Gaye spent his entire life trying to earn his father’s approval. His earliest reported experience of something like it came in 1972, when Gay Sr. attended Marvin’s performance at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.—the first time he had ever watched his son perform professionally. Marvin later said this was when he finally felt he had made his father proud.
But Gay Sr. never fully gave what Marvin needed him to give.
Days before the shooting, according to an account Gaye shared with a friend, Gay Sr. had nursed him with his own hands during an illness. The friend, hearing this story, said it was clear to him that Gay Sr. did love his son—that whatever his limitations and his cruelties, the love was there somewhere. Marvin seemed to find comfort in this idea.
It was not enough. Nothing, ultimately, was ever going to be enough.
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PART TWENTY-TWO: THE PARANOIA, THE DRUGS, AND THE QUESTION OF INTENT
In the years since April 1, 1984, a particular question has circulated through the accounts and analyses of Marvin Gaye’s death: Was it suicide? Not in the conventional sense—Gaye did not pick up a weapon and use it himself—but in the deeper, more ambiguous sense: Was it a death that Gaye, in some part of his mind, sought?
The evidence that pushes toward a “yes” includes:
The fact that multiple family members believe he provoked the confrontation with knowledge or intent.
The fact that Frankie Gaye’s memoir recounts what may have been a statement of Marvin’s—”I got what I wanted”—that implies awareness of the outcome.