|
Extrait de l'album
THE LAST CONCERT TOUR avec:
???...
Biographie:
" b. Marvin Pentz Gay Jnr., 2 April
1939, Washington, DC, USA, d. 1 April 1984, Los Angeles,
USA. Gaye was named after his father, a minister in the
Apostolic Church. The spiritual influence of his early years
played a formative role in his musical career, particularly
from the 70s onwards, when his songwriting shifted back
and forth between secular and religious topics. He abandoned
a place in his father's church choir to team up with Don
Covay and Billy Stewart in the R&B vocal group the Rainbows.
In 1957, he joined the Marquees, who recorded for Chess
under the guidance of Bo Diddley. The following year the
group was taken under the wing of producer and singer Harvey
Fuqua, who used them to re-form his doo-wop outfit the Moonglows.
When Fuqua moved to Detroit in 1960, Gay went with him:
Fuqua soon joined forces with Berry Gordy at Motown, and
Gay became a session drummer and vocalist for the label.
In 1961, he married Gordy's sister, Anna, and was offered
a solo recording contract. Renamed Marvin Gaye, he began
his career as a jazz balladeer, but in 1962 he was persuaded
to record R&B, and notched up his first hit single with
the confident 'Stubborn Kind Of Fellow', a Top 10 R&B hit.
This record set the style for the next three years, as Gaye
enjoyed hits with a series of joyous, dance-flavoured songs
that cast him as a smooth, macho, Don Juan figure. He also
continued to work behind the scenes at Motown, co-writing
Martha And The Vandellas' hit 'Dancing In The Street', and
playing drums on several early recordings by Little Stevie
Wonder. In 1965, Gaye dropped the call-and-response vocal
arrangements of his earlier hits and began to record in
a more sophisticated style. The striking 'How Sweet It Is
(To Be Loved By You)' epitomized his new direction, and
it was followed by two successive R&B number 1 hits, 'I'll
Be Doggone' and 'Ain't That Peculiar'. His status as Motown's
best-selling male vocalist left him free to pursue more
esoteric avenues on his albums, which in 1965 included a
tribute to the late Nat 'King' Cole and a misguided collection
of Broadway standards. To capitalize on his image as a ladies'
man, Motown teamed Gaye with their leading female vocalist,
Mary Wells, for some romantic duets. When Wells left Motown
in 1964, Gaye recorded with Kim Weston until 1967, when
she was succeeded by Tammi Terrell. The Gaye/Terrell partnership
represented the apogee of the soul duet, as their voices
blended sensuously on a string of hits written specifically
for the duo by Ashford And Simpson. Terrell developed a
brain tumour in 1968, and collapsed onstage in Gaye's arms.
Records continued to be issued under the duo's name, although
Simpson allegedly took Terrell's place on some recordings.
Through the mid-60s, Gaye allowed his duet recordings to
take precedence over his solo work, but in 1968 he issued
the epochal 'I Heard It Through The Grapevine' (written
by Whitfield/Strong), a song originally released on Motown
by Gladys Knight And The Pips, although Gaye's version had
actually been recorded first. With its tense, ominous rhythm
arrangement, and Gaye's typically fluent and emotional vocal,
the record represented a landmark in Motown's history -
not least because it became the label's biggest-selling
record to date. Gaye followed up with another number 1 R&B
hit, 'Too Busy Thinking 'Bout My Baby', but his career was
derailed by the insidious illness and eventual death of
Terrell in March 1970. Devastated by the loss of his close
friend and partner, Gaye spent most of 1970 in seclusion.
The following year, he emerged with a set of recordings
that Motown at first refused to release, but which eventually
formed his most successful solo album. On 'What's Going
On', a number 1 hit in 1971, and its two chart-topping follow-ups,
'Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)' and 'Inner City Blues', Gaye
combined his spiritual beliefs with his increasing concern
about poverty, discrimination and political corruption in
American society. To match the shift in subject matter,
Gaye evolved a new musical style that influenced a generation
of black performers. Built on a heavily percussive base,
Gaye's arrangements mingled jazz and classical influences
into his soul roots, creating a fluid instrumental backdrop
for his sensual, almost despairing vocals. The three singles
were all contained on What's Going On, a conceptual masterpiece
on which every track contributed to the spiritual yearning
suggested by its title. After making a sly comment on the
1972 US presidential election campaign with the single 'You're
The Man', Gaye composed the soundtrack to the 'blaxploitation'
thriller Trouble Man. His primarily instrumental score highlighted
his interest in jazz, while the title song provided him
with another hit single. Gaye's next project saw him shifting
his attention from the spiritual to the sexual with Let's
Get It On, which included a quote from T.S. Eliot on the
sleeve and devoted itself to the art of talking a woman
into bed. Its explicit sexuality marked a sea-change in
Gaye's career; as he began to use cocaine more and more
regularly, he became obsessed with his personal life, and
rarely let the outside world figure in his work. Paradoxically,
he continued to let Motown market him in a traditional fashion
by agreeing to collaborate with Diana Ross on a sensuous
album of duets in 1973 - although the two singers allegedly
did not actually meet during the recording of the project.
