26 years ago today, while kids were planting whoopee cushions under their dads bottoms and flushing Cherrybombs down the staff toilets, Marvin Gaye Sr was pulling a trigger that would snuff out one of the finest talents bestowed on this rapidly burning earth.
Marvin Gaye died at the peak of his troubles, with a twisted road of brilliance and turmoil in his wake. By the time his womanizing, womanbeating, transvestite Minister father had snapped, Marvin had become a bizarrely paranoid, hollowed out crack addict. When the two troubled souls collided that night in the family home, with years of hurt and friction behind them, the hour had come for one of them. The day before his 45th birthday, Marvin Gaye took a bullet in the heart.
The story is as tragic as it is bizarre, thanks to the morally crippled character that Gaye Sr had become. This was reflected on the front cover of Time Out, London, Issue 781, which told the story of the slaughter. The cover see’s Marvin Gaye Sr, decked out in a woman’s negligee, diamond earrings and a beanie hat, shooting his son dead with (ironically) the very gun he had given him to protect his life with.
The cover was crass and cheap, but so was the 80’s. It’s a shame that The Prince of Soul wasn’t afforded a passing in decade that would have handled the tragedy of his death in a more respectful manner.
Today is the 26th Anniversary of Marvin Gaye’s death.
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