What's Going On

Throughout the decades What’s Going On, has become known as one of the greatest R&B albums of all time.  Marvin Gaye’s delivery of this early seventies protest album was one of the most genuine Motown records of all time.  Prior to this, Marvin had been a sex symbol of his time.  He was touring around playing the standard Motown hits and was very famous.  This was going very well for awhile, but as the war tension increased and race riots and the civil rights movement raged on, Marvin changed.  He no longer wanted to use his fame as a way of making people pretend everything is ok.  Gaye wanted to use the fame he was granted to expose the holes in the world at the time.  The record label of course, did not take this very well.  Berry Gordy, manager of the label who was also the brother of Gaye’s wife Anna, was so against releasing the album that the release date was pushed back over a year.  When it was finally released, it wasn’t even with his approval. 

            What got Marvin started on this album was actually Renaldo Benson of the Four Tops.  He originally wrote the framework of what would become “What’s Going On?” in 1969.  It wasn’t a song that he was necessarily interested in playing, but he knew it had potential.  It was when Benson met Marvin that he saw the potential behind it.  Marvin took the song and smoothed out the melody and added to the lyrics, with the help of Al Cleveland.  Gaye made an effort to make this is first self produced work.  David Van DePitte, who had been a regular writer for Motown, helped him with the arrangements.  The musicians used for the session were a mixture of Motown regulars and others.  The biggest notable one would be the unique drumming style of Chet Forest. Forest had been trained classically and had big band experience, which gave the band a whole mess of different options to mind a groove.  Paying attention to the groove of the track, it flows differently than the straightforward Motown records to this point.  A few more interesting things on the title track would be the vocals and the saxophone.  The saxophone was actually recorded while the musician was warming up and no actual takes were recorded.  The vocals were actually two vocal tracks together.  This was a mistake by the engineer, who was supposed to play one track at a time, but it ended up giving Gaye’s voice much more depth. 

            This album is one of my favorite soulful albums of all time.  I find how each song is brought together and flows from one to the other are simply beautiful.  I got irritated when I realized how difficult it was for him to get such a masterpiece released.  It was exactly what the public needed at the time and probably would have even made more of an impact if it were released right after being finished.  As a bass player, I find Jameson’s lines melodic yet completely grooving.  These tracks consisted of some of the greatest studio musicians of all time.