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Frankie Gaye is Marvin's brother; his experience in Vietnam was the inspiration behind Marvin Gaye's "What's Happening, Brother". He's a good guy, one who held back from publishing this book until his father died. He did not want to hurt any living person he dearly loved, and this sentiment will appeal to most of us. Inexplicably, he also chose not to start writing until the main stars -- his brother and his father -- had died, and so the story he tells is not always the most vivid or fresh. The parts that work are the comic moments, which he probably repeated to friends and family. Starting in 1973, there were the concert tours where Frankie would introduce Marvin, and the similarities between Marvin Gaye's humor and Andy Kaufmann's are fascinating. Few things made Marvin laugh more than seeing his brother squirm, speechless, as adoring fans chanted "Marvin!" at him. One time, Marvin even proposed that Frankie dupe fans beyond the initial intro, and actually perform the whole show as if he were Marvin. It never happened, but this would have been no less a joke on Gaye's audience than what Andy Kaufman and sidekick Bob Zmuda did later.
Marvin Gaye, My Brother is best during such intimately silly moments, which only this brother could provide:
"Marvin was halfway through his number when he saw me motioning him to zip up. Trying to look cool, he turned around and quickly closed his fly without missing a beat... The number went over so big that he had thoughts about working it into his act. The demand for front row seat soared..."
Frankie's love for his brother comes through, and it shows in the way he has more difficulty relaying scenes where he's the focus. When he comes back from Vietnam and tells his brother all that went on, the storytelling is insufferably weak. Nothing colorful or unique is mentioned, except the moment when he's teased for his last name.
"(The sergeant) looked around and hollered, 'Who's Gaye?' My heart was beating like bongoes, but I knew I had to respond, so I took a deep breath and, in my deepest voice, I barked out, 'I am, sir.' I got all messed up. I should have said, 'Here, sir.'"
Frankie's connection with Marvin helped earn him eventual respect with his troops, and being Marvin's brother never appears to have been the hardship that it was for other siblings of famous people. Frankie never made it beyond being Marvin's brother, the look-alike who toured with him and helped him during hard times, but he doesn't seem disappointed about that. The book doesn't even explore this angle, giving Marvin the primary focus throughout.
The first half of the book pales in comparison with its second half, then, because Frankie was a barely-seen face in Marvin's early years with the Moonglows, Motown and the music business. Until he returned from Vietnam, and began the introduction shtick, Frankie's story of Marvin is mostly told via phone calls from Marvin to the family. We learn that Marvin may have played around a little, and we get a good idea about the degree of distance he kept between himself and kin. As for the handful of stories from before Marvin became famous, they don't present a fully formed impression of the man. We see a Marvin who liked church just for the singing, and a Marvin whose "faith in Jesus and God was as strong as ever" (15). Perhaps Frankie saved his childhood recollections for last, and brought them up only briefly to Fred E. Basten before he died.
The book wasn't finished when Frankie died; it looks like Basten did a lot of clean-up in order to connect and smooth together all the fragmented recollections. His professional touch-ups are most obvious in the beginning chapters, and they're a little embarrassing:
"There was another saying (Father) was fond of telling us. It went something like: 'I brought you into this world, and if you ever lay a hand on me, I will take you out...' I never forgot Father's words. I guess Marvin never did either." (11)
Of course, it's hard to determine whether it's Frankie or Fred to blame for the TV-movie-of-the-week premonitions, but honestly-told biographies seldom flow smoothly from one chapter to the next. This one puts Vietnam flashbacks in which Frankie yells out "Marvin, Marvin!" next to childhood stories in which their dad yells "Marvin! Marvin!" It's as if Basted wanted his book to be a screenplay, and he's using chapter breaks like commercial breaks.
Marvin, My Brother is not a very enjoyable read until Marvin's life takes a nosedive. This is not because high drama has greater appeal -- though it does -- but because Frankie finally makes use of the fact that he's Marvin's brother, and that he is privy to information we'd otherwise not know. Though he was not in the house when Marvin was shot by his father, he paints a picture I certainly never read before. He gives us Marvin's last words ("I couldn't do it myself, so I made him do it", 185) and leaves you wondering if Marvin's dad really did commit murder, or if he was indeed used by his suicidal, drug-dependent son as a tool with which to kill himself.
Whatever the case, Marvin, My Brother makes it clear that Marvin Gaye died with very little left in him. An inability to deal with drugs had made him paranoid, and scarcely interested in music. He knew what was going on, but he didn't care.
"I ran my race. There's no more left in me." (185)
-- Theodore Defosse
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About the Publisher:
Whether you're looking for books about instruments, performers, the making of music, or the history of artists and genres, Backbeat provides some of the fairest, most even-handed assessments in the world of music literature.
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