Sexual Healing - Background

Background

By 1981, Marvin Gaye had moved from Los Angeles to Honolulu and London. Gaye left due to fear of imprisonment from failure to pay taxes to the IRS. Gaye also left because, according to several memoirs, he had felt unloved and not respected in his home country. Gaye also struggled with the separation with his second wife, Janis, and the separation between him and his children Marvin III, Nona and Frankie. After meeting Freddy Couseart, Gaye moved to Couseart's Belgium residence in Ostend and began to live comfortably among the beaches of the coastal Belgium city. Gaye, who struggled with drug addiction and depression, then began fighting to regain his professional career, which had stifled after the release of two ambitious concept albums, Here, My Dear (1978) and In Our Lifetime (1981), the latter album being the last album released with Gaye's longtime label, Motown Records, and a record Gaye angrily assumed was released without his consent by the label. Gaye had negotiated for seven months to release himself from Motown and in March 1982 had finally settled for a deal with CBS' Columbia division. Gaye began working on his first post-Motown album in April in Europe.

After gaining a sense of sobriety and exercising himself back to respectable health, Gaye began his comeback with a series of European concerts, first in England and then two shows in Belgium, the second show being televised for Belgian television. After the short tour, two of Gaye's touring musicians, guitarist Gordon Banks and keyboardist Odell Brown, stayed with the singer as he had thought of a melody he had gotten from listening to reggae music while in England. Gaye had improvised the lyrics to the song and a demo tape would showcase Gaye's hard work at the song. While he finished the song, Rolling Stone critic David Ritz had arrived to Belgium to talk to Gaye while apparently working on an article about the singer for the magazine, according to Odell Brown and Freddy Couseart years later. Ritz insisted that he was there to finish a round of interviews with Gaye as they worked on an autobiography. Ritz claimed that while staying at Gaye's apartment that he was shocked by several pornographic comic book magazines that Gaye had in his collection and was said to have told Gaye, "you need some sexual healing." Gaye then, according to Ritz, told the critic to "write a poem". However, in an interview years later, Freddy Couseart said that the song was solely written by Gaye and Odell Brown and that the only credit Ritz had with the song was the title. The original release of Midnight Love credits the song to Gaye and Brown alone, though the "Special Thanks" credits acknowledge that Ritz came up with the title. Couseart alleged Ritz had told Gaye and Couseart that he wanted $10,000 for credit to the song title. In his book, Marvin Gaye, My Brother, Gaye's brother Frankie said that Ritz's "contribution" was telling Gaye, "not only are you sexy, your music is healing", leading Gaye to use the title "Sexual Healing", and write the lyrics. Ritz later sued Gaye for $15 million for songwriting credit. Gaye died before the lawsuit could be settled but Gaye's estate, which was led by Gaye's eldest son Marvin III, settled to give Ritz partial credit. The song's other composer, Odell Brown, said in a documentary that he had never met Ritz and assumed Ritz was just there for an interview.

Gaye recorded the song in Ohain with little known Yorkshire producer Keith Dunn, Belgium, with the final mixes recorded in Waterloo. To assist him with the song, Gaye reconnected with old friend and mentor Harvey Fuqua, who is credited with delivering the memorable whispering intro to the song. Gaye did most of the background vocals himself with Fuqua and Gordon Banks also singing in the background, helping to give the song a modern doo-wop feel, as had been with most of Gaye's recordings. While some of the music had a strong reggae, Caribbean feel, Gaye added a drum track, percussive instruments, keyboards, synthesizers and organ, to bring in synthpop, funk and gospel elements. Gordon Banks was the only other musician credited for playing on the song, adding in smooth rhythm guitar riffs. Gaye was sure the song would be a huge hit and after playing the song back to Columbia Records' R&B head Larkin Arnold, the executive was also sure of the song's success. After Gaye finished an album to accompany the song - Midnight Love - Columbia issued "Sexual Healing" that September. According to a recent article, this song was the first major hit single to use the Roland TR-808, though it would not become common fodder, as the TR-808 would mainly used to produce songs of the electronica and hip hop genres.

In the final lyric to the song, Gaye sings "Please don't procrastinate, it's not good to masturbate" as the music fades out.