Bonus Episode: Jake x RedHanded Crossover Episode

Summary

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DISGRACELAND x RedHanded Crossover: The Murder of Marvin Gaye

Released: November 9, 2023

Main Theme & Purpose

This special crossover bonus episode features Jake Brennan, host of DISGRACELAND, joining the co-hosts of RedHanded (Hannah and Suruthi) for a deep dive into one of music history’s most haunting true crime stories: the murder of Marvin Gaye by his father, Marvin Gaye Sr. The conversation blends true crime, music history, and cultural analysis, peeling back the layers behind the myth of the Motown legend for both fans of criminal tales and pop culture.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Introducing the Hosts and the Collaboration

• The episode opens with friendly banter about how the crossover came about via Instagram comments.
  [07:42]

  “It did indeed. We did Brenda Spencer… someone from Disgraceland commented and being like we should collab on the music side.” – Hannah

• Jake explains DISGRACELAND's mission:
  [06:26]

  “Disgraceland is very simply a music and true crime podcast. ...either the insane crimes [musicians] have committed or have happened to them.” – Jake Brennan

2. The Troubled Gaye Family History

• Marvin Gaye Sr.: Raised in violence and joined an ultra-strict cult-like church (House of God, the Holy Church of the Living God…).
  [11:32]

  “This church was called the House of God, the holy church of the living God, the pillar and the ground of the truth, the house of prayer for all people.” – Suruthi

• The church mixed Pentecostal Christianity and Orthodox Judaism, with extreme rules and gender subservience.
  [12:31]

  “Women and girls were subservient, dressed all in white with embroidered blue skull caps... No shellfish or pork.” – Hannah

• Marvin Gaye Jr.’s traumatic childhood: Physical, psychological, and emotional abuse by his father, and deep family resentment.
  [13:02]

  “He’d even tell his children straight, I brought you into this world and I can take you out.” – Hannah

3. The Music: Roots in Gospel, Doo Wop, and the Genesis of Soul

• The church’s musical influence was profound—Jake contextualizes for listeners:
  [19:37]

  “It’s hard to overstate just how influential gospel music…was on black culture in the 40s and 50s… it becomes what we now know as soul music. So Marvin Gaye is a young kid... in Sam Cooke, he sees a model.” – Jake Brennan

• Discussion about doo-wop, Motown’s “assembly line” brilliance, and Marvin’s emergence as a star.
  [23:14]

  “Doo wop… is vocal music, acapella music that sprung from street corners, largely… those tight harmonies from the gospel church influenced doo-wop as well.” – Jake Brennan
  [33:19]
  “All caveats… that Berry Gordy was a very bad guy… But I just want to give the proper context [to Motown’s significance].” – Jake Brennan

4. Family Dysfunction Escalates with Fame

• Marvin’s fraught relationship with his father bleeds into all aspects of his life and career.
  [14:12]

  “My husband never wanted Marvin and he never liked him... He didn't want me to love him either.” – Alberta Gay (Marvin’s mother, quoted by Suruthi)

• Patterns of control, self-sabotage, drugs, and exploitation in both personal and professional settings.

5. Artistic Legacy: “What’s Going On” and Breaking Barriers

• Marvin Gaye’s masterpiece, the social protest album “What’s Going On,” faced initial rejection by Berry Gordy for being political and “loose,” but Gaye persisted and forced its release.
  [43:04]

  “Berry Gordy heard the demo… and he hated it… he especially didn’t like that it was political… but Stevie Wonder loved it… and the radio stations freaked out… It becomes this massive hit.” – Jake Brennan

• The album’s cultural impact: First time a black artist could protest on the charts.
  [45:46]

  “It quite literally gave license… to black artists to protest on the charts. That had never been done before.” – Jake Brennan

6. Downward Spiral: Drugs, Isolation, and Paranoia

• Marvin’s success could not conquer his inner demons. His drug use escalated to smoking and eating cocaine; paranoia took over. He surrounded himself with bodyguards, firearms, and demanded financial proof of success for his father.
  [55:41]

  “He once asked Motown for his recording fee… as a million dollars in cash… so he could show his father he’d made it. That is so desperately sad.” – Suruthi
  [66:43]
  “He literally ends up bringing two men on the road with him. One is a priest, the other is his coke dealer… so that he can do drugs and then immediately go confess his sins.” – Jake Brennan

7. The Murder: Tragic Inevitability

• On April 1, 1984, after days of building tension and a fight over a perceived slight, Marvin Gaye Sr. shot his son with a gun Marvin Jr. himself had bought.
  [73:36]

  “He returned with a .38 handgun that his son had bought him three months before for Christmas. Without a word, Marvin Gaye Sr. shot his son Marvin Gaye Jr. directly in the heart.” – Suruthi

• Gaye’s last words (as reported by his brother Frankie):
  [74:05]

  “I got what I wanted. I couldn’t do it myself, so I had him do it. It’s good. I ran my race. There’s no more left in me.”

8. Legal Aftermath and Legacy

• Marvin Gaye Sr. presented a narrative of self-defense rooted in a supposed “drug-fueled rage,” yet evidence was misrepresented.
  [76:12]

  “The narrative held that Marvin Jr. had flown into a drug-induced rage… It was, you know, behind closed doors… his dad was a domestic terrorist.” – Suruthi

• Judge’s cold summation and Gaye Sr.’s essentially consequence-free life after the murder:
  [78:09]

  “Let’s say I didn’t dislike him...” – Marvin Gaye Sr. (at sentencing)

• Marvin Gaye’s sprawling legacy: open-casket memorial attended by thousands, and “What’s Going On” atop Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 greatest albums.
  [80:05]

  “…If I look at the most important thing Marvin Gaye did, it is that album ‘What’s Going On’… He created license for black artists to protest using the Billboard charts… monumental achievement.” – Jake Brennan

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Marvin Sr.’s parenting:

  “It was like living with a very peculiar, changeable, cruel and all-powerful king narcissist.” – Marvin Gaye Jr., recalled by Hannah [18:25]

• On the legacy of gospel in pop music:

  “Gospel music is… the Sunday morning music… There’s a looseness to it and ironically, a sexuality… when it merged with pop, it becomes what we now know as soul music.” – Jake Brennan [20:05]

• On what broke the Motown machine:

  “With ‘What’s Going On’, it’s particularly hard… there was nothing like it… it opened the floodgates.” – Jake Brennan [44:49]

• On Motown and Berry Gordy:

  “You can be a great person and not be a good person… you can make huge amounts of change… and still be a bad guy behind closed doors.” – Suruthi [34:00]

• On the end:

  “He was saying, the entire time, ‘I got what I wanted. I couldn’t do it myself. So I had him do it. It’s good. I ran my race. There’s no more left in me.’” – Suruthi [74:05]

• On legacy:

  “If he hadn’t made that album, he would be just known as this great soul singer… But with ‘What’s Going On’, he created license for black artists to protest… monumental achievement.” – Jake Brennan [80:05]

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Timeline & Timestamps for Key Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | Summary | |-----------|-------------------------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------| | 03:39 | Introductions & collaboration | Jake joins RedHanded; show missions explained | | 08:51 | The Gaye family background | Marvin Sr., church, abusive dynamic | | 19:37 | Black gospel’s musical legacy | Jake on gospel’s influence on pop and soul | | 23:14 | Doo-wop & Motown explained | Jake explains doo-wop, Motown’s business model | | 34:00 | Music industry context | The complexity of Berry Gordy and Motown’s achievements and flaws | | 41:23 | Marvin’s duality emerges | Drug use, fame, performance anxiety escalate | | 43:04 | “What’s Going On” | The battle over releasing the album; significance | | 55:41 | Gaye’s need for father’s approval | Marvin’s desperate attempts to finally win approval | | 66:43 | Touring chaos | Jake on Marvin’s priest-dealer duality and stage neuroses | | 73:36 | The shooting | Marvin Sr. shoots Marvin Jr.; aftermath begins | | 80:05 | Final legacy discussion | Jake and hosts reflect on Gaye's cultural and artistic impact |

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Tone & Style

The conversation is darkly humorous and irreverent, but also deeply empathetic. Hannah and Suruthi maintain their trademark blend of gallows humor and serious inquiry, while Jake brings encyclopedic music knowledge and wry asides.

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Takeaways for Newcomers

• Marvin Gaye’s life was a turbulent blend of musical genius and deep familial trauma.
• His artistic output, especially “What’s Going On,” forever changed the way black artists could address social issues through mainstream music.
• The cycle of abuse, addiction, and the quest for acceptance by a destructive parent ultimately led to his tragic, almost “pre-destined” murder.
• The episode is layered, moving from historical and cultural context to psychological insight, all interjected with raw, candid humor.

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Memorable Closer:

• Jake finally makes a promised panda reference in the last seconds to win a Guinness wager. [81:38]

  “You know, it’s Marvin Gaye’s other brother, Panda Gaye…” – Jake Brennan

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Recommended For:
Listeners interested in the interwoven worlds of true crime, music history, family dysfunction, and the cost of genius. Even if you’re unfamiliar with Marvin Gaye, this episode is an enthralling, unsettling, and insightful chronicle of both personal and cultural tragedy.

