By Elliott West
“If you cannot find peace within peace, you will never find it anywhere else”.
Marvin Gaye
Introduction
Marvin Gaye changed the direction of soul music. A black American singer whose soothing voice brought joy to lovers across the globe with hits like “Sexual Healing” and “Heard It Through the Grapevine”. A music icon who dreamt his father would kill him, a dream that shockingly came true when he shot the soul icon in Los Angeles in 1984, a day before his 45th birthday. The Motown great who came from a Pentecostal household and struggled with drug addiction spent some of his last years in Belgium, jogging, recording the album “Midnight Love” and using the time to detox from cocaine addiction. A move that was split between here and London, fleeing his native USA to also avoid possible imprisonment for tax evasion.
Keeping Track
Marvin used his music creativity as his therapy. Whilst at a London nightclub in 1981, the Belgian music promoter Freddy Cousaert gave him his business card and urged him to move in with him. Instead, he went to stay with a close friend. Staying at the Ostend home of the Belgian musician Charles Dumolin and his wife Greetje in 1981, he recorded a reported 66 demo tracks on tapes that have gathered dust for 42 years. A gift that he left to his friend, telling him to “do whatever you want with it”. He also left behind some costumes and notes. Dumolin died in 2019 and now the family want to release the unheard tracks. However, there is a hitch. Although the family under Belgian law own the tapes, granting ownership of the property to someone after they have had it for 30 years. Yet the problem is that the law doesn’t include intellectual property. This means that the Gaye estate still has a legal right to the deceased singer’s property. A legal battle that will probably rage on for many years to come with music lovers not able to hear these unheard jewels from Gaye’s music catalogue. A lawsuit that echoes the one between Ed Sheran and the Gaye estate when Sheran was sued for $100 million for reportedly using multiple musical elements including melody, harmony and rhythmic components from “Let’s Get It On” on his song “Thinking Out Loud”.
