"By the time 44-year-old Marvin Gaye moved into the big, rambling house with his parents on South Gramercy Place, his cocaine habit was severe and his paranoia was deep. Enemies were conspiring against him, he feared. He gave his father a .38-caliber revolver. To protect the house, he said. He had come full-circle from childhood, to live with his mother, who adored him, and his disapproving father, who would kill him."
"It was 1984. It might have been a period of triumph for the vocalist known as the King of Sensual Soul. The year before, he had finally won two Grammy Awards after decades of nominations. At the NBA All-Star Game in Inglewood, he had delivered a slowed-down, funkified version of the Star Spangled Banner that redefined the national anthem. He had broken free from Motown, his longtime label, with a hit comeback album, "Midnight Love," and one of his signature songs, "Sexual Healing.""
"Suave tenor, restless risk-taker, longtime sex symbol with an elegant-playboy persona, Gaye had an otherworldly voice. His falsetto found new registers of rapture and longing. His songs married carnality and spirituality, with an echo of the little boy singing in the gospel choir of his father's church. "My daddy was a minister," Gaye said, "and so when I began to sing it was for him.""
Marvin Gaye moved back into his parents' large South Gramercy Place house at age 44 while struggling with severe cocaine addiction and deep paranoia. He feared conspiracies, armed his father with a .38 revolver, and relived a childhood dynamic of a devoted mother and a disapproving, violent father. In 1983–84 Gaye experienced major professional success, winning two Grammys, performing a reworked national anthem, leaving Motown, and releasing Midnight Love with the hit "Sexual Healing." His falsetto blended sensuality and spirituality. He grew up in Washington, D.C., under strict Pentecostal teachings and repeated physical abuse by Marvin Gay Sr.
Read at Los Angeles Times
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