What's Going On, Marvin Gaye

January 12, 2008

The main reason for listening to Marvin Gaye is pretty easy to locate: that smooth voice. It really doesn't matter too much what he is singing.. it just feels right. But in the 70s Gaye becomes more than a voice. He releases a string of albums that are some of the great accomplishments of the rock period. These albums combine the musical strength of Motown with the genre experimentation that was taking place elsewhere in popular music. What's Going On came out in 1971 and its title song deserves analysis.

First I should mention how exciting it is to begin to discover musical crossover in this era. On Aretha Franklin's album Live at Filmore West she performs "Love the One You're With" and "Eleanor Rigby." Both songs receive her musical imprimatur, but they point to an appreciation of the broad pop music world.. before the individual components get sealed off from one another. Marvin Gaye does not cover any pop songs, but he casts a sympathetic eye at the world around him and asks: "Who are they to judge us, just because our hair is long?" The long hairs must be the anti-war protesters.. the counter-culture.. and Marvin Gaye takes them all in with that amazingly inclusive "us" and "our."

That is the kind of spirit that myself and others hear in the campaign of Barack Obama.. and which we want badly to believe in. Obama's campaign is often referred to as "post-racial" in the sense that he refuses to divide the world in the same tired ways.. but I think by listening to a few Black popular musicians some of that same spirit is present. In the spirit of Borges, maybe we could call artists like Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder Obamaesque.

Let's take a look at "What's Going On":

Mother, mother
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 - Ya

Father, father
We don't need to escalate
You see, war is not the answer
For only love can conquer hate
You know we've got to find a way
To bring some lovin' here today

Most notable about these two opening stanzas are the references to family members: mother, brother, father. Mothers stand in for the sorrow of loss. Brothers are those who are dying (in the Vietnam War). Fathers are the figure to whom one can appeal not to escalate the war. The travails of a nation at war are mapped onto the family. This is a rhetorical coup because Gaye does not have to address an other. The authority figures who might "escalate" the war are not pictured as an enemy, but as a family member to be pleaded with.

Love is the answer for this inter-familial tension. That claim is supported by a citation of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. that "war is not the answer." The call for love is a bromide, but one that harkens back strongly to the counter-cultural ethic as enunciated by the Beatles in "All You Need Is Love." Strangely then, the messages of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Beatles are combined.. and applied within a family dialogue that allows for no bad guys to appear.

The next stanza in this musically complex piece is ushered in with a striking shift in rhythm:

Picket lines and picket signs
Don't punish me with brutality
Talk to me, so you can see
Oh, what's going on
What's going on
Ya, what's going on
Ah, what's going on

In a more direct way than previously we are present in the midst of the social tension of the late 60s and early 70s. You can see in your mind's eye the lines of anti-riot police officers and the stormy youthful protesters. Gaye pleads: "Don't punish me with brutality".. thereby aligning his voice squarely with the protesters. He further asks: "Talk to me, so you can see/ What's going on.." Again he is eminently reasonable: don't beat me up, talk to me and hear me out. It is a "come let us reason together" moment, the aim of which is to figure out "what's going on".. i.e. what's really going on, not what you have been told is going on. The song title thus contains something of an epistemological claim: how can we know something genuine about the world? By listening to people who have experienced the world.

Next comes a musical interlude with some elusive words:

In the mean time
Right on, baby
Right on
Right on

The original single version of the song is different than the version that appeared on the album.. and I have to assume that these lines are unique to the album since they point forward to the song "Right On." This is an important reference since that song goes some way toward explaining how Gaye could go from a socially conscious album like What's Going On to a self-gazing album like Let's Get It On. The key is to understand the elastic nature of love, which can work on a lot of levels, from social ills to personal sexual enjoyment. In "Right On" after praising those who understand that it is good to care for society's ills, Gaye breaks off and praises a more hedonistic lifestyle:

Those of us who live a life
Hey, hey, hey enjoying ourselves
For those of us who got drowned
In the sea of happiness
For the soul that takes pride in his God
And himself and everything else
Love
That's all it is
We need love
That's all it is
Oh, oh
Love, love
Love's the thing

That is exactly the message of "What's Going On" but now the notion of love has lost any boundary. "What's Going On" used family love as a path by which we could escape national hatreds, "Right On" allows love to be everything to everyone. I love the album Let's Get It On, but it is hard not to miss the moral authority of its predecessor.