What’s Going On: 50 Years Later

Today, friends, is a special day. And I don’t mean because we’re swapping the old boss for the new boss.

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the release of my favorite song of all time, and the title track to my favorite album of all time: What’s Going On by the great Marvin Gaye.

50 years ago today, Motown Records, at the extreme apprehension of founder Berry Gordy — who didn’t fancy “protest songs” as a part of the Motown “brand” — released the 45rpm single What’s Going On b/w God Is Love to record stores and radio stations across the stolen land known an america.

The song’s journey began at People’s Park in Berkeley, California in the summer of 1969, when Four Tops singer Renaldo “Obie” Benson stepped off a tour bus and witnessed firsthand the extreme brutality of Berkeley police against peaceful protestors in the park. Benson took the seed of a song idea back with him to Motown’s Detroit homeland and co-wrote a skeletal version of the song with his friend Al Cleveland. Benson & Cleveland brought the unfinished piece to Marvin Gaye, who initially resisted himself but eventually seized upon the overtly political (let’s not forget that all art is political — any art that claims it isn’t is still taking a political stance in its indifference) song as his opportunity to break away from the Motown pop assembly line and assert himself as an artist, songwriter, arranger, and producer of profound and independent vision. Gaye assembled Motown’s legendary studio band The Funk Brothers — with a particular focus on the incredible, fluid basswork of session legend James Jamerson. The bass player was pulled out of a late-night jazz club gig and brought back to the studio good and drunk — so drunk, in fact, he had to lie down to record what became one of the most intricate and perfect bass performances in the history of popular music.

When Motown head Gordy heard the song and denied Gaye the chance to release it, the latter flat-out refused to record another note for Motown all through the long autumn of 1970, while the single sat on the shelves. Motown brass finally panicked and — without Gordy’s knowledge — set the song for a January 1971 release — “dump the garbage” month for the music business.

No matter the month.

What’s Going On was an instant smash that tapped into an illegitimate country unsettled and furious with its institutions and its status quo. Its lyrics — from that initial heart’s cry of Benson’s at People’s Park in Berkeley to the added gifts and insights of Cleveland and eventually its singer and ambassador Marvin Pentz Gaye, Jr. — touched people around the world with their plaintive, albeit naive and simplistic plea for love over hate and peace over endless war. Gaye in particular added the poignant touch of speaking in dialogue with his own mother and father — hinting at the complicated and painful dynamic between the artist and his parents, a dynamic that would end in Gaye’s death at the hands of his twisted father 13 years later.

The song, backed with an early version of future album track — and continued dialogue with his parents and the other father Gaye sung to from the earth to the heavens — God Is Love, hit number one on the soul charts and number two on the pop charts. Gordy, ever the shrewd and greedy businessman, reacted predictably — he insisted that Gaye record an entire album of political music to support Motown’s new hit protest song. The album named after the single would come almost exactly four months later, but that’s history for another day…

For now, please join me in celebrating the enduring and incredible legacy of my favorite song in the world, and the greatest song of all time: Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On. Dig, if you will, the fake-out fade moment at 3:49, when the song comes roaring back to full volume for a few last seconds. This was Gaye’s special little “fuck you” to Berry Gordy and the perfectionism of the Motown Machine, and it’s a moment I paid homage to on my most recent studio album, at the end of track two — just one of many ways I’ve tipped my hat to my hero over the years.

Add to that list of homages a 2013 live rehearsal cover of What’s Going On featuring the Central Pennsylvania gospel band Salt N Light, which you can now download for free exclusively on Bandcamp!

I’ll be back later in the year with more What’s Going On album anniversary tributes. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy my cover of What’s Going On as well as Marvin’s original and enduring masterpiece.