Iconic at 50: Marvin Gaye's 'What's Going On'

[music] [What’s Going On]

Picket lines and picket signs

Don't punish me with brutality

Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC.

[What’s Going On]

Come on talk to me

So you can see

What's going on (What's going on)

Yeah, what's going on (What's going on)

Tell me what's going on (What's going on)

I'll tell you, what's going on (What's going on)

Right on, baby, right on

Right on, baby

Right on, baby, right on

Brian Lehrer: That is obviously Marvin Gaye singing What’s Going On, the title track to his 1971 album and this summer on The Brian Lehrer Show we're looking at or rather listening to some iconic songs and albums that turned 50 this year, and digging into the political and social as well as musical context in which they were made and their impact on both music and culture.

We talked about Joni Mitchell's Blue last week. Joining me to talk now about how Marvin Gaye's What’s Going On was shaped by its time and continues to shape an enduring legacy today is Emily Lordi, professor of English at Vanderbilt University, and author of several books most recently, The Meaning of Soul: Black Music and Resilience since the 1960s. Professor Lordi, thank you so much for some time today. Welcome to WNYC.

Emily Lordi: Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we'll open up the phones right away on such an iconic song and album, what did Marvin Gaye's What’s Going On mean to you? Do you have a special story of when you first heard the song or the album back in the day? If you were around in 1971, were you one of the first people to get your hands on it 50 years ago, because you were already a Marvin Gaye fan? Did it feel as monumental, as it does now? Did it feel like a departure from his earlier work?

Or are you of the younger generation that still sees the song as relevant, not just a moldy-oldy or anything else you want to say about 1971? If you were around to see it in the context of Marvin Gaye, or if you're younger 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280 or tweet @BrianLehrer.

Professor Lordi, you write, "What’s Going On is a divinely inspired work driven by social rage." Where would you start to introduce this album and the meaning of it to people who don't know it?

Emily Lordi: Yes, sure. Well, I guess I would, first of all say that What's Going On, coming out in 1971, is coming into this moment of intense political, social moments around the country, around the world. We're getting the rise of Black power, of course, the Black Power Movement in the United States, which was driven in part by the recent assassination of Martin Luther King.

We're getting protests against the Vietnam War, of course, the Mayday Protests in spring of '71. Marvin Gaye himself, is going through some personal spiritual, psychic crisis. He is depressed. He has just lost his duet partner, and really his musical soulmate, I would say Tammi Terrell, who dies of cancer in 1970. His marriage is in shambles, his relationship with Berry Gordy head of Motown Records, which is, Marvin's label is strained at best. He's really going through it.

Through it all, in the midst of that crisis, which is, again, both personal and social, he finds find collaborators, first of all, to help him speak and sing his mind, in a way. In this really remarkable musical statement that was is about face for somebody who was known for these more powerful pop hits up until that point.

Brian Lehrer: Talk to me about some of these Motown Record Label politics that you refer to because I saw Rolling Stone recently wrote that What’s Going On was R&B's first concept album. Dig into that a little bit. I think you were just starting to describe the concept a little bit, but how was it initially received by Gordy Berry?

Emily Lordi: Well, he didn't love it. The politics were complicated. I don't know that I would necessarily say it was his first R&B concept album, I might give that credit instead to Isaac Hayes's Hot Buttered Soul, which is released in 1969. Definitely Marvin Gaye's it's [unintelligible 00:04:35] all the way through. It's fully composed. In other words, each track leads into the next. There's a sense of a holistic vision to the record that we see also in Isaac Hayes's work, but we also see even more political commentary.

I think that was really what distinguishes Marvin Gaye's concept album from some of those that might have come before but it was also what Berry Gordy really didn't like about it. Berry Gordy for all that was just extraordinary about him as the record executive, head of Motown Records, did not really want his artists speaking out about social issues, and Marvin Gaye had a lot to say. He released What’s Going On as the single and Berry Gordy hated it.

What's funny about that is that, allegedly, when they were recording the record, the version of it that would then appear on the album itself, they decided to crank the

volume back up on that track in the last moment. One of Gaye's collaborators later said that it was like giving the middle finger to Berry Gordy saying like, "This track that you hated. We know you hate it, and you think it's going to fade out, you think it's about to end but actually, it is still going on."

