Original subtitles

I've spent my whole life fighting.

First my family, then my record company, then my two wives,

and my dear father.

The hardest fight has been with my own demons.

That made me who I am.

# ...songs from pain

# Some songs were done by chosen me

# Some from men insane... #

Tonight I am so proud to have the greatest singer in the world

in the auditorium tonight. It's Marvin Gaye!

# Let the good times roll

# Let the good times roll

# Distant lover, baby

# Distant lover

# Oh, oh, baby... #

I've known since childhood I'd be in show business,

but not until much later that I'd be an artist,

writing songs that are my life story

About relationships and...separations.

# Oh, baby

# Honey, please

# Come back

# Ooh

# Come back home, little darlin'...

When I was a child, I used to have these dreams -

there was a sea of humanity and I was performing for them.

I was singing for what seemed like millions of people,

and towards the end of this dream, which I dreamed often as a child,

I was acclaimed the greatest singer on Earth.

I dreamed that constantly.

Father was a man of "spare the rod, spoil the child".

And he never spared the rod.

He was very, very, very strict.

So we all were punished if we did things that my father didn't like.

And I think one of the problems that my father had with my brother was

that he didn't realise that Marvin was a free spirit.

He doesn't like to be chained or bound.

# Father, stop

# Criticising your son... #

Sometimes, we would have to undress down to our underwear,

cos he thought the clothing got in the way.

My goodness, I knew my heart would sink, cos I knew he was in trouble.

Father liked mind games. He played with me.

He'd make me wait up to an hour while he jangled that belt buckle

just loud enough.

There was something inside him

enjoying the pain he caused the whole family.

# Everybody wants somebody

# To be their own piece of clay... #

It was like the Oedipus story transposed to Washington DC.

Only ours was a fight for the love of my mother

between son and father.

Marvin's dad was the Gestapo. What we would call him was

holier-than-thou disciplinarian. You know what I mean by that?

He would always recite something from the Bible.

One thing we used to remember, he would always tell Marvin

he didn't know where he came from.

"I don't know where you came from, boy! You're not mine!

"There's too much of the devil in you."

So there's this whole painful dynamic,

and I think as Marvin grew older,

when he was looking for paternal love,

paternal attention, he would do it through provocation.

I had learned from experience

that my fight to win love would always be accompanied by pain.

The punishment and guilt that Father inflicted on us was reflected

in our church, where he was preacher.

A mix of Jewish Orthodox severity

and black Pentecostal joy.

HORN BLOWS

I understood that, in my life,

the pleasures of the devil were going to give the joys of God.

Some mighty stiff competition.

THEY SING HYMN

He carried the extremes of his childhood church,

the fundamentalist Pentecostal attitude of all or nothing,

of doom or total ecstasy, throughout his entire life.

# Our father

# Which art in Heaven

# Hallowed be Thy name... #

I think we have two sets of gods in us,

and I think we have to decide which we are going to serve.

It's simple as that.

# Deliver us from evil

# For Thine is the kingdom

# And the power

# And the glory

# Forever... #

The Lord's music in Marvin's mind was at odds with the Devil's music.

The Devil's music was defined by Marvin's dad.

Marvin went from the Lord's Prayer to doo-wop.

# Ba-ba-ba-ba

# I knew from the start That you were the only girl for me

# And I knew from the start... #

Doo-wop groups, with their sharp clothes and their sharper harmonies,

always fascinated me, but Father was convinced

that my joining the Moonglows would be a terrible mistake.

And his voice telling me, "No, no, no," haunted me.

# My Mama Loochie

# She's a brand new coochie

# Ding-dong baby... #

So I left home with my mother's blessing

and hooked up with Harvey Fuqua, leader of the Moonglows.

We worked the road for a year or so and then moved towards Detroit.

# Hey, yeah

# She can dance

# And she can sing... #

Motown Records was unique at that time.

A black-owned record company run with a fist of iron

by its pugilistic boss Berry Gordy.

We didn't do music to preach or to...

tell people what they should do.

We were really... Our focus was on good music.

Naturally, we were in business and we wanted to make everybody hear it.

