The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (95 page)

The short-term creative effect of his grief was perversely beneficial to Marvin Gaye: coupled with ongoing events in Vietnam and at home, it inspired the finest work of his career. He reemerged with the breathtaking, self-written
What’s Going On?
(1971), a classic album which revealed in songs like the title track and ‘Mercy Mercy Me’ Gaye’s previously stifled love of God and his planet, shadowed by his despair for its inhabitants. Despite the enormous critical acclaim the record drew, Gaye fell deeper into paranoia, exacerbated by his relentless hoovering of cocaine – but yet again, this prompted good work. He viewed his competition with apprehension, but always managed to trump them with the sheer quality of his output. Fearful of losing his crown to a Teddy Pendergrass, a Lou Rawls or even a Barry White, Gaye followed the productive with the seductive: the steamily sexual
Let’s Get It On
(1973) was inspired by new love Janis Hunter – this time a partner some years his junior, whom he’d woo in song for the last decade or so of his life. That Hunter aspired to a singing career herself was a nuisance to Gaye, who strove to prevent this (as he had done with his brother, Frankie, some years before). As the new record suggestively pronounced, he was to remain firmly ‘on top’ – a position he clearly relished.

Marvin Gaye: Let’s get it on

‘Did I love him? Let’s just say I didn’t dislike him.’

Marvin Gay Sr, interviewed in prison

But Gaye was to visit the darkest places of his life in the years that followed. Despite another US chart-topper with ‘Got to Give It Up’ (1977) – an extraordinary self-purging, disco-flavoured anthem – he was declared bankrupt the year after, with debts of several million dollars. An advance for two further albums with Motown held off the debt-collectors temporarily, but Gaye’s affairs of both the heart and the pocket were out of control. Separated once again, he was shedding enormous amounts of cash on settlements, maintenance and court orders (the 1979 album title
Here, My Dear
is believed to be a direct reference to Anna Gordy’s demands). This was topped by a heavy sprinkling of ‘the white stuff’ – Gaye himself said, ‘I don’t wanna know how much I spent on toot – several hundred thousand, I’d guess.’ Gaye was more horrified, however, to learn that Motown – tired of waiting for their star to sort himself out – had issued an unfinished album in his absence. Gaye considered this a huge affront to his integrity and left Gordy and the label by mutual agreement almost immediately. He also left the US and the horrors it now held for him, living in secret European exile until the release of a first album for Columbia.
Midnight Love
(1982) was far from his most inspired work, though it spawned a huge international hit in ‘Sexual Healing’, the whole set produced by trusted friend Harvey Fuqua. By now, though, Gaye’s behaviour was erratic and disturbing. His stage performance, once a peacock-like display of colour and poise, was now crass, little more than cheap sexual posturing with unwilling pawns. Another blow to his manhood was the loss of his home, which meant a return to the house he had purchased for his parents in 1965. Naturally, this also meant a return to the sick mother he loved and the sickening father he loathed.

Aware that he was distressed by his situation, Gaye’s friends became concerned by his talk of suicide (plus at least one attempt), relieving him of a .38 revolver. The singer – almost goading his father into committing the crime – eventually gave the weapon to Gay Sr, his obsession with security seemingly causing him to lose his senses. On the morning of All Fool’s Day 1984 (just one day ahead of his forty-fifth birthday), Gaye, now a bloated, drug-ravaged parody of a once-smooth prototype, sat quietly with Alberta in the darkened room he almost never left. As his father’s rasping demands cut through the conversation in a manner the frayed singer could no longer tolerate, Gaye leapt up, stormed into Gay Sr’s room and began hitting his father – an act that Gay Sr believed to be the utmost in disrespect: indeed, he’d vowed to his daughter Jeanne that should his eldest son ever attack him, he’d ‘murder him’. So, Gay Sr retrieved the gun given him and fired into Gaye’s chest. As his son slumped from the bed, Gay Sr shot again at pointblank range.

Marvin Gaye was pronounced dead at the California Hospital Medical Center just after 1 pm. Attendees at his funeral in Glendale included Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson, Gaye’s favourite singer Dick Gregory, his two ex-wives and three children; some 10,000 onlookers viewed the casket before the singer was cremated. The only absentee was Gaye’s father, busy displaying the bruises on his body and deflecting police questioning as though having prepared for that moment for decades. Following the November trial, Gay Sr – originally charged with murder – pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter, for which he received five years’ probation. Having left no will, his son was unable to benefit his surviving children: all of his estate went to honour unpaid debts.

See also
Harvey Fuqua (
Golden Oldies #115). Reese Palmer -founding tenor of The Marquees - died in October 2011.

Friday 27

Z Z Hill

(Arzel Hill - Naples, Texas, 30 September 1935)

Z Z Hill amassed hits on the R & B listings right through his illustrious career, without ever achieving crossover success. A Texas-blues-drenched soul singer, Hill named himself in deference to his hero, B B King, and served his time in lounge bars before moving to Kent Records and gaining R & B hit status with songs such as ‘You Were Wrong’ and ‘Hey Little Girl’ during the mid sixties. His career witnessed many dips in fortune, but early cut ‘I Need Someone to Love Me’ (1971) became a firm favourite some seven years after its original recording. And ten years later, Hill – now well into his forties – was signed with Malaco, enjoying a considerable revival not unlike that of Millie Jackson, with whom he regularly toured. His 1982 album,
Down Home Blues,
remained in the chart until well after his untimely death two years later.

Z Z Hill was injured in what appeared to be a minor car accident in February 1984 – within two months, however, an undetected blood clot provoked the heart attack that killed him. But a trio of beardy Texan blues rockers kept his name alive …

JUNE

Saturday 2

Nathaniel Nelson

(Chicago, Illinois, 10 April 1932)

The Flamingos

The Platters

A jewel in the crown of already-glistering vocal troupe The Flamingos, Nate Nelson was the magnificent lead who somehow fitted snugly within the R & B shuffle of this pioneering group’s songs. The group – at its strongest with Nelson, Jake Carey (bass), Tommy Hunt (tenor), Terry Johnson (tenor) and Paul Wilson (baritone) – has been widely recognized as having influenced a generation of soul and Motown acts, with The Temptations, for example, emulating their smooth choreography as well as their predecessors’ carefully-constructed vocal parts.

Nelson – trained, like so many black vocalists of his era, in gospel – joined The Flamingos part-time in 1954, groomed to replace incumbent lead Sollie McElroy. Under Nelson’s lead, the group enjoyed its most prolific period, which included the great ballad ‘I’ll be Home’ (1956) and a major national doo-wop hit – and recognized classic – in ‘I Only Have Eyes for You’ (1959). As the group slowly fragmented, Nelson fronted another muchloved vocal troupe, The Platters, the group managing to place a pair of hits long after their most successful period. Nate Nelson’s sad death at the age of fifty-two was hastened by his hospital’s inability to find a suitable heart donor in time to save him.

See also
Bobby Lester (
October 1980) - a later singer with The Flamingos. Nate Nelson was the first of the original group to shuffle off, since joined by Paul Wilson (1988), Sollie McElroy (1995), cousins Jake (1997) andZeke Carey (1999), plus Johnny Carter (2009). Six Platters have passed away: see David Lynch (
January 1981); Paul Robi (
February 1989); Tony Williams (
August 1992); also early Platters Cornell Gunter (
February 1990) and Elsbeary Hobbs (
May 1996). Manager/ producer Buck Ram (1991) and later singers Randy Jones (2002) and Zola Taylor (
Golden Oldies #48) have also died.