It's Gaye's statement of creative independence saying, "I am a grown man, I need to do what I need to do, and I'm going to make the statement that I need to make." People heard it as a call to action. They understood it as the galvanizing message that it was. I think a lot of people understood what it took also for Gaye to break out of Berry Gordy's stranglehold and out of that on apolitical regime.

Brian Lehrer: We'll listen to a few more track excerpts as we go from the album What's Going On. For example, there's the song Inner City Blues, which covers crime and policing. Let's take a listen to about 30 seconds of that.

[Inner City Blues plays]

Oh (ow) crime is (woo) increasing

Trigger happy policing

Panic is spreading

God knows where we're heading

Brian Lehrer: That obviously, so relevant still today, unfortunately, but you wrote in The Guardian, "It often seems to me that the hauler, the culmination of the growing tones, Gaye sings on the track, should be fiercer, more unhinged." You want to talk about the cognitive dissonance that one might have listening to those lyrics but in the context of a really smooth soul song?

Emily Lordi: Yes, absolutely. That's one thing that I think is so extraordinary about this record is that it is again, a record produced in the midst of personal and social crisis, but it is a beautiful work of art. That in of itself is a testament too, isn't it? The strength, the power of the human spirit, which was, I think, again, a personal statement, and also a statement that people, especially Black people listening to this record, understood and took encouragement from.

This idea that things aren't over when they seem to be, that you actually can keep going. That I think, we also hear in it in the aesthetic of the Inner City Blues, which is the aesthetic of the blues, which is this really understated, I'm going to say a lot in very few words. Trigger happy policing like, how much is contained in that little phrase. There's so much there and so there's a restraint, an aesthetics of restraint, and also an aesthetics that insist on beauty again, in the midst of this.

When you listen to the track, as we just did, very briefly, you hear the bell tones, you hear this echo-ey almost chamber sound, you hear the piano and you feel how the song moves. Actually, its a great song and you almost feel, if you didn't listen to the lyrics, you might just think, that the content was very different. I understand that

tension is central to what he's doing.

He's saying, "Yes, the inner city is a place of the blues. It's a place of desperation but it's also a place of incredible beauty and possibility." This almost chamber music sound that he's creating says to me, that the chamber can feel like an execution chamber at times, or like a place where you are stuck, but it can also feel like a church. He's bringing those things together both in that track and also, I think on the album as a whole which is just one thing that makes it so powerful.

Brian Lehrer: Oleg in Bayonne you're on WNYC as we talk about Marvin Gaye's What’s Going On at 50 years old. Hi, Oleg.

Oleg: Hey, Brian, long-time lingerer and admirer. Thank you so much for taking my call. I just wanted to say it missed my generation. I'm in my early 40s but the work is still so relevant today, as you guys were talking about. I love the fact that the whole album just really flows one song to the next. It's one of the first, what I would think of, as a mixed album, almost. There is no pauses between the songs and you can listen to the whole album in one long session and everything flows together and it impacted me quite a bit. I just wanted to pitch that out there. Thanks a lot.

Brian Lehrer: Oleg, thank you and thank you for lingering. Let's talk about some of the composition of the record. To pick up on Oleg's thought, the tracks on the album are connected without any pauses, which was new and different at that time, makes it feel like both the concept album and the stream of consciousness, and you write about how a question in one track becomes the title of the next track. Elaborate on that and how it comes across to you.

Emily Lordi: Sure. What I mean when I talk about that, the question becoming the title is specifically, the album begins with a house party scene as anybody who's listened to it all the way through, as your caller just now will know. It begins, it drops you in the middle of this house party. People are greeting each other and one thing that somebody, and actually interestingly also, Brian, some of those people that you hear in that scene are members of the Detroit Lions who Marvin was training with.

He had an idea that maybe if music didn't work out, he might become a football player. It was rather unlikely, but anyway, he made friends with these guys and some of them are the people who are featured in this opening party scene, but one of them says, "What's happening brother," to another, and that becomes the title of the following track, What's Happening Brother.

That's just one of many examples of the way that Marvin weaves these different lyrics, and also melodies, and different kinds of musical ideas throughout the course of the album in order to create this beautiful Sonic hole. When I talked to the music historian, Ricky Vincent's about this record, something that he said was that Marvin Gaye was creating this concept of soul music as high art and showing that for all of it, complexity and social commitments and investments, and it's rooting in the blues and all of this different stuff. It's a high art form and you can hear that again in the way that the record is so very meticulously and beautifully composed.