Marvin's new Motown family

offered him a replacement father figure in Berry Gordy.

Over the years, they'd fight about everything.

# Patience is a virtue That's what I've been told... #

But you must understand, at that time, I was totally obscure

as an artist, and I hadn't even had a single record or anything.

I was just a studio musician, a session musician,

drummer and songwriter, trying to hustle my way round Motown,

to get started.

We just thought of Motown being the greatest place in the world to be.

It was the place, if you wanted the opportunity

of accomplishing your dream,

reaching your goals, musically,

that Motown was the place to be.

And most of the people that came to Berry Gordy at that time

has absolutely no clue

of what we were to do and how we were to achieve it.

We were expecting Berry Gordy to make us over,

to make us a star.

And Marvin knew how, in his music and his moves and his actions,

with his eyes, with his hands, with his body language, period.

# Make you feel so good

# Hitch hike

# Hitch like Marvin

# Hitch like Susan Woo!

# Hitch like Marvin Hitch like Susan... #

It wasn't shaking my ass on stage that made me a star, that's for sure.

Motown never understood it was my voice that people wanted to buy.

# Hitch hike, baby Yeah, it's all right

# Bye-bye, baby... #

Motown producers cut everything as high as they could for anybody.

On all those records, I was just discovering my voice,

and they were killing me with them, and the keys were atrocious.

He would give us a lot of mouth, a lot of lip

about, "You're cutting me in these keys!

"I can't sing this stuff like this!"

Then he would sing and he would take the demo and transform...

He'd start sliding into falsetto

and the parts that were too high, he'd scream it out.

And he would subtly make the song his own.

# Ooh, baby

# I needed the shelter

# Of someone's arms

# And there you were

# I needed someone

# To understand my ups and downs

# And there you were

# With sweet love and devotion

# Deeply touching my emotions

# I wanna stop Stop

# And thank you, baby

# I want to stop Stop

# And thank you, baby

# Yeah, now

# How sweet it is to be loved by you... #

He gave you a spice of life in his voice, that you heard.

You heard the pain and the anguish.

And the sweet and the love, cos he would got from hot to cold

and meet lukewarm... You would get all of these different feelings.

# How sweet it is to be loved by you

# Ooh, baby

# I needed the shelter of someone's arms... #

In terms of the black record-buying public,

I think I broke through rather early,

although I couldn't sell

near the volume of records that my contemporaries could.

During the '60s, there was a struggle

for black music acceptance amongst whites.

Before Berry Gordy,

it was thought of as not particularly chic

to have black record collections in your homes, if you were white.

Motown has done a great deal to alleviate that.

There was enough rhythm and blues interjected into their music

for white record buyers to say, "This is good black music,

"because we can recognise a bit of ourselves in it."

Which I think is the secret to many things in life -

if you're clever enough and you want to reach people,

you have to try to give them a taste of themselves.

# You are my pride and joy

# And I just love you

# Love you, darlin'

# Like a baby boy loves his toy... #

The lyrics of my songs are always about what's happening in my life.

Right then, I was head over heels in love with Anna Gordy,

the boss's sister.

She was 17 years older than I, but I just wrote what I felt about her.

# Pride and joy

# I believe I'm no Baby boy

# Baby boy Baby boy

# And I know you're mine My pride and joy

# Yeah, baby

# Yeah, baby... #

Oh, he was always good looking

and he was always flirting around

and jostling with me.

And I don't really know, cos, you know, I was kind of...

a hard-to-get person.

And everybody knew that, and...

I think they thought he was the one to get after me.

I believe one of the reasons Marvin was attracted to his wife

was because I think she reminded him of his mother.

And then I'm sure the fact that she was the sister of the president

of the record company didn't hurt any either!

He knew that if he married the boss's sister, that the boss would look

at him a little differently and do more for him

than if he hadn't married his sister.

# Cos I got to get my hands on some loving... #

Anna appreciated my every move.

When we were married, she knew what she wanted, and got it.

But I also knew what I wanted,

never mind what other artists thought.

We didn't say very much because it was Berry Gordy's sister.

