DIVIDED SOUL The Life of Marvin Gaye

One of the most widely acclaimed pop music biographies finally gets the audio treatment. As coauthor of one of Gaye's biggest hits, “Sexual Healing,” David Ritz actually knew Marvin Gaye, and their relationship gives this narrative a degree of intimacy rare in biographies. As Ritz explains, Gaye's troubled life was a classic Oedipal drama tinged with psychosexual overtones befitting Gaye's overtly sensual music. At the root of it was the artist's complex relationship with his father, a contradiction that Dion Graham narrates expertly, mimicking the dialects of Marvin and his father. Graham is at ease with the colloquialisms that abound in this rough-and-tumble story of the rhythm-and-blues business and the performer who was at the center of it all until his father tragically took his life. J.S.H. © AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine [Published: APRIL 2009]