MARVIN GAYE - “I Heard It Through The Grapevine”
(#268, 29th March 1969)
Some of my favourite soul performances go to the ragged-throated extremes of the style - Lorraine Ellison’s apocalyptic “Stay With Me”, for instance. But more of them are like “I Heard It Through The Grapevine”, whose emotions are just as intense but more strictly controlled.
In fact the impact of Gaye’s song is in the way the singer enacts resisting the intolerable pressure of the situation - the sound of him not cracking up, howling or hollering or exploding with pain, is as powerful and wracking as the dams actually bursting. His only chance - whether of winning her back or just keeping his dignity (by the end it doesn’t necessarily matter) - is to stay reasonable, to not break down. The music - measured, smooth, almost smoochy - taunts his efforts. The backing singers hardly break a sweat. Stray words of Gaye’s bubble into wails or snarls, he ends bitter and defeated, but he keeps control. His reward is simply a limit on his humiliation, and the power of the song is in selling us a situation where that really is worth fighting so hard for. 9
Site powered by
FT's Tom on September 14th, 2006
Supplementary notes:
1/ This is sort of written in response to Mark Gamon’s accusation of me not liking soul music in the (IIRC) Joe Cocker post. I do like soul music, but I like some kinds more than others.
2/ This was Dave Marsh’s favourite single in his Top 1001 of all time book, which is an indirect inspiration for Popular.
3/ The main thing stopping me giving it a 10 is the existence of the Slits’ outrageously great version.
FT's rosie on September 14th, 2006
Now this is more like it. One of my absolute favourites from this period, from all time, and would definitely have been a 10 in my list.
I haven’t heard The Slits’ version, mind.
blount on September 15th, 2006
slits version truly truly awesome, closer to outright rage of glady knight ‘original’ than the scary simmering rage that builds thru the verses until punctured by the pain in the chorus in gaye’s ‘cover’. how big a hit was the gladys version in the uk? it was a pretty huge hit over here, enough so that gaye’s ‘reworking’ of it definitely would’ve been noticed/a factor, and while there was still such a thing as oldies radio down here the gladys version held it’s own w/ gaye’s in terms of airplay. you also had (even in the marsh book!) the ‘gladys version better than gaye version’ argument (my take: gaye version - 10, gladys - 8).
blount on September 15th, 2006
also haha tom yr argument here inadvertantly possibly proves mark’s argument re: you and soul!
FT's Doctor Mod on September 15th, 2006
Well, I personally much prefer the spectacular high-energy Gladys Knight version. Gladys puts her complaint right up front–she heard the gossip and now she’s furious! You can bet that whomever she’s addressing will get what’s coming, because there’s a hint of triumph in the delivery.
I’m not saying that Marvin Gaye’s version (which came out about a year or so after GK’s, if I recall correctly) isn’t an extraordinary recording. But I can’t help but feel uncomfortable with it, as if a paranoid imagination is turning an everyday breakup into a widespread conspiracy theory.
Having been through a number of such scenarios over the years, I can certainly say that it’s better to get mad than to get paranoid.
FT's rosie on September 15th, 2006
The Gladys Knight version certainly got some airplay in the UK but it wasn’t, I think, a big hit. Gladys’s was a fine recording but didn’t send the shivers up my spine the way Marvin’s did and - tellingly - still does.
FT's rosie on September 15th, 2006
Oh - forgot to mention - perhaps it’s the crime writer in me but while Gaye’s paranoia might not be the best way to deal with betrayal than Knight’s get-it-out-and-get-over-it, but there’s a much better story in it!
Mark Gamon on September 15th, 2006
Fair enough. Can’t argue with that. Sorry if I upset you before. I’d have given this a 10, mind…
FT's Tom on September 15th, 2006
No not upset at all! No point getting upset over someone’s perception of yr tastes, particularly not as there’s a grain of truth in it.
FT's katstevens on September 15th, 2006
Marv - 10
Gladys - 8
Slits - 9
Gladys doesn’t quite sell it as well for me.
FT's alext on September 15th, 2006
Was this in a jeans advert, or was it raisins?
