The band that forced Marvin Gaye to go solo: “I’d had it”
Being in a successful band is the archetypal dream of countless budding young musicians across the music landscape, but then again, there are certain performers who work better in isolation. Marvin Gaye, as he found out during the late 1950s, was one such figure.
It wasn’t until the 1960s that the world came to know the name Marvin Gaye; one of the flagship voices of Motown Records, an infallible force of soul excellence, and a man rapidly approaching the coveted title of ‘sex symbol’ with every new release. He signed up to Berry Gordy’s label while it was still in its relative infancy back in 1960, and it was through the vehicle of Hitsville USA that he would eventually carve out his groundbreaking discography, of which the politically turned-on masterpiece What’s Going On is undoubtedly the crowning jewel.
Unlike some of his fellow Motown roster, though, Gaye wasn’t merely plucked from the obscurity of Detroit’s talent shows and gospel churches. In actual fact, his music career predates Gordy’s label by a fair few years. Originally, the vocalist formed a group named The Marquees, shortly after cutting his teenage career in the US Air Force short.
Despite some early successes with this outfit, including earning the approval of none other than Bo Diddley, who tried to sign the quartet to Chess Records – before they ultimately decided to head to Okeh, instead – The Marquees never quite took off. After one single, which, despite Gaye’s talents already being rather overt, failed to chart, the group were dropped, and subsequently hired by Harvey Fuqua of The Moonglows.
With their own history stretching back to the early 1950s, The Moonglows were something of a relic as far as Gaye was concerned, but they nevertheless offered him an ‘in’ to his own ambitions. Namely, the various tracks the group recorded for Chess during the latter part of the decade included ‘Mama Loocie’, an otherwise unnoteworthy track which was the first to feature Gaye on lead vocals.
Although the group might have provided Gaye with a few invaluable experiences during his relatively short tenure with them, it was always pretty clear that the vocalist had ambitions of doing it all on his own. During one Air Force performance review, a senior commander declared that Gaye “cannot adjust to regimentation nor authority,” and it seems as though that spirit was carried through into his music career, as well as his fledgling military career.
Eventually, then, Gaye was forced to go out on his own. “I’d had it as a member of a group,” he recalled during a 1972 chat with Rolling Stone. “I sang with the Moonglows for two years, and that was enough.”
Those two years with the ageing R&B outfit seemingly did enough to convince Gaye to pack his bags and move to Detroit, quickly striking a deal with Gordy and committing himself to the Motown roster, where he would remain for another 20 years, having enjoyed a colossal, lasting impact on the landscape soul and R&B music, as well as amassing a plethora of chart-topping classics.
It has been a treacherous decision for countless musicians throughout history, but it is fair to say that Marvin Gaye’s decision to ‘go solo’ certainly paid dividends.
