Latest / DISGRACELAND / Bonus Episode: Jake x RedHanded Crossover Episode

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Bonus Episode: Jake x RedHanded Crossover Episode · DISGRACELAND

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Hey, discos, need a little more Disgraceland in your life,
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: just to touch to get you through. Yeah, me too.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: This is the podcast that comes after the podcast. Welcome
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: to Disgraceland, the after Party. Welcome to the Disgraceland bonus episode,
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: a little thing we'd like to call the after Party.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: This is the show after the show, the party after
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: the party.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: The bridge to get you from one full ever. All right, guys,
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: this is an extra special after party bonus episode because
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: I was able to sit down as a guest with
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: two of my favorite podcasters, the incredibly smart, funny and
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: talented women from one of the biggest true crime shows
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: on the planet, the Red Handed Podcast. These guys just
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: won the Listener's Choice Award at the British Podcast Awards
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: for the third straight year, and we spent our time
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: talking about the murder of Marvin gay which is something
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: that I know you guys will be interested in because,
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: as you know, we released an episode on Marvin Gaye
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: sometime back, and we'll be re releasing it into the
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: feed after this Red Handed Conversation drops. Gonna be making
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: a habit of this, finding ways to resurface archive episodes,
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: as we've been doing, but with a little more intention
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: when we have to.
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: Hit your feeds. You're gonna be hitting your feed every Friday.
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: But more on that later. All right, for now, I
• 1:26
  Speaker 3: give you me the murder of Marvin Gay in the
• 1:28
  Speaker 3: Red Handed Podcast, a podcast you guys are going to
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: be sure to go follow as soon as this episode ends.
• 1:34
  Speaker 3: All right, thanks, guys, let's do it.
• 1:46
  Speaker 4: I'm Hannah, I'm Ruti, and welcome to red Handed, but
• 1:49
  Speaker 4: no ordinary red Handed, very extra special, very exciting red Handed, very.
• 1:55
  Speaker 5: Musical red how very musical red Hand, A musical murdery
• 1:58
  Speaker 5: red Hand.
• 1:59
  Speaker 4: And we have the absolute pleasure of welcoming Jake Brennan
• 2:04
  Speaker 4: from I read just this very morning on the interwebs,
• 2:07
  Speaker 4: host of the most downloaded podcast of all time, Disgracelands.
• 2:12
  Speaker 5: So podcast Royalty, Jake, talk to the people, don't caveat.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: Hey guys, Hey, hey, I'm so happy to be here.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: Have that in London though I'm here in the States.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: Thanks for having me. I do just you know, I
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: hate to be an asshole right out of the gate,
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: but quick correction, most downloaded music podcast.
• 2:31
  Speaker 5: There we go. That is a big win. Still, though
• 2:33
  Speaker 5: there's a lot of music podcasts out there. So congratulations
• 2:37
  Speaker 5: big one.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: Well, thank you very much.
• 2:38
  Speaker 5: Thank you for the people who are listening who for
• 2:41
  Speaker 5: some reason have not heard of Disgraceland. Please can you
• 2:45
  Speaker 5: tell them who you are, what you guys do, tell
• 2:47
  Speaker 5: us a little bit, sure.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: Disgraceland is very simply a music and true crime podcast,
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: So everything we do has a true crime angle to it.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: We tell the stories of musicians and either the crimes
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: that they have themselves committed or been accused of committing,
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: or just the insane things that have happened to them.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: So it's everything from you know, Cardi b assaulting somebody
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: in a club, to Jerry Lee Lewis potentially getting away
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: with murdering his wife to the assassination of John Lennon
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: to Little Peep overdosing Mac Miller. We're all over the place.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: We cover every single genre and yeah, it's just music
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: and true crime. That's the easiest way to say it.
• 3:27
  Speaker 5: Nice Well, we are very excited to have you here
• 3:30
  Speaker 5: and listeners. You guys know, we don't do this very often.
• 3:32
  Speaker 5: We haven't done very many collapse on red Handed, but
• 3:35
  Speaker 5: we thought, you know what, we're getting into the end
• 3:37
  Speaker 5: of the year this month. You guys are getting a
• 3:39
  Speaker 5: two parter on Lynnette Dawson and a two parts probably
• 3:42
  Speaker 5: on Israel Keys, So there is a lot there is
• 3:46
  Speaker 5: a lot of like just hardcore true crime coming your way.
• 3:49
  Speaker 5: So we're not stepping away from it today, don't worry.
• 3:51
  Speaker 5: Like I said, very murdery today. But we thought we
• 3:53
  Speaker 5: would try something a bit different and invite our new
• 3:56
  Speaker 5: friend Jake onto the show. And I think it is
• 3:59
  Speaker 5: quite a nice story how this happened, isn't it, Because
• 4:02
  Speaker 5: I believe it all stemmed off the back of an
• 4:03
  Speaker 5: Instagram comment.
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: It did.
• 4:05
  Speaker 4: Indeed, we just so we did Brenda Spencer, who's obviously
• 4:07
  Speaker 4: the inspiration of BoomTime routside down on Monday, mm hmm.
• 4:09
  Speaker 4: And then I like to think it was Jake, It
• 4:11
  Speaker 4: might have been someone else apart from Disgraceland comments and
• 4:14
  Speaker 4: being like we should clab on the music side of this,
• 4:16
  Speaker 4: and I was like, sick, yes, but we'd obviously already
• 4:18
  Speaker 4: done Brenda Spencer we have so out of that sprang
• 4:21
  Speaker 4: a conversation and then we landed on the case so
• 4:24
  Speaker 4: that we're going to do now.
• 4:25
  Speaker 5: And I'm very excited. I did not know what happened
• 4:28
  Speaker 5: to the person in this story happened to the person
• 4:30
  Speaker 5: in this story.
• 4:31
  Speaker 4: I think we can say his name, it's in the
• 4:32
  Speaker 4: title Marvin Kay.
• 4:35
  Speaker 5: I did not know what happened to Marvin Gay. Happened
• 4:37
  Speaker 5: to Marvin Gay. So I'm very excited to get started.
• 4:39
  Speaker 5: And also, like Jake said, he couldn't be here in
• 4:42
  Speaker 5: London today, he is in the state. He is actually
• 4:45
  Speaker 5: my moving buddy because we're both moving houses tomorrow. So
• 4:47
  Speaker 5: there's a lot of boxes and a lot of moving
• 4:49
  Speaker 5: around going on at the moment. But Jake has promised
• 4:51
  Speaker 5: that he's going to try and bring up the topic
• 4:53
  Speaker 5: of panders and if he does, the next time we
• 4:56
  Speaker 5: do meet, I will owe him one guinness. So let's
• 4:59
  Speaker 5: see what we can do. People.
• 5:00
  Speaker 4: It's the same color as pandas it is.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: Good one yes.
• 5:06
  Speaker 4: Me down right?
• 5:09
  Speaker 5: Okay?
• 5:09
  Speaker 4: I think then, with introductions out the way, should get going.
• 5:13
  Speaker 4: Let's do it all right, everyone ready? Jake? Ready?
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: What Rack?
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: I'm ready?
• 5:16
  Speaker 5: Okay.
• 5:18
  Speaker 4: This is the story of two Marvin Gays. On the
• 5:20
  Speaker 4: face of it's the story of two men, Marvin Pence
• 5:22
  Speaker 4: Gay Senior and Marvin Pence Gay Junior. One a cross
• 5:26
  Speaker 4: dressing Pentecostal preacher who ruled with an iron fist and
• 5:29
  Speaker 4: the other a multi award winning voice of a generation.
• 5:32
  Speaker 5: That's quite a mouthful, that's quite a sentence.
• 5:34
  Speaker 4: Well I crossed it, so thank you very much. But
• 5:39
  Speaker 4: also the chart topping Motown legend was nowhere near perfect.
• 5:43
  Speaker 4: Behind the charming soul singer with the golden voice was
• 5:46
  Speaker 4: a controlling, self sabotaging, unpredictable wreck, and this fight between
• 5:51
  Speaker 4: the two sides of himself as well as the destructive
• 5:53
  Speaker 4: force that was his father, stalked Marvin gay throughout his career,
• 5:57
  Speaker 4: through number one albums, multiple Grammys, and critical acclaim. He
• 6:01
  Speaker 4: fled his demons and the ghost of his father's abuse
• 6:04
  Speaker 4: to Hawaii, Belgium, and deep into the Santa Monica Mountains,
• 6:07
  Speaker 4: where he held a shaking knife to his girlfriend's throat,
• 6:11
  Speaker 4: and eventually, just after a whirl Win tour, he returned
• 6:15
  Speaker 4: to his parents' house and died by his father's hand.
• 6:19
  Speaker 4: This is the story of one of the most notorious
• 6:21
  Speaker 4: murders in musical history.
• 6:24
  Speaker 5: The first Marvin Gaye with no E was born on
• 6:27
  Speaker 5: a Kentucky form form form.
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: Where am I?
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: He sounds like you're from Boston farm?
• 6:35
  Speaker 5: Did you do that for me? Because I'm from Did
• 6:38
  Speaker 5: I do forarm? Did I do farm? He was He
• 6:44
  Speaker 5: was born on a Kentucky farm in October nineteen fourteen,
• 6:49
  Speaker 5: and he was actually one of thirteen children.
• 6:52
  Speaker 4: It's too many.
• 6:52
  Speaker 5: That is a lot of children.
• 6:54
  Speaker 4: Too many am I been in?
• 6:55
  Speaker 5: And unfortunately for Marvin gay Senior, this giant family was vicious.
• 7:01
  Speaker 5: He grew up in a storm of fights, which occasionally
• 7:04
  Speaker 5: escalated into serious violence and sometimes even a bullet. One afternoon,
• 7:11
  Speaker 5: Marvin recalls his father beating his mother until blood poured
• 7:15
  Speaker 5: out of her face. Another night, his father shot his mother,
• 7:20
  Speaker 5: but said it was just a warning. It's a hell
• 7:24
  Speaker 5: of a warning now, Marvin Gaycinia's mother survived, but the
• 7:29
  Speaker 5: atmosphere scarred the young Marvin and taught him the meaning
• 7:34
  Speaker 5: of violence as power. When he was young, his mother
• 7:38
  Speaker 5: moved the family to a new church. And if you
• 7:41
  Speaker 5: thought what you had to say, Hannah was a mouth
• 7:43
  Speaker 5: for let me tell you the name of this church.
• 7:45
  Speaker 5: Because this church was called the House of God, the
• 7:49
  Speaker 5: Holy Church of the Living God, the Pillar and the
• 7:51
  Speaker 5: ground of the Truth, the house of prayer for all people.
