Who killed Marvin Gaye?
Marvin Gaye is, without a shadow of doubt, one of the true legends of modern music.
The ‘Prince of Soul’ was an original pioneer of the Motown sound, renowned as one of the greatest pop singers of his generation. He was also a revolutionary innovator of soul music during multiple reinventions of artistry, most notably with the protest album What’s Going On and his hit single ‘Sexual Healing’.
While Gaye had his personal and professional struggles in the latter part of his career, he was still a young man at the time. The biggest song from his 1982 album, Midnight Love, won him two Grammy awards. And so, it shocked the world when, on April 1st, 1984, the singer was pronounced dead at the age of 44.
The singer had been shot twice by a .38 Special pistol, with a bullet in his chest, dealing him a mortal blow. Perhaps even more tragically, the incident had happened at the Gaye family home in the Arlington Heights neighbourhood of Los Angeles, where his parents, Marvin Gay Sr (the star added the ‘e’ to his stage name) and Alberta Gay, lived.
His brother Frankie lived next door, and when he heard gunshots, he found Marvin slumped on the floor and broke down as he cradled his body. After being rushed to California Hospital Medical Center by the police, Marvin Gaye was confirmed dead on arrival.
So, why was he shot?
Gaye had been shot by his own father following a physical altercation in which Gaye Jr had hit and kicked Gay Sr repeatedly.
Gaye had intervened when his father had been verbally abusing his mother, and the two men soon came to blows. Nevertheless, the fight was over by the time Gay Sr returned to his eldest son’s room and shot him with the very same pistol Gaye Jr had gifted him for Christmas.
There seemed to be an element of premeditation about the shooting, given the gap of several minutes between the end of Gaye Jr’s sustained attack on his father and the latter returning to shoot him. In the words of LAPD Lt Bob Martin at the time, “Marvin Gay Sr armed himself with a handgun and fired several shots wounding Marvin Gaye Jr.”
It wasn’t simply “self-defence”, as Gay Sr later claimed during a police interview. His daughter and Marvin Jr’s sister Jeanne told journalist and biographer David Ritz, not long after her brother’s death, “In the past, father had made it very clear that if Marvin were to strike him, he’d murder him.” Marvin Sr had done what he’d promised to do.
On the other hand, Marvin Gaye Jr’s own psychological condition at the time suggests there was more to the tragedy than the senseless actions of an abusive father. Those close to Gaye in the final months of his life described him as paranoid and suicidal.
He had spiralled back into the drug abuse that had afflicted his career over the previous decade following his final tour. His autopsy showed both cocaine and PCP in his system, while a friend later described how he’d surrounded himself with the wrong crowd: “Pushers, women, all kinds of people would come to the door all through the night.”
At the same time, Gaye was convinced that someone was trying to murder him. And his final confrontation with his father was far from his first. A mutual dislike had developed between them since the singer’s childhood, during which Gay Sr subjected his son to relentless “whippings” from the age of seven, according to sister Jeanne.
Did Gaye provoke his father on purpose?
Jeanne Gay also told Ritz that she felt there was premeditation involved in the murder on her brother’s side, as well as her father’s. “He put himself out of his misery,” she suggested. “He brought relief to Mother by finally getting her husband out of her life. And he punished Father by making certain that the rest of his life would be miserable.”
This suggestion is supported by Marvin’s brother Frankie, who has alleged that the soul legend intimated with his final words that death was what he wanted. But whether or not it was truly his son’s intention, Gay Sr’s actions show remarkable callousness and a horrifying disdain for the life of his own child.
Ironically, the second single posthumously released under Gaye’s name after his death was entitled ‘It’s Madness’, which just about summed up the whole awful affair. A beautiful cry of desperation from a man who felt “lost in space”, the song was actually written and recorded in the early 1970s, with the same lush instrumentation which backs his 1971 masterpiece What’s Going On.
But in any case, it sounds like someone who wanted out. Just not at the hands of his father under such devastating circumstances.
What happened to Marvin Gay Sr?
He surrendered calmly, saying, “I didn’t mean to do it.”
Gay Sr was initially charged with first-degree murder, but that was later reduced to voluntary manslaughter after it came to light that Marvin Jr had physically assaulted him during the heated row. In the end, Marvin Sr pleaded no contest and, in November 1984, was handed a six-year probation sentence with no prison time — partly because of his age (he was 70) and a number of health issues, including a brain tumour.
Gay Sr told the court, “If I could bring him back, I would. I was afraid of him. I thought I was going to get hurt. I didn’t know what was going to happen. I’m really sorry for everything that happened. I loved him. I wish he could step through this door right now. I’m paying the price now”.
Marvin Gay Sr would then live out the remainder of his life in near obscurity. He moved into a retirement home and rarely spoke to the press.
Marvin Gay Sr later died of pneumonia in a nursing home in 1998, at the age of 84.
