Motown RecordsMarvin Gaye
NOS News•today, 6:05 PM•Adjusted today, 6:20 PM
Previously unreleased work by Marvin Gaye has been found in Ostend. That reveals the BBC after conversations with the lawyer of a family who says they have tape recordings of the American artist. It concerns 30 cassette tapes with demos. It is not yet clear what will happen to the music. The rights belong to the family of Marvin Gaye.
Gaye, who died in 1984, is still at great heights as a soul singer. He is consistently in the Top 2000 with a number of songs, including What’s Going On in Sexual Healing, and his music is streamed and downloaded approximately 20 million times worldwide every month. The fact that new material from the artist is now emerging is great news for fans and music connoisseurs.
Comeback
It is not surprising that the work was discovered in Belgium. Marvin Gaye stayed in Ostend for more than a year from February 1981. Things were not going well for him at the time: his second marriage had ended, he was battling a cocaine addiction and was haunted by a tax debt.
On the Belgian coast he found his way back up and the inspiration for the (comeback) hit of his life: Sexual Healing. He also kicked the habit of hard drugs. In 1982, Gaye returned to the US. The newfound success was short-lived: two years later, Gaye was shot dead by his father, one day before his 45th birthday, after intervening when his parents were arguing.
IMAGO/MARC JOHNIn the Casino-Kursaal complex in Ostend, where he once performed, Marvin Gaye is honored with a statue
Gaye’s violent death was a shock. The recordings that have now surfaced are in the hands of the family of Charles Dumolin, a Belgian artist in whose house Gaye stayed for a while. He left behind some stage costumes, notebooks and cassette tapes. “They belong to the family because they were left behind in Belgium 42 years ago,” said Alex Trappeniers, the family’s lawyer. “Marvin gave it to them and said, ‘Do what you want with it’ and he never came back.”
The newly discovered recordings may shed new light on the last years of the Prince of Motown, as his nickname was. The BBC has heard a fragment and speaks of an almost eerie moment when the singer’s voice is heard after a series of complex harmonies with his backing band: “Was the tape recorder on?” says Gaye. “I’m not sure I can do that again.”
Listen to Gaye’s voice on one of the cassette tapes here:
New music Marvin Gaye discovered
Trappeniers did not want to show anything else except the short fragment. Yet the BBC, which was allowed to see the entire archive with all the costumes and documents left behind, has no doubts about the authenticity of the material. The fact that the work only emerged decades later may have to do with Belgian law: anyone who comes into possession of something gains absolute ownership of it after 30 years.
Legal complications
Trappeniers says the 30 audio tapes contain 66 demos of unknown songs. “A few of them are complete and some are just as good as Sexual Healing because they were also made in the same period.”
Whether and when the new music will be heard by the general public is still a question, because there are legal complications. Under Belgian law, whoever has the recordings may be the owner of the tapes, but does not automatically have the right to publish them. That right probably rests with Gaye’s family in the United States. They can release the music, but they don’t have the tapes. Trappeniers hopes a compromise can be reached with Gaye’s family. “I think we’ll both benefit from that.”
According to the BBC, lawyers for Gaye’s heirs were previously unaware of the existence of the tapes. According to them, it is possible that negotiations will follow about the recordings, but they have not yet started.
2024-03-30 17:05:01
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