FT's Tom on September 15th, 2006
Both! Well maybe. Definitely raisins, it put Isabel off the song for years (as did Vitalite for the next one up).
Marcello Carlin on September 15th, 2006
Levi jeans, Nick Kamen in the launderette, 1986.
This does represent a major turnaround in the UK singles chart, though; thanks to a concerted and passionate effort from Dave Godin at Motown UK in conjunction with Blackburn on the breakfast show, from about Nov ‘68 we see a sudden influx of Motown hits, both old and new. Tied in with the mod/skins division - those who didn’t quite go along with/were left out of psychedelia - this meant a substantially “blacker” singles chart, and the succession of “Grapevine” by the next number one underlined what was a revolution of sorts; note how Tom/Engelbert/etc. chart positions noticeably slide downwards (in general) after March ‘69 and concurrent reduction in old-school balladeers - there is the unexpected Rat Pack revival (Gentle On My Mind/My Way) but that’s a separate phenomenon altogether.
Depending on whom you believe - Barrett Strong? Norman Whitfield? Marvin? - the subtext to the Marvin version was substantially deeper and more sinister than just love gone wrong, but I’ll leave that for others to debate…
FT's Martin Skidmore on September 15th, 2006
I’d like to add that this is one of the great numbers ones in production terms too - for me, Norman Whitfield is one of the two or three greatest producers ever, and terribly undervalued. If I were at home I would listen to it again and make some specific comments about this, but I’m not.
FT's Tim Hopkins on September 15th, 2006
My favourite bit of this record is the first fifteen secods or so, up to and including the “oooh”. It seems to me to anticipate the sound and feel of seventies adult soul but more importantly it sounds completely fantastic.
The main body of the record, as fine as it is, feels more like a very good soul record of its time, not that there’s anything wrong with that.
jeff w on September 15th, 2006
Martin and Tim H have just said exactly what I was about to say. (Somehow I missed this post popping up on my LJ Friends page, assuming it did at all.)
From the wtf ‘clunk’ at the start of the record (a serendipitous by-product of the dustbin drum sound you get on much mid-late 60s Motown?) and the potentous electric piano riff, through the build of additional instruments to that wail of anguish on the horns, the intro sets the scene perfectly for Gaye’s battle not to “lose it”.
But what follows is just as good. An easy 10 for me. (I don’t think I’ve heard the Gladys Knight version, but I like The Slits’ take too.)
blount on September 15th, 2006
mod soooo otm re: ‘a paranoid imagination turning an everyday breakup into a widespread conspiracy theory.’
FT's wwolfe on September 15th, 2006
I remember hearing Gladys Knight’s version when it was a hit, but I have no memory of hearing Marvin Gaye’s version then. (Odd, since I think it was #1 in the States for eight or nine weeks.) Which is maybe why Gaye’s version still sounds - I’m not sure what the word is: foreign? strange? unexpected? Or maybe that’s just a mark of how original his performance is. (Ditto Norman Whitfield’s arrangement: since this was recorded in 1967 - and wouldn’t this have felt as out of place had it been released in the Summer of Love as did the first Velvet Underground album at that time? - this seems like the blue print for all the great Whitfield productions to come.)
Thinking about it, maybe it’s most emotionally accurate for me to think of the two versions as two different songs. I know as a matter of fact that’s not true, but that’s how it feels to me when I hear them. Every version I’ve ever heard of “Yesterday,” to pick an obvious example, sounds like a different interpretation of the same song; Gladys and Marvin sound like they’re singing two very different songs. Maybe Dave Marsh’s take on Marvin’s version gives a key to why by placing Marvin’s version in a racial/historical context; I found Marvin’s version more interesting once I thought of it in those terms. By comparison, Gladys’s version seems wholely about the emotions of her specific situation. Given how well she expresses those emotions (with major help from the Pips and the Funk Brothers), that’s plenty for me.
One aspect of the two competing versions that I think tips in Marvin’s favor: the backing female singers do seem to “taunt” Gaye, which suits the mood and message of his version, but - as fine as they are - it could be argued that the all-male Pips lending her support seems to contradict Gladys’s message of betrayal at the hands of her low-down dirty dog of a man.
