Marvin Gaye doco on Sky this week. Alarming!!

[max_tranmere]

Did anyone see this? I tell you, if you think your family is dysfunctional, check out poor Marvin's! His father was the local Priest, who beat his children, was a transvestite, and kept guns. Marvin was a famous singer, but spent his money on vast quantities of cocaine, and was into drawing sado-masochistic pictures and covering his walls with them. At one point, at the height of his success, Marv was living in a campervan at a roadside because the taxman had taken all his cash, and his coke addiction was so extreme that he had to spend all his money on that. Whereas if he wasn't buying so much drugs he could have afforded a house.

Marvin seemed like a nice guy to his fans, but he was apparently horrible to his wives (he had several). The drugs and the sado-porn I imagine didn't help the relationships run smoothly. Marvin was very paranoid all the time, apparantly a result of the cocaine. His father was jealous of his success and hated him for being sucessful. Marvin was so paranoid that a member of the public was going to kill him, that he bought numerous firearms and kept them with him in his parent's home (where he stayed after finishing a tour). It wasn't a fellow citizen that Marvin needed to fear. His own father shot him dead instead! Like I said, if you thought your family was odd...

Did anyone else watch this and what did you think? I found it interesting but one of the most extreme cases of a f**ked-up family I think I've ever seen!!

[Jonone]

In the period in which Marvin was brought up childcare orthodoxy was probably 'spare the rod and spoil the child'. It's more a question of consistency and severity given that beatings may have been 'normalized', and Gaye Sr was probably inconsistent and excessive which would tend to be experienced as unjust and cruel. As for the guns, well it's America so it's not unusual.

The transvestism is a bit f*cked up .. when you factor in religion and violent rage it's clear it's not a harmless Eddie Izzard thing going on, but something darker and more corrosive.

Marvin's unravelling through drugs isn't unusual for the time. There will be lots of musicians and actors of the time who have a similar story to tell. Gaye Sr saw what Marvin was doing in terms of his career as decadent and ungodly. The pair of them probably had some kind of weird codependency thing going on and in the clear light of day they should have stayed out of one another's way instead of living together. The outcome perhaps had a kind of tragic inevitability.

[andy at handiwork]

Didn't stop him having one of the finest voices in popular music thank goodness. The possessor of what I think was probably the best voice, Sam Cooke, also died of lead poisoning.

[number 6]

Saw a doc about him a few years back,i swear it said he sepnt the last time of his life in a coastal town in England,and even played drats for the local pub team!

[andy at handiwork]

Wrong side of the Channel. In early 1981 he lived for a couple of months in a village near Ostend.

[max_tranmere]

Interesting comments there. As far as Marvin's cocaine use is concerned, it is certainly correct that there was a lot of it about. We all know the music industry has been lubricated by it for decades and it said this on the programme. His dad - the cross-dressing, child beating, gun hoarding, son murdering, Priest - bizarelly only got a 5 year suspended sentence for bumping off Marvin. (He shot him twice at close range). That was the exact 'sentence' he got, even though he was obviously the one who shot him dead. It said on the programme that the paramedics were afraid to enter the house for over 20 minutes as Marvin's old man was still in there with his weapon. Strange how he basically got let off in Court.

[dynatech]

I draw parrallels with John Lennon, in that he seemed to positively revel in his dysfunctional background and after initially rising to the top and overcoming the shortcomings allowed himself to sink into drug addiction which pulled him right back down again, whilst still producing mighty work that still stands up. Unlike Lennon though he wasn't fogged up enough to mistake bullshit and soundbites for truth, but it's hard to see either of them could have cruised into old age somehow as both were, if the truth be told, fucked-up cunts touched by the hand of genius.

[one eyed jack]

It makes you wonder why no one has made a bio pic of him.

He had such a drama filled lifestyle. Rumour had it that his sons "bi sexualess this might also be linked to the tranvetism.

Spike Lee echoed this in "Jungle Fever" with the Priest father shooting Sam Jacksons drug adicted son character.

[steve56]

Still like his records have you noticed all this comes out after he died so Marvin cant answer back

[steve56]

Well Grapevine still sounds good 40 yrs on