So we accepted it, we just thought it was a shame it wasn't us.

All of us were jealous and resented the fact that he married Anna.

They used to call Motown Records "Patent Place".

There was always talk about Marvin being gay.

"Look at his last name". That's really ignorance.

I said, "Look in your phone book,

"you'll find lots of gay people then!" That's stupidity.

People would be very cruel, they'd say very unkind things.

And so, without the "E"...

..it would give people reason to say,

"Hm!"

So Marvin decided he would put an "E" on his name.

And he did this to silence the gossips

and to distance himself from his father's name.

Marvin's father was the weird one.

When you're a kid, you sneak and look in people's houses.

Marvin's dad had this thing where we would see him putting on stockings,

garter belts,

you know, underwear.

We didn't understand why.

Father liked to wear women's clothing.

It may have been just to embarrass me

but there were times

his hair was long and curled

and he seemed determined

to show the world the girl inside of himself.

Marvin seeing his dad, who on one hand was a charismatic preacher

and on the other hand was a cross-dresser

was a source of great confusion for him.

It was something he felt he inherited in his DNA

that he didn't want there.

So...a lot of what Marvin did in later life,

in searching for a macho role, the boxer, the athlete, was a reaction

to his dad's effeminate demeanour.

On the inside of Marvin...

lived...three people.

There was the spirit man Marvin

that was sensitive and kind

and spiritual.

There was the other Marvin

that was the star

and there was the Marvin

that WAS the Stubborn Kind Of Fellow

so you're going to have confrontation.

And I'm not moving from here until I get what I want.

# Oooh

# Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

# I try to put my arms around you

# All because I wanna hold you tight To hold you tight

# But every time I reach for you, baby, and try to kiss you

# You jump out of sight Out of sight

# Hey now, I've got news for you

# Don't you know I've made plans for two

# I guess I'm a stubborn kind of fellow

# Got my mind made up to love you

# Oooh-ooh-ooh

# Baby, yeah-yeah-yeah, yeah-yeah-yeah

# Hey-eh

# Yeah!

# Yeah-yeah-yeah, yeah-yeah-yeah

# Whoo! #

Marvin was a good storyteller so you would imagine...what you wanted to imagine, he would make you feel.

All of that came out in the performance, in his voice,

he would adjust his tones

to fit whatever we were talking about.

So everybody would get a sense of, "I've been there, I can relate."

Marvin would do anything to...

..to captivate an audience.

And he would captivate us in the studio the same way

because he was a music SELLER.

You sell yourself.

I was a bit spoiled, I was a prima donna,

I was the president's brother-in-law

and I was rather ridiculous about things.

I've always had a big ego problem.

And I was going anyway, in my mind,

I was better than everybody, anywhere.

I seemed to enjoy being able to say, "I don't have to do that.

"You guys do that."

Most people think Marvin Gaye was this great artist.

Ah, he could do that, do that.

He was a great artist - in the studio.

When it came to the stage, Marvin couldn't dance a lick.

Couldn't pat his foot on the two and four.

He pat his foot...excuse me, he pat his foot like a white boy.

He had, what I'd call, performance anxiety in many areas.

And I think that came from being insecure about himself

and his image.

# Quiet nights and quiet stars

# Quiet chords from my guitar

# Floating on the silence that surrounds us... #

He had this thing in his head about being more of a balladeer.

He wanted to follow in the footsteps

of the Frank Sinatras and the Dean Martins and the Tony Bennetts.

# I who was lost and lonely

# Believing life was only

# A bitter, tragic joke

# Have found with you

# The meaning of existence

# Oh, my love... #

The problem was nobody bought my smooth crooner records.

Motown hated them.

We fought repeatedly about my image.

But concealed behind that ego

and his heartthrob image,

Marvin was going through all kinds of hell.

He had a very complicated relationship to...

er...women,

particularly to Anna, his wife.

And his life was full of betrayal,

most of which was his own invention.

And you know,

Marvin even went as far as going to motels

where he was convinced Anna was having an affair

and he would show up at motels in the middle of the night,

knocking on doors.

So he needed this kind of drama

to excite his creative imagination.

