#5. "What's Going On" (Marvin Gaye)

It was 1970.  Marvin Gaye was on a self-imposed hiatus from recording following the death of his friend/singing partner Tammi Terrell, and apart from occasionally producing the vocal group The Originals, he didn't even want to set foot inside the studio.  
In the meantime, he was receiving letters from his little brother, Frankie, who was fighting in Vietnam.  In the correspondence, he'd tell Marvin about the unsettling things he was experiencing.
As Frankie Gaye told biographer David Ritz for the liner notes of The Best of Marvin Gaye anthology (1995), "The war sickened me.  It seemed useless, wrong, and unjust.  I relayed all this to Marvin."
Around the same time, Renaldo "Obie" Benson of The Four Tops had witnessed a crowd of young protestors get roughed up by cops in Berkeley, CA, where the group had just finished performing a show.  Benson told songwriter Al Cleveland about what he'd seen, and Cleveland started writing a new composition about social ills with the intent of having The Four Tops perform it.
But the other members of Benson's group shied away from doing a "protest song."  So while hanging out with Gaye during a round of golf, Benson and Cleveland decided to pitch him the song instead.  Gaye initially thought it might be a good vehicle for The Originals.  But after a lot of cajoling from Benson, Gaye ultimately decided to record and produce the single himself.
Along the way, Gaye added additional lyrics, pulling inspiration from his little brother's letters, and embellished the melody to fit his own style.  The result: one of the most soulful commentaries on the Vietnam era ever recorded.  In fact, it's less of a protest song (he's not really pointing fingers at anyone), and more of a rhetorical question to humanity: what are we doing to one another?
It's a favorite of mine because the message and the music come together so perfectly.  Its deeply funky groove perfectly captures the reality of the young soldier who comes home to his inner city neighborhood, looking for comfort, only to find unrest at every turn.  At the same time, the lush orchestration and the multi-tracked vocals, which create a whole chorus of Marvins, almost border on the sacred.  It's simply one of the most moving, heartfelt pieces of popular music ever recorded.
Regarding Gaye's vocals, the whole idea of him harmonizing/duetting with himself came about as a happy accident.  As recording engineer Ken Sands notes in a July 2011 article in Sound on Sound online, they had recorded two, separate takes for the lead vocal, and Gaye wanted to listen and evaluate which one he thought was best.  Instead of outputting each take as a separate demo track, Sands just created a single stereo track, with Take #1 in one channel and Take #2 in the other, giving Gaye the ability to pan back and forth between speakers and/or listen to both takes simultaneously for easier comparison.  It was when everyone heard the playback with two Marvins sharing the lead that they realized they'd stumbled upon something magnificent.
Said Sands, "As it turned out, singing against himself worked, but I'm not going to take credit for thinking things through and saying, 'This is what I want to happen'...A lot of brilliance is bred of happenstance."

"Mercy, Mercy Me (The Ecology)" (Marvin Gaye)

