Twenty-five years ago, Marvin Gaye
rebuilt his mind, body, and eventually his career in an
unlikely place: a tiny town on the coast of Belgium. retraces
Gaye's steps to find out what was going on back
then.
Marvin Gaye was on the brink when he crossed the English
Channel on a ferryboat in 1981 seeking refuge in the small Belgian
city of Ostend, a faded seaside resort town that had once hosted
Europe's moneyed classes but was now, like the great soul singer
himself, facing harder times. The man with the string of feel-good
Motown hits in the 1960s and the 1971 breakthrough album
What's
Going On was leaving
America behind. The reasons for his
self-imposed exile were many and complex, and included two failed
marriages; financial woes, highlighted by a losing battle with the
Internal Revenue Service; a career that seemed to be in terminal
decline; and an increasing dependence on hard drugs. Gaye, in his
early 40s, still had the charm, looks, and talent of a star - his
voice would never fail him - but he was squandering these gifts.
Michael Jackson and other talented newcomers had eclipsed him at
the beginning of a new, video-dominated era that focused attention
on younger performers. It seemed the music world was passing him by
as his successes of the '60s and '70s faded into memory. He was
lucky to be well enough to even travel to Belgium. At the end of a
chaotic
European tour, Gaye had declined to return to Los Angeles
and instead plunged into
London's drug scene, living in squalid
conditions and shunning his contacts in the music business who had
brought him fame and fortune. Those close to him feared that, like
Jimi Hendrix and
Jim Morrison before him, Gaye would die on foreign
shores.
But Gaye flourished in Ostend, an unlikely setting for an urbane
black American accustomed to
Los Angeles,
Detroit, and Washington,
D.C. At first, the move seemed like another blunder. He did not
speak Flemish or French, there were few local residents who knew or
cared about his musical achievements, and he was often quite
isolated. Still, he found solace in the salty sea air and worked
himself back into shape by jogging along the beach and
boxing in a
local gym. He started work in a nearby studio on a comeback album
that would become an international smash, and, more importantly, he
cut down on drug use.
This troubled man found a measure of inner peace in Ostend that
seemed to vanish when he returned to the
United States after almost
two years in Belgium. Gaye started abusing drugs again and
eventually was shot dead by his father after a series of
confrontations in their home.
"Marvin was a special man, very distinguished, very impressive, but
it was like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," says Monique Licht, an
independent-film producer in Belgium who worked with Gaye on a
30-minute film for Belgian television, 1981's
Marvin Gaye:
Transit Ostend. (A new film about Gaye, starring
Law &
Order's Jesse L. Martin as the
Motown legend, is scheduled to
begin production later this year.) "At times, he was like an
elegant zombie walking along the beach in Ostend," says Licht. "He
was there, but at the same time he was not there. His mind was
working all the time, thinking a lot of things, and he was far from
his family. Everything was broken in his life and in his mind. He
was suffering."
Like so many who knew Gaye, Licht was both enchanted by his warmth
and intelligence and alarmed by his deep unhappiness, which he was
unable to mask in his later years. She remembers a vibrant man who
was at times utterly delightful and at times completely lost.
"He rebuilt himself in Ostend," she says. "He was quiet and
peaceful. At that time, he was free of drugs. He could walk in the
streets. He was calm. He was happy alone in front of the sea. In my
opinion, he should have stayed in Ostend. I don't understand why he
went back to the States. That is the cruel reality. If he had
stayed, he might still be alive today."
IT IS EASY TO SEE why Gaye found some tranquillity in
Ostend, a working fishing port with a wide, miles-long beach and a
cheerful seafront crowded with restaurants and clubs. It is the
sort of place where visitors are left alone, if that is what they
want, and welcomed whenever they seek company. The sound of the
waves is a constant, soothing presence, and the vastness of the sea
seems to have pleased Gaye, who was raised in crowded, inner-city
neighborhoods.
He made friends easily and never acted like a big star, says Jan
van Snick, who today runs Jan's Café but who used to be the
proprietor of Le Bistro, where Gaye was a regular.
"He came in every day with the
basketball players who were his
friends," says van Snick, who has a signed poster from Gaye on
display at his new restaurant. "He was very generous, very nice,
and he liked the girls. He acted like a normal person - no glitter,
no show. He spoke about his problems in the United States. He was
very popular here; he spoke to everyone, he sang in the church, he
went to the fishermen's cafés. He was a good man. He did not have a
big head."
Gaye's stay in Ostend revolved around the late
Freddy Cousaert, a
local club owner and promoter who convinced the soul singer to
leave his risky life in England behind and take up residence in
Ostend. The open-ended sojourn lasted for almost two years before
Gaye returned to the United States as his last hit song, "Sexual
Healing," was climbing the charts. Cousaert, who died in a bicycle
accident in 1998, was motivated partly by an abiding love for
American soul and blues music, and partly by the conviction that he
could rehabilitate Gaye and earn a healthy living by putting the
singer back on the road for European gigs.
Cousaert had been part of a relatively small group of blues and
soul aficionados in
Western Europe in the era before the Beatles,
the
Rolling Stones, and the Animals exposed an entire generation to
the genius of
Little Richard,
Chuck Berry,
John Lee Hooker, and
others. He had a nightclub in Ostend that was known for the
spectacular quality of its jukebox, and he became a magnet for
people who shared his taste.