# Oh, I heard it through the grapevine

# And I'm just about to lose my mind

# Honey, honey, well... #

Grapevine was my first number one hit.

I believed every word of that song.

It was happening to me.

The doubting, the friends whispering in my ear,

the suspicions.

# People say believe half of what you see

# Son, and none of what you hear

# But I can't help bein' confused

# If it's true, please tell me, dear

# Do you plan to let me go

# For the other guy you loved before?

# Don't you know I heard it through the grapevine

# Not much longer would you be mine, baby... #

To help cement his troubled marriage with Anna,

and also to tie him to the family home,

they adopted a child they called Marvin Pentz Gaye III

after Marvin's dad.

As big as my dad was,

he never played the big shot.

He always came in as the underdog.

He...times were very normal as far as what normal is that I know of.

He wanted domestic happiness,

he wanted simple domestic happiness.

One woman, his children, an uncomplicated home life.

But at the very same time,

he did all he could to undermine that happiness.

In the years leading up to Grapevine,

there'd been plenty of gossip about what I was up to behind Anna's back.

Berry had paired me with some pretty glamorous singing partners

for a series of duet albums.

First Mary Wells and then Kim Weston.

He was a perfect gentleman,

first of all.

But he was very shy,

he was rather insecure.

And, er...when they say a ladies man,

they mean that the ladies ran after him.

I think Marvin, on some level, was scared of women.

He was scared of aggressive women - he didn't like aggressive women.

The ones who never had a chance were the ones who were most assertive.

After my first two partners left Motown,

I was paired with Tammy Terrell.

Tammy was vulnerable and misunderstood -

my perfect partner.

# ..or winter cold can stop me, baby

# No, no, baby

# Cos you are my goal

# If you're ever in trouble, I'll be there on the double

# Just send for me Oh, baby

# My love is alive

# Way down in my heart

# Although we are miles apart

# If you ever need a helping hand

# I'll be there on the double just as fast as I can

BOTH: # Don't you know that there ain't no mountain high enough

# Ain't no valley low enough

# Ain't no river wide enough

# To keep me from getting to you, babe... #

My singing partnerships at Motown were all fragile affairs.

After Tammy collapsed in my arms

and later died of a brain tumour, I had to stop.

Behind its glossy images, I could see the bottom line

of what this business was really about.

After Tammy died, Marvin didn't perform for four years.

And the music they had created together,

those wonderful hits,

and the image they had created as a couple,

which was the image of innocence,

was all about to change.

SIRENS WAIL

The social turmoil, the violence of those years,

was happening all around here.

Inside me too, where my own problems were burning me up.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world,

my own family was fighting and dying for Uncle Sam.

I think it was around 1969, 1970,

when I stopped thinking so much

about my erotic fantasies

and I started to...

think about the war in Vietnam with my brother

who used to tell me...

he'd respond with some pretty horrible stories about the war.

I became quite affected by it.

# What's going on? What's going on?

# What's going on? What's going on? Yeah, what's going on? #

Frankie told me

that he used to sit up night after night with Marvin

and they'd go back and forth discussing

all the horrors in Vietnam and how unnecessary the war was

and all the innocent people being hurt

and how sad it was.

And the two of them used to sit there and cry.

# Hang in there, baby

# Mother, mother

Thank you

# There's too many of you crying

# Brother, brother, brother

# There's far too many of you dying

# You know we've got to find a way

# To bring some lovin' here today

# Oh, baby

# Father, father

# We don't need to escalate, oh baby

# War is not the answer

# Only love can conquer hate

# You know we've got to find a way... #

There was a great deal of unrest in there...but in any event,

it caused me to look at society, take a hard look at society,

and something happened with me during that period

and I felt a strong urge to write music and to write lyrics

that would touch the souls of men.

# Oh, what's going on? What's going on?

# What's going on? What's going on?

# Yeah, what's going on? #

What's Going On was my masterpiece,

made with the help of God and the recording studio.

That was the one place

I knew I could control the forces of chaos around me.

At last I felt free to make things happen the way I wanted.

# Right on, right on, ay-ay-ay-ay-ay... #

Marvin was in total control of his production - dictator.

