Q-and-A with Jan Gaye, Author of After the Dance: My Life with Marvin Gaye

The second wife of Marvin Gaye, who lives in Cranston, reveals what it was like to be married to the iconic artist.

How long have you been in Rhode Island and what brought you to the state?

We’ve been here close to five years and it was a combination of getting out of Los Angeles, because of bad memories, and the main thing was Wheeler. It was good to get out of Los Angeles. Me, my daughter, Nona, my son, Frankie, and my grandson, Nolan. We had heard about Wheeler, and Nolan started to get excited about it. It’s a great school. He said, “I just want to see the school. I want to do whatever I need to do to get into this school.” By that time, we were back in Los Angeles, and we got the call to come back and interview. So he got in and we packed up everything and moved across the country. We’re a tiny little family living in a tiny little state that we love.

That says a lot about education here.

This was the main draw, to get him higher learning than he couldn’t get in the school system in Los Angeles. And now he’s graduating in May. He’s talking about RISD, we’ve talked about Brown. We said goodbye to family and friends; I’ve only been back twice, both times for the “Blurred Lines” lawsuit. If it wasn’t for that, I probably wouldn’t have gone back.

Nona and Frankie had to get on a flight with me. We all knew what we had to do. It wasn’t a matter of luck, it was a matter of skill and having incredible lawyers to represent the family. And we won.

If only they had given credit, or asked for permission, in the first place.

That’s it, and so many people have said music is not in a grab bin and you just go and help yourself. You have to go through the proper channels, and they all know that. Sometimes it slips through.

I’m glad you pursued it, and it means something for the music industry in general.

When artists are settling up before something happens, but reality is, they sued us first, and that’s the bizarre part. If you are a logical thinker, you think, okay, why is he suing us if he didn’t do anything wrong?

There are many people who have drawn influence from Marvin, so what is the right way to do it, and what is the wrong way?

When you get too close to a song, whether it’s Marvin, James Brown, Tom Jones, it doesn’t matter who it is, you know as a musician or a producer, if you’re copying the song or it’s something about the tonation. [Robin Thicke] should know that it was time to go and ask for a license, or at least get in touch with the family and say, we want to do this, or this is the way it’s going to go. He didn’t do any of it. He let it slide, then they started contradicting themselves; they thought about it; they didn’t think about it. It was on our minds; it wasn’t on our minds. Pharell said at one point, Marvin never crossed my mind throughout the whole process, but then one of our attorneys caught him on video tape, saying, “I was pretending to be Marvin Gaye.” It took a lot out of me. I had just gone through breast cancer.

Are you healthy now?

Yes. That’s what my doctor said: You just think of it as beating cancer. I don’t take anything for granted anymore. I got through that; I got through the trial. We don’t know whether they are going to appeal or not, so we’ll see. Getting out and promoting the book has really helped me. Promoting this book that took thirty years to write, has really helped to not focus on the case, to not focus on the negative, to absolutely focus on health and hoping and praying every day that there’s no relapse. I’ve talked to other women who have gone through it, and they say you better get used to it because it is something that will always be on your mind.

You said there was a family history?

My mother had cancer, my father passed away from cancer, so I have it on both sides.

After reading the book, I am amazed by all you went through.

Between drugs and infidelities and stupidity, lack of good judgment, I am lucky I survived the ‘70s, let alone the ‘80s and ‘90s and now.

It took thirty years to write?

I started and I stopped. I just couldn’t let go.

What made you realize you were ready to finish it? What made the time right now?

Going through what I went through health-wise, and my sixtieth birthday is coming up in January. So I thought if you’re ever going to write it, and actually let someone else read it, may as well do it now. You’ve got David [Ritz, the co-author], you’ve got support from your family. My grandson is eighteen, so he knows. He amazes me sometimes the amount of things that he knows. I try to protect him. But he says, “Grammy, I know what the F-bomb is about, I know about sex, I know about women.” I say, “No you don’t; you still wear diapers and you’re a baby.”

