Marvin Gaye – Five Things I Saw & Heard This Week

Five Things, Saturday, August 5th

THE INTRO
Now we’re all getting fully signed up to the future — it’s Philip K. Dick’s world after all, we just live in it — this week, Five Things touches on A.I., a spooked and possessed Marvin Gaye song, a world of music newly discovered, a video that is so French it should be required viewing at Customs and an extraordinary guitar modification. The saddest news was the passing of Sinead O’Connor. I thought back to a performance of the song every news broadcaster defaulted to this week [“Nothing Compares to You“] in 2012, where I tried to convey just how extraordinary her voice was… and Philip Watson sent me this astonishing performance of “Danny Boy.”

{ONE} THE DYLAN-A.I. INTERFACE
I don’t join things, generally — I’m not very clubbable. The only two clubs I’ve ever been a member of are the Levon Helm Fanclub and Fred’s (an Eighties Soho Club I somehow designed the identity for). But there I was at the Dylan discussion group with a Bob-inspired bottle of wine. I had bought it from Dina, our excellent local wine store, and it was made by Joe Jefferies, a man apparently at “the militant end of the natural wine world.” Originally from Warwickshire, he’s now in the Languedoc and producing wines from volcanic soils (100% Carignan in this one, if you’re asking), and he’d named one 2021 vintage, “Where black is the colour, where none is the number”. Seemed like a good wine for the pre-discussion supper. So, a quiz with the wine as the prize, and I hit on asking Chat GPT to write a review of one of the songs we were discussing — “Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?“ The first attempt was poor — bland and full of signature A.I. terms. Then I thought I’d ask for a review in the style of Lester Bangs (figuring it would add personality).

It added Lester’s rather dismal and critical view of Bob just enough to make the game (I handed round print-outs, first to guess the author won the prize) last for a little while as suggestions were thrown around and out. Finally, Alan peered up from the murk (our table in Soho House West was very dimly lit) and said,”It’s Chat GBT!”. And as he doesn’t drink, the wine went to Mick.
Postscript: I think A.I. had something to do with this weirdness that I found when looking for Dylan pictures on Getty Images: I know Aaron Rapoport’s originals, and they didn’t look like this…

{TWO} THE DEEPEST SOUL
There are still things to discover, Part One:
“Piece of Clay” by Marvin Gaye [hear it in the Music Player on the right].
I don’t know how I found this track, but it comes from the unreleased follow-up to What’s Going On, which was to be titled You’re The Man. Written by Gloria Jones and Pam Sawyer, it’s a brilliant piece of work — and the rough-hewn quality, where the edges haven’t quite been burnished off, make you think it could be a demo. “Father! Stop criticizing your son / Mother please leave your daughters alone / Don’t you see that’s what wrong with the world today / Everybody wants somebody to be their own piece of clay…” As sung by Gaye, that opening line is especially painful.

According to the Apple Music liner notes, “underperformance of the title track ahead of the album’s release, coupled with disagreements the singer is said to have had with the label about the project’s direction, led to the entire thing being shelved, leaving most of the songs to subsequently trickle out as bonus cuts packaged with reissues, compilations, and box sets. The official release [in 2019] of You’re The Man, then, is a time capsule — a portrait of an artist at the top of his game, but also one torn between the socially conscious anthems of What’s Going On and the superman lover he’d embody on 1973’s Let’s Get It On.”

The intro sounds like it was recorded in a church, an organ laying a carpet under a distorted slide guitar, very Duane Allman at Muscle Shoals, pushing the needles into the red before two drum hits and a crash cymbal silences it. Marvin sings the first line, then doubles his vocal like Al Green. Gospel piano drives the melody into the title line, so beautifully weighted by Marvin. A syncopated bass pushes into the second verse as Marvin heats up. The guitar comes back in, adding blues to the Southern Soul of the song. Then we’re into the middle eight — a call and response with the backing singers, joined by a horn section; it’s as if the entire congregation have picked up instruments. Suddenly, on the phrase love, not hate, everything drops out, bar the drums and bass as Marvin soars; then, from the back of the church, the fuzzed guitar creeps in, taking us all to a classic gospel ending and down into the fade.

{THREE} THE LIFE OF REILLY
There are still things to discover, Part Two: The Durutti Column.
Reading the excellent Conquest of the Useless [on Substack], I was sent to a Guardian article by Daniel Dylan Wray on Vini Reilly and the music of the Durutti Column. How did I miss them all those years ago — the music is simply glorious. The first song I hear is “Otis”, referenced in the article.