Everything was dictated. He would dictate to the musicians,

dictated to me, dictated to the singers.

Whatever he wanted to do, he was total control, total control.

And he knew what he wanted, cos it was not a typical Motown sound.

It was not typical love songs that Motown were putting out.

It was an album about what man is doing to the ecology, what man is doing to himself.

# Oh, make me wanna holler And throw up both my hands

# Yeah, it make me wanna holler

# And throw up both my hands # Ow!

# Crime is increasing

# Trigger-happy policing

# Panic is spreading

# God knows where we're heading

# Oh, dah-dah, dah-dah, dah-dah

# Dah-dah, dah, dah-dah

# Dah, dah-dah, dah-dah

# Dah-dah, dah, dah-dah... #

He wanted to do something talking about police brutality,

the Vietnam War, um, all the things that, um...

that were bad in our society.

And I was just very scared that he was going to ruin his image.

And many times it sort of spilled over into personal disagreements

and in some cases some violent, semi-violent disagreements,

between Berry and myself, politically speaking.

It should have been my moment of artistic triumph

but Berry's supporters in the Motown marketing meetings ridiculed What's Going On.

They trashed it, they threw it in the garbage can.

Said it wasn't no good, it wasn't nothin'.

You know? Because they didn't have anything like it to compare with it.

Obviously, I learned a great deal because the album was What's Going On,

probably the greatest piece of work that Motown has ever put out.

# Father, father Father, father

# We don't need to escalate Father, father

# Oh, baby War is not the answer

# Only love can conquer hate... #

When he calls out "Father, father",

Marvin is really calling on God AND his earthly father for support.

Father Gaye should have been proud

but the man was eaten up with envy.

For Marvin's album, in truth, was a much better sermon

than his father ever preached, and certainly a more rewarding one.

Marvin brought home an attache case

with a million dollars in it.

And when he threw it on the bed and said, "What do you think now, Father?"

Um, he says,

"I still say, what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?"

No matter where Marvin was,

no matter what stage of his life or his career,

he continued to be haunted by his dad,

he continued to hear his father's voice ask him,

"Why are you doing this? Why aren't you preaching? Where's your church?

"Why are you singing the wrong kind of music?"

As long as I know you have a humble mind and as long as you know there's a God upstairs

and you can call on him, and respect the people, I think you are a wonderful person.

I needed space from both my father's warnings

and from Berry Gordy, the surrogate father of my Motown family.

It was time to strike out.

Marvin loved combat.

He didn't know how to go from one stage in his life

to another without combat.

So that, rather than leave Motown

with good understanding and goodwill and peacefully,

he had to fight his way out of the company, in his own mind.

I put distance between us when I uprooted to the brighter skies of Los Angeles.

I was still under contract to Motown but I was free now to record whatever I wanted.

I wrote a soundtrack for a movie and called it Troubled Man.

MUSIC: "Troubled Man" by Marvin Gaye

APPLAUSE

Now Marvin made the biggest turnaround any artist ever made.

From anthems of political protest

to ballads about love,

physical love.

# I've been really tryin', baby

# Tryin' to hold back this feeling so long

# And if you feel like I feel, baby

# Then come on, oh, come on, ooh

# And let's get it on CHEERS

# Oh, baby, let's get it on

# Let's love, baby

# Let's get it on, oh, sugar

# Let's get it on

# Hoo, hoo-oo... #

I'd left behind all the constraints of Motown and my marriage.

My new life was a roller coaster ride of parties, drugs

and one-night stands.

Until I met a 17-year-old called Janice Hunter.

We met in 1973 in Hollywood.

And...something magical happened

when we...when our eyes met.

And it sounds a little corny but it was really, for me, it was love at first sight.

And he told me later that it was love at first sight for him too.

# I just want to show you all my love

# All my love, all of the love

# I feel for you, baby, oh... #

I remember the first time he drove me home,

the first time he kissed me.

And we were standing at the bottom of my stairs

and he took my face in his hands...

..and I thought he was going to kiss me on the lips, and he kissed me on my forehead

and it was one of the sweetest kisses I've ever had.