Your kids are very close in age?

They are fourteen months apart. But that’s been great! They’ve all grown up together. I was a kid when I had them and a kid raising kids. And after Nona had her son, I raised him too. Nona was working, because she was a working actress and singer. She would be on tour for whatever reason, and Nolan was always with me. I preferred it that way.

What do you love so much about Rhode Island?

The people; the changing of the seasons. Living in Los Angeles at the beach, you have the luxury of looking at the ocean, but here, you can go to the ocean and to the beach, and there’s also the trees and the greenery. There’s the history, and that’s what is so special to me. My mom was born in Brockton, and I would come back as often as I could as a kid, so when I was a kid, I wanted to go to Wellesley and it was all because of Ali MacGraw and “Goodbye, Columbus.” It’s just a beautiful place.

How do you feel now that you’ve written the book?

After writing the book, I’ve met family members I’ve never met before. A lot of really nice people. When I wrote the book, I thought people are going to judge me harshly. I thought they would think I was trying to bring Marvin down. Him being so beloved, people shouldn’t think I am trashing him. That’s the last thing on my mind. Part of writing the book was to say that Marvin was a man before he was anything else. He was a creative genius, always will be, he was G.O.D. to me, but you get a different perspective when you are married to that person;  there’s the public persona and then there’s the person behind that. The fact that both of us had drug issues made it particularly difficult to have a real relationship.

It was always there from the time you were raised growing up and came back into life when you met him.

It never really left. My mother was a weed smoker and there were always drugs around somewhere. My stepfather was a dealer. It was never far away. I ended up dropping out of school and having children. I wouldn’t change any of that, but it’s not what I had planned at a young age.

He sort of consumed your life.

Only what I allowed him to do. I was more than willing to be consumed. It was not a problem. He was my soulmate. I always say to people, he was like my father, my husband, my boyfriend, my best friend, my confidante, the father of my children, my teacher, my guru.

What made you keep going back to the drug use?

When you are a drug addict, once you start using drugs, there’s always the chance that you’ll go back. There’s always that chance of relapsing one way or another. You can be dry for thirty years and then pick up a drink. But with my father being an alcoholic and my mother being a drug addict, and pretty much everyone in our lives was on one thing or another, it was easy. It was almost accepted back then.

It’s still prevalent today.

It’s tough. Some people can get through their entire lives without using drugs. They don’t suffer the way others do. But sometimes you have underlying psychological issues, and then you add drugs on top of that, it’s like being in hell.

From your book, it seemed like Marvin was trying to treat himself for depression through some of the drug use.

He self-medicated, and that did not take his pain, and I followed suit. I was in pain too. So let’s do this together. And it was before AIDS was an issue for people. I met him in ’73. No one really knew about AIDS. It was free love, sex, drugs, a lot of bad decision-making.

But maybe if you didn’t go through some of the things you went through, maybe some of that music wouldn’t have been made? You have to have the struggle to come up with art.

A lot of artists do. Especially someone like Marvin, who did “What’s Goin’ On.”

That was one of his most newsworthy and influential songs that commented on the times of the Vietnam War.

Not just for those times; these times too.

It also reflected on his family life too.

Well he talks about his mother and father, and part of that was trying to please his father, but there was no way to please him. There was nothing he could have done in his life to please his father. He was jealous of him. Since he was five and singing in church, all the church ladies would run up and hug him and tell him how beautifully he sang. And he loved that attention from them, but he wanted it from his father and there was no way to get it. ‘Til the very end. ‘Til the very last day of his life.

When I think of it, it’s a bad dream. Sometimes I wonder what life would be like for him in these times, because of his reaction to the late ‘60s and ‘70s. He found his way out of it through sex.

You didn’t write too much about that, but I know there were at least several other women…

Until David and I started writing, there were some women that I didn’t know about. I was like are you kidding me? You’ve got to be joking.

You always went back. You loved him unconditionally.

