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“I could never get angry enough to fight back,” Marvin says. He was also the son of a preacher - a prophet, Marvin says, and a healer, and a philosopher - and it wouldn’t do to bring reports of fighting. You had to bring your lunch money for the older kids, learn to run fast or get into boxing. Tall but slight as a child, Marvin learned the rough facts quick. The most frightening time was the first 17 years, the ones Marvin spent while living at 1716 1st Street, S.W., in Washington, D.C., in a ghetto he and his friends called Simple City. I’ve got it worked down to about ten percent lately.” “It’s as if he’s developed this phobia about performing,” Marvin’s younger brother, Frankie, says.Īnd Marvin, a man who has sold four million albums in the last three years, who has sung about God and ecology, who has managed boxers and trained with them, who has prayed to God and sung finely of sex, says, “I used to be afraid about 70% of the time. Long pan shot of the leaden Pacific horizon and a cold January sunset. I’ve got it worked up to about 15 good minutes before my voice breaks.”Ĭlose-up on Marvin, brooding. In the studio I sing a phrase or two at a time, but Friday I’m going to have to do over an hour. The first time I tried it, I could only do about five minutes. I started singing… trying to do the whole show. The first time out, he isn’t going to be at top form. It’s like Muhammad Ali coming back to the ring. “You don’t expect a man to come back after five years and give a perfect show. “Fifteen minutes,” he mutters disconsolately.Ĭut to: Marvin at the wheel of his jeep, careening over the dry winter hills. Now, amid the wind and water sounds we hear Marvin Gaye’s tenor voice. Inside, a tall, athletic-looking black man in faded jeans stands braced against the glare, staring down toward the distant waters. Slow dolly to one of the Pacific-side windows. Windsounds, and far below, the Pacific Ocean. There are two jeeps parked alongside the dirt road. T he Marvin Gaye documentary should start like this:Ī wide-angle helicopter shot of the bare Southern California mountains zooming down to a small, weathered-wood and glass canyon-top home.