"What's Going On"

Marvin Gaye was a small 90-pound scrawny artist and musician. Lyricist Al Cleveland wrote a protest song about an event Renaldo Benson had witnessed for him to perform. Unfortunately none of the four tops at the time were interested in it. Benson finally decided to give Marvin Gaye the song to perform and on their first practice of it he was sold on it. Marvin was a very spiritual individual and a rebel in his music career prior. He was an excellent piano player as well as an amazing vocalist.

            The lyrics for this song were initially sparked when Renaldo Benson witnessed violent interactions between protestors and police in Berkeley while on a tour. Benson started to question in his mind, “What’s going on?” The violence he saw in the park that day led him to seek the help of songwriter Al Cleveland who he worked with often. With the help of Cleveland, a song was successfully written to express the issues Benson had encountered. The song was continuously morphed to eventually cover the issues of the protestors beating, Marvin Gaye’s appreciation of his brother serving in Vietnam, sorrow for Gaye’s singing partner Tammi Terell who had been killed brain cancer, violence on the streets of Detroit, and the shootings of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy.

            Marvin Gaye continuously was butting heads in the studio with his producer, and brother in law, Berry Gordy. Gordy did not like Marvin’s protest songs and did not want to release them, but instead thought Gaye should focus on his love songs. Gordy liked for Marvin to stay in the normal production side of Motown but Marvin refused and was constantly finding ways to be different and innovative. Gordy literally stated that “What’s Going On” was the worst song he had ever heard and was refusing to release it.

            One of the things that set “What’s Going On” apart from all the other albums coming out of Motown of the time was that Marvin used multi-layered lead vocals in his songs. The initial creation of this effect was a mistake by Gaye’s engineer, Ken Sands. The mistake however, ended up being Gaye’s signature sound. Another very unique thing in Gaye’s album was that he used amateurs for the background arrangements. Gaye invited some of his friends from the Detroit Lions football team to come in and record some of his backgrounds.

             My personal and professional opinion of Marvin’s album was that it was soothing and smooth to listen to. The vocals sounded amazing through out each track and had a unique character and mood implemented in the songs. I found Marvin’s style and lyrical content to be creative and fun to listen to. The album was very well produced and its sound is no question to its success.


Sources for "What's Going On" post on (10/10/11):


The story of "What's Going On"


Biography of Marvin Gaye