• 7:54
  Speaker 4: Put the thesaurus down.
• 7:56
  Speaker 5: They were just like we got to get everybody bums
• 7:59
  Speaker 5: on pews.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: What do we call it?
• 8:02
  Speaker 4: But just for fun, they called it the House of
• 8:04
  Speaker 4: God for short. And the House of God was a
• 8:07
  Speaker 4: pretty interesting mix. It combined Pentecostal Christianity with Orthodox Judaism,
• 8:13
  Speaker 4: and that meant no Christmas and no Easter neither.
• 8:16
  Speaker 5: Oh boo, I know the worst of everything.
• 8:18
  Speaker 4: Who were we talking to you the other day? Who
• 8:19
  Speaker 4: was saying that he knew loads of Jehovah's witnesses and
• 8:22
  Speaker 4: it was mainly people who just like didn't want to
• 8:23
  Speaker 4: pay for Christmas.
• 8:24
  Speaker 5: Yeah, it was calm, my videographier. Yeah, So yesterday when
• 8:28
  Speaker 5: we went on our ghost ton, our videographer was saying
• 8:30
  Speaker 5: where he grew up, there were a lot of Jehovah's witnesses.
• 8:33
  Speaker 5: But he was like, but it was mainly just the
• 8:34
  Speaker 5: dads who didn't have jobs, and they were like, no Christmas,
• 8:37
  Speaker 5: we don't do Christmas.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: We don't do that.
• 8:39
  Speaker 5: It's very cheap when you don't celebrate anything as a dad.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: I can't get behind that. I just can't do it. Christmas.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: Is it's worth the hassle? I think unless you're Marvin
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: Gaye that it's definitely not worth it.
• 8:50
  Speaker 4: No, you're right, spoilers, so it gets even better. No Christmas,
• 8:55
  Speaker 4: no Easter, and a strict patriarchal structure. Women and girls
• 8:58
  Speaker 4: were subservient, dressed all in with embroidered blue skull caps.
• 9:02
  Speaker 4: They didn't eat shellfish or pork, and they strictly kept
• 9:05
  Speaker 4: the Sabbath. Every Friday night at sundown, members down tools.
• 9:09
  Speaker 4: From then until Sunday morning. Everything that wasn't praying and
• 9:12
  Speaker 4: praising God was forbidden.
• 9:14
  Speaker 5: What do you do then, just pray?
• 9:16
  Speaker 4: Well, hit each other apparently.
• 9:18
  Speaker 5: No pray, and try not to commit outright murder?
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: Got it?
• 9:24
  Speaker 4: When the first Marvin Gaye became a minister, he was
• 9:26
  Speaker 4: totalitarian in the way he enforced his listening of strict rules,
• 9:30
  Speaker 4: and when he came to have a family of his
• 9:32
  Speaker 4: very own, he was no different. He moved the family
• 9:36
  Speaker 4: to Washington, d c. And used violent discipline in the
• 9:38
  Speaker 4: pursuit of what he saw as the perfect godly family,
• 9:43
  Speaker 4: and there were no vague threats during those years. He'd
• 9:46
  Speaker 4: even tell his children straight, I brought you into this
• 9:49
  Speaker 4: world and I can take you out.
• 9:52
  Speaker 5: What is the scariest thing either of your parents have
• 9:55
  Speaker 5: ever said to you? Growing up?
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: You're going to be a podcaster.
• 10:04
  Speaker 5: I mean, mine was probably quite similar to what Marvin
• 10:06
  Speaker 5: gay heard.
• 10:07
  Speaker 4: I'll put you through that second walk.
• 10:10
  Speaker 5: Mine was an a minus. You get in here, don't come.
• 10:16
  Speaker 4: Back down until you're a doctor.
• 10:18
  Speaker 5: Yes, yes, don't come back down until you're a doctor.
• 10:21
  Speaker 5: I'm a podcaster through His dad.
• 10:24
  Speaker 4: Is slimly clinging onto the hope that she will one
• 10:26
  Speaker 4: day retrained to be a doctor.
• 10:29
  Speaker 5: The person who can't look at blood.
• 10:34
  Speaker 4: And Marvin Gaye Senior was by far the harshest with
• 10:37
  Speaker 4: his second child, Marvin Pencegate Junior. Marvin Junior's mum, Alberta,
• 10:42
  Speaker 4: would later say, my husband never wanted Marvin and he
• 10:45
  Speaker 4: never liked him. For some reason. He didn't love Marvin,
• 10:48
  Speaker 4: and what's worse, he didn't want me to love him either.
• 10:52
  Speaker 5: Rough stuff that is so rough. That is so rough.
• 10:55
  Speaker 5: But that's quite like I don't want to say common
• 10:57
  Speaker 5: thing because it's not common, but that is quite an
• 10:59
  Speaker 5: art type like the father who then has children and
• 11:03
  Speaker 5: then is resentful of the mother giving attention to that child,
• 11:08
  Speaker 5: and then the resentment that that breeds turns into abuse
• 11:10
  Speaker 5: towards that child, which is just so bizarre because it
• 11:13
  Speaker 5: like overrides the natural biological urge that parents are meant
• 11:16
  Speaker 5: to have to protect and prioritize their children. But we
• 11:19
  Speaker 5: do see it. We see a lot of this in
• 11:21
  Speaker 5: true crime.
• 11:21
  Speaker 4: It's not a Christian that is it.
• 11:23
  Speaker 5: No, none of what he does is very Christian. So
• 11:27
  Speaker 5: Marvin Gay Junior grew up in what was known then
• 11:31
  Speaker 5: as Simple City.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: It's pretty good.
• 11:34
  Speaker 5: What's happening? My theory joke is is it just that America,
• 11:38
  Speaker 5: the US, I should say, is so big that you
• 11:41
  Speaker 5: guys are just like, there's too many things to name.
• 11:43
  Speaker 5: Name it whatever the hell you like? Simple City? Sure,
• 11:46
  Speaker 5: what the hell?
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: I think you're hitting the nail right on the head.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: I think this was named with extreme laziness and not
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: a hint of irony.
• 11:53
  Speaker 5: No, so we're not missing any irony. Okay, got it.
• 11:57
  Speaker 5: What is the best city name you've come across though
• 11:59
  Speaker 5: in your years? That Disgraceland?
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: Well, I don't know, I mean, I mean, just not
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: to be totally basic about it, but you know they
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: called you know, obviously Elvis is his home. It's not
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: a city, but his estate was Graceland. And Jerry Lee
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: Lewis was such the opposite of Elvis. He was such
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: a hell raiser in a maniac that the locals called
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: where he lived Disgraceland, which obviously that's why we named
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: the show that.
• 12:24
  Speaker 5: I see. I thought you were just punning off Elvis's
• 12:26
  Speaker 5: But now it makes sense. Interesting, Simple City is up
• 12:29
  Speaker 5: there for me. But also it will be very hard
• 12:31
  Speaker 5: to top Truth and Consequences. Truth or Consequences?
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, where is that from? Actually i've heard.
• 12:38
  Speaker 4: That New Mexico.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: There it is.
• 12:39
  Speaker 5: It's David Parker. Ray abducted all those women, kept them
• 12:42
  Speaker 5: in his weird like sex cabin, tied them up, tortured them, etc.
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: Etc.
• 12:47
  Speaker 5: Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. They named themselves that because
• 12:51
  Speaker 5: they wanted to win a prize from a local radio show.
• 12:56
  Speaker 5: It was the first town that changed its name to
• 12:58
  Speaker 5: Truth or Consequence. Is won the radio show and that's
• 13:01
  Speaker 5: why they did it.
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: Wow, amazing. It sounds like it's out of a Coen
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: Brothers film or something like that.
• 13:08
  Speaker 4: Yes, I mean it might as well be. I think
• 13:10
  Speaker 4: about fifteen people living there now.
• 13:13
  Speaker 5: So back to Simple City where Marvin Gay Junior is
• 13:16
  Speaker 5: growing up. He later called it a slum of Washington, DC.
• 13:21
  Speaker 5: So Simple City, it's not like it's a nice place
• 13:24
  Speaker 5: to live. It's a slum okay. They couldn't even bothered
• 13:27
  Speaker 5: to name, and they just called a simple city. And
• 13:29
  Speaker 5: from a young age, Marvin gay Junior grew to expect
• 13:32
  Speaker 5: the belt for any minor transgression, real or imagined against
• 13:37
  Speaker 5: his father. It was a campaign of fear. The older
• 13:41
  Speaker 5: Marvin seemed to take pleasure in. Marvin Jr. Remembered being
• 13:45
  Speaker 5: told that he would be whipped, only to be made
• 13:48
  Speaker 5: to wait in an adjoining room for over an hour
• 13:51
  Speaker 5: for his punishment. So Dad's really like not just the
• 13:55
  Speaker 5: physical torture, it's also the psychological abuse. Domestic terrorism is
• 14:01
  Speaker 5: what we're seeing here. And all the while that Marvin
• 14:05
  Speaker 5: Gaye Junior was waiting in the other room for his beating,
• 14:08
  Speaker 5: his father would stand in the other room shaking the
• 14:12
  Speaker 5: belt buckle. He later told his biographer David Ritz and
• 14:16
  Speaker 5: this is a quote, the only way to short circuit
• 14:19
  Speaker 5: the agony was to provoke him even more and just
• 14:23
  Speaker 5: get the beating over with. That is so sad. Basically,
• 14:28
  Speaker 5: he's like, I wanted to just forgo the psychological torture,
• 14:32
  Speaker 5: so I would provoke my father until he just beat
• 14:34
  Speaker 5: me and got it done with. So, yes, we can
• 14:37
  Speaker 5: really see a pattern starting to emerge here. Basically, it
• 14:41
  Speaker 5: was like Marvin Junior said, it was like to live
• 14:44
  Speaker 5: with his father quote, it was like living with a
• 14:47
  Speaker 5: very peculiar, changeable, cruel and all powerful king narcissist.
