How Did Marvin Gaye Die? Inside The Motown Legend’s Murder
After inflicting decades of torment and abuse, Marvin Gay Sr. shot his son Marvin Gaye at point-blank range inside the family’s Los Angeles home on April 1, 1984.
As music critic Michael Eric Dyson once said, Motown legend Marvin Gaye “chased away the demons of millions… with his heavenly sound and divine art.” But while this soulful voice healed those who listened, the man behind it suffered a tremendous amount of pain.
That pain largely centered on Gaye’s relationship with his father, Marvin Gay Sr., an abusive man who never wanted his son and made no secret of it. A violent alcoholic, Gay took out his anger on his children — especially Marvin.
But not only did Marvin Gaye endure this abusive childhood, he eventually found worldwide fame as a soul singer for the iconic Motown Records in the 1960s and ’70s. But by the 1980s, Gaye moved back in with his parents in Los Angeles following a losing battle with cocaine addiction as well as financial difficulties.
“He wanted everything to be beautiful,” a friend once said of Gaye. “I think his only real happiness was in his music.”
It was there, in the family’s Los Angeles home, that the tension between Gaye and his father reached its tragic climax when Marvin Gay Sr. fatally shot his son three times in the chest on April 1, 1984.
But as the Prince Of Motown’s brother, Frankie, later said in his memoir Marvin Gaye: My Brother, Marvin Gaye’s death seemed written in stone from the beginning.
Inside The Abusive Household Of Marvin Gay Sr.
Marvin Pentz Gay Jr. (he changed the spelling of his surname later on) was born on April 2, 1939, in Washington, D.C. From the start, there was violence inside the home thanks to his father and violence outside the home due to the rough neighborhood and public housing project in which they lived.
Gaye described living in his father’s house as “living with a king, a very peculiar, changeable, cruel, and all-powerful king.”
That king, Marvin Gay Sr., hailed from Jessamine County, Kentucky, where he was born to an abusive father of his own in 1914. By the time he had a family himself, Gay was a minister in a strict Pentecostal sect who disciplined his children severely, with Marvin reportedly getting the worst of it.
Marvin Gaye performing ‘I Heard It Through The Grapevine’ in 1980.
While under his father’s roof, the young Gaye suffered vicious abuse from his father nearly every day. His sister Jeanne later recalled that Gaye’s childhood “consisted of a series of brutal whippings.”
And as Gaye himself later said, “By the time I was twelve, there wasn’t an inch on my body that hadn’t been bruised and beaten by him.”
This abuse prompted him to turn to music rather quickly as an escape. He also later said that were it not for his mother’s encouragement and care, he would have killed himself.
The abuse that caused these suicidal thoughts may have been partly fueled by Marvin Gay Sr.’s complicated emotions about his own rumored homosexuality. Whether or not that’s true, the source of the rumors was largely that he cross-dressed, a behavior that was — often erroneously — linked with homosexuality, especially in decades past.
According to Marvin Gaye, his father often wore women’s clothes, and “there have been periods when [my father’s] hair was very long and curled under, and when he seemed quite adamant in showing the world the girlish side of himself.”
But whatever its cause, the abuse didn’t stop Gaye from also developing an extraordinary talent for music. He went from performing at his father’s church at age four to mastering both the piano and drums by the time he was a teen. He developed a deep love for R&B and doo-wop.
As he started to make a name for himself professionally, Gaye wanted to distance himself from his toxic relationship with his father so he changed his name from “Gay” to “Gaye.” Gaye reportedly also changed his name in order to quell rumors that he and his father were both homosexuals.
Gaye eventually moved with a musical colleague of his to Detroit and was able to secure a performance for the biggest name on that city’s music scene, Motown Records founder Berry Gordy. He was quickly signed to the label and soon married Gordy’s older sister Anna.
Though Gaye soon became the Prince of Motown and enjoyed monumental success for the next 15 years, his relationship with his father never truly healed.
The Troubled Months Before Marvin Gaye’s Death
Entertainment Tonight covering the news of Marvin Gaye’s death.
By the time Marvin Gaye finished what would be his last tour in 1983, he had developed a cocaine addiction to cope with the pressures of the road as well as his failed marriage to Anna due to his infidelity and which resulted in a contentious legal battle. Addiction had made him paranoid and financially unstable, inspiring him to return home. When he learned that his mother was recovering from kidney surgery, that only gave him more reason to move into the family home in Los Angeles.
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Back home, he found himself in a pattern of violent fights with his father. Even after decades, the old problems between the two were still raging.
“My husband never wanted Marvin, and he never liked him,” Alberta Gay, Marvin Gaye’s mother, later explained. “He used to say he didn’t think he was really his child. I told him that was nonsense. He knew Marvin was his. But for some reason, he didn’t love Marvin, and what’s worse, he didn’t want me to love Marvin either.”
Furthermore, even as a grown man, Gaye harbored troubled emotions related to his father’s cross-dressing and rumored homosexuality.
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According to one biographer, Gaye had long feared that his father’s sexuality would influence his, saying:
“I find the situation all the more difficult because… I have the same fascination with women’s clothes. In my case, that has nothing to do with any attraction for men. Sexually, men don’t interest me. It’s also something I fear.”
Marvin Gay Sr. said he wasn’t aware his son had died until a detective told him hours later.
Whether it was these fears, Marvin Gaye’s drug addiction, Marvin Gay Sr.’s alcoholism, or a myriad of other causes, Gaye’s time back home quickly proved to be violent. Gay eventually kicked Gaye out, but the latter returned, saying, “I have just one father. I want to make peace with him.”