A big part of it was our children. We have two kids, and when we split, he took my son and I took my daughter, and then the next time I see my son, he’s speaking with an English accent. That’s not good. This can’t be working for anybody. Writing with David was good because he knew things I never knew.

Did he write his biography too?

Yes, he did Divided Soul and that’s the one book that people always go back to this many years later. If you want any information about Marvin, you go to that book.

You have many great memories with Marvin, but the relationship was also volatile. To focus on the positive, is there a favorite memory you’d like to share?

One that immediately comes to mind, and it’s also my kids favorite memory of their dad, we had a Christmas we spent together in Belgium, away from the craziness in the States and all the family members that were like barnacles. We went shopping, bought groceries, the toys, we did all the cooking ourselves, and it was snowing. We were right on the North Sea and we built a snowman. We named him Luke after Luke and Laura from “General Hospital.” There was no arguing that day, but by New Years, those wonderful feelings had changed and I ended up coming back to the States.

Is that around the time when you filed for divorce?

No. I would start it and stop, a lot like my book.

It was really after the incident with the knife, right? And after it was final, you still went back?

We still got back together. We couldn’t stay away from each other. I think of it as chasing a relationship around the globe, from city to city, to see if it works here. Let’s try it in Hawaii. Let’s try it in Paris. Let’s try it in London. Let’s try it in Austin, L.A. It just never went the way it could have gone had we not been on drugs. I really feel like that was a major issue, and it is for pretty much for anyone who uses drugs.

It makes you wonder what life would have been like if you were both clean at the same time.

My kids and I have talked about that a lot. What do you think dad would be like today? I think he’d still be doing music. If we both got clean at the same time, we might still be together. He would be writing more incredible music. You look at someone like Quincy Jones, he’s eighty-five, or something like that, still an amazing producer; still incredible at what he does. Smokey Robinson, same thing.

How old would Marvin be today?

Seventy-six. Which I can’t picture.

What was going through your mind when you were finally in his studio as a young girl?

I was speechless. I tried to talk and when I finally did say something, it was minimal. The gentleman who had introduced us told him he was my father, so I thought, this is a good way to say something. And I said, “Just in case you want to ask me out, you don’t have to worry about that guy over there. He’s not my father.” And he did, eventually. I remember seeing him in living color, real, not television, not photographs, the most beautiful man, just skin glowing. He seemed really comfortable with himself in the booth, but put him on stage and it was a totally different story.

And he really loved your innocence, but the age difference was quite significant. Did that ever bother you, or anybody?

It didn’t bother me. It bothered his wife. It bothered my mother, but maybe I was oblivious to people that it did bother. Get your own life. Don’t worry about what I’m doing. But I was a very mature seventeen-year-old if there is such a thing.

I think everything you went through made you more mature than an average teenager.

Well that’s one of the things that he and I talked about was abuse at a young age; sexual abuse. Emotional abuse. His was sexual as well. We would talk about it. And it’s interesting, because we both learned how to be abusive to others through our own experiences of being abused. You play these mind games with each other, and lie to each other; you would think two people in love wouldn’t do that, but it happens.

What are your kids doing now?

My son is very shy and introverted. Frankie does his own thing. He’s an artist, loves to do graphic arts, and Nona is thinking about going back to film and music. We’ll see what happens.

I heard you are thinking about opening a restaurant?

My friend and I talked about opening a soul food restaurant; fresh-baked cornbread and collard greens, and chicken and waffles.

Out of all Marvin’s songs, which is your favorite?

He wrote a song called “Jan.” Of course I love that, but aside from that, the entire What’s Goin’ On album. I can’t pick a song. It’s not just hit after hit, it’s concept after concept; dialogue after dialogue that hit home back then when I was in my teens, and is so magnified now with what’s going on in the world. The President himself turned to the album and quoted it. Nelson Mandela, you can go on YouTube and see him quoting Marvin. It is probably his greatest music work as far as politics in the world is concerned, and then it shifted from that to the world of sex. How people are intimidated. David and I talked about this: If you ever want to know anything about Marvin, turn to his music. It talks about his shortcomings, drugs and women and prostitutes, love and his parents, war, his idiosyncrasies. I think that’s what kept him going for such a long time until he was in a place where he was lost. It happens to so many geniuses.