When Eric Burdon was just 15 - years before he shot to fame as lead
singer of the blues-oriented Animals - he went to Cousaert's club
on his first trip outside England. The music he found there was a
revelation, and he started a casual, on-again, off-again friendship
with Cousaert that lasted for decades.
"We were attracted by the sounds on the jukebox," says Burdon of
his first encounter with Cousaert. "It wasn't the normal top-10
stuff. He had
Ray Charles and Charles Brown, blues people."
Burdon was not in Belgium when Gaye was under Cousaert's care -
living in an apartment Cousaert rented, taking many home-cooked
meals at Cousaert's house - but he said many musicians believe that
Cousaert saved Gaye from self-destruction.
"What I heard was that Freddy really grabbed hold of Marvin and
shook some sense into him, and told him he had to straighten out
his life and get off drugs," says Burdon. "They started working out
on the beaches of Ostend. When I met Freddy later, he told me that
he had succeeded in getting Marvin off of any kind of hard drug.
Marvin was totally clean. He was capable of stepping into the ring
and going toe-to-toe with top amateurs. Freddy felt he'd done a
great job in turning this guy's life around."
THERE IS NO DOUBT THAT Gaye regained his physical health in
Ostend. Footage from
Marvin Gaye: Transit Ostend, the movie
chronicling his time there, shows Gaye - fit, confident, and
handsome - sparring in the gym and playing basketball with a
friend. There are also rare musical gems, including footage of Gaye
fooling around on a Steinway and singing some of his hits in the
most relaxed possible way, and an a cappella rendition of The
Lord's Prayer, performed in an Ostend church, that is
startling in its intensity and depth.
One of Gaye's jogging partners was Dirk van der Horst, a local soul
music fan who had, by coincidence, named his first son Marvin as a
tribute to Gaye, his favorite singer. When Gaye came to Ostend, a
friend took him to van der Horst's apartment unannounced to meet
little Marvin, who was only one year old at the time.
"He was completely normal," van der Horst says. "It was not the
real big soul singer who was at my place; it was Marvin. He would
come by about once a week. It was really nice, and he enjoyed it.
We jogged together on the beach. He was about 10 years older than
me, and he was faster than me. He liked the people in Ostend, he
liked the simplicity, and he liked not being recognized. He said he
could be himself here."
Gaye's physical recovery allowed him to contemplate a return to the
recording studio. The catalyst for his creative revival turned out
to be the arrival in Ostend of David Ritz, an American biographer
and soul-music expert who was collaborating with Gaye on a book
about the singer's life. At first, Cousaert - anxious to protect
his turf - was reluctant to take Ritz to Gaye's apartment, but he
eventually relented, and Ritz and Gaye spent several weeks together
in the relative calm provided by Ostend.
"Cousaert wasn't sure he wanted me to hang out with Marvin," Ritz
says. "He was very suspicious and very protective and very
proprietary. But when I started talking to Marvin, I got the idea
Cousaert had been really good for him. The vibe I got from Marvin
was, 'How can I get back? I am coming back.' That was quiet
determination. He loved Ostend. The air was clean. It was pretty
much long walks, jogs, bike rides - sort of a restoration,
restoring his spirit."
At one point in their marathon talks, which provided much of the
material for Ritz's biography of Gaye, Divided Soul: The Life of
Marvin Gaye, Ritz told Gaye that the singer needed "sexual
healing." The phrase caught Gaye's imagination.
"What he responded to was the notion of healing," Ritz says. "He
asked me what I meant, and I said, 'You need a woman who loves you
as you.' I told him we all need healing. We all need the
introduction of love. In the creation of the song, which took only
minutes, he asked me to write a poem, and he wrote the music. It
all fell together effortlessly. I think the song went with the
desire of his heart that he be restored, not just to the charts of
popular music, but also restored to a country that he had rejected,
and that he felt had rejected him, and restored to the bosom of his
nuclear family, from whom he had withdrawn."
THE SONG GAYE AND RITZ wrote together provided the
centerpiece for 1982's
Midnight Love, the comeback album
Gaye recorded in a small studio outside of
Brussels with musicians
imported from America. He turned to his original musical mentor,
Harvey Fuqua (from one of Gaye's first doo-wop groups, the
Moonglows), to help produce what would be one of his most vital
albums.
Gaye had regained not only his physical and mental equilibrium, but his commercial touch as well. After several albums that had disappointed fans and critics, he scored major hits with both the Grammy-winning single — “Sexual Healing” became his biggest-selling single ever — and the album. The renewed acclaim supercharged his career and fueled his triumphant, and ultimately fatal, return to the United States.
The chain of events set in motion by Gaye’s successful return to the recording studio confirmed Cousaert’s worst fears. He had wanted to keep Gaye under his wing and manage the singer’s comeback from the safe haven of Ostend, but when Gaye’s mother in the United States needed emergency
surgery, Gaye left Ostend abruptly.
He never came back.
Authoramerican airlines
american airlines offers regular service to brussels, belgium, which is less than two hours away from ostend by car or train.