Denise gordy and marvin gaye

Marvin Gaye's life ended 20 years ago when his father shot him on April Fools' Day. But Gaye's musical legend has never stopped growing. He also explores Gaye's ongoing impact on the American music scene. In Mercy, Mercy MeDyson examines Gaye's iconic status and why the man who asked What's Going On remains as relevant now as he was when he was alive.

Dyson sees Gaye as a highly conflicted artist whose searing sexuality was rooted in his deep-seated spirituality. Beneath the suave, lover-man exterior was a tormented soul who had been brutally abused by his cross-dressing, minister father. Gaye had a string of broken relationships, battled drug addiction and bristled under restrictions imposed by the Motown machine.

Dyson interviewed dozens of people associated with Gaye and deftly weaves a tale of the Trouble Man 's tortured life. Along the way, there are revelations that the teenaged Gaye was likely raped by an uncle, that his long-thought platonic relationship with singing partner Tammi Terrell was an intimate one, and that the son Gaye had with his first wife, Anna Gordy, who was 17 years his senior, actually was one he fathered by her year-old niece.

The Untold Truth Of Marvin Gaye

Gaye, who had a jazz musician's knack for collaboration and improvisation, never bought into Motown's assembly-line methods. And though he remains the storied label's biggest-selling star, he was not afraid to make music that did not have huge sales potential. His dogged determination also reared up when he recorded What's Going Onhis groundbreaking masterpiece, in only 10 days while fighting Motown president Barry Gordy all the way.

Gordy didn't like his matinee-idol star singing anti-war and pro-environmental anthems. He didn't think the album would sell. Gaye proved Gordy wrong. It is now universally regarded as one of the greatest albums ever made. Dyson concludes that Gaye continues to influence music, and he draws parallels between the Motown star and his contemporary counterpart, R.

Kelly, another star whose art rises out of a fusing of the sexual and the spiritual. It is hard to speculate what direction Gaye might have taken had he lived, but at the time he died, he was besieged by all manner of demons, including drugs and depression. Those were things, writes Dyson, that all of Gaye's creative genius could not help him outrun.

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