Product reviews
Marvin Gaye's 1960s persona--his smooth good looks, impeccable dress sense, and magnificent voice--embodied Tamla Motown boss Berry Gordy's vision for the record label as The Sound of Young America. Gaye's '70s bid for artistic freedom, resulting in influential albums such as WHAT'S GOING ON, TROUBLE MAN, and LET'S GET IT ON, paved the way for artists like Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson to create similar seminal works. But he was also a man at war with himself--a terminally insecure cocaine addict who had a viciously combative, and ultimately fatal, relationship with his alcoholic father, who murdered him in 1984. David Ritz's remarkable and often harrowing biography, DIVIDED SOUL, begun before the singer's death, contains candid recollections from Gaye, his family, his friends, and his musical contemporaries, with a wealth of information about the tortured artist's roots, his attitude to his music, and the demons that drove him to drug addiction and repeated attempts at suicide.
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