Released on May 21, 1971, Marvin Gaye’s 11th studio album What’s Going On is one of the most important albums ever released. The landmark concept album is sung from the perspective of a Vietnam War veteran returning to the USA and observing injustice and suffering.
The socially conscious tunes that he composed were deeply rooted in the personal. For example, Marvin tried to put himself into the shoes of his younger brother Frankie, who was stationed in Vietnam, as a radio operator. “The death and destruction I saw in Vietnam sickened me,” Frankie related to Gaye’s biographer David Ritz, in his book Divided Soul: The Life of Marvin Gaye: “The war seemed useless, wrong, and unjust.”
Frankie’s experiences were especially tapped into on the album’s first two tracks, the legendary title track and “What’s Happening Brother”, about the feelings of disillusionment experienced by war veterans returning home. Frankie was moved to tears the first time he heard “What’s Happening Brother”, describing it as “so personal and heartfelt”.
Other issues are explored on the album such as on one of the album’s standout “Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)”. Gaye mournfully ponders ecological destruction (“oil wasted on the ocean and upon our seas, fish full of mercury and radiation underground and in the sky”).
The album closes with the potent “Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)” which was one of three singles along with the title track and “Mercy Mercy Me”. Gaye shared credit with James Nyx, a struggling songwriter who also worked as a janitor and elevator operator at Motown. Gaye was finding it hard to come up with words, so Nyx came up with the lyrics about the “have-nots” of America after reading a newspaper headline about the “inner city” of Detroit. The tune was frequently sampled on Hip-hop tunes earning Nyx significant royalties in the later years of his life.
Marvin Gaye faced resistance from Motown founder Berry Gordy, who already butted heads with Marvin over the release of the title track as a single. He felt that recording a political concept album would be commercial suicide. “I was in the Bahamas trying to relax,” Gordy related in the 2016 documentary Marvin, What’s Going On? “He called and said, ‘Look, I’ve got these songs.’ When he told me they were protest songs, I said, ‘Marvin, why do you want to ruin your career?’”
Due to the title track becoming an unexpected hit, and Gaye’s firm insistence, Gordy gave in, realizing that it was in Motown’s best interest to capitalize on the success and release an entire album of new material.
Just like with the title track, Gordy was proven wrong. Marvin Gaye created a masterpiece that sadly has become even more relevant over the years.