It’s 8:45 on a late May evening in Manhattan, and Marvin Gaye is not feeling well. He’s just played seven sold-out shows in six days at Radio City Music Hall—all the while nursing a seriously sore throat—and now he’s in bed in his suite at the Waldorf with the covers pulled up to his bearded chin. To complete the look, his white-pajama-covered right arm pokes out from the sheets to press a blue ice bag to his head. It’s difficult to hear him—“I have a very soft voice, actually,” he says softly—so I put the tape recorder on his bedside table.
Gaye had left the States for London four years before with his life in chaos: bankruptcy, a bitter divorce, a government claim of $2 million in unpaid taxes, another bitter divorce, a custody fight with his second wife over their four-year-old son, a fondness for cocaine that culminated in a suicide attempt, and fast-fading record sales. Now, at 44, he is midway through his first American concert tour in six years, a tour inspired by the success of the million-selling album Midnight Love (his first for CBS Records after 20 years with Motown) and the classic No. 1 single from that album, “Sexual Healing.” His comeback is the talk of the industry.