• 14:53
  Speaker 4: Hmmm, And the word peculiar doesn't just refer to Marvin
• 14:58
  Speaker 4: Gaye Senior's unusually savage parenting. Marvin Senior was not like
• 15:03
  Speaker 4: the other dads in Simple City. He taught her around
• 15:05
  Speaker 4: the house in his wife's heels, her best dresses, and
• 15:08
  Speaker 4: her wigs, and sooner or later the neighborhood kids saw
• 15:11
  Speaker 4: him do that through the window and let Marvin Junior
• 15:13
  Speaker 4: have it, and eventually it wasn't a secret anymore. Marvin
• 15:18
  Speaker 4: Senior was a flamboyant, unashamedly cross dressing man of God,
• 15:22
  Speaker 4: and that didn't sit right with the Washingtonians of the
• 15:24
  Speaker 4: forties and fifties. The shame came from all sides for
• 15:27
  Speaker 4: Marvin Jr. From his family's esoteric religious customs to his
• 15:31
  Speaker 4: father's quirks and even being teased as a sissy for
• 15:34
  Speaker 4: his own shyness. And for Marvin Junor, his first suicidal
• 15:38
  Speaker 4: thoughts hit him in his early teens. His church was
• 15:42
  Speaker 4: a strict and unforgiving place, and only activities that served
• 15:45
  Speaker 4: to praise the Lord were allowed. But luckily for Marvin Junior,
• 15:49
  Speaker 4: that included music. And we're going to pass over to you, Jake,
• 15:53
  Speaker 4: as our music expert. Can you talk a little bit
• 15:55
  Speaker 4: about the church's influence on popular music in the forties
• 15:58
  Speaker 4: and fifties.
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: Hard to overstate just how influential gospel music, the music
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: that came out of the church was on black culture
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: in the forties, in the fifties, and just I know
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: it's obvious, but I got to say it. When I
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: refer to the church here, I'm referring to sort of
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: the you know, universal Christian Black church in America the
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: forties and the fifties Baptist Church. I'm not referring to
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: whatever crazy nutty church Marvin Gay's father was preaching out
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: that we talked about earlier. Yeah, it kind of goes
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: without saying, but worth pointing out just massively influential gospel
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: music is, of course, the Sunday morning music, which is
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: different in subject matter lyrically from the Saturday night music
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: of blues and R and B that's happening in the clubs,
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: but the same people are listening to gospel music in
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: church on Sundays, and you have, as it pertains to
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: Marvin Gay, you have these artists come out of the
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: gospel church in the fifties, you have Sam Cook come
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: out in the sixties, Ray Charles, and when they come
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: out of gospel they meld the actual mutis musick with
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: secular music, with pop music. And the irony here is
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: gospel music has this looseness to it and ironically this
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: sexuality to it that when it was merged with pop
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: music and secular music, it becomes what we now know
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: as soul music. So Marvin Gay is a young kid.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: He's watching all this happening around him, and in Sam Cook,
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: he sees a model for him to sort of use
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: the church and use gospel music to propel a sort
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: of music career for himself.
• 17:25
  Speaker 5: Wow, that's fascinating. I didn't know at all, but this
• 17:28
  Speaker 5: is just speaking to my own ignorance about this. How
• 17:30
  Speaker 5: many of those incredibly influential artists came from a gospel background.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's real. It's almost an endless list. I mean,
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: you have Aretha Franklin, whose father was a major preacher
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: at the time, and then even just a ton of
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: blues musicians who you don't even associate with gospel music,
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: like you know, Muddy Waters or BB King. They all
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: kind of passed through the church at one point and
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: go on to do their thing in secular music. But
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: the real big star is like Sam I mean, Sam
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: Cook was a worldwide phenomenon almost and that was a
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: real template for mar Gay. And thankfully Marvin Gay had
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: this immense talent himself that could match his ambition in
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: the model of Sam Cook that he was seeing.
• 18:07
  Speaker 5: Absolutely And when you think about it, it does make
• 18:09
  Speaker 5: sense because even in the nutty church that Marvin Gay
• 18:13
  Speaker 5: Senior is hanging out in a house of God, service
• 18:17
  Speaker 5: could actually include a whole small orchestra of instruments, saxophones,
• 18:22
  Speaker 5: wailing handclapping organs, and tambourines. So even in a place
• 18:27
  Speaker 5: where there is nothing allowed except the praising of God,
• 18:31
  Speaker 5: the music is there. And that's what is, like you said,
• 18:34
  Speaker 5: Marvin Gay Junior's savior.
• 18:36
  Speaker 4: And that's why there's so many like in early soul
• 18:38
  Speaker 4: and motown specifically, so many super tight harmonies, especially in
• 18:42
  Speaker 4: backing vocals, because all of the backing singers had sung
• 18:45
  Speaker 4: in choirs in church that they knew how to do
• 18:47
  Speaker 4: it already.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: Mm hmm, exactly.
• 18:49
  Speaker 5: So at this church, like probably many churches at the time,
• 18:53
  Speaker 5: people would pour into the aisles possessed by spirits sometimes,
• 18:58
  Speaker 5: and Marvin gay Junior was a sense station. He'd learned
• 19:01
  Speaker 5: the piano by ear from the age of five, and
• 19:05
  Speaker 5: his voice blew people away, and for a while even
• 19:10
  Speaker 5: his father was impressed. But by his late teens, Marvin
• 19:15
  Speaker 5: Gaye Junior was singing for money. He was into that
• 19:19
  Speaker 5: secular music. He'd sung what he'd heard on the radio
• 19:23
  Speaker 5: do wop. To Marvin Senior. It was the devil's music. Jake,
• 19:29
  Speaker 5: could you tell us what is do wop? What are
• 19:31
  Speaker 5: we talking about there? I don't know if I'm I
• 19:33
  Speaker 5: feel like I kind of know, but tell us I
• 19:36
  Speaker 5: feel confident.
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, doop of course, just is you know,
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: vocal music, a cappella music that's sprung up from street
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: corners largely, and it's kind of to hip. Back to
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: what Hannah was saying earlier, the sort of tight harmonies
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: from the gospel church influenced doop as well. But I
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: mean's somebody like Marvin Gaye's dad anything that was not
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: strictly gospel music was the devil's music. I mean anything.
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: I mean even like I was reading something the other
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: day that you know, Marvin Gay got in trouble for
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: reading I think Charlotte's Web because it was it was
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: considered to be a book of the devil, which is
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: just insanity. But you know, duop, you can picture, like
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: you know, four Italian guys on the street corner in
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: Philadelphia with greasy hair, singing together. This is just sort
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: of the earlier incarnation of that from the forties and fifties.
• 20:24
  Speaker 5: Perfect. This is great having Jake on. I feel like
• 20:26
  Speaker 5: I've done so many more research about any of those music.
• 20:29
  Speaker 5: I can just be like, Jake, please tell us. But yeah,
• 20:32
  Speaker 5: so Marvin Gay Senior absolutely goes without a doubt saying
• 20:36
  Speaker 5: he is convinced this is devil music. He is not
• 20:38
  Speaker 5: interested in his son doing this at all. But Alberta Gay,
• 20:42
  Speaker 5: Marvin Junior's mother, she gave her son permission to follow
• 20:46
  Speaker 5: his talent and it was his ticket out. By then,
• 20:50
  Speaker 5: the beatings had only increased. Marvin Junior may have been
• 20:53
  Speaker 5: taller and stronger than his father, but he never talked back.
• 20:58
  Speaker 5: In his own words, quote, I wanted to strike back,
• 21:02
  Speaker 5: but where I come from. Even to raise your hand
• 21:06
  Speaker 5: to your father is an invitation for him to kill you.
• 21:37
  Speaker 4: And with that neat bit of foreshadowing, firmly in the bank, Jake,
• 21:40
  Speaker 4: we're going to hand over to you, because we are
• 21:43
  Speaker 4: going to skip ahead a bit. Marvin Gate joined and
• 21:46
  Speaker 4: quit the Air Force, and then he joined a do
• 21:47
  Speaker 4: what group called the moon Glows, and then moved to Chicago.
• 21:50
  Speaker 4: He sung back up for Chuck Berry, and eventually he
• 21:53
  Speaker 4: caught the attention of a young producer and one of
• 21:56
  Speaker 4: my least favorite men of all time, Barry Gordy, who
• 21:59
  Speaker 4: had just founded Motown Records. And I have a particularly
• 22:03
  Speaker 4: strong opinion on him because before I did Red Handed
• 22:06
  Speaker 4: as my job, I worked on Motown the music Ah
• 22:09
  Speaker 4: and Motown the Musical is a very so dream Girls
• 22:13
  Speaker 4: is a very thinly veiled story of Berry Gordy and
• 22:16
  Speaker 4: Diana Ross and the Supremes. Right, all of the names
• 22:18
  Speaker 4: are changed, but the story is the same. Motown is
• 22:22
  Speaker 4: the rebuttal right so like it is. It shows Berry
• 22:25
  Speaker 4: Gordy as this like like young up and coming kid
• 22:28
  Speaker 4: who just like started from nowhere. His parents lent him
• 22:31
  Speaker 4: two hundred thousand dollars so he could start the label
• 22:33
  Speaker 4: like he was not like and he he met Diana
• 22:35
  Speaker 4: Ross when she was fourteen, like Pieter, shit fucking awful guy.
• 22:40
  Speaker 5: So it took me.
• 22:41
  Speaker 4: When I quit, finally quit that job, I would like
• 22:44
  Speaker 4: be on road trips with my friends and some Motown
• 22:45
  Speaker 4: will come on. I'll be like, please turn this offen
• 22:48
  Speaker 4: because my desk was directly above the stage, so I
• 22:51
  Speaker 4: would like hear like, oh, it's the contours, it's lunchtime.
• 22:54
  Speaker 5: How many shows were there are? Day two?
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: Two?
• 22:56
  Speaker 5: So you had to listen to Motown the musical twice
• 22:59
  Speaker 5: a day every day for.
• 23:00
  Speaker 4: Once because I went home for okay, yeah, okay, and
• 23:03
  Speaker 4: then obviously every time, like my mum was in town,
• 23:04
  Speaker 4: I want to go and see it, and I'm okay,
• 23:06
  Speaker 4: I'll just sit through it again. So I'm going to
• 23:08
  Speaker 4: hand over to you for possibly a more positive spin.
• 23:12
  Speaker 5: On not just shop but how much I hate Barry Gordy.
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: Okay, so that was the dream Girls. Now I'm giving
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: the Motown rebuttal is that what.
• 23:19
  Speaker 5: We do exactly exactly?
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: All right?
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: Okay, with all that context of what we now know
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: about Barry Gordy, we do need to kind of travel
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: back in time to where we're at. We're talking about
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: Marvin Gay, Visa v. Berry Gordy. Fast forward from the
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: influence of the church in the nineteen forties to the
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: nineteen sixties to early nineteen sixties and the secular music
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: that was made by Motown Records. And it's really hard
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: to describe now just how influential Motown was on popular culture.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: It was the first entity of black music making that
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: crossed over in a very significant way and sold records
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: on mass to not just black kids, but to white kids.