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Transcript

[Becca Tilly]

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[Jake Brennan]

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[Becca Tilly]

Wow.

[Jake Brennan]

There's also French toast, a ham and cheese omelette, and oh, they got a BLT and fries now.

[Becca Tilly]

Okay, we're coming here every day.

[Jake Brennan]

You don't have to tell me twice.

[Hannah]

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[Becca Tilly]

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[Hannah]

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[Becca Tilly]

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[Jake Brennan]

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[Hannah]

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[Jake Brennan]

Hey Discos, need a little more Disgraceland in your life? Just a touch to get you through. Yeah, me too. This is the podcast that comes after the podcast. Welcome to Disgraceland. The After Party. Welcome to the Disgraceland bonus episode. A little thing we like to call the After Party. This is the show after the show. The party after the party. The bridge to get you from one full all right guys, this is an extra special after Party bonus episode because I was able to sit down as a guest with two of my favorite podcasters. The incredibly smart, funny and talented women from one of the biggest true crime shows on the planet, the Red Handed Podcast. These guys just won the Listener's Choice Award at the British Podcast Awards for the third straight year. And we spent our time talking about the murder of Marvin Gaye, which is something that I know you guys will be interested in because as you know, we released an episode on Marvin Gaye sometime back and we'll be re releasing it into the feed after this red handed conversation drops. Going to be making a habit of this, finding ways to resurface archive episodes as we've been doing, but with a little more intention when we have them hit your feeds. They're going to be hitting your feed every Friday. But more on that later. All right, for now I give you me the Murder of Marvin Gaye and the Red Handed Podcast. A podcast you guys are going to be sure to go follow as soon as this episode ends. All right, thanks, guys. Let's do it.

[Hannah]

I'm Hannah.

[Becca Tilly]

I'm Sruti.

[Hannah]

And welcome to Red Handed. But no ordinary Red handed. Dun dun dun dun. Very extra special. Very exciting. Red Handed.

[Becca Tilly]

Very musical. Red Handed.

[Hannah]

A very musical Red Handed.

[Becca Tilly]

A musical murdery.

[Hannah]

Red handed. And we have the absolute pleasure of welcoming Jake Brennan from I read just this very morning on the Interwebs, host of the most downloaded podcast of all time, Disgraceless.

[Becca Tilly]

So podcast royalty, Jake, talk to the people.

[Hannah]

Don't caveat it.

[Jake Brennan]

Hey, guys. Hey.

[Hannah]

Hey.

[Jake Brennan]

I'm so happy to be here. I'm not in London though. I'm here in the States. Thanks for having me. I do have a just. You know, I hate to be an asshole right out of the gate, but quick correction, most downloaded music podcast read that.

[Hannah]

Qualify me there.

[Becca Tilly]

There we go. That is a big win. Still though, there's a lot of music podcasts there. So congratulations, Big one.

[Jake Brennan]

Well, thank you very much. Thank you.

[Becca Tilly]

For the people who are listening who for some reason have not heard of Disgraceland, please can you tell them who you are, what you guys do? Tell us a little bit.

[Jake Brennan]

Sure. Disgraceland is very simply a music and true crime podcast. So everything we do has a true crime angle to it. We tell the stories of musicians and either the insane crimes that they have themselves committed or been accused of committing or. Or just the insane things that have happened to them. So it's everything from, you know, Cardi B assaulting somebody in a. In a club to Jerry Lee Lewis potentially getting away with murdering his wife to the assassination of John Lennon to Lil Peep overdosing Mac Miller. We're all over the place. We cover every single genre. And yeah, it's just music and true crime. That's the easiest way to say it.

[Becca Tilly]

Nice. Well, we are very excited to have you here. And listeners, you guys know we don't do this very often. We haven't done very many collabs on Red Handed. But we thought, you know what, we're getting into the end of the year this month. You guys are getting a two parter on Lynette Dawson and a two parter probably on Israel Keys. So there is a lot. There is a lot of like just hardcore true crime coming your way. So we're not stepping away from it today. Don't worry. Like I said, very murdery today. But we thought we would try something a bit different and invite our new friend Jake onto the show. And I think it is quite A nice story how this happened, isn't it? Because I believe it all stemmed off the back of an Instagram comment.

[Hannah]

It did indeed. So we did Brenda Spencer, who's obviously inspiring of Boom Timer outside Monday. And then I like to think it was Jake. It might have been someone else. Someone from Disgraceland commented and being like we should collab on the music side of this. And I was like, sick. Yes. But we'd obviously already done Brenda Spencer. We have so out of that sprang a conversation and then we landed on the case that we're gonna do now

[Becca Tilly]

and I'm very excited. I did not know what happened to the person in this story. Happened to the person in this story.

[Hannah]

I think we can say his name. It's in the title.

[Becca Tilly]

Marvin Gaye. I did not know what happened to Marvin Gaye. Happened to Marvin Gaye. So I'm very excited to guest started. And also like Jake said he couldn't be here in London today. He is in the States. He is actually my moving buddy because we're both moving houses tomorrow. So there's a lot of boxes and a lot of moving around going on at the moment. But Jake has promised that he's going to try and bring up the topic of pandas. And if he does, the next time we do meet, I will owe him one Guinness. So let's see what we can do, people.

[Hannah]

It's the same color as pandas.

[Becca Tilly]

Oh, it is.

[Jake Brennan]

Good one. Yes.

[Hannah]

They're everywhere trying to hunt you down. Right. Okay. I think then with introductions out the way, we should get going.

[Becca Tilly]

Let's do it.

[Hannah]

All right, is everyone ready? Jake, you ready?

[Jake Brennan]

Let's rock. I'm ready.

[Hannah]

Okay. This is the story of two Marvin Gays. On the face of it is the story of two men. Marvin Pence Gaye Sr. And Marvin Pence Gaye Jr. 1, a cross dressing Pentecostal preacher who ruled with an iron fist and the other a multi award winning voice of a generation.

[Becca Tilly]

That's quite a mouthful. It's quite a sentence.

[Hannah]

Well, I crushed it, so thank you very much. But also, the chart topping Motown legend was nowhere near perfect. Behind the charming soul singer with the golden voice was a controlling, self sabotaging, unpredictable wreck. And this fight between the two sides of himself as well as the destructive force that was his father, stalked Marvin Gaye throughout his career. Through number one albums, multiple Grammys and critical acclaim. He fled his demons and the ghost of his father's abuse to Hawaii, Belgium and deep into the Santa Monica mountains where he held a shaking knife to his Girlfriend, Throat. And eventually, just after a whirlwind tour, he returned to his parents house and died by his father's hand. This is the story of one of the most notorious murders in musical history.

[Becca Tilly]

The first Marvin Gaye with no e was born on a Kentucky form.

[Hannah]

Where am I?

[Jake Brennan]

You sound like you're from Boston Fom. Did you do that for me because I'm from Boston?

[Becca Tilly]

Did I do Phuom? Did I do form in a Boston accent? He was born on a Kentucky farm in October 1914, and he was actually one of 13 children.

[Hannah]

That's too many.

[Becca Tilly]

That is a lot of children.

[Hannah]

Thirteen, too many, in my opinion.

[Becca Tilly]

And unfortunately for Marvin Gaye Sr, this giant family was vicious. He grew up in a storm of fights, which occasionally escalated into serious violence and sometimes even a bullet. One afternoon, Marvin recalls his father beating his mother until blood poured out of her face. Another night, his father shot his mother, but said it was just a warning. It's a hell of a warning. Now, Marvin Gaye Sr's mother survived, but the atmosphere scarred the young Marvin and taught him the meaning of violence as power. When he was young, his mother moved the family to a new church. And if you thought what you had to say, Hannah was a mouthful. Let me tell you the name of this church, because this church was called the House of God. The holy church of the living God, the pillar and the ground of the truth, the house of prayer for all people.

[Hannah]

Put the thesaurus down. It's enough. House of God is enough.

[Becca Tilly]

They were just like, we got to get everybody bums on pews. What do we call it? But just for fun, they called it the House of God for short.

[Hannah]

And the House of God was a pretty interesting mix. It combined Pentecostal Christianity with Orthodox Judaism. And that meant no Christmas and no Easter neither.

[Becca Tilly]

Oh, boo. I know the worst of everything.

[Hannah]

Who were we talking to the other day who was saying that he knew loads of Jehovah's Witnesses and it was mainly people who just, like, didn't want to pay for Christmas. It was Callum, our videographer.

[Becca Tilly]

Yeah. So yesterday when we went on our ghost hunt, our videographer was saying where he grew up, there were a lot of Jehovah's Witnesses. But he was like, but it was mainly just the dads who didn't have jobs. And they were like, no, Christmas, we don't do Christmas. We don't do birthdays. It's very cheap when you don't celebrate anything.