Brian Lehrer: Such a high art form that What's Going On is listed by Rolling Stone magazine as number one on its list of top 500 albums. Did you know that?

Emily Lordi: Wow, no.

Brian Lehrer: It's amazing. Other music critics have pointed out that What's Going On is written as a statement, not a question. How do you read that? Was Gaye asking what's going on, or telling people what's going on?

Emily Lordi: I think that's a great question. I think it's supposed to be unresolved. I think it's supposed to be, I think the answers are supposed to be multiple. It's interesting, what's going on? It does sound like a question, but in the lyrics to that song, what Gaye is singing is, come talk to me so you can see what's going on.

That reminds me of some other songs from the era such as Marlena Shaw's Woman Of The Ghetto where she's saying, white sociologists come into our city talking about what's wrong, but talk to me, she's saying, I am the woman of the Ghetto and I will tell you, if you want to really know what my life is like, I'm the best authority on my own, lack experience.

I hear him using that idea but he's also saying we've got to find a way to bring some love in here today. It's like, he doesn't really know. It's what's going on? It is that question, that place where you know what you need to do, but you don't know how. In that way, I think the title in the song is supposed to suspend itself between that answer and that question. Then finally, Brian, I'll just quickly say that, I also think that What's Going On is about persistence. It's about that idea of what I was saying before, what endures, what survives, what keeps going on.

I get that concept from Mos Def, Yasiin Bey who has a song indebted to Marvin, a 2004 track called Modern Marvel where he says, "This is how it goes on. This is how we," I think he's saying as Black people, paraphrasing him, this is how people keep going on. I think all of those meanings, the question, the answer, and that insistence on endurance are all wrapped up in that title or concept.

Brian Lehrer: We're going to hear excerpts of a few more attracts, but I want to bring on a couple of callers real quick who are from younger generations and want to talk about how the album influenced them. Jeff in Jersey city, you're on WNYC. Hi Jeff.

Jeff: Hi, how's it going. A long time listener, even though I am a little younger, I guess, but I love your show and thank you for taking my call, but I just really wanted to say that the musicians that played on the track, they were the ones that really brought me on. I'm a base player and I just love James Jamerson. I know it's not Marvin Gaye, but I just wanted to mention that the musicians on that track are game-changing and they changed my life and the way I hear music. I just wanted to mention that.

Brian Lehrer: That is great, Jeff, shouting out the base player. Jason in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi Jason.

Jason: Hi. I fact checked myself. I actually said something wrong. I said to the screener that What's Going On was on She's So Unusual, but it's actually on Cyndi Lauper's his True Colors. As a young exer, I actually knew the song originally as a Cyndi Lauper song and then later found out that it was a Marvin Gaye song.

Brian Lehrer: People enter music from all doors, Professor Lordi, and I guess it's always a tribute to the greatness of a song if it gets covered a lot.

Emily Lordi: That's right. Absolutely. We had a couple of great covers in Marvin zone era. Donny Hathaway covering What's Going On in his 1972 live album, and Aretha Franklin covering Holy Holy, and really re-orchestrating it into this congregational church song into a gospel song on her album Amazing Grace, 1972 as well. It's reach is broad, but also it was immediate.

Brian Lehrer: Let's hear a little more music. Among the many topics that this album covers is environmentalism. Let's take a listen to about 18 seconds of Mercy Mercy Me.

[music] [Mercy Mercy Me]

Ah, things ain't what they used to be (ain't what they used to be)

Oil wasted on the ocean and upon our seas

Fish full of mercury

Brian Lehrer: A little historical context in May, 1971, fully a quarter of the public thought that protecting the environment was important yet only 1% had thought so just two years earlier, according to the EPA's website. What was going on in 1971, among many other things, was a growing environmental consciousness in the United States. How unusual was it at that time to talk about, "Oil in our seas or fish full of mercury" to quote those lyrics in any kind of pop music?

Emily Lordi: I think it was really rather unusual. That was just another one of those things that Marvin Gaye, again it was like, we understood and I don't mean I personally, I wasn't around at that time, but I think that a lot of listeners understood that Marvin Gaye was a complicated guy, an extraordinary performer and musician and artist. Had a great voice and incredible capability to sing and to be a duet artist, but I don't think that people quite understood just the depths of his, and the reach of his social consciousness. This was an opportunity for him to speak these truths again that weren't necessarily being spoken. Vietnam, but not a lot of people were singing about Vietnam either at this point.

