishments work to a really remarkable degree. Every "ooooh", "mmmmm", and "yeah yeah yeah" or "ba dop bop" that brackets the lyrics is another gift to the listener in its own right.
posted by Nerd of the North at 12:46 PM on May 22, 2021 [1 favorite]

The Vietnam War was so nuts in retrospect.

~20M boomers entering draft age → ~2M draftees → ~1M sent to Vietnam → 17,000 killed there

So a kid in the 1960s had a 1:1000 chance of getting killed by American foreign policy.

COVID's killed ~1,000 men age 18-29 in the USA in the past year while Vietnam at its peak in the late 60s was killing 12-15X that.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 2:15 PM on May 22, 2021 [1 favorite]

(I'm no expert, but I think the number of American soldiers killed in the Vietnam War might be higher than 17,000.)
posted by box at 3:49 PM on May 22, 2021 [2 favorites]

The →'s in my above were meant to signify a process/pipeline.

Also, all the kids who were able to avoid the draft to pursue "other priorities" via five colllege deferments, ROTC, joining a National Guard unit, bone spurs etc. etc. put this sacrifice of serving in SE Asia more on the people in Gay's community
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 5:29 PM on May 22, 2021

Having been living in Marvelworld... where does it sit vis-a-vis Trouble Man?

Oh god, Sam did recommend Trouble Man, didn't he? In my head, he always recommended this album. Because, you know, that would make sense. But that's not what happened, is it?

I'm far from the first to wonder about this.
posted by Naberius at 6:18 PM on May 22, 2021 [1 favorite]

Profoundly influential record. I don’t have much to add about its political legacy that hasn’t already been covered, except yes. I recall it breaking through into rock radio enough for me to become aware of it back then, when the airwaves were still pretty segregated. There’s interesting production values at work, like making the Congo slaps more predominant than the snare drum, and Jamerson just tears it up from start to finish.

There was a lot of good soul coming out in the early 70’s - Curtis Mayfield, Isaac Hayes, Miles Davis’ early electric work, but this one is top of the heap.
posted by Devils Rancher at 11:10 AM on May 23, 2021