Marvin Gaye - What's Going On - HD

What's Going On was the first album on which Motown Records' main studio band, the group of session musicians known as the Funk Brothers, received an official credit. The album features introspective lyrics and socially conscious themes about drug abuse, poverty, and the Vietnam War. What's Going On was both an immediate commercial and critical success and has endured as a classic of early-1970s soul. A deluxe edition set of the album was released on February 27, 2001, and featured a rare live concert shot at Washington, D.C.'s Kennedy Center from May 1972.

In worldwide critics', artists' and public surveys, it has been voted one of the landmark recordings in pop music history and is considered to be one of the greatest albums ever made. In 2003, the album was ranked number 6 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

During the late 1960s, Marvin Gaye had fallen into a deep depression following the collapse and later diagnosis of his singing partner and fellow Motown artist Tammi Terrell having a malignant brain tumor. Gaye was also depressed with the fallout of his first marriage to Anna Gordy, a growing dependency on cocaine which he often rubbed on his gums or ate because he had trouble snorting, troubles with the IRS and struggling with his relationship in Motown Records, the label he had signed with in 1961. At one point, Gaye attempted suicide at his brother-in-law Berry Gordy's father's home with a handgun, only to be saved from committing the incident by Berry Gordy himself. During this time, Gaye began experiencing international success for the first time in his career following the release of "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" and subsequent hit singles such as "Too Busy Thinking About My Baby", "Abraham, Martin & John" and "That's the Way Love Is". But Gaye was in no mood to celebrate: "My success didn't seem real. I didn't deserve it. I knew I could have done more. I felt like a puppet -- Berry's puppet, Anna's puppet. I had a mind of my own and I wasn't using it."

During this time, Gaye was able to prove his worth as a producer, producing several songs for Motown vocal group The Originals. The songs, "Baby, I'm for Real" and "The Bells", became hits as a result. On March 16, 1970, Terrell succumbed from her illness, roughly five weeks before her 25th birthday. Gaye dealt with Terrell's death by going on a prolonged seclusion from the music business. After his success with the Originals, Gaye changed his look, ditching his clean-cut, college boy image to form a beard and dressing more casually, wearing sweatsuits. Gaye also pierced his ear in defiance and stood up to Motown executives who felt he should've been touring. He also began working on fixing his personal issues, re-embracing his spirituality and also attended several concerts held by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, which had been used for several Motown recordings in the 1960s. Around the spring of 1970, Gaye also began seriously pursuing a career in football with the professional football team, the Detroit Lions of the NFL, even working out with the Eastern Michigan Eagles football team. However, Gaye's pursuits for a tryout with the Lions was stopped after being advised that an injury would derail his music career, leaving him upset. Despite this, Gaye would befriend two of the Lions teammates, Mel Farr and Lem Barney.

While traveling on his tour bus with the Four Tops on May 15, 1969, Four Tops member Renaldo "Obie" Benson witnessed an act of police brutality and violence committed on anti-war protesters who had been protesting at Berkeley's People's Park in what was later termed as "Bloody Thursday". A disgusted Benson later told author Ben Edmonds, "I saw this and started wondering 'what the fuck was going on, what is happening here? One question led to another. Why are they sending kids far away from their families overseas? Why are they attacking their own kids in the street?"Returning to Detroit, Motown songwriter Al Cleveland wrote and composed a song based on his conversations with Benson of what he had seen in Berkeley. Benson sent the unfinished song to his band mates but the other Four Tops turned the song down. Benson said, "My partners told me it was a protest song. I said 'no man it's a love song, about love and understanding. I'm not protesting. I want to know what's going on.'"

The song was presented by Benson and Cleveland to Marvin Gaye while finding him at a golf game. Returning to Gaye's home in Outer Drive, Benson played the song to Gaye on his guitar. Gaye felt the song's moody flow would be perfect for The Originals. Benson, however, felt Gaye could sing it himself. Gaye responded to that suggestion by asking Benson for songwriting credit of the song. Benson and Cleveland allowed it and Gaye edited the song, adding a new melody, revising the song to his own liking, and changing some of the lyrics, reflective of Gaye's own disgust. Gaye finished the song by adding its title, "What's Going On". Benson said later that Gaye tweaked and enriched the song, "added some things that were more ghetto, more natural, which made it seem like a story and not a song... we measured him for the suit and he tailored the hell out of it." During this time, Gaye had been deeply affected by phone conversations shared between him and his brother after he had returned from service over the treatment of Vietnam veterans.

Gaye had also been deeply affected by the social ills that were then plaguing the United States at the time, even covering the track, "Abraham, Martin & John", in 1969, which became a UK hit for Gaye in 1970. Gaye cited the 1965 Watts riots as a pivotal moment in his life in which he asked himself, "with the world exploding around me, how am I supposed to keep singing love songs?"[ One night, Gaye called Berry Gordy about doing a protest record while Gordy vacationed at the Bahamas, to which Gordy chastised him, "Marvin, don't be ridiculous. That's taking things too far."