FT's wwolfe on September 15th, 2006
Oh, and re: the execrable California raisins commercial: the singer was Buddy Miles, ex-Hendrix drummer and mild turn-of-the decade hitmaker with “Them Changes.”
Dadaismus on September 15th, 2006
I’m ashamed to admit I don’t think I’ve ever heard the Gladys Knight version! But, I think I’m not alone among UK residents in that.
FT's Doctor Mod on September 15th, 2006
I know that the Four Tops did a raisin commercial (in the US, at least)–in the eighties?–that would also link Motown with the shrivelled grape industry. I can’t remember what song they sang, though.
FT's koganbot on September 15th, 2006
Mod OTM as to the shadowy paranoia of the Gaye version, though that’s why I prefer the Gaye–esp. adore the creepily eerie keyboard, comes from ghostland. Fwiw, I think guitar players Tom & John Fogerty get a sound that’s almost as skin-tingling in the Creedence version, which when edited down to three minutes I love even more than the Gladys Knight. (And I loathe the Slits’ version, but that’s a different story.)
Song hate hasn’t shown up on this thread, at least not yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a lot in the world. “Grapevine” became a boomer nostalgia song at the time of The Big Chill, hence all those TV commercials. When I think of what I “feel” in relation to that song, it’s really what I recall feeling, since so much oversaturation makes it hard for the music to come across with any attributes anymore. It’s to great songs as “To be or not to be” is to great phrases lifted from soliloquies: you forget that the words actually mean something. I myself am particularly oversaturated because I walk for exercise, and when I want to keep up a good clip I’ll lock myself into a rhythm from a song, and my tempo song for flat surfaces is the Gaye version of “Heard It Through the Grapevine.” I don’t have a walkman, so this is all in my head, but my mind plays that song every day, not for any feeling or meaning but just to keep the pace.
Real good Douglas Wolk piece from a few years back about the challenge in covering the song. “Just three lines in, you have to leap up an octave in the middle of a phrase and nail a crucial word of the lyric.”
FT's koganbot on September 15th, 2006
Wwolfe raises an interesting question of how the song would have stood out or fit in if it had been issued the year it was recorded, 1967. I’d guess it would have fit fine. I can’t imagine that it would have sounded more menacing and frightening than “White Rabbit,” and it wouldn’t have had any of the latter’s frightening (to me) cultural overtones. I don’t want to say that “Summer of Love” was a mere advertising slogan based on a line by the not-all-that-hip John Phillips, but it hardly conveys the year in music. I’m sure I’d have been stunned and scared by the first Velvets album if I’d heard it. But it wouldn’t have felt different in kind from the aforementioned “White Rabbit” or from “The End” by the Doors, or for that matter from all those Yardbirds-derived garage rockers from the likes of the Count Five and the Electric Prunes (”Get Me to the World On Time” and “Too Much to Dream” sounded real brutal in their time, banging their way out of the radio), given that the Velvets themselves were basically Yardbirds-derived garage rockers. Years later I’d hear for the first time tracks recorded back in 1966 by an obscure San Francisco psychedelic band called The Great Society, and was excited by how much the rhythms and the guitar playing reminded me of the Velvet Underground. The Great Society recorded the original versions of “White Rabbit” and “Somebody to Love,” which the lead singer took with her when she joined Jefferson Airplane the next year.
FT's koganbot on September 15th, 2006
I love the old Slits, and I don’t think I was irritated by their “Heard It Through The Grapevine” when I first heard it so much as I was bored. But in retrospect it marked the transition to my not loving them and from the band going from inventive, surprising, sharp-witted, and mocking to sentimental quasi-mystical “tribal” clomp blomp.
blount on September 15th, 2006
can’t say/wasn’t there obv but it definitely seems like it’d slide in beside “white rabbit” very well - foreboding tone well established on the american hit parade by this point since at least ‘fwiw’, maybe rooted in ‘eve of destruction’ being such a smash, maybe (MAYBE) residue/heirs to ‘dead teenager’ songs of early 60s? (by this point there were a lot of dead teenagers obv).