And that was really the beginning of our relationship.

# You know I love you, baby

# You know I love you so much

# Oh, that's much better baby... #

Let's Get It On, it was straight-up sexual.

It was about sexual freedom, it was about his sexual freedom,

it was about what he felt about men and women and being physical

and he was not afraid to express any of it.

# Turn the music lower, babe

# Uh, turn the lights down low, baby

# Turn the lights down

# Oh, don't go nowhere, girl Don't go nowhere... #

We found a hideaway from the glare of publicity way up in Topanga Canyon.

Never mind I was still wedded to Anna and the nightmares of the past.

For me, love carries the seeds of its own destruction.

I needed a mother's love to help me through.

So I bought her a gated mansion

and father moved there too.

Marvin loved his mother so much because she was there to defend him

in just about everything,

and to encourage him in just about everything

Any problem, no matter what it was,

he would tell her.

And she in turn would give him answers.

She became his confidante

and his spiritual guru.

But even mother couldn't protect me from the temptations of the road.

Ironically, the huge success of Let's Get It On

meant all the old commercial pressures which I thought I had escaped now reappeared.

I was back on tour.

..Yeah, OK.

Just give him some water. He wants water.

Plain, out of the tap?

They wanted me to jump back out there and shake my booty just like a teenager all over again.

I just wanted to be alone with Jan.

Touring always tears at my gut.

I do enough drugs in ordinary life but on the road, quantities triple.

..Instead of chemicalised tap water, which you can drink...

And then I have to act like every woman's lost lover

so she'll go out and buy three more copies of my latest record.

Are you serious? Is this me?

# Save our sweet world

# Help, somebody

# Save the world, save the world Save the babies, save the kids

# Save the children, yeah... #

What kept me going was having children of my own with Janice,

something Anna was never able to give me.

They were more important to me than money and so-called success.

I wanted to give them the love I never had from my father.

He did have family values,

as distorted as they may have been

and as dysfunctional as his own family was as he was growing up,

he did his best

to create his own family, to have his children around him,

to have a wife, to have a home.

And for us it wasn't an easy thing to do

because we were both heavily addicted to drugs and alcohol

and it's very difficult to base a marriage...

relationship...or anything else

when you have that as a major issue on both sides.

# I want you

# But I want you to want me too... #

My next album, I Want You, was my way of telling Janice

I wanted her as my wife,

both of us needing the stability of marriage.

# ..Yes, baby, ooh

# Get down, baby

# Ooh, I want you... #

This record represented more Marvin's love,

first for Janice,

and I think he was probably more happier in this album

than probably any album he ever did because this album from top to bottom

was excessively sensual.

VOCAL HARMONIES TRACK PLAYS

He's doing background and a lead.

And the background is four to five different harmony parts.

And that's what you're hearing.

# Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh

# Hoo, ah-ah

# I want you... #

I think the irony about Marvin is that the inner turmoil he had

between the spirit and the flesh,

that turmoil found perfect peace in his art.

# ..Just like I want you... #

So that the different voices in his head -

one whispering, "Love God", the other whispering, "Get everything you can" -

these warring voices which tore him up,

he was able to harmonise, literally harmonise,

in his art.

# ..A one-way love is just a fantasy

# Oh, sugar

# To share is precious, pure and fair

# Ooh Don't play with something... #

One thing that actually blew me away, if I can use that phrase,

is one afternoon and Marvin's singing his ass off, but I don't see Marvin.

I looked out of the control room and there was Marvin

extremely relaxed, totally on his back,

and he was singing...

I've never seen an artist sing... Sung like he's standing up.

He's singing his ass off.

# It's just too bad, just too sad

# You-ou don't want me now

# But I'll get along some way

# Baby, some, somehow, baby... #

Marvin was able to communicate

what people were experiencing in their own lives,

through his voice.

Certain notes he would hit had a sound

which meant it was coming from his gut,

coming from his heart, from his soul.

You can actually hear it.