The break-up of his marriage to Anna Gordy in 1975 delayed
work on his next album. I Want You was merely a pleasant
reworking of the Let's Get It On set, albeit cast in slightly
more contemporary mode. The title track was another number
1 hit on the soul charts, however, as was his 1977 disco
extravaganza, 'Got To Give It Up'. Drug problems and tax
demands interrupted his career, and in 1978 he fled the
US mainland to Hawaii in a vain attempt to salvage his second
marriage. Gaye devoted the next year to the Here My Dear
double album, a bitter commentary on his relationship with
his first wife. Its title was ironic: he had been ordered
to give all royalties from the project to Anna as part of
their divorce settlement. With this catharsis behind him,
Gaye began work on an album to be called Lover Man, but
he cancelled its release after the lukewarm sales of its
initial single, the sharply self-mocking 'Ego Tripping Out',
which he had presented as a duet between the warring sides
of his nature. In 1980, under increasing pressure from the
Internal Revenue Service, Gaye moved to Europe where he
began work on an ambitious concept album, In My Lifetime.
When it emerged in 1981, Gaye accused Motown of remixing
and editing the album without his consent, of removing a
vital question-mark from the title, and of parodying his
original cover artwork. The relationship between artist
and record company had been shattered, and Gaye left Motown
for Columbia in 1982. Persistent reports of his erratic
personal conduct and reliance on cocaine fuelled pessimism
about his future career, but instead he re-emerged in 1982
with a startling single, 'Sexual Healing', which combined
his passionate soul vocals with a contemporary electro-disco
backing. The subsequent album, Midnight Love, offered no
equal surprises, but the success of the single seemed to
herald a new era in Gaye's music. He returned to the USA,
where he took up residence at his parents' home. The intensity
of his cocaine addiction made it impossible for him to work
on another album, and he fell into a prolonged bout of depression.
He repeatedly announced his wish to commit suicide in the
early weeks of 1984, and his abrupt shifts of mood brought
him into heated conflict with his father, rekindling animosity
that had festered since Gaye's adolescence. On 1 April 1984,
another violent disagreement provoked Marvin Gay Snr. to
shoot his son dead, a tawdry end to the life of one of soul
music's premier performers. Motown and Columbia collaborated
to produce two albums based on Gaye's unfinished recordings.
Dream Of A Lifetime mixed spiritual ballads from the early
70s with sexually explicit funk songs from a decade later,
while Romantically Yours offered a travesty of Gaye's original
intentions in 1979 to record an album of big band ballads.
Although Gaye's weighty canon is often reduced to a quartet
of 'I Heard It Through The Grapevine', 'Sexual Healing',
What's Going On and Let's Get It On, his entire recorded
output signifies the development of black music from raw
rhythm and blues, through sophisticated soul to the political
awareness of the early 70s, and the increased concentration
on personal and sexual politics thereafter. Gaye's remarkable
vocal range and fluency remains a touchstone for all subsequent
soul vocalists, and his 'lover man' stance has been frequently
copied as well as parodied. "
(source http://music.yahoo.com/)
Album notes:
" Recorded during the summer of 1983,
THE LAST CONCERT TOUR shows Marvin Gaye in the midst of
a comeback doomed to be cut short by his murder the following
year. Gaye's consummate showmanship and innate musicality
leap out despite the poor sound quality of the two-track
recording. Of particular interest is the way sex and religion
continually pop up throughout the crooner's set. The brassy
and sensual "Come Get To This" rubs shoulders with the sparsely
arranged "God Is My Friend," in which Gaye is accompanied
only by piano. Elsewhere, he reminisces about his preacher
father before launching into a funky reading of "Joy." Gaye
avoided the oldies path by updating well-known numbers such
as "What's Going On" and "I Heard It Through The Grapevine"
with more up-tempo arrangements, and including more recent
material such as "Sexual Healing" and "Third World Girl"
in his set. Sentimentality did play a part in these shows,
and Gaye stoked these fires by paying tribute to "his baby"
Tammi Terrell in back-to-back versions of Ashford & Simpson
classics "Ain't Nothing Like The Real Thing" and "Your Precious
Love." Hearing Gaye growl out the suggestive "Let's Get
It On" amidst a chorus of screaming female fans, there is
no doubt that his time on earth ended far too soon. "
(source http://music.yahoo.com/)
|