Even this concept of police violence, brutality, [unintelligible 00:17:40] enforced ghettoization of Black people, he sings about in Inner City Blues. A lot of these topics were things that were rather new in the pop music landscape. He deserves credit for it along with his collaborators. I'm really glad your caller mentioned that because it wasn't just a one person show by any means. I think he was emboldened by his musical collaborators, but to speak to some of these issues that people haven't really been talking about that were definitely going on.

Brian Lehrer: You write that music historian, Ricky Vincent sees Marvin Gaye's actions as the driving force behind Stevie Wonder's political turn at Motown, as well as The Rigorous Funk of Sly and The Family Stone, and The Righteous Soul of Aretha Franklin's 1972 album, Young, Gifted and Black. The song What's Going On also went on to inspire the legendary anti-apartheid revolutionary. Here's a clip of Nelson Mandela speaking at Detroit's Tiger Stadium during his first tour of the United States after his release from jail in 1990.

Nelson Mandela: When we were in prison, we appreciated and avidly listened to the sound of Detroit Motown. On reaching Detroit, I recalled some of the words of a song sung by Marvin Gaye, "Brother, brother, there's far too many of you dying."

[applause]

Brian Lehrer: Wow. You quoted this moment in your recent piece for The Guardian. I would have to guess, but you tell me that even when you're Marvin Gaye, even when you're a giant yourself, when Nelson Mandela name checks your song, it's got to give you chills.

Emily Lordi: I would imagine that it's just too bad that Marvin Gaye wasn't there to, he had passed years prior, but yes, absolutely. I think it was such a moment for people that when you could hear just the beginning of that clip. The crowd's response and it was a beautiful moment. It gives me chills just to listen to it. It's Nelson Mandela saying both, yes this song and its message has endured for 20 years. Recorded in '71, now he's speaking in 1990 that it made its way all the way to him.

It's a beautiful gesture of diplomacy and Black internationalism for him to say in Detroit, a home of Motown where he knows Marvin recorded this music to say, "Something in this resonates with me, and I see you, and I remember you, and I know where Detroit is." It was a shout-out to the locals. It was Nelson Mandela saying, "I know Marvin Gaye. He speaks to me, and I'm speaking to you in this language that does endure and that still does bind us together."

Brian Lehrer: We're going to go out with one more song excerpt from the album. You didn't write about this one in your piece. His song, Flyin' High (In The Friendly Sky) and Gaye's approach to singing about addiction on the album, another tough issue that he dealt with head-on. Why do you think that was part of the concept that had to do with other aspects of social conditions at that time?

Emily Lordi: I'm glad that you mentioned that because that's something that people don't usually talk about, and that indeed I didn't even talk about in my article, but that was another aspect of the texture of Black life that Gaye is addressing and trying to tease out in this record. The concept of addiction in Flyin' High, that's an interesting song because it's very chill, and it is kind of a reprieve. It's the third track on the album, and it gives people a little sense as we're talking about it. It's a composed speech, and so just as in the center of an opera, you would have a different kind of song that would alleviate the tension and bring you down before things build back

up. That's what Flyin' High is doing.

I'm saying that because I think that it's not a judgmental song. In a way, I think it is saying, "Here's a real problem. It's like drugs are killing Black people. They're killing people throughout the country." It's not like Curtis Mayfield singing Pusherman in 1972. It's not like Stevie Wonder who's going to sing Too High or on Innervisions in '73. It's much more sympathetic.

Literally, Marvin Gaye is as high as everybody else. He's on the same plane. He's not taking the moral high ground. In that way, this song reminds me a little bit more of Gil Scott-Heron's Home Is Where the Hatred Is from the same year, covered by Esther Phillips, which is a song where, again, the speaker is singing from the I position and saying, "I am trying to kick this, and it's hard, and it feels good." It's that complexity. It's that both end, and it's addressing the problem and also being right in the mix with you and saying, "I am subject to this just as much as anybody else. I'm not better than anybody else."

Again, it's this gesture trying to give something, I think, to the listeners to reflect their lives and also help them through them.

Brian Lehrer: We will go out on a little bit of it. We thank Vanderbilt English professor, Emily Lordi, author of several books, most recently, The Meaning of Soul: Black Music and Resilience since the 1960s. Thank you so much for coming on the show and talking through all this with us.

Emily Lordi: Oh, thank you. It's been a pleasure.

Flying high in the friendly sky

Flying high without ever leavin' the ground, no.

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