# ..Don't you wanna care?

# Ain't it lonely out there?

# I want you, want you, baby

# But I want you I want you to want me too...

He would use his voice to elevate whatever it is he's talkin' and singin' about

and lower his voice to let people know, "Hey, this is comin' from my gut, from my soul."

And then he will soothe it out and you say, "Ah, this is melody, I think I'm feelin' good now."

He fought back through his music.

He fought back through his voice.

I was also using my music, my songs, to fight my old wars with Anna.

I'd been waiting to divorce both her and Motown for 14 years

and now the moment had arrived and all I felt was pain.

# ..makes you so stubborn... #

The courts ordered Marvin Gaye that all of the moneys that was to be made off of his next album

was to go to Anna because of their divorce.

So he did an album called Here My Dear that sold about six.

# Laughing and running wild

# Anna

# Anna

# An-naaa!

# Yeah

# Now this is Anna's song

# Hey baby

# Hey baby... #

I felt trapped.

Though legally free now to marry Jan,

our relationship was already turning rotten

because of all the skeletons in my closet.

Marvin's relationship with Anna always intimidated me.

And...being that young, I really didn't know what to do.

I still believe he loved Anna

and that was a great source of jealousy for me.

At the end of the '70s you have this amazing situation where, you know,

marriage number two had fallen apart.

The acrimony deepens, uh, he owes the IRS millions,

he's out of money entirely.

He leaves the United States,

he goes to Hawaii where he lives in a bread van.

Marvin continues to feud with wife number two

so the...the pattern continues of going from romantic hope

to romantic despair.

In spite of the fact that I had boyfriends, he had girlfriends,

we had other relationships outside of our marriage,

I believe it's impossible to have a healthy relationship

when you have two sick people involved in it.

The more I loved Jan, the more I hated her.

I just want to be left alone

to blow my brains away with high-octane coke.

If he's really an artist...

he has these fits of depression that he can't seem to shake

because if he's really concerned and...

if he can really see then he feels. Just like a sponge, he picks up...

and he retains it and the only way you can get these feelings off

is to put it in your music.

# Oh, please

# Come back home

# Whoa-ooh-oh, baby

# Oh!

# Oh, baby!

# Please

# Oh!

# Oooh, come back home

# Oh!

# Yeah! #

I still did the occasional show just to keep body and soul together.

And it was while I was holed up in Hawaii

that a promoter from England, Jeffrey Kruger, arrived

and offered to take me there.

I flew over to see Marvin

and we had to track him down through drug dealers.

Which we did.

And he was a shock to me when I saw him again.

He'd lost a lot of weight, told me he hadn't eaten,

hadn't even washed, which was so unlike Marvin cos he was a very sharp character.

Kruger helped to clean me up by taking me on tour to England.

And the highlight of that tour was to be a command performance for Princess Margaret.

Little did I know it would never take place

and he'd be the one to sabotage it but I should have known.

It was a wonderful evening, except there was no Marvin!

The Princess left about 10.30.

I was leaving about 10.40, there was nobody left in the audience,

and Mr Marvin Gaye rolls up,

unsteady, and sat at the piano

and wanted to know what time the show was gonna start.

I said, "There's the cleaner. You can sing to her. We're going."

And that's exactly what happened.

# Huh! #

The headlines in every paper that I can think of

was that Marvin Gaye Snubs Royal Family.

TRAIN HOOTS

I was down and out, at my lowest ebb,

and I met boxing promoter Freddy.

And he took me to dry out in the fresh sea air of Ostend, Belgium.

Of all places!

Marvin sees Freddy as a boxing trainer,

as the guy who's going to get him into shape again.

And it's here in Belgium that Marvin begins to plan his comeback.

My next fight's going to be my wife.

15 round...elimination bout.

For all the property.

I was fighting back at last.

I get to Ostend, Belgium, we're working on Marvin's biography,

I go up to his apartment

and there on the coffee table are lots of books of S&M pornography.

Marvin was still struggling with the devil,

still struggling with his demons.

I said, "Marvin, what you need is sexual healing.

"Not sexual pain."

And he says, "What does that mean?"

and I said, "The love of one woman who would love you for being you."

And he said, "I LOVE that idea.