Reilly is dismissive about his own music — “When I listen back to it, it’s boring,” he says. “It’s done. I’ve already expressed everything I needed to when I was playing it.” I tell him that a colleague told me they wanted the 1989 track “Otis” playing at their funeral. “Give him my apologies,” he laughs before downplaying the beauty of the track, in which sparkling guitar swirls around dreamy vocal samples from Tracy Chapman and Otis Redding. “It was just messing about.”

It is four minutes of heaven. YouTube decides next up is a live performance, “Jacqueline”, with drumming from Bruce Mitchell. I only knew of Bruce as a member of Alberto Y Los Trios Paranois, the art-rock-satire-band, but his duet with Reilly is wonderful, his red brushes flying over the kit in perfect sync with Vini’s guitar and keyboards, his palpable enjoyment wonderful to watch.

{FOUR} THE WAY TO THE NEXT WHISKY BAR…
This was the most extraordinary thing I saw in the week that Jane Birkin passed on. From Off the Fence, the newsletter of The Fence magazine: “Let’s celebrate all that is best in Gallic culture with this amazing video from 1988, which shows a children’s choir decked in full Serge Gainsbourg regalia — whiskies and cigarettes in hand — regale Gainsbourg himself with one of his songs as the Frenchman weeps with emotion. One to warm your stony hearts!”

On a TV appearance toward the end of his life, he was surprised by a choir of children (Les Petits Chanteurs d’Asnières) in full Gainsbourg regalia — black jacket, grey wig, sunglasses, whisky, cigarette, unshaven. They’re singing Serge’s “J’e suis venu te dire que je m’en vais” (“I came to tell you that I’m leaving”) but they’ve changed it to “On est venu te dire qu’on t’aime bien” (We came to tell you that we like you).

{FIVE} THE A-Z OF THE B
Did you know Gene Parsons fitted a Clarence White/Gene Parsons B-Bender to a 1964 Gibson Dove acoustic guitar? I didn’t. Mind blown. Check this out. Nathaniel Murphy, who is playing it, is an Englishman in Chicago, and a fine guitarist.

Thursday, September 27th

It’s Thursday, and Teresa May is currently redefining the word awkward. Donald Trump is on some quest to recalibrate all norms of human behaviour, and The Bodyguard has thankfully finished (hands down, the worst series that I have ever watched right to the end). However, this week’s Five Things was written in the cool Dark Mode of MacOS Mohave, while listening to a bootleg of the demos for the White Album mostly recorded at George Harrison’s house in Esher. They’re possibly on the new boxset to be released in November.

I like Paul McCartney’s take on it: “We had left Sgt. Pepper’s band to play in his sunny Elysian Fields and were now striding out in new directions without a map.” Ah, musicians in the act of creating something, before it gets nailed down, still loose enough for a certain amount of fun. In a sense, this is their Basement Tapes, and it’s interesting to hear “Back in the USSR” sounding much more Beach-Boys-y, and “Child of Nature” before its melody became re-purposed as “Jealous Guy”.

I wish I were at The Village Trip in New York this week. Congratulations are due to Liz Thompson for having the determination to pull the whole thing together. Starting with a photo exhibition featuring the work of David Gahr, it features a free concert in Washington Square Park with Susanne Vega headling and ends with a gig, Talkin’ New York Folk Revival, at The Bitter End featuring David Amram and Happy Traum. Liz hopes this will be the first year of many celebrating the importance of Greenwich Village in America’s music history.

ONE DAVID & SYD
Writing a profile of my first boss, David Driver, for Eye magazine, I ended up with much material that had to be excised. Here’s David’s recollection of Syd Barrett at the Cambridge School of Art: “Roger ‘Syd’ Barrett was also at the college. He formed Pink Floyd and played at our Christmas parties. I remember going to Syd’s home a few times, and he had a huge collection of singles. There was a mountain of them on the floor. Incredible. He was very clever. But I think he was quite limited in what he could do. He wasn’t a brilliant musician.”
But an interesting all-rounder – did you ever see him post-college?
“Yes. I did. But he was a bit strange around that time. Very sad. You wouldn’t have expected it. When he was at college Syd and Roger Waters were just so desperately keen to pick your brains, they were like magpies. They were a good two or three years below us and, they’d come and scour the place and talk to older students during lunchtime.”

