Trouble Man: The Life and Death of Marvin Gaye by Steve Turner

The Ecco Press, 2000

Rating=8

Marvin Gaye’s story has all the familiar elements of a modern celebrity tragedy: squandered wealth, kinky sex, and prodigious drug use. The morbid twist at the end of Gaye’s life is notably tragic, though, the culmination of a stormy relationship full of unresolved issues with his father. Turner shows Gaye divided by the same dual nature that ruined his father, a conflict between spiritual and carnal needs. Marvin Gaye, Sr. allegedly used his position in the church to lure women into sex, abused his wife verbally and physically, and “spent much of his time locked away in his bedroom experimenting with women’s clothes and make-up.” Marvin Sr. considered the younger Marvin’s pop singing inappropriate, but held a lifelong jealousy toward his son’s success. This jealousy and the singer’s longing for his father’s approval defined their relationship.

His father’s rejection led Gaye constantly to rebel against authority, from his superiors in the Air Force, to Motown head Berry Gordy, to the IRS. Almost without exception, this rebellion cost Gaye dearly, such as the tax evasion that saw his royalties paid to the IRS after his death. =Trouble Man= offers some likely causes for Gaye’s personal and professional decisions, along with the consequences. The book also illuminates the extremes in Gaye’s life, characterized by his two finest albums, What’s Going On—a classic of sensitive R&B and politically-aware pop—and Let’s Get It On, “an opera of bedroom delights.”

Turner’s thoughtful portrayal of Gaye’s shocking death seems almost inevitable, if no less tragic. Some of the biggest questions raised by Gaye’s life—what drove his father to murder, what was the nature of his sexual obsessions—are unanswered and unanswerable. Regardless, Trouble Man satisfactorily recounts a tormented life without sensationalizing it. –James A. Gardner

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