[Jake Brennan]

As a dad, I can't get behind that. I just can't do It Christmas is. It's worth the hassle, I think. Unless you're Marvin Gaye, then it's definitely not worth it.

[Becca Tilly]

No, you're right. Spoilers.

[Hannah]

So it gets even better. No Christmas, no Easter, and a strict patriarchal structure. Women and girls were subservient, dressed all in white with embroidered blue skull caps. They didn't eat shellfish or pork, and they strictly kept the Sabbath every Friday night at sundown. Members down tools from then until Sunday morning. Everything that wasn't praying and praising God was forbidden.

[Becca Tilly]

What do you do then? Just pray?

[Hannah]

Well, hit each other, apparently.

[Becca Tilly]

Pray and try not to commit outright murder. Got it.

[Hannah]

When the first Marvin Gaye became a minister, he was totalitarian in the way he enforced his litany of strict rules. And when he came to have a family of his very own, he was no different. He moved the family to Washington, D.C. and used violent discipline in the pursuit of what he saw as the perfect godly family. And there were no vague threats during those years. He'd even tell his children straight, I brought you into this world and I can take you out.

[Becca Tilly]

What is the scariest thing either of your parents have ever said to you growing up?

[Jake Brennan]

You're going to be a podcaster.

[Becca Tilly]

I mean, mine was probably quite similar to what Marvin Gaye heard.

[Hannah]

I'll put you through that fucking war.

[Becca Tilly]

Mine was an A minus. You get in here.

[Hannah]

Don't come back down until you're a doctor.

[Becca Tilly]

Yes, yes. Don't come back down until you're a doctor. I'm a podcaster.

[Hannah]

Saru's dad is slimly clinging onto the hope that she will one day retrain

[Becca Tilly]

to be a doct, the person who can't look at blood.

[Hannah]

And Marvin Gaye Sr. Was by far the harshest with his second child, Marvin Pence Gay Jr. Marvin Jr. S mum, Alberta, would later say, my husband never wanted Marvin and he never liked him. For some reason, he didn't love Marvin. And what's worse, he didn't want me to love him either. Rough stuff.

[Becca Tilly]

That is so rough. That is so rough. But that's quite like. I don't want to say common thing because it's not common, but that is quite an archetype. Like the father who then has children and then is resentful of the mother giving attention to that child, and then the resentment that that breeds turns into abuse towards that child, which is just so bizarre because it, like, overrides the natural biological urge that parents are meant to have to protect and prioritize their children. But we do See it. We see a lot of this in true crime.

[Hannah]

It's not very Christian, though, is it?

[Becca Tilly]

No, none of what he does is very Christian. So Marvin Gaye Jr. Grew up in what was known then as Simple City.

[Hannah]

It's pretty good.

[Becca Tilly]

What's happening? My theory, Jake, is, is it just that America, the U.S. i should say, is so big that you guys are just like, there's too many things to name. Name it whatever the hell you like. Simple City. Sure. What the hell?

[Jake Brennan]

I think you're hitting the nail right on the head. I think this was named with extreme laziness and not a hint of irony.

[Becca Tilly]

No, not missing any irony. Okay, got it. What is the best city name you've come across, though, in your years at Disgraceland?

[Jake Brennan]

Well, I don't know. I mean. I mean, just not to be totally basic about it, but, you know, they called, you know, obviously Elvis his home. It's not a city, but his estate was Graceland. And Jerry Lee Lewis was such the opposite of Elvis. He was such a hellraiser and a maniac that the locals called where he lived Disgraceland, which I always thought that was interesting. Obviously, that's why we named the show that.

[Becca Tilly]

I see. I thought you were just punning off Elvis's, but now it makes sense. Interesting. Simple City is up there for me. But also, it will be very hard to top. Truth and Consequences.

[Hannah]

Truth or Consequences.

[Becca Tilly]

Truth or Consequences.

[Jake Brennan]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Where is that from? Actually, I've heard that.

[Hannah]

New Mexico.

[Jake Brennan]

There it is.

[Becca Tilly]

It's David Parker Ray abducted all those women, kept them in his weird, like, sex cabin, tied them up, tortured them, etc. Etc. Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. They named themselves that because they wanted to win a prize from a local radio show. Yeah, it was the first town that changed its name to Truth or Consequences, won the radio show, and that's why they did it.

[Jake Brennan]

Wow. Amazing. It sounds like it's out of a Coen Brothers film or something like that.

[Hannah]

Yes. I mean, it might as well be. I think about 15 people live there now, so.

[Becca Tilly]

So back to Simple City, where Marvin Gaye Jr. Is growing up. He later called it a slum of Washington, D.C. so simple city, it's not like it's a nice place to live. It's a slum. They couldn't even be bothered to name it. They just called it Simple City. And from a young age, Marvin Gaye Jr. Grew to expect the Belt for any minor transgression, real or imagined, against his father. It was a campaign of fear. The older Marvin seemed to take pleasure in. Marvin Jr. Remembered being told that he would be whipped only to be made to wait in an adjoining room for over an hour for his punishment. So dad's really like, not just the physical torture, it's also the psychological terrorism.

[Hannah]

Abuse, yes.

[Becca Tilly]

Domestic terrorism is what we're seeing here. And all the while that Marvin Gaye Jr. Was waiting in that other room for his beating, his father would stand in the other room shaking the belt buckle. He later told his biographer David Ritz, and this is a quote, the only way to short circuit the agony was to provoke him even more and just get the beating over with. That is so sad. Basically he's like, I wanted to just forego the psychological torture so I would provoke my father until he just beat me and got it done with. So yes, we can really see a pattern starting to emerge here. Basically, it was like Marvin Jr. Said, it was like to live with his father. It was like living with a very peculiar, changeable, cruel and all powerful king Narcissist.

[Hannah]

And the word peculiar doesn't just refer to Marvin Gaye Sr's unusually savage parenting. Marvin Sr. Was not like the other dads in Simple City. He totter around the house in his wife's heels, her best dresses and her wigs. And sooner or later the neighborhood kids saw him do that through the window and let Marvin Jr have it. And eventually it wasn't a secret anymore. Marvin Sr. Was a flamboyant, unashamedly cross dressing man of God. And that didn't sit right with the Washingtonians of the 40s and 50s. The shame came from all sides for Marvin Jr. From his family's esoteric religious customs to his father's quirks and even being teased as a sissy for his own shyness. And for Marvin Jr. His first suicidal thoughts hit him in his early teens. His church was a strict and unforgiving place and only activities that served to praise the Lord were allowed. But luckily for Marvin Jr. That included music. And we're going to pass over to you, Jake, as our music expert. Can you talk a little bit about the church's influence on popular music in the 40s and 50s?

[Jake Brennan]

Yeah, it's hard to overstate just how influential gospel music, the music that came out of the church was on black culture in the 40s in the 50s. And just I know it's obvious, but I got to say it, when I refer to the church here, I'm referring to sort of the, you know, universal Christian Black Church in America, the 40s and the 50s Baptist Church. I'm not referring to whatever crazy nutty church Marvin Gaye's father was preaching at that we talked about earlier.

[Hannah]

Yeah.

[Jake Brennan]

Kind of goes without saying, but worth pointing out, just massively influential. Gospel music is, of course, the Sunday morning music, which is different in subject matter lyrically from the Saturday night music of blues and R and B that's happening in the clubs. But the same people are listening to gospel music in church on Sundays. And you have, as it pertains to Marvin Gaye, you have these artists come out of the gospel church in the 50s, you have Sam Cooke come out in the 60s, Ray Charles. And when they come out of gospel, they meld the actual music with secular music, with pop music. And the irony here is gospel music has this looseness to it and ironically, this sexuality to it that when it was merged with pop music and secular music, it becomes what we now know as soul music. So Marvin Gaye is a young kid. He's watching all this happening around him. And in Sam Cooke, he sees a model for him to sort of use the church and use gospel music to propel a sort of music career for himself.

[Becca Tilly]

Wow, that's fascinating. I didn't know at all, but this is just speaking to my own ignorance about this. How many of those incredibly influential artists came from a gospel background?

[Jake Brennan]

Yeah, it's a real. It's almost an endless list. I mean, you have Aretha Franklin, whose father was a major preacher at the time, and then even just a ton of blues musicians who you don't even associate with gospel music, like, you know, Muddy Waters or BB King, they all kind of passed through the church at one point and go on to do their thing in secular music. But the real big stars, like, I mean, Sam Cooke was a worldwide phenomenon almost, and that was a real template for Marvin Gaye. And thankfully, Marvin Gaye had this immense talent himself that could match his ambition in the model of Sam Cooke that he was seeing.

[Becca Tilly]

Absolutely. And when you think about it, it does make sense, because even in the nutty church that Marvin Gaye Sr. Is hanging out in, a house of God, service could actually include a whole small orchestra of instruments. Saxophones, wailing, hand clapping organs and tambourines. So even in a place where there is nothing allowed except the praising of God, the music is there. And that's what is, like you said, Marvin Gaye Jr. S savior.

