Music for Grownups Reviews: Marvin Gaye, Joe Cocker
By: Richard Gehr | Source: AARP.org | 2008-05-13
Richard Gehr is a veteran music critic based in New York City.
Marvin Gaye
"What's Going On: The Life & Death of Marvin Gaye"/"Greatest Hits:
Live in '76"
Eagle Vision DVD
While most behind-the-music-style documentaries focus on the sordid details of their subjects' lives, this BBC production is accompanied by a bonus DVD, "Greatest Hits," which testifies to Marvin Gaye's brilliance. It is compactly conveyed in this record of his smoldering, onstage genius during a 1976 appearance in Amsterdam.
"What's Going On" uses actors, interviews, and archival footage to recount Gaye's brilliant musical career and tormented personal life in a relatively tasteful fashion. Gaye's two marriages—the first to the Motown Chief Executive Officer, Berry Gordy's, sister, 17 years his senior; the second to a woman 17 years his junior—his drug addiction, abusive childhood, and 1984 gunshot death (at the hand of his cross-dressing, fundamentalist-preacher father) remain the stuff of Shakespearean tragedy. Gordy, who initially rejected Gaye's 1971 masterpiece, “What’s Going On,” offers artistic closure by praising it belatedly as "probably the greatest piece of work that Motown has ever put out."
Joe Cocker
"Hymn for My Soul"
Fantasy
The combination of Tom Petty keyboardist Benmont Tench's piano and Mike Finnigan's B3 organ provides a rich gospel undertone throughout the latest Joe Cocker album, one of a long string extending back to his 1969 debut. The material itself, though, tends toward the secular. Cocker lends his powerful, gravelly, and somewhat mournful voice to soul music by Stevie Wonder, "You Haven't Done Nothin'," and Percy Mayfield, "River's Invitation," funk by the New Orleans Meters "Love Is for Me," and rock by John Fogerty, "Long as I Can See the Light." The Beatles, who've done well by Cocker since "With A Little Help From My Friends," are represented here by "Come Together"—from the movie "Across the Universe," and better still, George Harrison's cautionary "Beware of Darkness." Cocker sounds remarkably confident throughout his most musical album in years.
"What's Going On: The Life & Death of Marvin Gaye"/"Greatest Hits:
Live in '76"
Eagle Vision DVD
While most behind-the-music-style documentaries focus on the sordid details of their subjects' lives, this BBC production is accompanied by a bonus DVD, "Greatest Hits," which testifies to Marvin Gaye's brilliance. It is compactly conveyed in this record of his smoldering, onstage genius during a 1976 appearance in Amsterdam.
"What's Going On" uses actors, interviews, and archival footage to recount Gaye's brilliant musical career and tormented personal life in a relatively tasteful fashion. Gaye's two marriages—the first to the Motown Chief Executive Officer, Berry Gordy's, sister, 17 years his senior; the second to a woman 17 years his junior—his drug addiction, abusive childhood, and 1984 gunshot death (at the hand of his cross-dressing, fundamentalist-preacher father) remain the stuff of Shakespearean tragedy. Gordy, who initially rejected Gaye's 1971 masterpiece, “What’s Going On,” offers artistic closure by praising it belatedly as "probably the greatest piece of work that Motown has ever put out."
Joe Cocker
"Hymn for My Soul"
Fantasy
The combination of Tom Petty keyboardist Benmont Tench's piano and Mike Finnigan's B3 organ provides a rich gospel undertone throughout the latest Joe Cocker album, one of a long string extending back to his 1969 debut. The material itself, though, tends toward the secular. Cocker lends his powerful, gravelly, and somewhat mournful voice to soul music by Stevie Wonder, "You Haven't Done Nothin'," and Percy Mayfield, "River's Invitation," funk by the New Orleans Meters "Love Is for Me," and rock by John Fogerty, "Long as I Can See the Light." The Beatles, who've done well by Cocker since "With A Little Help From My Friends," are represented here by "Come Together"—from the movie "Across the Universe," and better still, George Harrison's cautionary "Beware of Darkness." Cocker sounds remarkably confident throughout his most musical album in years.
preview