Personal life of Marvin Gaye

Marvin Gaye was an American music artist and singer-songwriter who won acclaim for a series of recordings with Motown Records. Gaye's personal life, mainly documented in the biography, Divided Soul: The Life of Marvin Gaye, included religious faith, child abuse by his father, personal relationships with his two wives, friends and girlfriends, bouts with depression and drug abuse.

Marvin Gaye and his three siblings were brought up in a strict religious Pentecostal sect known as the House of God by their minister father Marvin Gay, Sr.. Marvin began singing church solos at the age of four. The House of God took its teachings from Hebrew Pentecostalism, advocated strict conduct, and adhered both the Old and New Testaments. Gaye remembers the family having to observe an extended Sabbath starting from "Friday night at sundown" into Saturday. Marvin Gaye later explained, "We kept the Sabbath in the purest sense. Father anointed converts with olive oil and baptized them in the river. The Sabbath was his day, it was God's day, and it was also a day for singing. Every member was blessed with a good voice. The joy of music was the joy of God." At times, Gaye's father would force his children to answer Biblical questions, disciplining them if they answered wrong.

Gaye's relationship with his father was troubled from childhood. According to his sister, Jeanne, Gaye suffered at the hands of his father, who would strike him for any shortcoming, including putting his hair brush in the wrong place or coming home from school a minute late. Gaye's sister recalled that Marvin would "constantly provoke Father. He disappeared on Saturday mornings when it was time to go to church." Jeanne Gaye explained that between the ages of 7 well into his teenage years, young Marvin's home life "consisted of a series of brutal whippings." Gaye explained his father's abuse to author David Ritz years later, stating "It wasn't simply that my father beat me, though that was bad enough. By the time I was twelve, there wasn't an inch on my body that hadn't been bruised and beaten by him." He stated what made the beatings worse was his father prolonging the time before punishing Marvin, making him remove his clothes, and having him hear his father's belt buckle loud enough before he received the punishment. Gaye felt a part of his father was "enjoying the whole thing". Marvin and his siblings were also bed wetters, which was the result of more whippings. The beatings deeply affected Marvin to the point that whenever he needed to express his need for attention, he would do it through antagonism and projections of violence.

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