Is That Enough: Marvin Gaye’s Here, My Dear at 45
Reflecting on the soul legend’s complicated masterpiece
In the 70s, pop music took a turn towards the introspective and the very personal.
By mid-decade, it felt completely normal to hear Bob Dylan let his estranged wife have it with the stinging and sad “Sara” on Desire, featuring the key line: “Stayin’ up for days in the Chelsea Hotel/Writin’ ‘Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands’ for you.” You can almost hear her yell back, “Well, I never asked you to do that!”
For Black artists, it was a different playing field. While the worlds of funk and soul got very political in the early 70s, beyond that any reference to love, romance or autobiography was typically expressed in idealized, non-specific fashion. “Family Affair” from 1971’s There’s A Riot Goin’ On certainly had the ring of truth, but when Sly Stone got a little more personal on Small Talk (1975), the reception was not encouraging.
Marvin Gaye was a prime example of that status quo: an artist unafraid to tell it like it was in the streets and between the sheets in post-60’s America on What’s Going On (1971) and Let’s Get It On (1973), but addressing both subjects as universal truths rather than through the lens of personal experience. But who was Gaye beyond being an exceedingly talented singer, musician and composer?
In December 1978, the world got an extra-large dose of exactly who Marvin Gaye was with the release of his 15th – and first double-length studio album, Here, My Dear. Unfortunately, many who heard it were baffled. The let down after 1977’s joyful and multi-million selling Live At The London Palladium, which featured a #1 single in “Got To Give It Up,” was palpable. Was he really airing the dirty laundry of his disintegrated marriage to Anna Gordy, his label-boss’s sister? And were there even any songs on it? It certainly didn’t help that no singles were released prior to the album coming out, with Motown waiting until February 1979 to put out “A Funky Space Reincarnation” in an attempt to boost sales, which had topped out at #26 on the pop charts.
Probably the best review it got at the time was from Robert Christgau, who awarded it a B+ while still noting he felt it had “nary a melody line” and was “Definitely a weird one.” Vivien Goldman in Melody Maker was not as kind, dishing out the snark with “By half-way through Side Two I’d already mentally awarded myself a medal – surely I was going to be the Only Person To Sit Non-Stop All The Way Through Here, My Dear?” Dennis Hunt in the LA Times had high hopes but concluded that instead of “a potent, cohesive statement about the trials of marriage…it just fizzles.” Robert Palmer in the NY Times noted its musical “brilliance” but found that Here, My Dear “flaunts the macho self-absorption that must have had something to do with the marriage’s faltering in the first place.” Ouch.
By the time I heard about the album in the early 80s, it was out of print. There’s nothing more frustrating to a music obsessive than learning of an album from a major artist with a complex history and a divided critical response and not being able to hear it. Was this going to turn into something like my hunt for Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music? As for that complex history, it was impossible to find mention of Here, My Dear without getting a dose of backstory, which included the fact that it was essentially recorded as a divorce settlement, with Anna Gordy getting not only the full $305,000 advance Gaye had received to make the album, but the first $295,000 in royalties to boot! Even with the finances in her favor, Gordy threatened to sue Gaye for invading her privacy through his music. These nuggets only fueled my interest, thinking how easy it would have been for him to release a crappy album to get out from under the obligation to make it, which was indeed his first impulse. But Gaye had too much pride to go out like that, as I would soon find out.
I was shopping at Record Explosion, a long-forgotten discount record store on Nassau Street in Manhattan, one or two blocks south of J&R Music World and Bondy’s (wait, are those long-forgotten, too?) and there it was: Here, My Dear. A stack of them, in fact, all sealed cutouts priced to move at $3.99. I ponied up a fiver without hesitation and soon had the lost album on my Technics, ready for the diamond’s truth telling: masterpiece or morass? The cover was mind-blowing in its own way, a Greek temple in flames with “Love and Marriage” opposite “Pain and Divorce.” Inside, an illustration reduced Gaye and Gordy’s life together to a board game, with his hand offering up an LP-shaped token to her hand.
Side one opens with the title track, which has Gaye speak-singing the rationale behind the album, moved along by wah-wah guitar and subtle percussion, and sounding proud and almost gleeful as he sings, “This is what you wanted…here it is!” No other soul album begins like that and I was instantly fascinated, a sense that only continued with the genius updated doo-wop of “I Met A Little Girl,” sounding almost like a soundtrack as Gaye shouts out “1964!” and “1976!” marking the beginning and end of their marriage. Impossible to ignore even this early on was the gorgeous, burnished production, and Gaye’s rich and relaxed vocals, often duetting with himself or providing counterpoint through overdubs.