[Hannah]

And that's why there's so many, like in early soul and Motown specifically, so many super tight harmonies, especially in backing vocals, because all of the backing singers had sung in Choirs in church. So they knew how to do it already.

[Jake Brennan]

Exactly.

[Becca Tilly]

So at this church, like probably many churches at the time, people would pour into the aisles possessed by spirits sometimes. And Marvin Gaye Jr. Was a sensation. He'd learned the piano by ear from the age of five and his voice blew people away. And for a while, even his father was impressed. But by his late teens, Marvin Gaye Jr. Was singing for money. He was into that secular music. He'd sung what he'd heard on the radio, Doo Wop. To Marvin Sr. It was the devil's music. Jake, could you tell us what is doo wop? What are we talking about here? I don't know if I'm. I feel like I kind of know, but tell us.

[Hannah]

I feel confident.

[Jake Brennan]

I mean, yeah, Doo wop. Doo wop, of course, just is, you know, vocal music, acapella music that sprung up from street corners largely. And it's kind of to hit to what Hannah was saying earlier. The sort of tight harmonies from the gospel church influenced doo wop as well. But I mean, to somebody like Marvin Gaye's dad, anything that was not strictly gospel music was the devil's music. I mean, anything. I mean, even like I was reading something the other day that, you know, Marvin Gaye got in trouble for reading, I think Charlotte's Web because it was considered to be a book of the devil, which is just insanity. But you know, doo wop, you can picture like, you know, four Italian guys on a street corner in Philadelphia with greasy hair singing, singing together. This is just sort of the earlier incarnation of that, from the 40s and 50s.

[Becca Tilly]

Perfect. This is great having Jake on. I feel like I've done so minimal research about any of this music. I can just be like, Jake, please tell us. But yeah, so Marvin Gaye Sr. Absolutely goes without a doubt saying he is convinced this is devil music. He is not interested in his son doing this at all. But Alberta Gay, Marvin Jr. S mother, she gave her son permission to follow his talent and it was his ticket out. By then the beatings had only increased. Marvin Jr. May have been taller and stronger than his father, but he never talked back in his own words. Quote, I wanted to strike back, but where I come from, even to raise your hand to your father, an invitation for him to kill you.

[Jake Brennan]

Alright, quick quiz for the hiring managers out there. What's worse? Being understaffed or being poorly staffed? Well, that's a trick question because both are recipes for chaos. Either way, just say to yourself, this is a job for indeed sponsored jobs. You'll get matched with candidates that meet the skills, certifications and everything else you're looking for. Or go a different way and get no traction. Seriously. Sponsored Jobs posted directly on indeed are 95% more likely to report a hire than non Sponsored Jobs. It really is a no brainer. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results when you need the right person to cut through the chaos. This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs and listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help your job get the premium status it deserves@ Indeed.com podcast just go to Indeed.com podcast right now. Indeed.com podcast terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs hello Hello, I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast smart talks with IBM. I recently sat down with IBM's chairman and CEO Arvind Krishna and I asked him how can companies use AI to its fullest potential to create smarter business? My one advice to them Pick areas you can scale. Don't pick the shiny little toys on the side. For example, if anybody has more than 10% of what they had for customer service 10 years ago, they're already five years behind. If anybody is not using AI to make their developers who write software 30% more productive today with the goal of

[Becca Tilly]

being 70% more productive.

[Jake Brennan]

Yeah, so we are not asking our clients to be the first experiment on it.

[Becca Tilly]

We say you can leverage what we did.

[Jake Brennan]

We're happy to bring out all our learnings, including what needs to change in the process. Because the biggest change is not technology. It's getting people to accept that there's a different way to do things. To listen to the full conversation, visit IBM.com smarttalks.

[Hannah]

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[Jake Brennan]

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[Hannah]

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[Becca Tilly]

for hub partners in your area.

[Hannah]

Hey there.

[Becca Tilly]

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[Hannah]

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[Jake Brennan]

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[Hannah]

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[Jake Brennan]

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[Hannah]

And with that neat bit of foreshadowing firmly in the bank, Jake, we're going to hand over to you because we are going to skip ahead a bit. Marvin Gaye joined and quit the Air Force and then he joined a doo wop group called the Moonglows and then moved to Chicago. He sung backup for Chuck Berry and eventually he caught the attention of a young producer and one of my least favorite men of all time, Berry Gordy, who had just founded Motown Records. And I have a particularly strong opinion on him because before I did Red Handed as my job, I worked on Motown the Musical.

[Becca Tilly]

Ah.

[Hannah]

And Motown the Musical is a very so Dreamgirls is a very thinly veiled story of Berry Gordy and Diana Ross and the Supremes. Right? All of the Names have changed, but the story is the same. Motown is the rebuttal. Right? So, like, it is. It shows Berry Gordy as this, like, young, up and coming kid who just, like, started from nowhere. His parents lent him $200,000 so he could start the label. Like, he was not, like. And he met Diana Ross when she was 14. Like, piece of shit. Fucking awful guy. So it took me, when I finally quit that job, I would, like, be on road trips with my friends and some Motown would come on. I'd be like, please turn this off. No more Motown. Because my desk was directly above the stage. So I would, like, hear, like, oh, it's the Contours. It's lunchtime.

[Becca Tilly]

How many shows were there a day? Two.

[Hannah]

Two.

[Becca Tilly]

So you had to listen to Motown the musical twice a day, every day for family?

[Hannah]

Well, only once, because I went home for.

[Becca Tilly]

Okay, okay, okay.

[Hannah]

And then, obviously, every time, like, my mum was in town, I want to go and see it. And I'm like, okay, I'll just sit through it again. So I'm gonna hand over to you for possibly a more positive spin on Motown, and I'll just shut up about

[Becca Tilly]

how much I hate Perry Gordy.

[Jake Brennan]

Okay, so that was the Dream Girls. Now I'm giving the Motown rebuttal. Is that what we're doing?

[Becca Tilly]

Exactly. Exactly.

[Jake Brennan]

All right. Okay. With all that context of what we now know about Berry Gordy, we do need to kind of travel back in time to where we're at when talking about Marvin Gaye vis a vis Barry Gordy. Fast forward from the influence of the church in the 1940s to the 1960s to early 1960s, and the secular music that was made by Motown Records. And it's really hard to describe now just how influential Motown was on popular culture. It was the first entity of black music making that crossed over in a very significant way and sold records en masse to not just black kids, but to white kids. And that was a huge deal at the time. We take it for granted now because everything is so integrated. But back then, obviously, it wasn't. And even the charts. We'll talk about this later. Weren't integrated either. And it wasn't like they had one or two hits. It's like they just crushed it constantly, consistently. And Barry Gordy, for all of his flaws, Hannah was. Was a genius on the level with some of the great innovators in American history. I mean, Motown Records is Detroit, and Berry Gordy, all he had to do was look down the road at the Ford Auto Factory and go okay, there's my template on how to make music. And he quite literally took the process that they were using to make cars, the assembly line process, and used it to make music. He had staff writers, staff producers. He had singers that were kind of interchangeable. And few of the really good ones became icons, like Diana Ross, whom you mentioned. So Marvin Gaye has this influence in Sam Cooke early on, and he uses that as a template to kind of model himself. And with that and with the sort of musical package that Marvin Gaye and Talon had put together, he could not have landed at a better place than Motown to launch his career. All caveats and asterisks that Barry Gordy was a very bad guy and did a lot of shitty things to a lot of people, a lot of artists especially, and young women. But I just want to give the proper context.

[Becca Tilly]

No, absolutely. Context. Context is key. And it's like we've said so many times on this show, you can be a great person and not be a good person. A person who makes huge amounts of change and transforms a city, transforms a whole industry, like you said, completely takes that huge, incredible step of desegregating the charts like we're going to go on to talk about later. Like you said, they could still be a bad guy back behind Closed doors. But I think the context is super important, so thank you for that.

[Jake Brennan]

Of course. Of course.

[Hannah]

And Marvin Gaye thrived in this environment. He started as a session drummer playing on tracks for Smokey Robinson and Stevie Wonder. And then he started adding piano and then backing vocals. And soon enough he was writing songs.

[Becca Tilly]

So, taking a cue from Sam Cooke, Marvin Gaye decided to add an E to the end of his name to lend himself some gravitas, as well as separating himself from his father and the rumors of homosexuality that still followed him. And Marvin Gaye Jr. Had his first hit with Stubborn Kind of Fellow and started to make a name for himself. A string of hits followed, and he was an immediate sex symbol. Night after night, women were throwing themselves at him. But one woman stood out. Anna Gordy, sister of Berry Gordy. And she was actually 17 years older than Marvin Gaye. And it would be incorrect of us not to discuss this next bit because this is where we think the. The second half of Gay's super Oedipal life really fires up. There's the kind of fighting his dad bit that was well underway. He's, you know, trying not to hit his dad back as much as he wants to, and now it's kind of into the shagging his mom season. Adam was, like we said, 17 years older than Marvin. Nothing wrong with her. But she was also very forthright and became an all important voice of reason and discipline in Gay's life. And he wanted to be with her. Conveniently. She was also the boss's sister. It was love, there's no doubt about that. But there was also definitely a transactional element to this whole situation too. You could rather cynically. And we're going to look at this as an opportunity, a way for Gay to join the dynasty. So he married Anna, and shortly afterwards he became one of Motown's biggest names.