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: And that was a huge deal at the time. We
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: take it for granted now because everything is so integrated,
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: but back then, obviously it wasn't. And even the charts
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: we'll talk about this later were integrated either. And it
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: wasn't like they had one or two hits. It's like
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: they just crushed it constantly, consistently. And Barry Gordy, for
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: all of his flaws, Hannah was a genius on the
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: level with some of the great innovators in American history.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: I mean, Motown Records is Detroit and Barry Gordy, all
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: he had to do was look down the road at
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: the Ford Auto Factory and go Okay, there's my template
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: on how to make music. And he quite literally took
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: the process that they were using to make cars, the
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: assembly line process, and used it to make music. He
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: had staff writers, staff producers, He had singers that were
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: kind of interchangeable, and few of the really good ones
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: became icons, like Diana Ross whom you mentioned. So Marvin
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: Gay has this influence in Sam Cook early on, and
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: he uses that as a template to kind of model himself.
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: And with that and with the sort of musical package
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: that Marvin Gay and Talent had put together, he could
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: not have landed at a better place than Motown to
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: launch his career. All caveats and asterisks that Barry Gordy
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: was a very bad guy and did a lot of
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: shitty things to a lot of people, a lot of artists,
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: especially in young women. But I just want to, you know,
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: give the proper conduct.
• 25:30
  Speaker 5: Yeah, absolutely, Content context is key. And you know it's
• 25:33
  Speaker 5: like we've said so many times on the show, you
• 25:35
  Speaker 5: can be a great person and not be a good person.
• 25:38
  Speaker 5: A person who makes huge amounts of change and transforms
• 25:41
  Speaker 5: a city, transforms the whole industry, like you said, completely
• 25:45
  Speaker 5: takes that huge, incredible step of desegregating the charts, like
• 25:48
  Speaker 5: we're going to go on to talk about later, Like
• 25:50
  Speaker 5: you said, I could still be a bad guy, yeah,
• 25:53
  Speaker 5: behind those doors, but I think the context is super important,
• 25:55
  Speaker 5: so thank you for that.
• 25:56
  Speaker 4: Of course, of course, and Marvin gay thrived in this.
• 26:00
  Speaker 4: He started as a session drummer, playing on tracks for
• 26:02
  Speaker 4: Smokey Robinson and Stevie Wonder, and then he started adding
• 26:06
  Speaker 4: piano and then backing vocals, and soon enough he was
• 26:09
  Speaker 4: writing songs.
• 26:10
  Speaker 5: So taking AQ from Sam Cook, Marvin Gaye decided to
• 26:14
  Speaker 5: add an e to the end of his name to
• 26:17
  Speaker 5: lend himself some gravitas as well as separating himself from
• 26:22
  Speaker 5: his father and the rumors of homosexuality that still followed him.
• 26:26
  Speaker 5: And Marvin Gaye Junior had his first hit with Stubborn
• 26:31
  Speaker 5: kind of Fellow and started to make a name for himself.
• 26:35
  Speaker 5: A string of hits followed, and he was an immediate
• 26:38
  Speaker 5: sex symbol. Night after night women were throwing themselves at him.
• 26:43
  Speaker 5: But one woman stood out, Anna Gordy, sister of Barry Gordy,
• 26:50
  Speaker 5: and she was actually seventeen years older than Marvin Gaye.
• 26:54
  Speaker 5: And it would be incorrect of us not to discuss
• 26:58
  Speaker 5: this next bit, because this is where waiting the second
• 27:03
  Speaker 5: half of Gay's super edaple life really fires up. There's
• 27:09
  Speaker 5: a kind of fighting his dad bit that was well underway. He's,
• 27:12
  Speaker 5: you know, trying not to hit his dad back as
• 27:14
  Speaker 5: much as he wants to. And now it's kind of
• 27:17
  Speaker 5: into the shagging his mum season. And it was, like
• 27:22
  Speaker 5: we said, seventeen years older than Marvin. Nothing wrong with her,
• 27:27
  Speaker 5: but she was also very forthright and became an all
• 27:30
  Speaker 5: important voice of reason and discipline in Gay's life, and
• 27:34
  Speaker 5: he wanted to be with her. Conveniently, she was also
• 27:37
  Speaker 5: the boss's sister. It was love, there's no doubt about that,
• 27:41
  Speaker 5: but there was also definitely a transactional element to this
• 27:44
  Speaker 5: whole situation too, you could rather cynically, and we're going
• 27:49
  Speaker 5: to look at this as an opportunity away for Gay
• 27:53
  Speaker 5: to join the dynasty. So we married Anna, and shortly
• 27:57
  Speaker 5: afterwards he became one of Motown's biggest names.
• 28:02
  Speaker 4: Back home in DC, infighting had forced the House of
• 28:05
  Speaker 4: God congregation to split into two. Marvin Senior's crowd was
• 28:09
  Speaker 4: the smaller half, and he soon found himself preaching in
• 28:13
  Speaker 4: disused storefronts or at home in his living room, and
• 28:16
  Speaker 4: after a while he stopped preaching altogether. He worked briefly
• 28:20
  Speaker 4: for the Air Force and then the Post Office, but
• 28:23
  Speaker 4: his refusal to work on the sabbath soon got him
• 28:25
  Speaker 4: booted out of both of those jobs. Soon he was
• 28:28
  Speaker 4: doing nothing, and that's pretty much how it stayed for
• 28:32
  Speaker 4: the rest of his life.
• 28:33
  Speaker 5: ALBERTA.
• 28:34
  Speaker 4: Gay meanwhile, was leaving the house at four am to
• 28:37
  Speaker 4: take the bus to the next date over to clean
• 28:39
  Speaker 4: rich people's houses, and.
• 28:41
  Speaker 5: Soon Marvin gay had a series of hits and wrote
• 28:44
  Speaker 5: several more for other Motown acts, like Dancing in the
• 28:48
  Speaker 5: Street for Martha and the Vandellas.
• 28:50
  Speaker 4: I'm just gonna slip it in here. Yeah, completely not
• 28:54
  Speaker 4: Motown related, but Jake, I'm absolutely desperate to get your
• 28:57
  Speaker 4: opinion on the Mick Jagger David Bowie cover of In
• 29:00
  Speaker 4: New Street.
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: I knew you were going to say that. I knew it,
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: and I was about to say something too, because I
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: didn't realize until right now that Marvin Gaye wrote that song.
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: So I was going to say, we have him to
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: blame or thank, depending on your point of view, for that.
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: Just it's both horrific and it's also just wonderfully entertaining
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: the Mick Jagger David Bowie video for Dancing in the Street.
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: So I'm on both sides of that fences.
• 29:24
  Speaker 4: It's definitely a moment in musical history that I will
• 29:27
  Speaker 4: never ever forget.
• 29:30
  Speaker 5: But getting back to our story today, like everything else
• 29:33
  Speaker 5: in the US, in the fifties, music was sadly segregated.
• 29:38
  Speaker 5: For the most part, White music would chart in the
• 29:40
  Speaker 5: top forty and the songs that Black America were listening
• 29:43
  Speaker 5: to ranked in the separate R and B or blues charts.
• 29:48
  Speaker 5: For a black artist to cross over into the top
• 29:51
  Speaker 5: forty took something really special. Jake, We're gonna look to
• 29:57
  Speaker 5: you again, talk to us a bit about this.
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, A lot of this gets credited to and I
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: certainly did this earlier, to Barry Gordy and his genius
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: and how to produce songs. But a lot of it
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: has to do too with just who Marvin Gay was
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: and the type of artist that he was where he
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: was able to cross over. And we really need to
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: illustrate here for the listeners who may not be aware
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: just how difficult that was and what it meant to
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: do that back in the forties, fifties and sixties, I mean,
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: there were different sets of charts, just like there are today,
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: and I should say it's still a big deal today.
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: We just had all these country artists here in America
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: who were on the Billboard Hot one hundred, not that
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: they hadn't been before, but much was made of that
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: because artists typically don't cross over, and the reason is radio.
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: So you know, for Marvin Gay to crossover, it means
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: that those white radio stations, pop radio stations were playing
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: the record, playing the single, I should say, and I
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: mean that translates directly into financial gain. It's just a
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: much bigger audience. Those stations are so much bigger, they
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: have a much wider and further reach. So, you know,
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: so it's one thing to cross over. You need a
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: special kind of talent that Marvin Gay certainly had. But
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: then when you do, the level of success that that's
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: going to bring you is going to be much bigger
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: than if you were just to be riding on.
• 31:12
  Speaker 5: The R and B charts. Do you think that Marvin
• 31:14
  Speaker 5: Gay intentionally set out to be able to do that
• 31:17
  Speaker 5: or do you think it was just something that came
• 31:19
  Speaker 5: because he was so talented.
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: I think Barry Gordy certainly intended to do that, and
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: by extension, Marvin Gay did as well, so bit by bit.
• 31:29
  Speaker 5: Gay crept up the top forty until the ballad Pride
• 31:34
  Speaker 5: and Joy made the top ten at number eight. But
• 31:39
  Speaker 5: as always with Marvin Gay, he could climb high, but
• 31:42
  Speaker 5: his demons weren't far behind. He'd been smoking weed pretty
• 31:47
  Speaker 5: much constantly since the Moonflows days, and as his star ascended,
• 31:52
  Speaker 5: he turned to coke. He never really took to snorting
• 31:55
  Speaker 5: it though, apparently he just ate it. He just eat coke.
• 32:01
  Speaker 5: So there you go.
• 32:02
  Speaker 4: I'm sure it gets the job done.
• 32:04
  Speaker 5: I mean it thoroughly did, and I don't know, maybe
• 32:08
  Speaker 5: it Obviously he has had a very abusive childhood. He's
• 32:11
  Speaker 5: obviously looking to substances as some sort of crutch. But
• 32:14
  Speaker 5: it could also have been to do with the fact
• 32:16
  Speaker 5: that Marvin Kay apparently hated performing, which until we looked
• 32:20
  Speaker 5: at this episode, I would just never ever have guessed
• 32:24
  Speaker 5: that to be the case. That he hated performing, And
• 32:28
  Speaker 5: apparently he could often be found shaking or being sick
• 32:33
  Speaker 5: backstage before a show, but then with a little powdered
• 32:37
  Speaker 5: courage in his mouth, he'd blow them away, always finishing
• 32:42
  Speaker 5: by mopping his brow with a silk handkerchief and then
• 32:45
  Speaker 5: throwing it into the baying crowd. But by nineteen sixty
• 32:49
  Speaker 5: nine this duality got serious.
• 32:52
  Speaker 4: His marriage to Anna was already pretty ugly. They were
• 32:54
  Speaker 4: both cheating on the rag and then using those infidelities
• 32:57
  Speaker 4: to twist the knife. Eventually, Marvin got a gun and
• 33:01
  Speaker 4: locked himself in an apartment, and he said that he
• 33:04
  Speaker 4: wouldn't leave until he or whoever dared interrupt him, was dead.