After proving Motown president Berry Gordy wrong with the huge success of the single "What's Going On" (Gordy had initially refused to release the song, feeling it was uncommercial and would alienate longtime fans with its social message), Marvin Gaye continued in his social consciousness vein with "Mercy, Mercy Me (The Ecology)."  
After taking an extended break from recording, largely due to being depressed about the death of his friend and singing partner Tammi Terrell, who'd passed in 1970 from a brain tumor, Gaye decided that, if he was going to record again, he only was going to make music that spoke to things he cared about: love, life, God, people, and nature.
As Gaye told Britain's Disc and Music Echo in 1971, "I can remember as a child I always kept myself to myself, and I always dug nature.  I used to fool around with worms, beetles, and birds, and I used to admire them while the other kids were playing sports.  It was like some strange force made me more aware of nature."
It probably seemed completely out of left field at the time for an R&B star to release a song about environmental concerns, but Gaye felt it was his duty to say something.
Incidentally, Gordy didn't care for "Mercy, Mercy Me" either.  (Apparently, he also had to be told what ecology was.)  But, once again, he changed his tune when the single version became a Top 10 seller in 1971.
Apart from Gaye's heartfelt delivery and poignant commentary about the ills mankind had inflicted upon the environment, I love the sound of this track.  There's the deep, signature Funk Brothers groove and Wild Bill Moore's unhinged sax solo, but then there's also that echo created by the heavy reverb on the percussion instruments.  That spacious sound created by the woodblock and congas is so evocative of the song's somber mood; it not only sets the scene that Gaye is drawing upon distant memories of better times, but it also replicates the paved-over, hollow sound of inner cities in that era.
In fact, if you are old enough to remember what most downtowns across America looked like in the 70s to the mid-80s, you'll know what I mean: there often were few trees, lots of concrete and asphalt, and lots of abandoned buildings.  In that emptiness, the cold sounds of vehicles and machines were amplified, including the din of demolition—the crashing and banging of falling debris and dump trucks.  Those were the sounds I heard as a child when my parents would take me to downtown Asheville.  Or when we visited relatives in the Rust Belt.  Or when we went to D.C. for the first time and stayed on South Capitol Street.
And it was that sound that struck me the first time I heard the song on the radio as a kid.  I remember being amazed that a sound could capture a time and place so precisely.
And I still marvel at Gaye's brilliance to not only use his words but also the very aural texture of America's crumbling cities to reach listeners.  It's simply a great and important song.

"Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)" (Marvin Gaye)

There’s no arguing that the album What’s Going On (1971) is a masterpiece.  It’s Marvin Gaye’s most complete artistic statement, and it’s one of the 1970s best albums from start to finish.
By the late 60s, Gaye had grown disillusioned not only with the Vietnam War and the social/political situation in America, but also the Motown/Tamla hit-making machine.  Even though his recordings had made him a star, he felt his music wasn’t saying anything important.  For a moment, he even decided to take a break from music and tried out for the Detroit Lions.
Ultimately, he returned to music because he felt a duty to say something—something Motown/Tamla chief Berry Gordy strongly advised him not to do.  Gordy (who also was Gaye’s brother-in-law at the time) flat out told him he was crazy for wanting to shed his crooner image and came very close to blocking the album’s title single from being released at all, calling it “the worst thing (he’d) ever heard.”
Thanks to pressures from other musicians and writers at Motown and the massive chart success of the lead single, Gordy didn't shelve the project, thankfully.
Quite literally, “Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)” is the climax of the work; it’s the very last song of the 9-song cycle that makes up What’s Going On.  Thematically, it’s also the synthesis of everything Gaye was thinking and feeling: his dismay at the hardships and crushing poverty that plagued America’s inner cities; politicians who seemed to care more about sending a man to the moon than helping people on Earth; and endless discrimination against blacks, hippies, young people, and the poor.  All of these themes simmer throughout the song, delivered by Gaye’s falsetto over a cold groove that’s driven by Gaye’s piano, Bob Babbitt’s funky bass, and Ms. Bobbye Hall’s expressive bongos.  When the reality of it all gets too much for him to take, Gaye dips back into his regular tenor to make commentary (Make me wanna holler, how they do my life... Make me wanna holler, throw up both my hands...). You also hear two or three Marvins in the background, howling/hollering/praying.  
It’s cerebral, spiritual, funky, angry, and weary, all at once.
On the single version, the song abruptly fades out just before the 3-minute mark.  On the album, however, the groove slows, and you’re treated to a stark, intimate piano/vocal reprise of the title track, just before the song/album dissolves into a foggy mist of multiple Marvins harmonizing over Hall’s heavily reverbed bongos.  This coda is somewhat bleak, and it's rife with a feeling of uncertainty.  Although, the treatment of the sound—the reverb and echo—automatically makes one think of being in church.  It absolutely fits with Gaye’s other primary theme on the album: seeking divine guidance and spiritual strength to cope with modern problems.