[Hannah]

Back home in D.C. infighting had forced the House of God congregation to split into two. Marvin Sr's crowd was the smaller half. And he soon found himself preaching in disused storefronts or at home in his living room. And after a while, he stopped preaching altogether. He worked briefly for the Air Force and then the post office. But his refusal to work on the Sabbath soon got him booted out of both of those jobs. Soon he was doing nothing. And that's pretty much how it stayed for the rest of his life. Alberta Gay, meanwhile, was leaving the house at 4am to take the bus to the next state over to clean rich people's houses.

[Becca Tilly]

And soon Marvin Gaye had a series of hits and wrote several more for other Motown acts like Dancing in the street for Martha and the Vandellas.

[Hannah]

I'm just gonna slip in here.

[Becca Tilly]

Yeah.

[Hannah]

Completely not Motown related, but Jake, I'm absolutely desperate to get your opinion on the Mick Jagger David Bowie cover of Dancing in the Street.

[Becca Tilly]

I knew it.

[Jake Brennan]

I knew you were gonna say that. I knew it. And I was about to say something too. Cause I didn't realize until right now that Marvin Gaye wrote that song. So I was gonna say we have him to blame or thank, depending on your point of view, for that. Just. It's both horrific and it's also just wonderfully entertaining. The Mick Jagger David Bowie video for Dancing in the Street. So I'm on both sides of that fence.

[Hannah]

It's. It's definitely a moment in musical history that I will never, ever forget.

[Becca Tilly]

But getting back to our story today, like everything else in the US in the 50s, music was sadly segregated. For the most part, white music would chart in the top 40. And the songs that black America were listening to ranked in the separate R and B or blues charts. For a black artist to cross over into the top 40 took something really special. Jake, we're gonna look to you again. Talk to us a bit about this. Yeah.

[Jake Brennan]

A lot of this gets credited to, and I certainly did this earlier, to Barry Gordy and his genius and how to produce songs. But a lot of it has to do too, with just Marvin Gaye was. And the type of artist that he was, where he was able to cross over. And we really need to illustrate here for the listeners who may not be aware, just how difficult that was and what it meant to do that. Back in the 40s, 50s and 60s, I mean, there were different sets of charts, just like there are today. And I should say it's still a big deal today. We just had all these country artists here in America who were on the Billboard Hot 100. Not that they hadn't been before, but much was made of that because artists typically don't cross over. And the reason is radio. So, you know, for Marvin Gaye to cross over, it means that those white radio stations, pop radio stations, were playing the record, playing the single, I should say. And I mean, that translates directly into financial gain. It's just a much bigger audience. Those stations are so much bigger. They have a much wider and further reach. So, you know, it's one thing to cross over. You need a special kind of talent that Marvin Gaye certainly had. But then when you do, the level of success that that's going to bring you is going to be much bigger than if you were just to be riding on the R and B charts.

[Becca Tilly]

Do you think that Marvin Gaye intentionally set out to be able to do that? Or do you think it was just something that came because he was so talented?

[Jake Brennan]

I think Berry Gordy certainly intended to do that. And by extension, Marvin Gaye did as well.

[Becca Tilly]

So bit by bit, Gay crept up the top 40 until the ballad Pride and Joy made the top 10 at number eight. But as always with Marvin Gaye, he could climb high. But his demons weren't far behind. He'd been smoking weed pretty much constantly since the Moonglow's days. And as his star ascended, he turned to coke. He never really took to snorting it, though. Apparently he just ate it. He'd just eat coke. So there you go.

[Hannah]

I'm sure it gets the job done.

[Becca Tilly]

I mean, it thoroughly did. And I don't know, maybe obviously he has had a very abusive childhood. He's obviously looking to substances as some sort of crutch. But it could also have been to do with the fact that Marvin Gaye apparently hated performing, which, until we looked at this episode, I would just never, ever have guessed that to be the case, that he hated performing. And apparently he could often be found shaking or being sick backstage before a show. But then, with a little powdered courage in his mouth, he'd blow them away, always finishing by mopping his brow with a silk handkerchief and then throwing it into the baying crowd. But by 1969, this duality got serious.

[Hannah]

His marriage to Anna was already pretty ugly. They were both cheating on the reg and then using those infidelities to twist the knife. Eventually, Marvin got a gun and locked himself in an apartment. And he said that he wouldn't leave until he or whoever dared interrupt him was dead. Eventually, he was talked down by his father in law. But these episodes repeated over the next few months. Sometimes Marvin Gaye would disappear for weeks without a word to anyone. He'd start to threaten his friends and family members at gunpoint. But all the while, his hits were only getting better. I Heard it through The Grapevine sold 4 million copies. It was Motown's biggest single so far. And now he was going to use his success to go his own way. When Gaye's brother Frankie recounted his stories from Vietnam, the singer was infuriated and knew that he had to do something. And that led him to what's Going on? Jake, can you speak a little bit about just what a seminal record that was?

[Jake Brennan]

I can try. I think Charles Bukowski said writing about music is like dancing about architecture. Very hard. It's very hard to do. Somehow we try. We keep trying, though, but with what's going on, it's particularly hard. You know, I'm always struck by the context of the day is so much different. You know, this was this record. I'll start with the history of him trying to make it with Berry Gordy. Berry Gordy heard the demo or the first recording of the song what's Going On? And he hated it. He quite literally called it the worst recording he had ever heard.

[Hannah]

Oh, wow.

[Jake Brennan]

And he refused to put it out. And he didn't like anything about it. He didn't like the production, like the quote, unquote, looseness of it, which I find to be rich. He didn't. He especially didn't like that it was political. That was the main reason he didn't like it. But Stevie Wonder loved it. Marvin Gaye played it for Stevie Wonder. A bunch of people around Motown who worked at Motown loved it. And it became this big battle between Marvin Gaye, who now had all this leverage, because as you just mentioned, Hannah, he was on the charts and he had success. Whereas before he wouldn't have said no or argued with Barry Gordy here, he is arguing with him. And there's like something like a seven, eight month battle that ensues where Marvin Gaye refuses to work at for Berry Gordy unless Barry allows him to make this record and put it out. And I just want to. I don't want to. I don't want to defend Berry Gordy here, but we're talking about a guy who is eating cocaine who's also married to your sister, right? So if anybody has insight into just how fucked up Marvin Gaye was and has the inclination to not believe that he can pull off what no other black artist has done before, which is have a hit that is political. Barry Gordy certainly had a unique perspective and unique lens into this. And perhaps his justified reason for not allowing Marvin Gaye to do this. But the music should have spoken for itself. The music was, as we know, incredible to the point where I think it was an A and R guy who worked for Berry Gordy at Motown. Ended up pressing singles on his own and sending them to some radio stations before it was officially released. And the radio stations freaked out. They loved it, they played it. It becomes this massive hit. And two things about this. One, the original title was what's Going On Question Mark. And Marvin Gaye insisted, and he had a fight with his co writers on this from Motown, that it was just. No, it's not what's Going on question Mark. It's what's going on. Period. Declarative. Because this is a statement of what is happening in our cities. This is the culture that I grew up in, that I am seeing that is not changing, that is getting worse. Vietnam, all the social unrest of the late 60s. And to speak to the significance of this album, quite frankly, there was nothing like it. There was no album that had done what it had done before. It quite literally gave license. Not literally, it quite figuratively gave license to black artists to protest on the charts. And that had never been done before. We take it for granted now, but it was this album that almost didn't get made that opened the floodgates.

[Hannah]

So I suppose in the end then, it was the music that spoke for itself. If it was getting secretly sent to radio stations.

[Jake Brennan]

I think so, yeah. I think some things are just so undeniably great that you can't put them down.

[Hannah]

And it worked because almost 50 years later, what's going on was ranked number one on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. So even Marvin Gaye Jr. Had to admit he was a superstar.

[Becca Tilly]

And Marvin Gaye's first LA home had been given to him by Berry Gordy. That didn't really sit right with the star. He wanted to buy a place for himself. So after the success of what's Going on, he bought what his family would later refer to as the big house. Marvin soon moved his parents into the mansion and considered it a fresh start. But his dad, Marvin Sr. As usual, was not happy. He resented the fact that his sexed up son's devil music had bought him this house. And he was still as the father of an adult man, jealous of his wife's relationship with their son. So in a further effort to patch things up, Marvin Jr. Would invite both of his parents even to go on tour with him. But his father always declined, choosing instead to stay alone in the big house, stewing in his booze soaked resentment. There was no way he was going to go on tour and watch all these people love his son, love and adore his son. That's hell for him.