• 33:09
  Speaker 4: Eventually he was talked down by his father in law,
• 33:11
  Speaker 4: but these episodes repeated over the next few months. Sometimes
• 33:15
  Speaker 4: Marvin Gay would disappear for weeks without a word to anyone.
• 33:19
  Speaker 4: He'd start to threaten his friends and family members at gunpoint,
• 33:22
  Speaker 4: but all the while, his hits were only getting better.
• 33:26
  Speaker 4: I heard It through the Grapevine, sold four million copies.
• 33:30
  Speaker 4: It was Motown's biggest single so far, and now he
• 33:35
  Speaker 4: was going to use his success to go his own way.
• 33:39
  Speaker 4: When Gay's brother Frankie recounted his stories from Vietnam, the
• 33:42
  Speaker 4: singer was infuriated and knew that he had to do something,
• 33:47
  Speaker 4: and that led him to what's going on, Jake, can
• 33:52
  Speaker 4: you speak a little bit about just what a seminal
• 33:56
  Speaker 4: record that.
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: Was I can try, Bukowski said, writing about music is
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: like dancing about architecture. Very hard. It's very hard to do.
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: Somehow we try. We keep trying, though, but with What's
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: going on, it's particularly hard. You know, I'm always struck
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: by the context of the day is so much different.
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: You know, this was this record. I'll start with the
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: history of him trying to make it with Barry Gordy.
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: Barry Gordy heard the demo or the first recording of
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: the song What's going On, and he hated it. He
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: quite literally called it the worst recording he had ever heard,
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: and he refused to put it out, and he didn't
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: like anything about it. He didn't like the production, like
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: the quote unquote looseness of it, which I find to
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: be rich. He didn't. He especially didn't like that it
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: was political. That was the main reason he didn't like it.
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: But Stevie Wonder loved it. Marvin Gaye played it for
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: Stevie Wonder. A bunch of people around Motown who worked
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: at Motown loved it, and it became this big battle
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: between Marvin gay who now had all this leverage because,
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: as you just mentioned, Hannah, he was on the charts
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: and he had success. Whereas before he wouldn't have said
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: no or argued with Berry Gordy, here he is arguing
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: with him, and there's like something like a seven to
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: eight month battle that ensues where Marvin gay refuses to
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: work at all for Barry Gordy unless Barry allows him
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: to make this record and put it out. And I
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: just want to I don't want to. I don't want
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: to defend Barry Gordy here. But we're talking about a
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: guy who is eating cocaine who's also married to your sister.
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: So if anybody has insight into just how fucked up
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: Marvin gay was and has the inclination to not believe
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: that he can pull off what no other black artist
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: has done before, which is have a hit that is political.
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: Barry Gordy certainly had had a unique perspective into a
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: unique lens into this and perhaps has justified reason for
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: not allowing Marvin Gaye to do this. But the music
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: should have spoken for itself. The music was, as we know, incredible,
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: to the point where I think it was an A
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: and R guy who worked for Barry Gordy at Motown
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: ended up pressing singles on his own and sending them
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: to some radio stations before it was officially released, and
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: the radio stations freaked out. They loved it, they played it,
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: it becomes this massive hit. And two things about this one.
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: The original title was What's going on? Question Mark, and
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: Marvin Gay insisted, and he had a fight with his
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: co writers on this from Motown that it was just no,
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: it's not what's going on, question Mark, it's what's going
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: on period declarative, because this is a statement of what
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: is happening in our cities. This is the culture that
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: I grew up in that I am seeing that is
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: not changing, that is getting worse, Vietnam, all the social
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: unrest of the late sixties. And to speak to the
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: significance of this album, quite frankly, there was nothing like it.
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: There was no album that had done what it had
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: done before. It quite literally gave license, not literally, it
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: quite figuratively gave license to black artists to protest on
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: the charts, and that had never had been done before.
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: We take it for granted now, but it was this
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: album that almost didn't get made that opened the floodgates.
• 37:16
  Speaker 4: So I suppose in the end then it was the
• 37:17
  Speaker 4: music that spoke for itself. If it was getting secretly
• 37:19
  Speaker 4: sent to radio stations, I.
• 37:21
  Speaker 5: Think so, yeah.
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: I think some things are just so undeniably great that
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: you can't put him down.
• 37:27
  Speaker 4: And it worked because almost fifty years later, What's Going
• 37:30
  Speaker 4: On was ranked number one on Rolling Stones's list of
• 37:33
  Speaker 4: the five hundred greatest albums of all time, So even
• 37:37
  Speaker 4: Marvin Gay Junior had to admit he was a superstar.
• 37:41
  Speaker 5: And Marvin Gaye's first la home had been given to
• 37:45
  Speaker 5: him by Barry Gordy. That didn't really sit right with
• 37:49
  Speaker 5: the star. He wanted to buy a place for himself,
• 37:53
  Speaker 5: so after the success of What's Going On, he bought
• 37:56
  Speaker 5: what his family would later refer to as the Big House.
• 38:01
  Speaker 5: Marvin soon moved his parents into the mansion and considered
• 38:04
  Speaker 5: it a fresh start, but his dad, Marvin Senior, as usual,
• 38:10
  Speaker 5: was not happy. He resented the fact that his sexed
• 38:14
  Speaker 5: up son's devil music had bought him this house, and
• 38:17
  Speaker 5: he was still, as the father of an adult man,
• 38:21
  Speaker 5: jealous of his wife's relationship with their son. So in
• 38:26
  Speaker 5: a further effort to patch things up, Marvin Junior would
• 38:29
  Speaker 5: invite both of his parents even to go on tour
• 38:32
  Speaker 5: with him. But his father always declined, choosing instead to
• 38:36
  Speaker 5: stay alone in the big house, stewing in his booze
• 38:40
  Speaker 5: soaked resentment. There was no way he was going to
• 38:43
  Speaker 5: go on tour and watch all these people love his son,
• 38:45
  Speaker 5: love and adore his son. That's the hell for him.
• 38:50
  Speaker 4: And whilst Marvin Jr. Was working on the number one
• 38:52
  Speaker 4: hornier song ever written, Let's Get It On, he was
• 38:54
  Speaker 4: introduced to the girl who would become his second wife.
• 38:57
  Speaker 4: And we say girl and we mean it. Gay would
• 39:00
  Speaker 4: become obsessed with her, singing every one of his songs
• 39:03
  Speaker 4: for the rest of his life with her in mind.
• 39:06
  Speaker 4: Sometimes and this makes me feel uncomfortable, he sometimes would
• 39:09
  Speaker 4: whisper her name softly in the background of recordings. And
• 39:13
  Speaker 4: the problem was she was sixteen. Marvin had been working
• 39:17
  Speaker 4: on Let's Get It On with the singer and songwriter
• 39:19
  Speaker 4: Ed Townsend, and when Townsend brought his teenage daughter in
• 39:23
  Speaker 4: to show her around the studio, Marvin Gaye was smitten
• 39:27
  Speaker 4: with Janis Hunter. Before we move on to pastures new pastures,
• 39:33
  Speaker 4: new and old and old, young and old and everything
• 39:36
  Speaker 4: in between, just because we've mentioned Ed Townsend, I have
• 39:39
  Speaker 4: to ask you how you feel about the Ed Sheeran trial.
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: I didn't follow it as closely as you as you
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: would think, but I just think in general, all of
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: these lawsuits that are being brought are frivolous. For the
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: most part. I think music is there's only twelve notes
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: a man can play. Boys said, hey, you're going to
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: run into these scenarios where there's similarities, and I think
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: there's a much easier way to handle this. I think
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: Tom Petty and Sam Smith there was some beef there,
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: they handled it out of court. It's just like they
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: just go for the juggular. Someone like Ed Cheering is
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: so popular and so successful that I just think it
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: strikes of being too opportunistic.
• 40:21
  Speaker 4: To me, absolutely, And I think I think if Ed
• 40:23
  Speaker 4: Townsend hadn't had success with the blood Lines trial, he
• 40:26
  Speaker 4: would never have gone after Ed Cheering. But I don't
• 40:28
  Speaker 4: know if you saw, but there Ed Sheeran used to
• 40:30
  Speaker 4: do the rounds on like morning talk shows, and he
• 40:33
  Speaker 4: was like, there's only four chords in music. Tell me
• 40:35
  Speaker 4: any song and I will play it for you using
• 40:38
  Speaker 4: only these four chords. And those were the four cords
• 40:40
  Speaker 4: they came after him for. And he, I don't even
• 40:43
  Speaker 4: want to say, got off he rightly was like yeah, vindicated, Yeah, yeah,
• 40:47
  Speaker 4: and he said he said during the trial, he was like,
• 40:49
  Speaker 4: if I lose this, I'm done. I quit the industry
• 40:52
  Speaker 4: because it's ridiculous to sue people over courts. It's really interesting,
• 40:55
  Speaker 4: But I think Edtwnsend will probably give up.
• 40:57
  Speaker 5: Now.
• 40:58
  Speaker 4: I mean one would hope, but I do have an
• 40:59
  Speaker 4: image of just like sitting in his house listening to
• 41:02
  Speaker 4: every trap on Spotify being like, no.
• 41:05
  Speaker 5: That's clocks enough, right down, that's good.
• 41:10
  Speaker 4: But let's get back to Marvin Gaye and where he
• 41:12
  Speaker 4: is in his life. He's thirty three, he's in a
• 41:14
  Speaker 4: crumbling marriage to a woman who's seventy teen years older
• 41:17
  Speaker 4: than him, and now he's obsessed with a girl seventeen
• 41:20
  Speaker 4: years younger than him. So sorry to anyone who loves
• 41:24
  Speaker 4: the song, but the vocal line of this is what
• 41:28
  Speaker 4: a critic said about Let's get it on, unabashed peon
• 41:33
  Speaker 4: to fucking It was sung directly to a sixteen year
• 41:35
  Speaker 4: old girl. Well, thank you, Okay, so we can all
• 41:38
  Speaker 4: feel gross about that for a while.
• 41:40
  Speaker 5: Just don't think about it. The guy was eating cocaine.
• 41:43
  Speaker 5: He didn't know what the fuck was going on, because yes,
• 41:45
  Speaker 5: between eating all his cocaine and having a secret teenage girlfriend.
• 41:49
  Speaker 5: Gay's paranoia was ramping up, so he ran to the
• 41:54
  Speaker 5: Santa Monica Mountains to a small house into Panga Canyon,
• 42:00
  Speaker 5: and in the notes producer briond producer Alex Brand has
• 42:04
  Speaker 5: written down if that name rings a musical true crime bell,
• 42:08
  Speaker 5: well done, have a sticker. That's where Charles Manson got
• 42:11
  Speaker 5: to know the Beach Boys. I didn't know that. All
• 42:14
  Speaker 5: I thought when I heard Tapanga Canyon was did you
• 42:17
  Speaker 5: ever watch Boy Meets Girl? Because that was what that
• 42:18
  Speaker 5: girl's name was.
