Alan Price, Singer(1982)

Raymond Seitz,American Ambassador to the UK(1993)

Pete Waterman, record producer(1995)

Dr Susan Greenfield, Writer, Neuroscientist(1997)

Professor Stuart Hall,Cultural theorist(2000)

Quentin Blake, Illustrator(2006).

Gaye’s final years were a sorry tale and there was little evidence to suggest that a commercial rebirth with ‘Midnight Love’ and the new contract with Columbia would have turned around a chaotic private life.

It must be said though that despite the abuse he put his body through for several years his voice remained in fine shape.

(Slits notwithstanding, I still think this is a straight-up 10)

Marvin’s was a remarkable talent within a stable of greatness. Smokey and Stevie shone equally (I think Wonder is a genius) but it was Gaye who really captivated me and it was this magnificent record which alerted me to him. “Got To Give It Up” and “Sexual Healing” followed decade by decade and then the singer’s manic father shot him to death in order to “teach Marvin a lesson”. The sad little prequel to this shocking and needless murder was a documentary Gaye made when he bizarrely turned up in Oostende, of all places, and wandered around this unremarkable Belgian seaside town talking gibberish. Not many of the locals knew who he was. One fisherman asked him (certainly in the spirit of the lunacy of the situation) whether he was from Uruguay. Soul legend he might have been but Gaye’s confession that he had no idea where this country was only demonstrated the poorness of the knowledge of lands outside their own country’s borders which is sadly typical of many of his compatriates. But then again, he did have enough savvy to find Belgium, much good that it did him, the poor bastard.

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

Rare Earth’s entire career surely?

She still has my vote. Must hear the Slits.

(Anyone remember the eleven-minute Creedence Clearwater Revival version? No? It’s just as well.)

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.

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.”