[Hannah]

And whilst Marvin Jr was working on the number one horniest song ever written, let's Get it on, he was introduced to the girl who would become his second wife. And we say girl and we mean it. Gay would become obsessed with her, singing every one of his songs for the rest of his life with her in mind. Sometimes, and this makes me feel uncomfortable, he sometimes would whisper her name softly in the background of recordings. And the problem was she was 16. Marvin had been working on let's Get it on with the singer and songwriter Ed Townsend. And when Townsend brought his teenage daughter in to show her around the studio, Marvin Gaye was smitten with Janice Hunter. Before we move on to pastures new. Pastures new and old and old, young and old and everything in between. Just because we've mentioned dead Townsend, I have to ask you how you feel about the Ed Sheeran trial.

[Jake Brennan]

I didn't follow it as closely as you would think, but I just think in general all of these lawsuits that are being brought are frivolous for the most part. I think music is. There's only 12 notes a man can play, boys said. And you're going, you're going to run into these scenarios where there's similarities and I think there's a much easier way to handle this. I think Tom Petty and Sam Smith, there was some beef there. They handled it out of court. It's just like they just go for the jugular. Someone like Ed Sheering is so popular and so successful that I just think it strikes of being too opportunistic to Me?

[Hannah]

Absolutely. And I think if Ed Townsend hadn't had success with the Blurred Lines trial, he would never have gone after Ed Sheeran. But I don't know if you saw, but Ed Sheeran used to do the rounds on like morning talk shows. And he was like, there's only four chords in music. Tell me any song and I will play it for you using only these four chords. And those were the four chords they came after him for. And he, I don't even wanna say got off. He rightly was like, vindicated. Yeah, vindicated. Yeah, yeah. And he said, he said during the trial, he was like, if I lose this, I'm done. I quit the industry. Cause it's ridiculous to sue people over courts. It was really interesting, but I think Ed Townsend will probably give up now. I mean, one would hope. But I do have an image of him just like sitting in his house listening to every track on Spotify, being like, no, that's close enough.

[Becca Tilly]

Write this down, write this down.

[Jake Brennan]

That's good.

[Hannah]

But let's get back to Marvin Gaye and where he is in his life. He's 33, he's in a crumbling marriage to a woman who's 17 years older than him. And now he's obsessed with a girl 17 years younger than him. So sorry to anyone who loves the song. But the vocal line of this is what a critic said about let's get it on. Unabashed peon to fucking. It was sung directly to a 16 year old girl.

[Becca Tilly]

Well, thank you.

[Hannah]

Okay, so we can all feel gross about that for a while.

[Becca Tilly]

Oh, just don't think about it. The guy was eating cocaine. He didn't know what the fuck was going on. Because, yes, between eating all his cocaine and having a secret teenage girlfriend, Gay's paranoia was ramping up. So he ran to the Santa Monica mountains to a small house in Topanga Canyon. And in the notes producer Briand producer Alex Briond has written down, if that name rings a musical true crime bell, well done. Have a sticker. That's where Charles Manson got to know the Beach Boys. I didn't know that. All I thought when I heard Topanga Canyon was, did you ever watch Boy Meets Girl? Because that was what that girl's name was.

[Hannah]

What? Topanga Canyon.

[Becca Tilly]

Topanga.

[Hannah]

Oh,

[Becca Tilly]

I can't remember her surname. Do you remember who I mean?

[Hannah]

No.

[Becca Tilly]

I'll Google it. I'll show you. Jake, do you remember?

[Jake Brennan]

I was confused. I thought you meant that the girl from Boy Meets Girl is named Charles Manson.

[Becca Tilly]

Her.

[Hannah]

Oh, yeah.

[Becca Tilly]

So maybe she was named after the canyon or the Beach Boys. Maybe her parents were big fans of Charles Manson.

[Jake Brennan]

There you go.

[Becca Tilly]

Anyway, so when he went to Topanga Canyon, remember, he's paranoid. He's starting to go off as rocker is Marvin Gaye Jr. So he gets two ginormous Great Danes to ward off intruders. And he hid his secret girlfriend away from his record label, from the press, from his parents and from his wife. Because yes, he is still married. And it wasn't a good look. Especially after Janice got pregnant at just 17 years old and then lost the baby. And that pregnancy, by the way, was no accident. Janice has since written, we made love at every opportunity, night and day. We never use birth control. It was clear that Marvin wanted me pregnant and I did nothing to prevent that. His possessiveness, jealousy and rage over this new muse of his was all consuming for Gay. And Janice was soon exposed to the wilder parts of his lifestyle. One day they went to a coke fueled party at Richard Pryor's house where the comedian lost control and smashed a wine bottle over his wife's head. They also went to Studio 54 with Mick Jagger and Jerry hall where actor Ryan O' Neil crept up behind Janis and put his penis on her shoulder.

[Hannah]

How very Kevin Spacey of him.

[Becca Tilly]

Allegedly,

[Hannah]

after they married, Janice gave birth to their first child and the 40 year old gay would berate the 22 year old Jan for her changing post birth body. He'd purposefully swerved the car while driving with Jan and the kids in it and he threatened to drive them off the road. And soon Gay pushed her into affairs with other men, booking hotel rooms for her and any man he saw take a shine to her. Once when Gay disappeared without a trace from a family holiday in Hawaii, Janice came home and slept with Gay's rival, Teddy Pendergrass. And when Marvin found out, out of his mind on coke and mushrooms, he lunged for Janice with a kitchen knife. He held the knife to her throat and said, this love is killing me. I beg you to provoke me right now so I can take us both out of our misery.

[Becca Tilly]

It's all very on the nose, isn't it? It's literally what he did to his dad. It's like, provoke me, provoke me so I can just do it. Yeah, don't make me stay in this state of like wanting, just make me do it.

[Hannah]

Yeah.

[Becca Tilly]

And it is also interesting because he's a very paranoid man by this point. Like we said, he's very paranoid, he's very possessive. He's very obsessed with maintaining Jan to himself. But then he also does the thing of, like, making her have these affairs with other men, which is interesting. Do you think it's. Possibly. But then he loses his mind when she sleeps with Pentagrass. Do you think it's a weird way. And it's still about him being in control. So as long as he's choosing who it is, maybe it's again, about not staying in that state of will it happen or won't it happen? That psychological abuse that his dad, like, instilled in him. Maybe it's like, she's gonna cheat anyway. I'm sure she's gonna cheat. And maybe he can't stand that in between stage of like, when's it gonna happen? So he. It's the same as provoking his dad. It's like, I'm gonna force you to have this of air. So at least I'm still in control. I know when it's happening. I know what's going on, and I know why I'm so angry.

[Hannah]

Yeah, maybe I think you're onto something.

[Jake Brennan]

I think it's partly that the control piece of it. I think there's part of Marvin Gaye that liked men as well and liked the idea of some of the men that were sleeping with his wife. I think that's part of it, too.

[Becca Tilly]

Interesting. Interesting.

[Hannah]

Thankfully, on this occasion, Marvin Gaye's mood switched and he let his wife go. She took the kids and she left for good.

[Becca Tilly]

But Marvin did harass Jan, saying that she'd stolen his family. And he'd accuse her of strange things like sending gang members to try and kill him. It's clear his paranoia was getting worse and decades of not paying his taxes were catching up to him. The money from his string of hits was still flowing in. He once asked Motown for his recording fee to be given as a million dollars in cash in a suitcase so he could show his father he'd made it. That is so desperately sad. I mean, imagine being Marvin Gaye and still feeling like you need to prove something to your piece of shit father.

[Hannah]

Yeah, there's. Speaking of things that are on the nose, and I hate to drag it back to Motown, to musical, but I can't help myself. There's a line in Motown musical where I think they're arguing about the release of what's going on Berry Gordy. And Marvin gets. And Marvin Gaye just goes, you're not my dad. I have a dad. And then he storms off stage.

[Becca Tilly]

Oh, my God.

[Hannah]

On the nose.

[Becca Tilly]

Oh, my God.

[Hannah]

And then you don't really see Marvin Gaye for the rest of the show.

[Becca Tilly]

Oh, because he's in the bag eating Coke?

[Hannah]

No, because he's been shot by his dad.

[Becca Tilly]

Spoilers.

[Jake Brennan]

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[Becca Tilly]

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[Jake Brennan]

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[Becca Tilly]

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[Jake Brennan]

Yes. Building actual physical machines. Yeah. It's why I came to IBM. I wanted the experience, the culture of, of building hard things that others have not done before. Where do you imagine we are in the timeline of this technology?

[Becca Tilly]

There will come a point when it will mature, right?

[Jake Brennan]

Yeah. My cell phone is a mature technology at this point.

[Becca Tilly]

How far are we from that point with quantum?