• 42:19
  Speaker 4: What Topanga Canyon?
• 42:20
  Speaker 5: Topanga? Oh, I can't remember her surname. Do you remember
• 42:26
  Speaker 5: who I mean? No, I'll google it. I'll show you.
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: Jake, do you remember I was confused. I thought you
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: meant that the girl from Boy Meets Girls named Charles Manson.
• 42:37
  Speaker 5: Huh oh yeah, So maybe she was named after the
• 42:41
  Speaker 5: canyon or the Beach Boys. Maybe her parents were big
• 42:44
  Speaker 5: fans of Charles Manson.
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: There you go.
• 42:48
  Speaker 5: Anyway, So when he went to Pank Canyon, remember he's paranoid,
• 42:53
  Speaker 5: he's starting to go off. His rocker is Marvin Gaye Junior.
• 42:56
  Speaker 5: So he gets two ginormous great Danes to ward off intruders,
• 43:01
  Speaker 5: and he hid his secret girlfriend away from his record label,
• 43:04
  Speaker 5: from the press, from his parents, and from his wife
• 43:07
  Speaker 5: because yes, he is still married, and it wasn't a
• 43:09
  Speaker 5: good look, especially after Janie got pregnant at just seventeen
• 43:14
  Speaker 5: years old and then lost the baby, and that pregnancy,
• 43:18
  Speaker 5: by the way, was no accident. Janis has since written quote,
• 43:22
  Speaker 5: we made love at every opportunity, night and day. We
• 43:26
  Speaker 5: never used birth control. It was clear that Marvin wanted
• 43:29
  Speaker 5: me pregnant, and I did nothing to prevent that. His possessiveness, jealousy,
• 43:35
  Speaker 5: and rage over this new muse of his was all
• 43:39
  Speaker 5: consuming for Gay, and Janis was soon exposed to the
• 43:43
  Speaker 5: wilder parts of his lifestyle. One day, they went to
• 43:46
  Speaker 5: a coke fueled party at Richard Pryor's house, where the
• 43:50
  Speaker 5: comedian lost control and smashed a wine bottle over his
• 43:53
  Speaker 5: wife's head. They also went to Studio fifty four with
• 43:57
  Speaker 5: Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall, where actor Ryan O'Neill crept
• 44:01
  Speaker 5: up behind Janis and put his penis on her shoulder.
• 44:05
  Speaker 4: How Mary Kevin's basically of him. Allegedly, after they married,
• 44:12
  Speaker 4: Janie gave birth to their first child, and the forty
• 44:14
  Speaker 4: year old Gay would burrate the twenty two year old
• 44:16
  Speaker 4: jan for her changing post birth body. He'd purposefully swerve
• 44:21
  Speaker 4: the car while driving with jan and the kids in it,
• 44:23
  Speaker 4: and he threatened to drive them off the road, and
• 44:26
  Speaker 4: soon Gay pushed her into affairs with other men, booking
• 44:29
  Speaker 4: hotel rooms for her and any man he saw take
• 44:32
  Speaker 4: a shine to her. Once, when Gay disappeared without a
• 44:36
  Speaker 4: trace from a family holiday in Hawaii, Janis came home
• 44:40
  Speaker 4: and slept with Gay's rival, Teddy Pendergrass, and when Marvin
• 44:44
  Speaker 4: found out, out of his mind on coke and mushrooms,
• 44:47
  Speaker 4: he lunged for Janis with a kitchen knife. He held
• 44:50
  Speaker 4: the knife to her throat and said, this love is
• 44:53
  Speaker 4: killing me. I beg you to provoke me right now
• 44:56
  Speaker 4: so I can take us both out of our misery.
• 44:58
  Speaker 5: It's all very on the no, isn't It's literally what
• 45:01
  Speaker 5: he did to his dad. It's like, yeah, provoke me,
• 45:04
  Speaker 5: provoke me so I can just do it. Yeah, don't
• 45:07
  Speaker 5: make me stay in this state of like wanting to
• 45:10
  Speaker 5: do it. Just make me do it.
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 45:12
  Speaker 5: And it is also interesting because he's a very paranoid
• 45:15
  Speaker 5: man by this point, Like we said, he's very paranoid,
• 45:17
  Speaker 5: he's very possessive, he's very obsessed with maintaining jan to himself.
• 45:22
  Speaker 5: But then he also does the thing of like making
• 45:24
  Speaker 5: her have these affairs with other men, which is interesting.
• 45:28
  Speaker 5: Do you think it's possibly? But then he loses his
• 45:30
  Speaker 5: mind when she sleeps with pentagraphs? Do you think it's
• 45:33
  Speaker 5: a weird way in it's still about him being in control,
• 45:36
  Speaker 5: so as long as he's choosing who it is. Maybe
• 45:38
  Speaker 5: it's again about not staying in that state of will
• 45:41
  Speaker 5: it happen or won't it happen? That psychological abuse that
• 45:44
  Speaker 5: his dad like instilled in him. Maybe it's like she's
• 45:47
  Speaker 5: gonna cheat anyway. I'm sure she's gonna cheat, And maybe
• 45:50
  Speaker 5: he can't stand that in between stage of like when's
• 45:52
  Speaker 5: it gonna happen? So he it's the same as provoking
• 45:55
  Speaker 5: his dad. It's like, I'm going to force you to
• 45:57
  Speaker 5: have this affair. So at least I'm still in control.
• 45:59
  Speaker 5: I know when it's happening, I know what's going on,
• 46:01
  Speaker 5: and I know why I'm so angry. Yeah, maybe I.
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: Think you're out of something. I think it's partly that
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: the control piece of it. I think this part of
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: Marvin Gaye that liked men as well, and like the
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: idea of some of the men that were sleeping with
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: his wife.
• 46:15
  Speaker 5: I think that's part of it, too interesting interesting.
• 46:19
  Speaker 4: Thankfully, on this occasion, Marvin Gaye's mood switched and he
• 46:22
  Speaker 4: let his wife go. She took the kids and she
• 46:24
  Speaker 4: left the good.
• 46:26
  Speaker 5: But Marvin did harass Jan saying that she'd stolen his family.
• 46:31
  Speaker 5: I need accuse her of strange things like sending gang
• 46:34
  Speaker 5: members to try and kill him. It's clear as paranoia
• 46:38
  Speaker 5: was getting worse, and decades of not paying his taxes
• 46:42
  Speaker 5: were catching up to him. The money from his string
• 46:45
  Speaker 5: of hits was still flowing in. He once asked Motown
• 46:48
  Speaker 5: for his recording fee to be given as a million
• 46:51
  Speaker 5: dollars in cash in a suitcase so he could show
• 46:55
  Speaker 5: his father he'd made it.
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: That is so.
• 47:00
  Speaker 5: Desperately sad. I mean, imagine being Marvin gay and still
• 47:07
  Speaker 5: feeling like you need to prove something to your piece
• 47:10
  Speaker 5: of ship father.
• 47:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah, there's speaking of things that are on the nose,
• 47:14
  Speaker 4: and I hate to drag it back to Motown to
• 47:15
  Speaker 4: musical I can't help myself. There's a there's a line
• 47:18
  Speaker 4: in Motown and musical where I think they're arguing about
• 47:21
  Speaker 4: the release of what's going on Berry Gordy and Marvin Gaye,
• 47:24
  Speaker 4: and Marvin Gay just goes, you're not my dad. I
• 47:26
  Speaker 4: have a dad, and then he storms off these yeah,
• 47:31
  Speaker 4: and then you don't really see Marvin Gay for the
• 47:32
  Speaker 4: rest of the show.
• 47:33
  Speaker 5: Because he's in the bag eating code because he's been
• 47:35
  Speaker 5: shot after But this was the problem. So he is
• 47:57
  Speaker 5: earning money, He's still making good money from all of
• 47:59
  Speaker 5: his mut of course he is. But the problem was
• 48:01
  Speaker 5: that as soon as Marvin had any money, it would
• 48:03
  Speaker 5: just go to paying off his debt, paying his divorce proceedings,
• 48:07
  Speaker 5: and also to furnish him with an endless stream of drugs.
• 48:11
  Speaker 5: And by nineteen seventy nine, and surprisingly, Marvion Gay's career
• 48:15
  Speaker 5: had stalled. He was on the run from his ex wives,
• 48:19
  Speaker 5: his family, his fans, his label, and the taxman. For
• 48:24
  Speaker 5: seven months, he hid out in Hawaii, sleeping in his
• 48:28
  Speaker 5: van or on the beach. Imagine how high you would
• 48:32
  Speaker 5: think you were if it was nineteen seventy nine and
• 48:34
  Speaker 5: you were just on the beach and you saw Marvin
• 48:36
  Speaker 5: Gay asleep in the sand. What have I taken?
• 48:42
  Speaker 4: But eventually Marvin Gay agreed to tour the UK to
• 48:46
  Speaker 4: drum up some cash, but it wouldn't be that easy.
• 48:50
  Speaker 4: His terror at performing on stage and his changeable moods
• 48:53
  Speaker 4: made it a nightmare to organize. He climbed out of
• 48:57
  Speaker 4: a window at Heathrow to avoid flying to Manchester for
• 49:00
  Speaker 4: his next show. On another date, he was booked to
• 49:03
  Speaker 4: perform in front of Princess Margaret, who is my favorite
• 49:06
  Speaker 4: Royal Marvin Gay had heard, and these things are true,
• 49:09
  Speaker 4: very hip, like to party. Princess Margaret absolutely both of
• 49:13
  Speaker 4: those things, and that's why she's the best one. But
• 49:16
  Speaker 4: in a sudden change of heart, Marvin Gay claimed that
• 49:19
  Speaker 4: he resented performing for Royalty and said he had been
• 49:22
  Speaker 4: tricked into the show by his tour manager. So Marvin
• 49:25
  Speaker 4: Gay left Princess Margaret waiting in a theater for hours
• 49:31
  Speaker 4: until she finally gave up and left.
• 49:33
  Speaker 5: That's pretty borer of him, though it is like nah.
• 49:37
  Speaker 4: And naturally it was front page news. Headlines like Popstars
• 49:41
  Speaker 4: snubs Margaret were splashed across the tabloids. Gay was making
• 49:44
  Speaker 4: enemies wherever he went. He bounced around Europe and the
• 49:47
  Speaker 4: US CBS bought him for one point five million from Motown,
• 49:52
  Speaker 4: hoping for one last comeback, and Marvin Gay built up
• 49:55
  Speaker 4: his strength. He even sow it up slightly, staying with
• 49:58
  Speaker 4: friends in Belgium, and then he made one of his
• 50:02
  Speaker 4: biggest hits yet, sexual healing.
