One day in 1973, Edward Townsend, a singer-songwriter who’d had a minor hit with the 1958 ballad “For Your Love,” invited a friend, the R. & B. superstar Marvin Gaye, to his home in Los Angeles, to hear some new tunes. Sitting at the piano, Townsend played a four-chord progression in the key of E-f lat major while singing a melody that harked back to his doo-wop days. Townsend, then forty-three, had recently been released from rehab, and the song was a plea to a higher power to help him stay sober. “I’ve been really tryin’ baby, tryin’ to hold back this feeling for so long” was one of the lines.
Gaye, who was suffering from writer’s block after the huge success of “What’s Going On,” for Motown Records, in 1971, heard his friend’s song as a hymn to sex. Together, they created “Let’s Get It On.”
Motown’s music-publishing company, Jobete, took fifty per cent of the song’s copyright. Gaye and Townsend agreed to split their share of the composition’s future earnings. Gaye recorded the song in L.A., in March, 1973, with members of the Funk Brothers, Motown’s house band, who added the wah-wah guitar introduction and the song’s undeniable groove, in which the second and fourth chords are anticipated—slightly in front of the beat. Gaye, in addition to his soaring vocal, played keyboard on the record.
The song, Gaye’s first No. 1, was one of the biggest hits of the year. It became a foundational track in the quiet storm of seventies R. & B. and soul, and has remained an evergreen—a steady earner.
This story is from the June 05, 2023 edition of The New Yorker.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the June 05, 2023 edition of The New Yorker.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
CHAOS THEORY
\"3 Body Problem,\" on Netflix.
WEST SIDE STORY
Ian Munsick brings his Wyoming sound to Nashville.
ALL THAT GLITTERS
The showmanship of Gustav Klimt.
YOU CAN'T SIT WITH US
Why New York restaurants are going members-only.
THE ENABLERS
Hitler didn't grab power; he was given it.
HOT AND BOTHERED
How Candida Royalle set out to remake the porn industry.
Neighbors
Not long after our twins turned three, my wife, Anna, accepted a transfer to the West Coast. The opportunity was lucrative, but that wasn’t why we were eager to go. Anna had spent that March and April involved with another man, a colleague, someone whose name I’d never heard until she told me about him. She said that it had been a terrible mistake, that it had only made her hate herself, and that this person had now begun almost to frighten her, continuing to call after she’d asked him to stop, declaring that he’d leave his family, demanding to speak with me. I was surprised to find that, more than anything, I felt sorry for her.
AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF GARDENING FOR COLORED CHILDREN
Two entries from a new alphabet of the colonized world, an illustrated ABC.
MAGA MIKE
House Speaker Mike Johnson uses a s uses a soft touch to push hard-right politics.
A CLASS OF HER OWN
Quinta Brunson was a devoted student of the sitcom long before she created \"Abbott Elementary.\"