[Jake Brennan]

By 2029 we'll build the first fault tolerant quantum computer that is one that can run a very, very large, large problem. To learn how IBM is building the future of computing, visit IBM.com quantum

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[Hannah]

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[Becca Tilly]

But this was the problem. So he is earning money. He's still making good money from all of his music. Of course he is. But the problem was that as soon as Marvin had any money, it would just go to paying off his debt, paying his divorce proceedings and also to furnish him with an endless stream of drugs. And by 1979, unsurprisingly, Marvin Gaye's career had stalled. He was on the run from his ex wives, his family, his fans, his label and the taxman. For seven months he hid out in Hawaii, sleeping in his van or on the beach. Imagine how high you would think you were if it was 1979 and you were just on the beach and you saw Marvin Gaye asleep in the sand. What have I taken?

[Hannah]

But eventually, Marvin Gaye agreed to tour the UK to drum up some cash. But it wouldn't be that easy. His terror at performing on stage and his changeable moods made it a nightmare to organise. He climbed out of a window at Heathrow to avoid flying to Manchester for his next show. On another date he was booked to perform in front of Princess Margaret, who is my favourite royal. Marvin Gaye had heard, and these things are true. Very hip, liked to party. Princess Margaret, absolutely both of those things. And that's why she's the best one. But in a sudden change of heart, Marvin Gaye claimed that he resented performing for royalty and said he had been tricked into the show by his tour manager. So Marvin Gaye left Princess Margaret waiting in a theatre for hours until she finally gave up and left.

[Becca Tilly]

That's pretty baller of him, though.

[Hannah]

It is pretty baller.

[Becca Tilly]

It's like, nah.

[Hannah]

And naturally it was front page news. Headlines like Pop Star Snubs Margaret were splashed across the tabloids. Gay was making enemies wherever he went. He bounced around Europe and the US. CBS bought him for 1.5 million from Motown, hoping for one last comeback. And Marvin Gaye built up his strength. He even sobered up slightly, staying with friends in Belgium. And then he made one of his biggest hits yet, Sexual Healing.

[Jake Brennan]

Before we get into the sexual healing that we all so desperately crave here, can I just go back to Princess Margaret, please, and say that Princess Margaret's 1960s exploits with in Swinging London, with the Rolling Stones, et cetera. There's some fertile stuff there for us to unpack at another time. I just want to lay that out there.

[Becca Tilly]

Perfect, perfect. So in 1982, Marvin Gaye Sr. Moved back to Washington. So he left the big house and he went back to fix up the family's old house. Now, for the other residents of the big house in la, so that's Gaye's mother Alberta, and his siblings Frankie and Jean and their families. It finally meant having some peace. Marvin Teeny's drinking hadn't improved over the years and neither had his temperature. Soon though, Alberta fell ill. She'd had a risky operation and she had weeks long recovery to get through. All the while, Marvin Sr. Her husband was nowhere to be found. Marvin Gaye Jr. Was furious. He stayed with his mother and made sure she had everything she needed while she recovered. But he was soon pulled away by his public. After five rocky years, his career seemed to have bounced back. He won nine Grammys that year, and Sexual Healing would be the biggest R and B hit of the 1980s. Even his drug use was at the lowest it had been for years. But then two things happened to unravel Marvin Gaye once and for all. Firstly, forced out on the road again, his 1984 tour would prove to be his wildest yet. And secondly, 16 months after Marvin Sr. Left, he returned to LA on tour.

[Hannah]

Marvin Gaye was completely out of control. Things had definitely changed since the early days. Jay, can you tell us a little bit about Marvin Gaye at his best? And then we can compare it to where he ends up.

[Jake Brennan]

Yes, I can. I mean, Marvin Gaye, you mentioned the success of Sexual Healing. And even when he's at his best, though, he's at his worst. So he's on stage and he's crap now. He's leaning into this, this, this sex symbol status that he has and he's got this, like, I don't know. Did we talk about this earlier? Did we talk about his. The fact that he couldn't dance? No, Marvin Gaye couldn't dance. Unbelievably, if you Google Marvin Gaye live footage, he kind of, you guys, Seinfeld

[Hannah]

fans, probably not enough.

[Jake Brennan]

He kind of looks like Elaine Bennis dancing. Listeners will know what I'm talking about. Just like, not a good dancer. So he had all this stage fright about being on stage and he had all this shame from this fear of being thought of as being gay because he was sensitive and the stuff with his dad and all that. So the way he combats that in the 80s is he leans into this sex symbol status on stage and he's doing like the striptease to Sexual Healing. And he's kind of a caricature of himself, but it works. It works for a while anyhow. But then the thing we all have to understand about where his live touring goes, I mean, he literally ends up bringing two men on the road with him. One is a priest, the other is his coke dealer. And he has them on opposite rooms in his hotel, connecting rooms so that he can do drugs and then immediately go confess his sins.

[Becca Tilly]

Wow.

[Jake Brennan]

It's a system. Talk about on the nose, with the angel and the devil on each shoulder. And it's a shame because he was really at the height of his success. And for a moment things were cleaned up, but they go off the rails pretty quickly there in the Beginning part

[Becca Tilly]

of the 80s, it's just like, he is like nothing if not on the nose. But it is just so tragic because it's like a man who's trying, he's like, I'm gonna take my priest. But he's also like, but I love that coke. I'm taking you too, dealer. Get in. And yeah, I just pulled up a live video on YouTube of Marvin Gaye singing I Heard it through the Grapevine. And you're right, he actually, once you know the context of the fact that he didn't enjoy being on stage and that he wasn't a good dancer, you are like, he does look uncomfortable. He looks like he just wants to go backstage and eat some goat.

[Jake Brennan]

Yeah, a man's gotta eat.

[Hannah]

So as Jake says, the performances of Sexual Healing got increasingly raunchy. And by the end of this Tour in the 80s, by the end of the show, he was basically just standing in his pants off stage. He was throwing back lumps of coke like they were Skittles. And the paranoia was all encompassing. He was certain that someone was after him, that a hitman had been hired to take him out. So he insisted that his brother be at his side at all times. They looked so alike that Marvin Gaye wanted to use him as a decoy. And at one point he was completely certain that he had been poisoned. He even hired attorney F. Lee bailey, part of O.J. simpson's Dream Team, to find out how he'd been poisoned and who by. Marvin Gaye said that the only reason he was still standing was that the comedian Dick Gregory had concocted an antidote to the imaginary poison that had saved his life. Gay also went on to become obsessed with firearms. He'd been stockpiling them at his LA home before the 1984 tour and even brought his parents a handgun for Christmas so they could protect themselves on tour. He made his guards carry submachine guns and wore a bulletproof vest all the way up to the stage.

[Becca Tilly]

As you can imagine from everything Hanna just told us all, that four month tour was a total disaster. And afterwards, Marvin returned to the LA house. Exhausted, manic, on the edge and more paranoid than ever. Gay took a bedroom between his mother and his father on the top floor. Now, Alberta and her husband Marvin Sr. Hadn't slept in the same room for 10 years. So it's basically mum, Marvin Jr and dad on the other side, a little weird, messed up sandwich. And Marvin Sr. By this point basically just stayed in his room the entire time swigging vodka. And Marvin Jr. To be honest, stayed in his. But he wasn't swigging vodka. He had started freebasing cocaine, which is basically a method of producing cocaine that's almost 100% pure and its low melting point also makes it easier to smoke. Within seconds, users get a heavy euphoric high, followed around half an hour later by a steep crash, which brings fatigue, depression, anxiety, irritability and even more paranoia. Marvin Gaye had an elaborate security system installed at the LA house, but he was in deep. Dealers would be in and out of the house constantly, as would women. At one point, up to 20 or 30 people would be coming in and out of that house every day, which is a lot for a man who is that paranoid. And his dad, Marvin Sr. Absolutely hated this.

[Hannah]

And then on the 31st of March 1984, Marvin Sr. Woke up angry. As well as the commotion of the house, he resented his son's success and his relationship with Alberta and pretty much everything else his son did as well. But this particular fight on 31 March was about money. Marvin Gaye Jr's debts were escalating and it was threatening their home. It was later reported that at this stage, Marvin Gaye owed over a million dollars to the IRS, a further $600,000 to the state of California, and another $300,000 in divorce payments in 1984. Yeah, man.

[Becca Tilly]

Oh my God. That is horrific.

[Hannah]

Yeah.

[Jake Brennan]

In one of the divorce settlements, the judge made Marvin Gaye fork over the royalties to his ex wife from his albums. He had like four albums he had to produce where all the royalties had to go to his ex wife. So he purposefully tried to make them shit. And he just couldn't. He just couldn't.

[Hannah]

He's too good.

[Becca Tilly]

He just couldn't do it. Like, they're just.

[Jake Brennan]

They're not bad albums at all.

[Becca Tilly]

Wow.

[Jake Brennan]

I don't think.

[Becca Tilly]

Anyways, anyhow, that's amazing.

[Hannah]

Marvin Sr. Was obsessed with wanting his son to know that he was a failure after all. And then when Alberta couldn't produce a specific insurance document, Marvin Gaye Sr. Flew into a rage. He spent the rest of the day storming about the house late into the evening, shouting at no one in particular.

