‘What’s Going On’ at 45: The Time Marvin Gaye Reminded Us That Only Love Could Conquer Hate

Marvin Gaye had to fight Berry Gordy at Motown to get this album made and released. The label was transitioning from Detroit to Los Angeles at the time. Vietnam kept raging on,President Nixon was blowing a dog whistle to bring down the sociopolitcal revolts of the 60’s and Marvin was depressed. He decided to write an album from the point of view of his brother Frankie-coming back into an unwelcoming America from Vietnam. With the help of the Four Tops’ Renaldo “Obie” Benson and Motown’s bass maestro James Jamerson, Marvin came up with a musical masterpiece whose appeal is still evolving.

What’s Going On has a basic groove-a cinematic soul jazz sort of sound on just about every song. Marvin scats and improvises many of the vocal adlibs himself. The title song begins the album on a happier note-hoping that people will come to deal with the racial,political and ecological concerns Marvin is so troubled by. By the time of the instrumentally brilliant,percussive Latin soul stomp of “Inner City Blues”,Marvin has given up. He sings “make me wanna holler/throw up both my hands”. To this day,it’s really up to the given listener whether they feel Marvin’s mixed emotions here are cathartic or enervating.

Berry Gordy turned out to be very wrong that this album had no potential. Not only was it a huge commercial success for Marvin Gaye,but he could hardly go one concert after this without inserting the title song of this album into his set. That goes to show how sometimes,the artist making the music really has more of a finger on the pulse of the people than those peddling their raw creative material. In 2001,the album was expanded into a 2 CD deluxe edition. Upon hearing it,I went to Amazon.com and reviewed this new presentation of this 1971 classic on thoroughly musical terms:

How do you make a overly reissued album classic better? Well actually this one DOES-I love all the songs on ‘What’s Going On’-it’s a great album but I always felt that it was highly overproduced.This one starts with the original followed by a different variation on the same album called ‘the original Detroit Mix’-THIS version is far more understated in the finest Donny Hathaway tradition and truly brings out the richness of Marvin’s voice and the depth of his vision-the sparer arrangement actually better expresses the music’s message of urban and environmental blight.There’s still orchestration but it isn’t mixed so high.

It’s also forcing one to acknowledge how great a pianist Gaye is.And that’s why I highly recommend that those who purchased previous issues of this CD should go out and pick this set up-that along with a bonus disk of live material and outtakes make this the definitive version of this album-to such an extent myself bought this and gave my original CD issue of this album (in this case the tepid ripoff of 1994’s so called ‘deluxe edition’) to my dad,a fellow music lover who I felt would benefit from having the album in his collection alongside his other classics like The Beatles White Album,Curtis Mayfield’s ‘Superfly’ and John Coltrane’s ‘A Love Supreme’ where it belongs!For those who want to replace an old copy of this CD with a better one LOOK NO FURTHER!For those you for whatever reason haven’t been initiated-well,what more can I say-there is no better place to come!

Marvin was seeking with this album,to quote George Clinton about funk in general,not to tell people what to think but that they CAN think. It begins with a black man who’d made good in the world. And him looking through the eyes of a loved one who wasn’t so lucky in that regard. He starts out with a degree of optimism. By the end of the album,one realizes how much of a thoroughly human figure Marvin Gaye was. By the time it ends, he has almost lost  hope. Especially with Jamerson’s bass lines,the instrumentation is what tends to carry the positivity through when even Marvin can’t anymore.

This is the type of album inspired a lot of artists to make what I refer to as “people music”-a type of message music that takes the ethnocentric melodies and rhythms of the artists back-round to express important ideas. Unintentionally, this album became the “people music” for Generation X . This is an intelligent and aware generation of Americans who often lacked focus and interest. And with the election of Gen Xer Barack Obama for two presidential terms in America, this album seemingly succeeded in getting a generation who didn’t want to get involved to find that way to bring  loving here today.

 

Anatomy Of The Groove For 2/13/2015-“Shut ‘Um Down” by Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson

The late Gil Scott Heron,self proclaimed “bluesologist” evoked a three prong musical transition in the 1970’s. He began by primarily performing raps over percussion and flutes to a melodic small group jazz/funk sound. During the late 70’s,he and his keyboard playing musical partner Brian Jackson began utilizing synthesizer abstractions in their music,based on the sounds created by Stevie Wonder at the same synthesizer facility Brian was using-TONTO. In 1980,Gil and Brian elected to put their collaboration on pause to pursue separate interests with their album 1980 at the very start of the new decade with it’s lead off song “Shut ‘Um Down”.

Beginning with a low rumbling piano that ascends into an explosive up-scaling after which Gil declares “hey what’s that rumble/did you hear that sound/know it wasn’t no earthquake,but it shook the ground”. The musical accompaniment has instantly swelled by this time into a slow,stomping and incredibly funky dance beat with very grits and gravy style juke joint piano accompanied by a medium pitched,rocking amplified guitar. On the choruses Gil is accompanied vocally by gospel drenched female backup singers along with a horn section blowing and wailing the changes. On the refrain,Brian Jackson takes over on a deep synth bass accompanying himself on a higher pitched ARP-sounding melodic synth line.

Musically speaking this song evokes the clean,concise production of a song such as Herb Alpert’s “Rise” with a get down and funky attitude-full of psychedelic soul flourishes,female choral vocals that take it back to Church as the saying going and most importantly? It all emphasizes Gil’s consistent emphasis in his vocal/song structured music on the usefulness of the very basic blues form in just about every aspect of black American music of the 60’s,70’s and even the beginning of the new decade. The song has a disco era four on the floor beat. But it really brings out George Clinton’s musical idea that anytime the rhythms and beats are slowed down? The music get’s incredibly funky.

Lyrically this song took on a theme one might not expect from Gil Scott-Heron. Long a champion of black power with his combination of razor sharp wit and homespun wisdom,this song deals with the massive environmental “no nukes” movement that arose enormously after the near meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in 1979. Gil calls for the immediate shutdown of all such power plants in America. Having been “thinking about power” on a literal and figurative level? He’s concluded that we’ve “gotta work for Earth,for all it’s worth ’cause it’s the only one we’ve got”. As one of the very few black musical spokespeople for environmentalism during the early 1980’s? This song is a strong thematic continuation of Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” from a decade earlier. And as such being strong “people music” represents one of Gil and Brian’s very funkiest jams ever!