Mercy, Mercy Me: The Art, Loves, and Demons of Marvin Gaye
- Book Review,
by Michael Eric Dyson
From Publishers Weekly
Dyson, a leading figure in black studies who is as comfortable discussing Tupac as Malcolm and Martin, offers a "biocriticism" that reflects on the themes of Marvin Gaye's music and personal life. Too much of the analysis, however, relies on nitpicking earlier critics, often reduced to accusing 1970s record reviewers of not getting Gaye's genius. While his examination of the cultural significance of What's Going On and follow-up albums is somewhat stronger, if not exactly revelatory, Dyson's ruminations hit shaky ground when he declares Gaye's shooting death at the hands of his father a suicidal acting out of an "Afroedipal" family drama. This queasy mixture of psychoanalytic theory and celebrity gossip undermines his narrative. Breaking with previous biographies, Dyson takes dubious assertions by a second-string Motown vocalist (contradicted by just about every reliable source) as proof Gaye had a sexual relationship with singing partner Tammi Terrell. At times, the writing is simply sloppy, contradicting itself from chapter to chapter and stretching out interviews until they trickle into irrelevancies. Dyson's personal fascination with the turbulent blend of spirituality and sexuality in Gaye's life and music is obvious, but it can't sustain an entire book. Though the mashing together of pop culture with gender and race studies is sure to score some points with academics and public intellectuals, it adds little of substance to Gaye's legacy as a musician. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
Long before his premature death, Marvin Gaye had attained the kind of iconic cultural status that shrouds an individual with so many layers of meaning that it may be hard for him to tell where his person ends and his persona begins. Two decades later, Gaye's influence remains so pervasive that it has almost become a cliché for young R&B singers such as R. Kelly, Maxwell and D'Angelo to cite him as a source of inspiration. At the same time, we are no closer to understanding Gaye, a turbulent soul who helped define soul music and became a celebrated voice of his generation. Illuminating the life of the brilliant and troubled musician is the task that Michael Eric Dyson sets for himself in Mercy, Mercy Me.On one level, we might see Gaye as the latest entry in what we could call the Dyson Icon Project. Dyson, a professor of humanities at the University of Pennsylvania, has an abiding interest in black men who live complex, often troubled lives and die violent deaths. The subjects of three of his previous books -- Malcolm X, Tupac Shakur and Martin Luther King Jr. -- each became a walking metaphor for the era in which he lived, and all three were gunned down in public. These works have provided both penetrating insights, such as Dyson's thorough assessment of King's virtues and limitations as a theologian, and glib observations, such as his unconvincing analysis of the alleged similarities in King's and Shakur's personalities. In Gaye, Dyson has found a figure as enigmatic, complex and compelling as any of his previous subjects -- a man whose troubled life was also ended by a hail of bullets, albeit from a gun that was purchased by him and fired by his father.Born in 1939 into an extremely religious family in Washington, D.C., Marvin early on became a target of the violent temper of his father, a Pentecostal minister. His adolescence was marked by his father's beatings, the strict religious demands of the household and the ridicule of other children based on from his father's reputation as a cross-dresser. (Dyson contends that this was likely a factor in Marvin's decision to add an extra letter to his surname, hoping to avoid the connotations of carrying the last name "Gay.") The author also cites a third-party source's claim that the physical abuse Gaye suffered from his father was compounded by sexual abuse from an uncle. Regardless, it is clear that the Gay household was far from idyllic. The young Marvin found his outlet in secular music, which was both an escape from the brutality of his family life and a defiance of his father's injunctions against nonreligious pursuits.Music, as Dyson points out, was Gaye's balm -- not his salvation. He failed in early attempts to forge a career as a black Sinatra-style crooner and moved only hesitantly toward soul music. He devoted a great deal of artistic -- and personal -- energy to reconciling his spiritual and sexual selves, a conflict that heightened his appeal as an artist. "Spiritual tensions," Dyson informs us, "roiled his sexual identity. He won from his battles, at least on record, a level of mature self-awareness." Outside the recording studio, however, was another matter. Gaye, Dyson informs us, fathered a child with 15-year-old Denise Gordy (niece of his then-wife Anna Gordy, who adopted the baby) in an arrangement that recalls the biblical tale of Sarah and Abraham: "Marvin did not tell [his biographer] that he was the baby's biological father. It was understandable: Marvin had made love to a minor, apparently with the consent of all involved. Still Denise was under the age of legal consent and Marvin might have gone to jail for statutory rape." Many of these revelations have been touched upon in previous works, particularly David Ritz's excellent biography. But Dyson is careful to draw the distinction that this book is not a biography of Gaye but rather a work of what he calls biocriticism. (It is organized thematically, not chronologically.) Dyson's goal is not so much to serve old wine in a new bottle as it is to create a new beverage altogether. Ultimately, this approach is both a virtue and a liability.Mercy, Mercy Me is at its best when Dyson untangles the complex mythology surrounding Gaye and offers insightful conjectures about the motivations of a genius. Writing of the complicated -- and possibly romantic -- relationship between Gaye and his most noted collaborator Tammi Terrell, he notes that their pairing took place in an "eerie, ironic fashion in which two people who brought such beauty into the world through their art couldn't see it in themselves." His analysis of "What's Going On," the 1971 classic LP, is both incisive and original. He argues convincingly that the title track was Gaye's attempt to break with the formulaic redundancy of the "Motown Sound." (Label founder Berry Gordy initially referred to it as "the worst single he'd ever heard," but after selling 100,000 copies ordered more just like it.) The landmark release, Dyson informs us, was conceived and executed in 10 days.On the subject of Gaye's murder, Dyson advances the argument that he baited and kicked his father in order to force Marvin Sr.'s hand, that he was attempting a form of passive-aggressive revenge by hanging his own death on his father's conscience. "Marvin," he writes, "extracted from Father a lethal act of generosity in the vocabulary he understood best: violent destruction." While this is an intriguing thesis, Dyson's heavily Freudian discussion (he uses the term "afroedipalism") at times seems a bit contrived. The book runs aground in the critical parts of Dyson's "biocriticism." He devotes a good deal of space to arguing with other writers and Gaye critics -- a decision that turns stretches of the book into more of a scholarly review of the literature than an engaging approach to a musical legend. This is important information, certainly, but a more concise approach to those arguments might have kept Gaye in the foreground. Ultimately, though, Dyson leaves us with less of Gaye the enshrined legend and more of Gaye the brilliant and frail human being. Mercy, Mercy Me ably sifts through the layers of meaning and myth surrounding its subject and brings us a degree closer to understanding the enigmatic, compelling and ultimately tragic life of Marvin Gaye.Reviewed by William Jelani Cobb Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.
Philadelphia Inquirer
"A major American thinker and cultural critic."
Book Description
From the critically acclaimed, best-selling author of Holler if You Hear Me, a fresh reassessment of the remarkable life, art, struggles, and death of an American icon. Twenty years after his murder at the hands of his own father, Marvin Gaye continues to define the hopes and shattered dreams of the Motown generation. A performer whose career spanned the history of rhythm and blues, from doo-wop to the sultriest of soul music, Gaye's artistry magnified the contradictions that defined America's coming of age in the tumultuous 1970s. In his most searching and ambitious work to date, acclaimed critic Michael Eric Dyson illuminates both Marvin Gaye's stellar achievements and stunning personal decline--and offers an unparalleled assessment of the cultural and political legacy of R&B on American culture. Through interviews with those close to Gaye--from his musical beginnings in a black church in Washington, D.C., to his days as a "ladies' man" in Motown's stable of young singers, from the artistic heights of the landmark album What's Going On? to his struggles with addiction and domestic violence--Dyson draws an indelible portrait of the tensions that shaped contemporary urban America: economic adversity, the drug industry, racism, and the long legacy of hardship. Published to coincide with the twentieth anniversary of Gaye's death in 1984, and infused with the soulful prose that has become Michael Eric Dyson's trademark, Mercy, Mercy Me is at once a celebration of an American icon whose work continues to inspire, and a revelatory and incisive look at how a lost generation's moods, music, and moral vision continue to resonate today.
About the Author
Michael Eric Dyson is an ordained minister and Professor of African American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Holler If You Hear Me: Searching for Tupac Shakur; I May Not Get There With You: The True Martin Luther King, Jr.; Making Malcolm: The Myth and Meaning of Malcolm X; and Race Rules: Navigating the Color Line. He lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
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