“When Did You Stop Loving Me, When Did I Stop Loving You” introduced a steadier pulse, rocking gently on the rhythm section of Frank Blair (bass) and Melvin Webb (drums) as Fernando Harkless wails away on sax. Improbably, the title of the song was a catchy hook (no melodies, Christgau), driving the emotion further into my heart even as I marveled at the invention. The next song stopped me in my tracks. “Anger” comes in hot with Gaye singing “Anger! It injures me…” as the groove gets deeper than anywhere else on the album. A devastating slab of mostly minor-key funk that has Gaye wrestling with the pull of rage, “Anger” was an instant hit in my house and I put it on countless mix tapes, trying to raise its profile.
Side two starts mysteriously, full of pinging synth, “Is It Enough” seemingly a rumination on the divorce hearings, comes into focus. The anger of the previous song is barely concealed by the drums, aggressive even at a slow tempo, as Gaye sings, with perfect rhythmic acuity, “The judge said she got to keep on living the way she accustomed to/She trying to break a man
I don’t understand/Somebody tell me please, tell me please/Why do I have to pay attorney fees (My baby’s) Attorney fees (Ooh baby).” The way Gaye turns these quotidian thoughts into music is pure genius – he really could captivate you by singing the phone book. He also played all the keyboards on the album, delivering a sweet solo to close the song.
“Everybody Needs Love” puts us back to the beginning of the album, thematically and melodically, while “Time To Get It Together” feels very much like a jam, an intimate look at Gaye in the studio, making something out of nothing. The song comes into startling sharpness near the end, when the groove tightens and Gaye declares:
“I’ve been racing against time
Trying my best to find my way
Change our world in just one day
Blowin’ coke all up my nose
Gettin’ in and out my clothes
Foolin’ ’round with midnight hoes (Wine, wine and dine)
But that chapter of life’s closed.”
The way Gaye calls himself out at least as much as he does Gordy, not to mention the compassion he shows for both of them as their love faded, helps Here, My Dear avoid being just a nasty screed.
“Sparrow,” which opens side three, could have been a single, not least for the way it takes a break from the narrative. It starts brightly, almost a tight pop song, and drifts into a jazz-fusion exploration before coming in for a landing on gently devastating waves of melody as Gaye envisions the titular bird as a symbol of all we need to protect on this earth. “Anna’s Song,” brings us into their bedroom, somehow tastefully, as Gaye looks back at happier times. Side three ends with a reprise of the “When Did You Stop…,” solidifying Here, My Dear as a concept album musically as well as thematically.
If I wasn’t already on board by then, the eight-minute quasi P-Funk of “A Funky Space Reincarnation” that opens side four, would have sealed the deal. It’s more of a musical mural than a song, with Gaye contributing all manner of synth sounds and telling futuristic tales (“We’ll send you over to the Plutotarium to be Plutotized”) as the rhythm moves ever forward and cowbells clank in the background. “You Can Leave, But It’s Going To Cost You,” brings us firmly back to earth (“Her lawyers worked so hard/Tryin’a take my riches”) and features some startlingly rhythmic vocalizing, before Gaye gives us one more glimpse of redemptive love on “Falling In Love Again.” Opening like an outtake from Bob Marley’s Survival, it features some of the most detailed horn arrangements on the album, with Gaye’s keyboards weaving artfully between them and the sharp rhythm track, as he delivers his final lesson: “Let’s live, not regret it.” Or maybe the final lesson is the joyful “Whoo!” in the fadeout of the finale, another reprise of “When Did You Stop Loving Me…,” Gaye the ultimate master of his musical destiny.
When the tonearm lifted, I had my answer: it’s a masterpiece, plain and simple, an epic confessional Bitches Brew that gave up many riches upon further listening. Here, My Dear set a new standard for what an album in the realms of funk, soul, R&B can be, incorporating deeply personal subject matter into supremely groovy soundscapes in a way that resonated far in the future on albums by Prince, D’Angelo, Janelle Monae and many others.
But even 45 years later in 2023 – and probably in “Two thousand and ninety three” – Here, My Dear stands alone, just like Marvin Gaye himself.
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