Marvin Gaye’s final interview before his death
“Love is misery.” That declaration came from Marvin Gaye in his last interview on camera before his tragic death in 1984. Gaye’s early life and perceptions of love were clouded by his fraught relationship with his father, and he notably added an ‘e’ to his surname to further distance himself from him when he found success later in life.
A love of women is naturally assumed when the late singer touches on what love meant to him, thanks to his sensual efforts on ‘Sexual Healing’, but in his 1984 interview with Tom Joyner, marriage seemed a scary prospect. “Love is miserable,” he professed. “And marriage is miserable. And sex is great.”
The interview was full of light-hearted quips like: “I write my music according to my lifestyle. If I’m sad, I write sad music; if I’m being divorced, I write divorced. If I’m sexy, if I feel hot, or horny – I’ll write a horny album.” But in fitting with the complex singer, there were rare moments of absolute emotional honesty behind his jokes, which came close to revealing Gaye’s complex relationship with intimacy.
Love, marriage and sex seemed fair game, but when Joyner asked Gaye about his suicide attempts, he seemed almost startled by the frankness of the question. He admitted he hated talking about it because it made him seem weak. But he seemed to counter his own apprehension by reminding himself he was an “honest soul”.
“I was a manic-depressant,” he confessed. “I was at my lowest. I really didn’t feel like I was loved. And because I didn’t feel loved, I felt useless.”
Potentially symptomatic of his manic depression, even at the height of his success, Gaye had consistent money troubles. He owed the government nearly $4million, which was enough to drive him to hide out in Europe as a tax exile for a number of years.
Naturally, for such a gifted songwriter, his way of describing the financial pressures he was under was vivid, clueing the viewers into how desolate he felt in his final years. “I was really broke,” he elaborated, “and things didn’t look too good. So I was stuck in this forest. And I couldn’t see.”
It’s one of the most revealing interviews fans of the late singer could hope for, touching on Gaye’s numerous divorces, bankruptcy and troubled relationship with Motown. But most importantly, it touched on his musical process. When asked about his iconic performance of the national anthem at a 1983 NBA game, he cited gospel singer Mahalia Jackson as one of his biggest inspirations.
“I felt that while singing it, while practising it, I felt it from my soul,” he said. “I felt that singing it with that kind of music as the background gave me an inspiration. And I asked God that when I sang it, would he let it move men’s souls? And I decided to go with it.”