The good thing was he won two Grammys in ’82 or ’83 but he was dead by ’84. He really did need that validation, but then once he got it, he didn’t know where to go from there. Now I am at the top of my game, I got my Grammys, now what do I do? He never found the answer to that. He made more music, but it was nothing like what he had done previously. I was around during the times he was struggling with music and not wanting to record. He had switched record labels. He always had stage fright.

I was surprised by how much money he spent.

He blew millions. I’ll give you a great example of how he was with money when he had a lot of it. We had bought a house, a beautiful hacienda in the Hollywood Hills. He decided he was going to rip the inside of the house apart completely. So we gutted the house and left the shell. I said, “So where are the bathrooms? Where are we sleeping? What’s happening?” He said, “Don’t worry about it. I have a surprise for you.” I thought he was going to furnish the place so we would have some place to sit. The next day, this truck comes barreling up the driveway and it’s holding a tree trunk on the back of the truck. I was like, “What are we doing here?” It was big enough for two to three people to get inside the trunk. He said, “It’s our new sauna.” There was no place to put it so he kept it outdoors in front of the house, and the homeowners’ association said, “What is going on with your house?” And I said, “How much did it cost?” And he said, “It was only twelve grand.” Back then, in those times, it could have been $40,000. How many times did he get in the sauna? One time. He was a compulsive spender. He had fifteen cars, a boat and two RVs, just excess. Then you have to figure in the amount that he spent on drugs, or we spent on drugs, and travel. It was a lot of nonsense but a lot of good things, too. It wasn’t all for nothing.

The sad thing is he died without a will, and that made it really difficult ‘til this day. It’s been hell for my kids. The kids have been getting royalties for years, but not what they could have gotten, had he left a will and paid his taxes. When he did the song, “Trouble Man,” he mentions three things that are for sure: taxes, death and trouble, and he unfortunately suffered all three in a time span of forty-four years. If you think about it, he was a relatively young man. You listen to his music; you know what was going on in his life. He would never turn his brain off.

That’s what made the music so special. What do you think made the music so timeless?

I think because everyone can relate to love, one way or another, whether you have it or you don’t. Everyone can relate to sex. If you have your eyes open, you can relate to what he was talking about as far as the environment is concerned. People who have blinders on think there’s no such thing as global warming or climate change.

What about the song “Marvin Gaye” with Meghan Trainor? What do you think about that one?

That one threw me for a loop. Charlie Puth. You can sing about a person. I could write a song called “Jamie Coelho” and put it out and there’s nothing you could do about it as long as I’m not saying anything disparaging or slanderous. I reached out to Charlie and Meghan to say, “Thank you, I think this is a cute song.” Old band mates have said, “They turned Marvin into a verb.” I said, “Well, they’ve done everything else, so why not turn him into a verb?” It’s used that way in a number of ways, but with the lawsuit, the general consensus is, you better pay before something bad happens, otherwise you’re going to get “Marvin Gayed.” “I didn’t want to be Marvin Gayed, so I made sure I paid.” Well, you should.

You were brave to stick up for all those other artists out there who may be in similar situations.

A lot of them can’t do it for themselves, or won’t, whatever the case may be. It was pointed out in the trial when I was on the stand, our attorney said, “If you gave away the rights to use Marvin’s music for free, and there was no necessity for a license, what do you think music publishing would be worth?” Zero. Because it would be like picking flowers in an open field. Marvin’s music would lose all of its value. And that would happen to any artist if you just give it away or allow people to take it. Here we are living in Rhode Island, minding our own business, not bothering anyone, and here come these two heavy-hitters. How do we fight back? What do we do? We’re not rich. We’re not about that. But we’re happy. And they took advantage of that.

