When Rolling Stone magazine recalculated its 500 greatest albums list last year, giving greater weight to musicians’ opinions and less to the critics, a new No. 1 emerged — Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On,” his seminal 1971 soul song cycle. And that album literally wouldn’t exist without the title tune.
The song was inspired by police brutality. Obie Benson, one of the Four Tops, witnessed hippies being beaten at a 1969 protest in Berkeley. Benson, working with Motown tunesmith Al Cleveland (“I Second That Emotion”), put his emotions into a song Benson wanted to record the song with the Four Tops, but the rest of the group balked at recording a “protest song.” So he took it to Marvin Gaye, who revised both the lyrics and music but wanted to give it to a Motown band he was producing, the Originals. Benson convinced him to sing it himself.
Gaye also decided to produce the record himself, and his inexperience led to some serendipitous accidents. For example, saxophonist Eli Fontaine’s intro to the song was just him warming up. When Fontaine told Gaye, “I was just goofing around,” Gaye replied, “Well, you goof exquisitely.”
The double lead voice was also a mistake. Gaye told Engineer Ken Sands to make a tape with the rhythm track and each take of his vocals on separate tracks so he could compare them. “Once I played that stereo mix on a mono machine and he heard both voices at the same time by accident,” Sands said. “He loved it.”
Motown chief Berry Gordy certainly didn’t. He told Gaye it was “the worst thing I ever heard in my life.” (Gordy later denied it, claiming his objection was that the song sounded too jazz-influenced.) Motown had a qualify control board that had to approve all the company’s singles; they rejected “What’s Going On,” reflecting near-unanimous opinion at Motown (only Stevie Wonder defended it). It sold 100,000 copies within a week of its release, the fastest-selling single in the company’s history to that point, and peaked at No. 2 on the Hot 100. Gordy was impressed enough to tell Gaye he would release an album of his “protest songs” if he could complete it in 30 days. He did.
Cover versions can’t duplicate the feel of the original production, but Daryl Hall and John Oates did a decent job in this 1981 Tokyo concert, even if they swapped out Fontaine’s alto sax for a tenor.