"Write a poem." And I wrote a poem and he wrote a melody.

# Get up, get up, get up, get up. #

'And sexual healing was born.'

# Wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up

# Oh, baby, now let's get down tonight

# Oooh

# Ba-a-by

# I'm hot just like an oven

# I need some lovin'

# Yeah, ba-a-by

# I can't hold it much longer

# It's getting stronger and stronger

# And when I get that feelin'

# I want sexual healing

# Sexual...healing

# Oh, baby

# Makes me feel so fine

# Helps to relieve my mind

# Sexual...healing, baby, is good for me

# Sexual...healing is something that's good for me

# Whenever blue teardrops are falling... #

Sexual Healing was a massive hit, my knockout punch

for all those who doubted my ability to make a comeback.

# There is something... #

CBS had finally bought me out of my Motown contract.

I flew home to Los Angeles where my mother and father were waiting.

I was inundated with honours. In 22 years I made 26 albums and 40 hits.

I went back on tour.

I needed the love of my fans, and a pay cheque, too.

# ..Darling, that's sexual healing. #

It was a crazy tour during which he had a preacher in one room

and his cocaine dealer in the other room

so the sort of metaphor became the literal condition of his life.

God in one room, the devil in the next.

The war continued and continued.

# Whoo!

# Sexual

# Oh, sexy... #

Marvin was convinced he HAD to give his public

more and more of his raw sexuality so...

so you have him making something of a spectacle of himself.

# Ow! Sexual... #

The last tour was a very sad tour

because Marvin had got really paranoid.

He thought that somebody was after him to kill him.

We would argue, either about money, the children, drugs,

who I was seeing, who he was seeing...

It was just... It was a constant battle with interference from everyone around us.

Janice would not let the children near him.

And that just broke his heart. Absolutely destroyed him.

Absolutely destroyed him.

DISTANT CHEERS OF CROWD, MUSIC FADES

He returned home to his mom and dad

and I think the reason is he was scared.

He became a child again and in his mind he was convinced

that he would be safe from harm in his mother's home.

And, of course, the terrible irony of it all is

that is where he would meet his death.

# Oh mother mother

# There's too many of you crying... #

Marvin wanted to see her

because I think he needed to feel he was loved.

I went over to the big house and I said, "Marvin, why are you crying?"

He said, "Cos nobody loves me."

Marvin had really deteriorated

to the point where he... At one time he wasn't putting on any clothes.

Uh, except, just, uh, walking around with his bathrobe on

with a loaded .38 revolver in his, in his pocket.

Uh, just in the house, pretty much paranoid.

'There was a strange cold...

'It's hard to describe the coldness. It was like...weird.'

Marvin! Woo-hoo!

The girls would be in the garden, screaming, "Marvin! Let me in!"

And they would come night and day.

They had no respect for Marvin's father or his mother.

So I think it was things like that,

that father really felt that he was losing control of his home.

It was like...the devil, almost, inside of him.

Marvin was beating his old man. He was beating Pops up.

Something he'd always wanted to do.

And Father kept the gun that Marvin bought for him.

Under his pillow.

I definitely believe that Marvin's death

was a way of him basically committing suicide

because he gave his father the gun,

and, basically, went and provoked his father

to the point that he shot and killed him.

TWO GUNSHOTS

And so this lifetime of vitriol

and endless antagonism,

which began in violence, ended in violence.

The ultimate act of revenge.

As I look back at my defeats and my problems

and all of the things that I can sink into depression about,

I can also look back and I can think of all the blessings I've had.

And my blessings actually outweigh all of the negative things that have...

that have occurred in my life

and it's that fact that probably makes me happiest of all.

I know somebody up there loves me.

# Mm, there are songs from wisdom Doo-be-doo Be-doo-be-doo

# There are songs from Satan

# There are songs from lovin' Yeah

# And there are songs from hatin'

# There are songs from lust

# And there are songs from pain

# Some songs were done by chosen men

# Some from men insane

# Groove, baby

# Groove on the light

# One time

# Groove, baby

# On the right

# Ooh, dance, baby

# To the light

# This time

# Dance, sugar... #

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