A column dedicated to great songs, old and new.
May 2, 2006
Written by Marvin Gaye
From What's Going On, Motown Records 1971
Marvin Gaye was a uniquely fascinating artist. His storied life has been covered in a number of books and in countless backstage tales, and his death, at the hands of his preacher father in 1984, is still viewed as one of the most tragic in pop music.
What's Going On
Marvin Gaye
"Mercy Mercy Me (the Ecology)" is track 6 on Marvin Gaye's groundbreaking 1971 album, What's Going On (on the LP, it closes Side A). Because of Gaye's current legendary status, it is now somewhat difficult to imagine what a jarring surprise the entire What's Going On album was at the time of its release. According to legend, Motown honcho Berry Gordy hated the album at first, citing both the unorthodox sonic approach and the incendiary social criticisms on the album as completely lacking in pop appeal. Gaye bravely stood his ground, however, and eventually proved Gordy wrong, 10 times over. With this flourish, Gaye not only symbolically liberated himself from the Motown machine, but also inadvertently paved the way for other Motown artists (such as Stevie Wonder, age 21 in 1971) to stray from the Motown formula and take artistic and commercial risks with their work.
"Mercy Mercy Me" is at its heart a blues lament, couched in a kind of space-age soul context, with stacked vocals by both Marvin and The Andantes. Dig the entire lyric below (by Marvin), which is radically different from anything Motwon had released before:
Oh, oh, mercy, mercy me
Oh, things ain't what they used to be, no, no
Where did all the blue skies go?
Poison is the wind that blows from the north and south and east
Oh, mercy, mercy me
Oh, things ain't what they used to be, no, no
Oil wasted on the oceans and upon our seas... fish full of mercury
Oh, oh, mercy, mercy me
Oh, things ain't what they used to be, no, no
Radiation underground and in the sky
Animals and birds who live near by are dying
Oh, mercy, mercy me
Oh, things ain't what they used to be
What about this overcrowded land?
How much more abuse from man can she stand?
Though the concerns Marvin addresses here are now part of our everyday conversation about life in the 21st century, in 1971 they were much less mainstream, which in hindsight makes Marvin's boldness even more admirable. Still, though the lyrical message of "Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)" is compelling on its own, the track itself is quite a treat. It starts off with a head-bobbing groove, supplied by the famous Funk Brothers (plus Marvin on the piano), various percussion, lifts off with Paul Riser's string arrangement, busts loose with a sax solo by "Wild Bill Moore", and concludes with a near-operatic female vocal. Structurally, like many of the tracks on What's Going On, the song feels off-the-cuff, slightly fragmentary, but oddly complete at the same time (the songs on the album are often linked together in a suite-like form).
To be honest, it almost feels like a cop-out to focus on a song from What's Going On for this column. Any serious pop fan worth their salt knows what an essential record it is, and Marvin made several other outstanding records, many of which dealt with the intense God-and-sex conflicts which torment many religious R&B songmen. My favorites of Marvin's longplayers (and remember I'm an oddball) are the slinky soundtrack to Trouble Man, the divorce-settlement diary Here, My Dear, and the swan song Midnight Love.
The truth is, you can't go wrong with Marvin. And without him, soul music ain't what it used to be.
pcm
Purchase:
What's Going On
$9.98 at Amazon.com
$9.99 at Tower
Records
Some of the issues Marvin addressed in this song are covered in the new film about global climate change, featuring Al Gore:
An Inconvenient Truth