That this performance happened less than fourteen months before his death—that the man on the court that February evening was the same man who would be lying on a bedroom floor in West Adams on April 1, 1984—is one of those facts that requires sitting with. He was capable of this. He was still doing this. And then he was gone.
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THE GRAMMYS, THE COMEBACK, AND THE WEIGHT OF IT
The Grammy Awards ceremony on February 23, 1983, was one of the defining moments of Marvin Gaye’s late career.
He had made his first album in nearly two years. He had done it outside the Motown system for the first time in over two decades. He had done it in Belgium, in circumstances that many people had not believed would produce anything commercially viable. And “Sexual Healing” had become his biggest single.
And now the Recording Academy—the industry organization that administered the Grammy Awards—had given him his first Grammy nominations and his first wins.
Best Male R&B Vocal Performance. Best R&B Instrumental Performance.
These were, as noted elsewhere, the first Grammy Awards of his career. He had been recording since 1961. He had produced some of the most acclaimed work in the history of American popular music. And in 1983, at the age of 43, after more than two decades of commercial and artistic achievement, the Recording Academy gave him his first recognition.
Gaye accepted the awards with grace. He performed “Sexual Healing” during the broadcast. He was, by the accounts of those who saw him that evening, clear-eyed and present—the Belgian calm still partially intact.