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: Before we get into the sexual healing that we all
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: so desperately crave, here, can I just go back to
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: Princess Margaret at lea say that Princess Margaret's nineteen sixties
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: exploits with in Swinging London, with the rolling stones, et cetera.
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: There's some fertile stuff there for us to unpack at
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: another time. I just want to sult lay that out.
• 50:26
  Speaker 5: There, perfect, perfect. So in nineteen eighty two, Marvin Gay
• 50:32
  Speaker 5: Senor moved back to Washington, So we left the Big
• 50:35
  Speaker 5: House and he went back to fix up the family's
• 50:37
  Speaker 5: old house. Now for the other residents of the Big
• 50:40
  Speaker 5: House in La So that's Gay's mother Alberta, and his
• 50:44
  Speaker 5: siblings Frankie and Jean, and their families. It finally meant
• 50:48
  Speaker 5: having some peace. Marvin Senior's drinking hadn't improved over the years,
• 50:53
  Speaker 5: and neither had his temper. Soon though, Alberta fell ill.
• 50:58
  Speaker 5: She'd had a risky operation and she had weeks long
• 51:01
  Speaker 5: recovery to get through, all the while Marvin Senior, her husband,
• 51:06
  Speaker 5: was nowhere to be found. Marvin Gaye Junior was furious.
• 51:12
  Speaker 5: He stayed with his mother and made sure she had
• 51:14
  Speaker 5: everything she needed while she recovered, but he was soon
• 51:17
  Speaker 5: pulled away by his public. After five rocky years, his
• 51:23
  Speaker 5: career seemed to have bounced back. He won nine Grammys
• 51:27
  Speaker 5: that year and Sexual Healing would be the biggest R
• 51:32
  Speaker 5: and B hit of the nineteen eighties. Even his drug
• 51:36
  Speaker 5: use was at the lowest it had been for years.
• 51:39
  Speaker 5: But then two things happened to unravel Marvin Gaye once
• 51:44
  Speaker 5: and for all. Firstly, forced out on the road again,
• 51:49
  Speaker 5: his nineteen eighty four tour would prove to be his
• 51:52
  Speaker 5: wildest yet. And secondly, sixteen months after Marvin Senior left
• 51:59
  Speaker 5: he returned to.
• 51:59
  Speaker 4: La on tour. Marvin gay was completely out of control.
• 52:04
  Speaker 4: Things had definitely changed since the early days. Jay, can
• 52:08
  Speaker 4: you tell us a little bit about Marvin gay at
• 52:10
  Speaker 4: his best and then we can compare it to where
• 52:12
  Speaker 4: he ends up?
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: Yes, I can. I mean Marvin gay you mentioned the
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: success of Sexual Healing and even when he's at his best,
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: though he's at his worst so he's on stage and
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: he's crap. Now he's leaning into this, this this sex
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: symbol status that he has, and he's got this like,
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: I don't know, do we talk about this earlier? Do
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: we talk about his the fact that he couldn't dance, No,
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: Marvin Gay couldn't dance unbelievably. If you google Marvin Gay
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: live footage, he kind of you, guys Seinfeld fans probably not.
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: It looks like Elayne Benis dancing. Listeners will know what
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: I'm talking about, just like not a good dancer. So
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: he had all this stage fright about being on stage,
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: and he had all this this shame from this fear
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: of being thought of as being gay because he was
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: sensitive and the stuff with his dad and all that.
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: So the way he combats that in the eighties is
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: he leans into this sex symbol status on stage and
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: he's doing like the strip tease, the sexual healing, and
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: he's kind of a caricature of himself. But it works.
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: It works for a while anyhow. But then the thing
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: we all have to understand about where his live touring goes.
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: I mean, he literally ends up bringing two men on
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: the road with him. One is a priest, the other
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: is his coke dealer, and he has them on opposite
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: rooms in his hotel, connecting rooms so that he can
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: do drugs and then immediately go confess his sins. Wow,
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: talk about on the nose with the angel and the
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: devil on each shoulder. And it's a shame because he
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: was really at the height of his success and for
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: a moment things were cleaned up. But they go off
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: the rails pretty quickly there in the beginning part of
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: the eighties.
• 53:57
  Speaker 5: It's just like he is like nothing if not on
• 54:01
  Speaker 5: the nose. But it is just so tragic because it's
• 54:04
  Speaker 5: like a man who's trying. He's like, I'm gonna take
• 54:07
  Speaker 5: my priest, but he's also like, but I love that coke.
• 54:11
  Speaker 5: I'm taking you too, Dila, get in and Yeah, I
• 54:14
  Speaker 5: just pulled up a live video on YouTube of Marvin
• 54:18
  Speaker 5: Gay singing. I heard it through the grapevine, and you're right,
• 54:20
  Speaker 5: he actually once you know the context of the fact
• 54:23
  Speaker 5: that he didn't enjoy being on stage and that he
• 54:25
  Speaker 5: wasn't a good dancer, you are like, he does look uncomfortable.
• 54:28
  Speaker 5: He looks like he just wants to go backstage and
• 54:29
  Speaker 5: eat some goat.
• 54:30
  Speaker 4: Yeah, a man's gonna eat so, as Jake says, the
• 54:34
  Speaker 4: performances of Sexual Healing got increasingly raunchy, and by the
• 54:38
  Speaker 4: end of this tour in the eighties, by the end
• 54:40
  Speaker 4: of the show, he was basically just standing in his
• 54:42
  Speaker 4: pants off stage. He was throwing back lumps of coke
• 54:45
  Speaker 4: like there were skittles, and the paranoia was all encompassing.
• 54:50
  Speaker 4: He was certain that someone was after him, that a
• 54:52
  Speaker 4: hit man had been hired to take him out, so
• 54:54
  Speaker 4: he insisted that his brother be at his side at
• 54:57
  Speaker 4: all times. They looked so alike that Marvin Gay wanted
• 55:01
  Speaker 4: to use him as a decoy, and at one point
• 55:04
  Speaker 4: he was completely certain that he had been poisoned. He
• 55:07
  Speaker 4: even hired attorney f Lee Bailey, part of OJ Simpson's
• 55:10
  Speaker 4: Dream Team, to find out how he'd been poisoned and
• 55:13
  Speaker 4: who by Marvin Gay said that the only reason he
• 55:16
  Speaker 4: was still standing was that the comedian Dick Gregory had
• 55:20
  Speaker 4: concocted an antidote to the imaginary poison that had saved
• 55:23
  Speaker 4: his life. Gay also went on to become obsessed with firearms.
• 55:28
  Speaker 4: He'd been stockpiling them at his La home before the
• 55:30
  Speaker 4: nineteen eighty four tour, and even brought his parents a
• 55:33
  Speaker 4: handgun for Christmas so they could protect themselves on tour.
• 55:37
  Speaker 4: He made his guards carry submachine guns and wore a
• 55:40
  Speaker 4: bulletproof vest all the way up to the stage.
• 55:43
  Speaker 5: As you can imagine from everything, Hannah just told us
• 55:45
  Speaker 5: all that four month tour was a total disaster. And
• 55:49
  Speaker 5: afterwards Marvin returned to the La House exhausted, manic on
• 55:54
  Speaker 5: the edge, and more paranoid than ever. Gay took a
• 55:59
  Speaker 5: bedroom between his mother and his father on the top floor.
• 56:02
  Speaker 5: Now Alberta and her husband, Marvin Senior hadn't slept in
• 56:05
  Speaker 5: the same room for ten years, so it's basically Mum,
• 56:08
  Speaker 5: Marvin Jr. And Dad on the other side, a little
• 56:11
  Speaker 5: weird messed up sandwich, and Marvin Senior by this point
• 56:15
  Speaker 5: basically just stayed in his room the entire time, swigging vodka,
• 56:20
  Speaker 5: and Marvin Jr. To be honest, stayed in his but
• 56:24
  Speaker 5: he wasn't swingging vodka. He has started freebasing cocaine, which
• 56:29
  Speaker 5: is basically a method of producing cocaine that's almost one
• 56:31
  Speaker 5: hundred percent pure, and its low melting point also makes
• 56:34
  Speaker 5: it easier to smoke. Within seconds, users get a heavy
• 56:38
  Speaker 5: euphoric high followed around half an hour later by a
• 56:42
  Speaker 5: steep crash, which brings fatigue, depression, anxiety, irritability, and even
• 56:47
  Speaker 5: more paranoia. Marvin Gaye had an elaborate security system installed
• 56:52
  Speaker 5: at the La House, but he was in deep. Dealers
• 56:56
  Speaker 5: would be in and out of the house constantly, would women.
• 57:01
  Speaker 5: At one point, up to twenty or thirty people would
• 57:04
  Speaker 5: be coming in and out of that house every day,
• 57:08
  Speaker 5: which is a lot for a man who is that paranoid.
• 57:11
  Speaker 5: And his dad, Marvin Senior, absolutely hated this.
• 57:19
  Speaker 4: And then on the thirty first of March nineteen eighty four,
• 57:22
  Speaker 4: Marvin Senior woke up angry. As well as the commotion
• 57:26
  Speaker 4: of the house. He resented his son's success and his
• 57:29
  Speaker 4: relationship with Alberta and pretty much everything else is Sun
• 57:33
  Speaker 4: did as well, But this particular fight on the thirty
• 57:36
  Speaker 4: first of March was about money. Marvin gay Junior's debts
• 57:40
  Speaker 4: were escalating and it was threatening their home. It was
• 57:44
  Speaker 4: later reported that at this stage Marvin Gaye owed over
• 57:46
  Speaker 4: a million dollars to the IRS, a further six hundred
• 57:49
  Speaker 4: thousand dollars to the state of California, and another three
• 57:52
  Speaker 4: hundred thousand dollars in divorce payments.
• 57:54
  Speaker 5: In nineteen eighty four. Man, oh my god, that is horrific.
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah. In one of the divorce settlements, the judge made
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: Marvin Gaye fork over the royalties to his ex wife
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: from his albums. He had like four albums he had
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: to produce where all the royalties had to go to
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: his ex wife. So he purposefully tried to make them
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: shit and he just couldn't. He just couldn't. Too good.
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: Just they're not bad albums at all. Wow, I don't think.
• 58:22
  Speaker 5: Anyways, that's amazing.