TWO WHENEVER BLUE TEARDROPS ARE FALLING…
I wouldn’t really recommend pulling into Ostend on a Sunday night – there was something menacing about its silent, deserted streets, only punctuated by music belting out of overlit pizza joints that seemed to be filled with over-oiled patrons. I’m sure it looks way better midweek, or on market day. Hotel located we headed to the seafront promenade to find something to eat, passing concert halls and galleries.

There’s a lot of music going on in Ostend, and it embraces its part in the Marvin Gaye story with this: “14 February 1981. Marvin Gaye arrives by ferry in Ostend, together with his little boy, Bubby. It marks the start of a fascinating story about Ostend, Marvin Gaye and the relationship between the two. This documentary walk through the city tells you everything about his comeback and how the monster hit song “Sexual Healing” came to life.” Sadly we won’t be taking that tour, or witnessing this…

THREE IT MUST BE BOOTLEG WEEK…
…as bobdylan.com announces the Blood on the Tracks entry to the Bootleg Series. So we’re at Volume 14 with More Blood, More Tracks. “The 6CD full-length deluxe version includes the complete New York sessions in chronological order including outtakes, false starts and studio banter. The album’s producers have worked from the best sources available, in most cases utilising the original multi-track session tapes.” Two thoughts. How staggering is it to reach number 14 in a multi-disc series using mainly just your unreleased masters and alternate takes. And, secondly, I could fill a week just listening to the 18 CDs in The Cutting Edge box set. Trouble is, I don’t have a week to devote to it, or worse, the desire. When is too much enough?

FOUR JUNK PARTNERS…
The reason I was listening to the Beatles bootleg, above, was to find out more about the song that titles Hailey Tuck’s first album, “Junk”. I feel slightly guilty for liking the record as much as I do, but as with all of Larry Klein’s productions the musicianship is so damned musicianly and the songs so well-chosen it’s hard to resist. Dean Parks is all over it, and Jay Bellerose on drums gives his usual masterly best – check out his accented playing on “My Chemical Life”.

The song is very cute, spun off a quote by W. H. Auden. “He said that in order to wake up, he would drink coffee, down a shot of whiskey, and take whatever drugs would get him into the mood of writing and he called it his chemical life. So the song’s about a suburban wife who is addicted to drugs kind of try to escape the banality of her wifey existence.” – Hailey Tuck, talking to Charles Waring of SoulandJazzandFunk. “Speedballs and cappuccino / My mother called from San Marino / Where Lambourghinis float down soft suburban streets / And gardeners keep the rhododendrons nice and neat”.

Other songs include Pulp’s “Underwear” (“If fashion is your trade, then when you’re naked / I guess you must be unemployed…”) and The Kinks’ “Alcohol” (“Barleywine, pink gin / He’ll drink anything…”), and the rather lovely version of McCartney’s “Junk” that started this.

FIVE SEEN AT A VINTAGE FAIR AT WALTHAMSTOW ASSEMBLY HALL

EXTRA LET’S FINISH WITH THIS!
If you haven’t seen it… The Band of the Welsh Guards played Aretha Franklin’s “R.E.S.P.E.C.T” on the day of her funeral, on the forecourt of Buckingham Palace.

https://twitter.com/ChrisBottaNHL/status/1035491166077235201

If you’re receiving the email out, please click on the Date Headline of the page for the full Five Things experience. It will bring you to the site (which allows you to see the Music Player) and all the links will open in another tab or window in your browser.

The book of Five Things is available from Amazon here.

“He writes with the insight of someone who has inhabited the world of the professional musician but also with the infectious enthusiasm of someone who is a fan like anyone of us. It’s entertaining and inspiring in equal measure.” – from an Amazon review by Zuma

“What a treat! And it has the years before I discovered your blog…” – Dan Franklin, Publisher

“A terrific book, stuffed to the gills with snippets of news items and observations all with a musical theme, pulled together by the watchful eye of Martin Colyer… lovingly compiled, rammed with colour photos and interesting stories. Colyer has a good ear for a tune, an eye for the out-of-ordinary and he can write a bit too.” – Steve Carr, everyrecordtellsastory.com

“I’ve been dipping with huge enjoyment since it arrived” – James Walton, writer and presenter of Radio 4’s books quiz, The Write Stuff, and the R4 pop quiz All the Way from Memphis.