FT's Tom on September 16th, 2006
Probably shameful admission: “Grapevine” is the only Slits I know! I mostly associate it with Matt DC’s Club Seal night. (I think I once heard two tracks off ‘Cut’ but the mood wasn’t right and I didn’t enjoy them)
Chris Brown on September 16th, 2006
In expectation of this coming up, I actually bought a Marvin Gaye best-of because I thought it rather remiss of me not to own this record. I was sort of worried about the whole saturation thing too because I wasn’t there at the time, and I’ve never known of this as anything other than an acknowledged classic - the “To Be Or Not To Be” comparison is a very apt one. I was eight when it was back in the Top 10 thanks to that jeans advert and I remember the raisins too (raisins, grapevine - do you see what they did there?!) to the extent that I dimly recall watching a mock-rockumentary about the California Raisins.
When I try to put all that aside, though, it stands up pretty well. I’m inclined to agree that the intro is the most dramatic part of all, shuffling in but still introducing tension. The other moment I’d like to commend is “Losing *YOU* would end my life you see,” precisely because it doesn’t sound even remotely contrived, though it obviously is.
BTW, Gladys Knight’s version only got to 47 in the UK. I know I have heard it, but I don’t really remember what it sounded like. Never cared for the Slits though.
FT's Doctor Mod on September 16th, 2006
And so I turned on the television late last night and the first person I saw on the screen was … Gladys Knight.
She still has my vote. Must hear the Slits.
(Anyone remember the eleven-minute Creedence Clearwater Revival version? No? It’s just as well.)
blount on September 16th, 2006
i flip-flop between ‘this is ghastly/this is awesome’ re: the ccr version all the time
FT's Doctor Mod on September 16th, 2006
Or awesomely ghastly.
blount on September 17th, 2006
was the ccr potentially in ‘response’ to vanilla fudge’s ‘keep me hanging on’? are there enough nixon era ‘motown x “dazed and confused”‘ epics to fill a cd-r?
Oh No It's Dadaismus on September 17th, 2006
are there enough nixon era ‘motown x “dazed and confused”‘ epics to fill a cd-r?
Rare Earth’s entire career surely?
intothefireuk on September 18th, 2006
Marvins ultra smooth effortless delivery is what seals it for me. That and the psuedo tribal rhythm behind the intro and chorus. It is though so familiar now it is easy to overlook just how good it really is. Of course at the time of its release Gaye was planning to edge Motown in a more overtly politically conscious direction possibly hastened by the death of MLK. This would be combined with elongated, lusher orchestral arrangements which would in turn pave the way for ‘Seventies soul’ - but we’ll get to that in a few years time.
marian amos on April 22nd, 2007
did anyone make an instumental that you know of?
Erithian on September 19th, 2008
Norman Whitfield R.I.P. This and “Papa Was A Rolling Stone” for starters - wow.
DJ Punctum on September 19th, 2008
Also, on “Love Don’t Live Here Anymore,” the most subtle and emotional use of the syndrum in pop I can think of.
Erithian on September 19th, 2008
Indeed yes - funny we should be discussing the syndrum right now on the Ring My Bell thread. Now there (i.e. Rose Royce) was a case where that sound enhanced the record rather than dominating it, and what a fantastic song.
mike on September 19th, 2008
Re. Norman Whitfield: see also the remarkable Masterpiece, his last album with The Temptations - although in truth the Tempts barely get a look-in, leading certain wags of the day to dub them “the Norman Whitfield Chorale”. As annoying as that sidelining might have been to the Tempts at the time, what remains is a marvellous piece of symphonic soul indulgence, particularly on the 13 minute near-instrumental title track and the seminal underground gay dance classic “Law Of The Land”.
DJ Punctum on September 19th, 2008
Hmmm…for me that was the point where they teetered into self-parody. Lots of reviews at the time of the “it was very nice of Norman to allow the Temptations to appear on their own record” variety.
On a not entirely separate note, has anyone else heard Marc Rapson’s pretty stunning dub remix of “Grapevine”? I’m absolutely sure that had the 12-inch single existed back then Whitfield would have jumped straight in and done an extended mix, and this is quite fantastic…
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=51106925