• 58:26
  Speaker 4: Marvin Senior was obsessed with wanting his son to know
• 58:29
  Speaker 4: that he was a failure after all, and then when
• 58:33
  Speaker 4: Alberta couldn't produce a specific insurance document, Marvin gay Senior
• 58:38
  Speaker 4: flew into a rage. He spent the rest of the
• 58:40
  Speaker 4: day storming about the house late into the evening, shouting
• 58:43
  Speaker 4: at no one in particular.
• 58:45
  Speaker 5: It distressed Marvin Jr. But he knew better than to
• 58:49
  Speaker 5: step in between his parents having a fight unless he
• 58:53
  Speaker 5: absolutely had to. Like we told you earlier, he knew
• 58:57
  Speaker 5: what raising a hand to his father would mean. The
• 59:01
  Speaker 5: next day, the first of April, the argument was still simmering.
• 59:05
  Speaker 5: Irene Marvin's sister in law came from the guesthouse with
• 59:09
  Speaker 5: breakfast for Alberta. Alberta had seen the state of Marvin
• 59:13
  Speaker 5: Junior in the past few days. He looked boned, hired,
• 59:17
  Speaker 5: like he hadn't slept for months. He looked, in his
• 59:20
  Speaker 5: mum's words, like he wanted to give up. So she
• 59:24
  Speaker 5: gave the breakfast that had been brought in to Marvin Junior.
• 59:28
  Speaker 5: And for some reason, for Marvin Senior, this was the
• 59:32
  Speaker 5: final straw. He saw it as yet another act of
• 59:35
  Speaker 5: favoritism and more disrespect, And at just after midday on
• 59:42
  Speaker 5: the first of April nineteen eighty four, he shouted up
• 59:45
  Speaker 5: the stairs to Alberta, and Marvin Junior shouted back.
• 59:51
  Speaker 4: Here's what he said. He said that if his father
• 59:54
  Speaker 4: had something to say to Alberta, then he could come
• 59:56
  Speaker 4: upstairs and say it himself. Oh God, and so Marvin
• 59:59
  Speaker 4: Senia did. He tore up the stairs, and as he
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 4: ran in, screaming at both of them, Marvin Jr. Leapt
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 4: out of bed and shoved his father to the ground.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 4: He punched and kicked Marvin Senior again and again. When
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 4: Alberta separated them, Marvin Senior quietly picked himself up dusted
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 4: himself off and went into his room. He returned with
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 4: a thirty eight handgun that his son had bought him
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 4: three months before for Christmas. Without a word, Marvin Gay
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 4: Senior shot his son, Marvin Gay Junior, directly in the heart.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 5: It's just such a classic and this like build up
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 5: of violence in an abusive home with a narcissistic parent.
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 5: And he was waiting, he was looking for something to
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 5: happen because Marvin Gaye Senior already knew the endgame. He
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 5: already knew he was going to do that. It was
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 5: just how am I going to get there? So the
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 5: bullet into Marvin Gay Junior's chest ricocheted through his right lung, diaphragm, liver, stomach,
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 5: and left kidney. And after he had shot his son,
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 5: Marvin Senior calmly stepped forward and fired again into his
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 5: son's left shoulder, and they go there's proof that it
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 5: wasn't just a heat of the moment, a snap. He
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 5: had time to go into another room, pick up his gun,
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 5: come back in there, shoot him, and then shoot his son,
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 5: who's already on the floor again. So as this is happening,
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 5: Frankie Gay, Marvin's brother, heard the shots and ran over
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 5: and he called nine on one. He then lay by
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 5: his brother as a pool of blood covered the floor.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 5: Marvin Junior was saying the entire time, I got what
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 5: I wanted, I couldn't do it myself, so I had
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 5: him do it. It's good. I ran my race. There's
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 5: no more left than me. Oh my god.
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 2: That is so.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 5: It's just so sad because it is just the cycle
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 5: of his life ending up exactly where both of them
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 5: knew it was going to end. It's almost like the
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 5: tragic inevitability of it. And I know people say this
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 5: all the time and it's such a cliche, but it's
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 5: like watching a car crash in slow motion. This is
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 5: exactly where it was always going to end up. The
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 5: gun was recovered just twenty minutes later. It had been
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 5: tossed on the front lawn of the house. Marvin Gaye
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 5: was declared dead on arrival at California Hospital Medical Center
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 5: just after one pm. It was the day before his
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 5: forty fifth birthday.
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 4: Marvin gay Senior was arrested and held at La County
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 4: Jail on a one hundred thousand dollars bail. His account
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 4: of the incident was widely reported, and he painted Marvin
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 4: Junior as having exploded in a drug fueled frenzy, claiming
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 4: that he had had no choice but to shoot his
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 4: son in self defense. Doctors also found a walnut sized
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 4: tumor in Marvin Senior's portuitary gland. His lawyer suggested that
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 4: this may have affected his judgment, but the judge ruled
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 4: that Marvin Senior knew absolutely what he was doing and
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 4: that he was fit to stand trial.
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 3: Good.
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 4: Once again, he testified that his son was out of
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 4: control and that quote, he knocked me onto the bed,
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 4: and when I fell, my hand happened to feel the
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 4: little gun under the pillow, and Marvin Senior said that
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 4: he was sure that the gun was loaded with b
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 4: B pellets. And in September, Marvin Senior unbelievably faced a
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 4: reduced charge of voluntary manslaughter, mainly owing to evidence of
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 4: bruising on his own body from the incident, and he
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 4: pleaded no contest. The court heard that PCP had been
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 4: found in Marvin Junior's body, which is known to make
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 4: people violent. However, it was totally untrue. The prosecution had
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 4: either misread or willingly misinterpreted the coroner's report.
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 5: Alberta.
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 4: Marvin's mum also repeated her version of events, which were
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 4: that her husband had left the room after an altercation,
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 4: returned with a gun, and then coldly shot their son.
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 5: Still, the narrative held that Marvin Junior had flown into
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 5: a drug induced rage and Marvin Senior had to defend himself.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 5: It's so awful, but it's like Marvin Junior, he's basically
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 5: been on tour. He's acted crazy, he's made a lot
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 5: of enemies, he's made a bit of a tit of himself,
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 5: and so people are like, of course, I believe that
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 5: he went into some sort of drug field mania because
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 5: this was bound to happen, and it was, you know,
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 5: it was behind closed doors. Like we said, his dad
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 5: was a domestic terrorist. Was behind closed doors that people
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 5: knew what he was really like. To everybody else, he
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 5: was just you know, a bit of a kooky preacher
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 5: who happened to be Marvin Gaye Junior's dad. So of
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 5: course people were like, yeah, that makes sense. So on
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 5: November the second, six months after he shot his son,
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 5: Marvin Senior faced as sentencing and he was asked directly
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 5: at this sentencing whether he loved his son, to which
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 5: he replied, let's say I didn't dislike.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: Him, so brutal, so brutal so.
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 5: Judge Gordon Ringer's closing statement was this, this is one
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 5: of those terribly tragic cases in which a young life
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 5: was snuffed out. But under the circumstances, it seems to
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 5: be agreed by everybody, including the very able and experienced
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 5: investigating officers in this case, that the young man who
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 5: died tragically provoked this incident and it was all his fault.
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 5: Even just the fact that the judge uses the word
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 5: provoked this incident. It's like if this was some sort
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 5: of Hammy lifetime movie, who'd be like, stop beating me
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 5: over the head with it. Yeah, stop beating me over
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 5: the head with this narrative. But it's you can't escape it.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 5: So Marvin Senior was sentenced to a six year suspended sentence,
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 5: which was then reduced to five years probation. So Marvin
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 5: Gay Senior, who shot his son twice once while he
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 5: was lying on the floor, never went to prison. After
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 5: fourty nine years of marriage, Alberta Gez finally divorced him
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 5: after the trial, and he was prohibited from owning firearms
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 5: or drinking alcohol. But he lived at the ripe old
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 5: age of eighty four and died in just nineteen ninety eight.
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 4: So hopefully we've shown you throughout this episode that there
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 4: were two sides to Marvin gay We've definitely covered some
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 4: of the more troubled aspects of his life, but we
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 4: also have to couple that up with an incredibly astute,
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 4: deeply talented artist that he was. He was beloved around
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 4: the world, still is. Ten thousand people cued for hours
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 4: to pass his open coffin and Jake, one last time,
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 4: we're going to hand over to you as our music savant.
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 4: Could you tell us a little bit about the legacy
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 4: that Marvin gay left behind?
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: For sure, you know, on the one hand, it's complicated,
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: Like you said, he was a very complicated guy. He
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: had really messed up relationships in his life with women
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: that were violent. But on the other hand, you know,
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: if I look at the most important thing that Marvin
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: Gaye did, it is that album. What's going on? That
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: to me is the crown jewel of his legacy. If
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: he hadn't made that album, he would be just known
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: as this great soul singer who had a bunch of hits,
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: bunch of number one hits, and you know, perhaps moved
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: the genre in some sort of innovative ways, but with
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: what's going on, he took it to an entirely different level.
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: And like we said earlier, he created license for black
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: artists to protest using the Billboard charts and that had
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: never been done before, and we take it for granted now,
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: and it was a monumental achievement. And I think that's
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: to me, that's the most significant part of Marvin Gaye's legacy.
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 4: I think the most like overwhelming tragedy of the whole thing. Obviously,
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 4: as we said multiple times, not excusing anything Marvin gay did,
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 4: but I think the saddest thing is that even though
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 4: he was at one time probably the most successful artist
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 4: in the world, his dad controlled literally everything, even the
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 4: way he died.
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: Right, good point, good point.
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 4: And that's all we've got.
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 5: So that is it, guys, that is it. That is
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 5: the story of Marvin Gaye Jr. I'm not going to
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 5: say and Marvin gay Senior, because fuck that guy. And Jake, yes,
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 5: this is it. This is your last like ten seconds
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 5: to bring up pandas you felt to do it back.
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: That oh my god, Oh my god, no, no, I
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: have the perfect one though you know it's Marvin Gaye's
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: other brother, Panda Gay. But he was the good son.
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: He was the one that Marvin gay Senior actually loved,
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: totally controlled by kind of child, actually doesn't have.
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 5: Sex, he ate se they go there, you go, all right,
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 5: you did it, you did it. Guinness is on me
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 5: when we finally meet up. Oh my god, my voice
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 5: is going.
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 4: Okay, I'm going to wrap it up because Serrus he's dead.
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 5: Okay, I killed it.
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 2: Cool.
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 4: So thank you so much for joining us. Jay, You've
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 4: got an absolutely encyclopedic knowledge of music that we will
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 4: be stealing from you once more, I'm sure, or many
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 4: times more.
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: Pleasure was all mine. Thank you so much for having me.
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: Loved hanging out and talking to you guys.
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 4: Wonderful.
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 5: Thank you, Jake, everyone,