Marvin Gaye “Midnight Love”
Was anyone ever as talented as this man, as perfect looking, as able to ooze sex, class and charm, even able to make an actual great soul jam out of environmentalism? Who can do that? His voice was untouchably smooth - when he goes into falsetto, it’s ethereal. His instinct for arranging harmonies was completely singular. Whatever political message he had, this guy always wanted to liberate your undies from you as part of the campaign. This was a height the Amnesty International rock crowd always fell short of. As the decades changed, he kept unbuttoning another button on his velour suit. By 1976, “l Want You” he was fully snaking into your nethers. The Footloose preacher would have a good case on this one— this music could put a baby in you. “Sexual Healing” was the last button. Now he’s in your bed. Everyone with the remotest interest in sex loved it. Even ferns liked it and they reproduce with spores.
The synthesizer and the drum machine are a trap for the middle aged, like the way your 70 year old mother still can’t figure out how to “reply all” to family emails. It’s easy enough for a youngster to figure out new technology, but what about Marvin Gaye at 42? He was legendarily troubled musician: debt, drugs, divorce, depression, but for a time, he found new inspiration in the sound of 1982 and found his way back on the charts.
The album’s big single “Sexual Healing” featured The Roland TR-808 Rhythm Composer. This was the first widely available drum machine. The 808 had its own sound. You probably know it from early hip-hop records and Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight” It does not sound like a real drum which was a technical limitation and a good idea. It’s got a very pleasing click to its wood block type sound, a bass beat that is more like a pulse than the result of impact, and a high hat with less tone to it—just a clean quick burst. When you use them together, the combination has its own delicate way of getting your rhythms moving. The exact frequency control of the machine, gave these beats a way of being loud while quiet. They were a kind of a tickle. Used less artfully this tool could also produce a relentless loop of maddeningly identical handclaps.
I can’t say I prefer Gaye’s 1982 methods to what he was doing in the late 60’s and 70’s, but the opener “Midnight Lady” is an infectious swirl about a cocaine fueled night eyeing superfreaks at the club. Gaye is trying on different voices, harmonizing with himself, imitating a group of ladies aghast at the cocaine in the mens room, doing some almost rap, bringing to life the whole gang at the club. When it really gets moving there are so many rounds of Marvin’s voice rotating around itself, it’s intoxicating. A well charted section of horns and an outro of live congas(?) keep the production from crossing over to Kraftwerk, but it’s on the edge of being too much, like the drug fueled night he’s singing about. Maybe that’s as it should be. There’s a hyperactivity to the song enhanced by these new tools. The sounds of the 808 don’t have any sustain to them, they hit and vanish, letting the song race on without stepping on its own tail. It all lands quite a punch.
“Rockin after Midnight” is a less successful but respectful variation of “Midnight Lady” The title itself has a generic, placeholder quality to it. It sounds like something a nine year-old would make up. Lyric clunk aside, Gaye still displays that same layering he was so adept at--rhythms and lines overlapping, going out, circling, returning. It was his super power as an arranger. There’s a funky guitar lick that channels a similar vibe to Michael Jackson’s “Wanna be Starting Something” which came out the same year, but doesn’t get off the wall as ecstatically. It does show you how close this middle-aged artist was to the cutting edge of popular music. The sounds of the 808 used in this album became wildly adopted across all genres. The old guy was the groundbreaker, two years ahead of Run DMC’s first 808 soaked album. That said, across the album, you start to feel the album’s relative lack of bottom. The first wave of electronic beats doesn’t have that fatness that shook the furniture in the 90’s with Dr. Dre’s “The Chronic” and the Beastie Boys “Paul’s Boutique”. These 808 sounds are playful, like little toys.
That tinkling quality wasn’t always easy to integrate into Gaye’s palette. “Third World Girl” starts out with another 808 playful beat and then a “Whoo-ooo-oo” that sounds dangerously like Indians taunting cowboys before resolving into a more familiar Soul exclamation. Maybe Gaye felt he was so broke it wasn’t iffy to be braggin’ from the first world about banging the third? This song’s Jamaican-influenced groove isn’t strong enough to merit some of the silliness of Gaye shouting “You’ll be my first, my second, my third world girl!”. “‘Til Tomorrow”, the only ballad, runs into the impasse of adapting these new sounds into a slow jam. The vocals are strong, but the electronic bed he’s making for you to lay down in has some lumps in it, not quite as silky as “Let’s Get it On” . The millisecond exactness of the beat, the cold quality of the synthesized tones, the mood isn’t right... not tonight honey, I’ve got an 808-ache. Sometimes these early electronic music innovations open up new frontiers, sometimes it sounds like you’re trying to squeeze soul out of the bleeps and blips of a touch tone phone.
Most every other song on the album has some element working successfully, but its not surprising that The “Sexual Healing” was the only hit. What was it about this song that clicked? Gaye could create a convincing groove in his sleep, but like other groove savants, James Brown, Prince, George Clinton, he was at times guilty of plopping in the pocket and just hanging out. “Sexual Healing” is not that; it’s a highly structured song, shifting, and evolving, never staying in one place too long, but always a coherent whole. The 808’s beats are delicately integrated and matched with Gaye’s vocals, the two wind around each other in a way that always feels flirtatious and vital, each supporting the other. From the whispered “get up, get up, get up, wake-up, wake-up, wake-up” to its pleading vocal for spirit body rehabilitation, this is full strength Gaye--modern, but really, timeless. Marvin’s death two years later has explanations but seems unexplainable. His own father shot him. A lifetime of conflict, Marvin’s self-destructive impulses, his father’s jealousy and fear of his own son—you can work it out on paper, but it’s hard to really understand. As I was struggling to articulate the genius of his music, I realized that I was running into that same thing, the thing that could be explained, but never truly understood.