[Becca Tilly]

It distressed Marvin Jr. But he knew better than to step in between his parents having a fight unless he absolutely had to. Like we told you earlier, he knew what raising a hand to his father would mean. The next day, the 1st of April, the argument was still simmering. Irene, Marvin's sister in law, came from the guest house with breakfast for Alberta. Alberta had seen the state of Marvin Jr. In the past few days. He looked bone tired, like he hadn't slept for months. He looked, in his mum's words, like he wanted to give up. So she gave the breakfast that had been brought in to Marvin Jr. And for some reason, for Marvin Sr. This was the final straw. He saw it as yet another act of favouritism and more disrespect. And at just after midday on the 1st of April, 1984, he shouted up the stairs to Alberta. And Marvin Jr shouted back.

[Hannah]

Here's what he said. He said that if his father had something to say to Alberta, then he could come upstairs and say it himself.

[Becca Tilly]

Oh, God.

[Hannah]

And so Marvin Sr. Did. He tore up the stairs, and as he ran in screaming at both of them, Marvin Jr. Leapt out of bed and shoved his father to the ground. He punched and kicked Marvin Sr. Again and again. When Alberta separated them, Marvin Sr. Quietly picked himself up, dusted himself off and went into his room. He returned with a.38 handgun that his son had bought him three months before for Christmas. Without a word, Marvin Gaye Sr. Shot his son, Marvin Gaye Jr. Directly in the heart.

[Becca Tilly]

It's just such a classic end this, like, buildup of violence in an abusive home with a narcissistic parent. And he was waiting. He was looking for something to happen because Marvin Gaye Sr. Already knew the end game. He already knew he was gonna do that. It was just, how am I going to get there? So the bullet went into Marvin Gaye Jr's chest, ricocheted through his right lung, diaphragm, liver, stomach and left kidney. And after he had shot his son, Marvin Sr. Calmly stepped forward and fired again into his son's left shoulder. And there you go. There's proof that it wasn't just heat of the moment, a snap. He had time to go into another room, pick up his gun, come back in there, shoot him, and then shoot his son, who's already on the floor again. So as this is happening, Frankie Gay, Marvin's brother heard the shots and ran over and he called 911. He then lay by his brother as a pool of blood covered the floor. Marvin Jr. Was saying, the entire time, I got what I wanted. I couldn't do it myself. So I had him do it. It's good. I ran my race. There's no more left in me. Oh, my God. That is so. It's just so sad because it is just the cycle of his life ending up exactly where both of them knew it was gonna end. Yeah, it's almost like the tragic inevitability of it. And I know people say this all the time and it's such a cliche, but it's like watching a car crash in slow motion. This is exactly where it was always going to end up. The gun was recovered just 20 minutes later. It had been tossed on the front lawn of the house. Marvin Gaye was declared dead on arrival at California Hospital Medical center just after 1pm it was the day before his 45th birthday.

[Hannah]

Marvin Gaye Sr. Was arrested and held at LA County Jail on a $100,000 bail. His account of the incident was widely reported and he painted Marvin Jr. As having exploded in a drug fuelled frenzy, claiming that he had had no choice but to shoot his son in self defense. Doctors also found a walnut sized tumor in Marvin Sr's pituitary gland. His lawyers suggested that this may have affected his judgment. But the judge ruled that Marvin Sr. Knew absolutely what he was doing and that he was fit to stand trial. Good. Once again he testified that his son was out of control. And that quote, he knocked me onto the bed and when I fell my hand happened to feel the little gun under the pillow. And Marvin Sr. Said that he was sure that the gun was loaded with BB pellets. And in September, Marvin Sr. Unbelievably faced a reduced charge of voluntary manslaughter, mainly owing to evidence of bruising on his own body from the incident and he pleaded no contest. The court heard that PCP had been found in Marvin Jr. S body which is known to make people violent. However, it was totally untrue. The prosecution had either misread or willingly misinterpreted the coroner's report. Alberta, Marvin's mum also repeated her version of events which were that her husband had left the room after an altercation, returned with a gun and then coldly shot their son.

[Becca Tilly]

Still, the narrative held that Marvin Jr. Had flown into a drug induced rage and Marvin Sr. Had to defend himself. It's so awful, but it's like Marvin Jr. He's basically been on tour, he's acted crazy, he's made a lot of enemies, he's made a bit of a tit of himself. And so people are like of course I believe that he went into some sort of drug fueled mania because this was bound to happen. And it was, you know, it was behind closed doors. Like we said, his dad was a domestic terrorist. It was behind closed doors that people knew what he was really like to everybody else. He was just, you know, a bit of a kooky Preacher who happened to be Marvin Gaye Jr's dad. So of course people were like, yeah, that makes sense. So on November 2nd, six months after he shot his son, Marvin Sr. Faced his sentencing. And he was asked directly at this sentencing whether he loved his son. To which he replied, let's say I didn't dislike him.

[Jake Brennan]

So brutal.

[Becca Tilly]

So brutal. So Judge Gordon Ringer's closing statement was this. This is one of those terribly tragic cases in which a young life was snuffed out. But under the circumstances, it seems to be agreed by everybody, including the very able and experienced investigating officers in this case, that the young man who died tragically provoked this incident, and it was all his fault. Even just the fact that the judge uses the word provoked this incident. It's like if this was some sort of hammy Lifetime movie, he'd be like, stop beating me over the head with it. Yeah, stop beating me over the head with this narrative. But it's. It's. You can't escape it. So Marvin Sr. Was sentenced to a six year suspended sentence, which was then reduced to five years probation. So Marvin Gaye Sr. Who shot his son twice, once while he was lying on the floor, never went to prison. After 49 years of marriage, Albertigay finally divorced him after the trial, and he was prohibited from owning firearms or drinking alcohol. But he lived to the ripe old age of 84 and died in just 1998.

[Hannah]

So hopefully we've shown you throughout this episode that there were two sides to Marvin Gaye. We've definitely covered some of the more troubled aspects of his life, but we also have to couple that up with an incredibly astute, deeply talented artist that he was. He was beloved around the world. Still is. 10,000 people queued for hours to pass his open coffin. And Jake, one last time we're gonna hand over to you as our music savant. Could you tell us a little bit about the legacy that Marvin Gaye left behind?

[Jake Brennan]

For sure. You know, on the one hand, it's complicated. Like you said, he was a very complicated guy. He had really messed up relationships in his life with women that were violent. But on the other hand, you know, if I look at the most important thing that Marvin Gaye did, it is that album, what's going on. That, to me, is the crown jewel of his legacy. If he hadn't made that album, he would be just known as this great soul singer who had a bunch of hits, bunch of number one hits, and, you know, perhaps moved the genre in. In some sort of innovative way, but with what's going on. He took it to an entirely different level. And like we said earlier, he created License for black artists to protest using the Billboard charts. And that had never been done before. And we take it for granted now. It was a monumental achievement. And I think that's, to me, that's the most significant part of Marvin Gaye's legacy.

[Hannah]

I think the most overwhelming tragedy of the whole thing. Obviously, as we've said multiple times, not excusing anything Marvin Gaye did, but I think the saddest thing is that even though he was at one time probably the most successful artist in the world, his dad controlled literally everything, even the way he died.

[Jake Brennan]

Right, Good point. Good point.

[Hannah]

And that's all we've got.

[Becca Tilly]

That is it, guys. That is it. That is the story of Marvin Gaye Jr. I'm not gonna say Anne. Marvin Gaye Sr. Cause fuck that guy. And Jake.

[Jake Brennan]

Yes.

[Becca Tilly]

This is it. This is your last, like 10 seconds to bring up pandas. You fail to do it.

[Jake Brennan]

My. Oh my God. Oh, my God. No, no. I have the perfect one though. You know, it's Marvin Gaye's other brother, Panda Gaye.

[Becca Tilly]

I don't know if you know about

[Jake Brennan]

Panda Gay, but he was the good son. He was the one that Marvin Gaye Sr. Actually loved. Totally controlled by communist China, by the way, because he doesn't have sex either. He hates sex. Total opposite.

[Becca Tilly]

There you go. There you go. All right.

[Hannah]

You did it.

[Becca Tilly]

You did it. Guinness is on me when we finally meet up.

[Hannah]

Oh, my God.

[Becca Tilly]

My voice is going.

[Hannah]

Okay, I'm going to wrap it up because Suri's dead.

[Jake Brennan]

Okay.

[Becca Tilly]

I killed.

[Hannah]

Cool. So thank you so much for joining us, Jake. You've got an absolutely encyclopedic knowledge of music that we will be stealing from you once more, I'm sure, or many times more.

[Jake Brennan]

Pleasure was all mine. Thank you so much for having me. Loved hanging out and talking to you guys.

[Hannah]

Wonderful.

[Becca Tilly]

Thank you, Jake.

[Hannah]

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[Jake Brennan]

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[Becca Tilly]

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