Do you have advice for women who might be in similar circumstances in an abusive relationship?

That is a tough question, because everyone is different, every relationship is different. The abuse was mutual and we were abusing each other. That’s not defending Marvin or saying what he did was okay. If there was anything I could have removed from our relationship, it would have been the drugs, and the abuse that followed. Abuse is never okay. Never, ever, ever okay. No matter who is giving it, it’s wrong. So I have to say to any young ladies that find themselves in that position, do your best to walk away and at least give the relationship a chance to cool down; give the other person a chance to change, because people can change.

You were strong. You were able to leave when things got to be too much.

I got to a point where I couldn’t see him anymore. He had been in my life since I was seventeen. He was upset because I wouldn’t allow him to see the children, so I had to send word back that, “I can’t let you see the kids. I’m afraid something will happen to them at that house.” Had they been there April 1 in 1984? Had any of the three of us been there, we could have all been dead.

Then he wouldn’t talk to me. It was like watching someone else’s life. The interesting thing is, the night before he was killed, my mother and a bunch of friends were sitting around my mother’s house and for some reason, the subject all night was Marvin. Finally I woke up the next day and was just opening my eyes, and the phone rang. It was my sister-in-law saying, “I heard he’s been killed.” I didn’t know how. I called the police department and asked questions and they wouldn’t tell me anything. They put me on hold for fifteen to twenty minutes, and finally came back and said, “I’m sorry to let you know that Mr. Gaye has expired.” I always think of it as a library card, or like a carton of milk: Bad after this date. They don’t have the gentlest touch giving out that information. I never went to court when the father was being prosecuted. I did, however, go when it was all over and speak to him and try to say to him that I forgave him for what he had done. The words came out, but they weren’t from the heart. It was what I thought I needed to do at the time. I was sinking into this weird psychological place, and I thought the only way to get out of this is to say something to the father, forgive him. And as soon as I left the house, I took it back. I didn’t forgive him. Why did I do that? I was just going through the motions. I struggle with it to this day. I still pray for the willingness to forgive him 100 percent.

Now you got everything out in the book.

Well, I got something out of it. It’s more cathartic. It’s like a freedom for me. That’s what my doctor says. You can’t hold onto it. What good is that going to do you? So let it go. You never let it go 100 percent. You do the best that you can. Hopefully by the time I am ready to join him, I will have let go of a lot more. Everything is not in the book. In the beginning, they marketed it as a tell-all, salacious memoir. I fought back against that, and it didn’t do me any good to do that. It’s a “tell-some.” There are things my children don’t even know that I hold close to my memories, and everyone is not welcome to them. But what I put in the book, people are more than welcome to read. I just hope they will read it and not skip through the book to try to find the juicy stuff.

I read in the back of the book, you refer to Whitney. Was that Whitney Houston?

They were very close. [Nona] was very close to Krissy. Whitney used to call Nolan “Little Prophet.” Nolan used to walk around and be like, “Everything is going to be okay. I don’t know why you are always worried about everything.” When she passed, and then when Krissy passed, it was horrible, horrible. It’s a crazy business. Things like this happen in everyday life but it’s magnified because people are watching.

Can you name a current musician who used Marvin Gaye’s influence in a respectful way as opposed to the wrong way?

The first person who comes to mind is Erick Sermon. I don’t know if you have heard of him. He’s not the most well known, but he did a song called “Music.” He came to the family first. He said, “I have this track. I want you all to hear it. If you like it, I’d like to release it, and I’m going to pay you.” All the steps he took to make that song great, he went to number one. It was his first number one ever, and he started touring, and invited us to the tour. To me, that’s an example of doing things the right way. John Legend is another one. He performed the entire What’s Goin’ On album at the Kennedy Center. For him to take on that album, with Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, I was in awe. I was like this guy has a set on him, because he has taken on one of the greatest albums of all time and performed it in front of all these people. And he really did a good job.

Photo by David Carpentier MD.