If there ever is an album that candidly portrays a breakdown of a marriage, then Here, My Dear is that album. In the summer of 1976, Marvin Gaye was going through a divorce with his first wife Anna Gordy, sister of the president of Motown Records Berry Gordy. Gaye was sued, and he had to pay not only child support, but half of the royalties of his next LP to Anna.
With this in mind, during the spring of 1977, Gaye entered the recording studio with the plan to produce a quick album. But Gaye (ever the professional) had a change of heart: the project became a chronicle of the brutal realities of his marriage with Anna and his strong yet confused feelings towards her. Here, My Dear was born.
And we definitely get an insight into the mind of someone who’s severely heartbroken. I mean, take the title track that opens the album. It’s tremendous: the instrumental is quite clever because it sounds like a remix of ‘Let’s Get it On’ (a song about you-know-what), almost reflecting the flipside of love, being the tragedy of heartbreak. The vocal arrangements are delightful, and Gaye eases us into how the LP will contain pretty honest lyrics (“you don’t have the right to use the son of mine/ to keep me in line”). His vocal delivery (despite wishes for Anna “to be happy”) has a sarcastic, bitter edge to it. The opener definitely contains all of which the album offers.
It is a very honest album indeed. We really do experience a rollercoaster of emotions on this LP (pardon the cliche, there’s literally no other way to describe this!). Take the next track ‘I Met a Little Girl’: Gaye tenderly documents the story of his relationship with Anna. He’s more wistful, admitting how Anna “blew his mind” when he first met her. But such nostalgic feelings give way to rage and confusion on the absolute banger ‘When Did You Stop Loving Me, When Did I Stop Loving You?’. Gaye’s vocals are unerring, the funk jam merely the foil character to his powerful vocal lines that at points reveal the extent of Gaye’s anguish because of the acrimonious nature of the marriage breakdown.
Lyrically, this is a very bizarre album. The lyrics don’t try to obfuscate nor poeticise the whole ordeal. They’re prosaic, so prosaic in fact that Anna was close to suing Gaye on the grounds that the LP breached the privacy of the relationship. The clarity of the lyrics makes sense given that Gaye composed them on the spot in the studio.
Take ‘Is That Enough’ (my favourite on the album), for example. The song is phenomenal with all things considered: the groovy jam has great drumming, and the saxophone solo at the end adds a welcome level of class; Gaye’s performance melodically is intricate, and the lyrics on the divorce settlement are very sharp (with consistent rhyming couplets), albeit hilarious at parts. Gaye doesn’t hold back on citing Anna’s controlling nature (“too possessive, jealous”), or his bewilderment of his financial penalty (“somebody tell me please, tell me please/ why do I have to pay [Anna’s] attorney fees?”). Only Gaye could pull off such lyrics in this case because his charisma on the mic shines through, and the harmonies are sultry, which was par for the course for him. With this song, Gaye puts a new shade of meaning to the term “tortured genius”.
With that being said, the album does drag in the second half. I would say Gaye’s sentimental nature gets in the way of this project being a classic. For instance, the song ‘A Funky Space Reincarnation’ where Gaye imagines a future world with peace and harmony and funky music, whilst still being romantically involved with Anna, is ridiculous. Bare in mind Gaye was married to his new wife Janis. This song just embodies the meaning of not getting over your ex.
I don’t believe “When Did You Stop Loving Me…” had to appear two more times on the album. I see how thematically it encapsulates the album’s overall sentiment of why did you break my heart? But it’s overkill. I reckon the soundscapes on the LP aren’t entirely engaging, but, again, I understand that the appeal and the legacy of the album is not hinged upon the music. If anything, Here, My Dear’s legacy rests on the immense courage Gaye had in producing such a peak into a man’s deteriorating mental health because of a failure of a marriage.
Here, My Dear is a document of a legendary artist experiencing a real low point in his personal life. This LP, despite being received rather badly when it was initially released, has grown to be acclaimed as a soul classic 45 years later understandably. There’s a rare few artists who are willing to be so honest on record, to produce work that honestly displays the ugly side of the sentimentality that’s all too-common, too-finely curated in general pop music (Roger Waters and Rivers Cuomo being other exceptions to this). Gaye, with Here, My Dear, presents the ugliness of love. The LP is emblematic of the heartbreak, the uncertainty, the grief that can come with it, experiences that we all fundamentally recognise.
Words by Keith Mulopo
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