A Boat Against the Current: Song Lyric of the Day (Marvin Gaye, on .

"You see, war is not the answer
For only love can conquer hate."-Renaldo "Obie" Benson, Al Cleveland, and Marvin Gaye, "What`s Going On," performed by Marvin Gaye on his LP What`s Going On (1971)

The Motown masterpiece What`s Going On

, released 40 years ago today, emerged from personal and national cauldrons. In lots of the prior year, Marvin Gaye slipped out of the music business, so distraught over the release of dear friend and vocal partner Tammi Terrell that he not simply thinking of departure the industry entirely, but even tried out for the Detroit Lions training season in a midlife attempt to get a pro football player.

In addition, the restoration of Gaye`s brother from Vietnam made the singer question the rate of hits such as "I Heard It Through the Grape" and "Too Busy Thinking About My Baby."

When Gaye finally returned to the studio, he was brimming with ideas for the most challenging and ambitious album of his career. While the music would blend jazz and classical elements into the now-familiar brand of Motown soul, the lyrics would handle all the churning discontents of the Us of his day: the war, inner city poverty and hopelessness, the generation gap, civil rights, and the environment.

A decade before, Gaye had supplied one of Motown Records with one of its first two albums, The Soulful Moods of Marvin Gaye. But now label founder Berry Gordy Jr. normally a shrewd judge of material, dug in his heels against releasing his star`s latest offering, believing it would go nowhere. Not even friend and label exec Smokey Robinson`s assurance that Gaye was serious about his threat to give the party could persuade him.

In the end, what changed Gordy`s mind was something far simpler and familiar: the certain sense of a hit.

Someone leaked to a local DJ the single "What`s Going On," even while Gordy remained adamant against its release. The song-started by Al Cleveland and Four Tops member Renaldo Benson, after watching the violent suppression of a demonstration, then completed by Gaye-began to be requested continually at the station. With everyone soon asking where the album was, Gordy relented.

Gaye`s self-produced LP did more than hit #6 on the album charts and spawn three top 10 singles, the title cut, "Inner City Blues (Makes Me Wanna Holler)" and "Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)"; did more than influence Stevie Wonder, Curtis Mayfield and other artists within the Motown fold in gaining creative master of their work; or, even a personal level, did more than move Gaye, formerly known better for his romantic crooning, onto an altogether new artistic plane.

No, Gaye`s smooth tenor, his command of a three-octave range, was put in the help of creative reconciliation, of bringing understanding to a divided country and his own fractured heart. The self-mastery he temporarily achieved was not long lasting (see, for instance, my prior post on his violent, unnecessary death at the men of his father).

But, standing mere inches from a microphone, he gave unforgettable voice to issues that, two generations later, have not weakened in urgency.