Since humans first started telling and sharing stories, the tragedy of doomed lovers has been a repeated theme. Some of our oldest stories are the Greek Myths – where they told the story of Orpheus and Euridice. Shakespeare had Romeo and Juliet as his star-crossed lovers – a story of heartfelt love which turns to tragedy, ending in a remarkable amount of death.
And there are plenty of times when real life imitates art, certainly within the creative community. For example, the painter Francis Bacon was deeply moved by the death of his muse George Dyer, inspiring some of his most notable pictures.
But the story that continues to sit hard with me is the story of Tammi Terrell and Marvin Gaye, a musical couple who captured the joy and marvel of true love better than almost anyone. Their magic was that they didn’t sound like two people singing from their lyric sheets, instead they had a remarkable chemistry which made you feel that every word came straight from the heart, speaking of a magical and inseparable bond that lifted the pair of them higher, and spread joy all around them. Their performance was once beautifully described as “like listening to conversation between two souls.”
It was their partnership that was the making of the couple as performers. Strange as it might seem for the man famous for declaring “Let’s Get it On” and telling of the magic of “Sexual Healing”, Marvin Gaye was initially a shy man uncomfortable with live performance until Motown bosses teamed him up with a beautiful young singer from Philadelphia.
That was when the magic started. Together they became an unstoppable force, capturing the highs and joys of romantic love, particularly through the songs that Nick Ashford and Valerie Simpson wrote for them. They looked into each other’s eyes and sang “You’re all I need to get by” and “There aint’ nothing like the real thing”. They held hands and told each other – and us – that “together we could open any door” and how much “love was the answer, whether you’re rich or poor”. Passion, committment, tenderness, togetherness….. pure joy.
This was all the more remarkable as the pair always remained close friends and were never romantic lovers – that seamless join on record and on stage was never consumated in real life.
Then on 14 October 1967 tragedy struck. On stage in Virginia while in the middle of the song Your Precious Love, Tammi Terrell collapsed into Marvin Gaye’s arms. This was no performance piece, but the first major strike of a malignant brain tumour, with Tammi rushed in for major surgery within months.
While 1968 brought huge chart success with the magificent “You’re all I need to get by” and “Ain’t nothing like the real thing” both topping the RnB charts, Tammi’s health continued to deteriorate with a series of further operations failing to halt the advance of her cancer. By the following year she was no longer well enough to perform. Here last public appearance came by chance. In a wheelchair and half-blind following all her treatment, Tammi had gone out to watch Marvin perform at Harlem’s famous Apollo Theatre.
When Marvin spotted Tammi in the crowd, he rushed over to her and the pair spontaneously began singing “You’re all I need to get by” ending in a standing ovation from the rest of the audience. Within a few months she was dead at the age of 24.
Marvin Gaye openly sobbed at her funeral, but managed to deliver a moving eulogy, telling the crowd of her courage and optimisim as she went through multiple operations, all while “You’re all I need to get by” played in the background.
Tammi’s death hit him remarkably hard. Marvin refused to perform for at least two years and considered leaving the music industry altogether. “When Tammi became ill, I refused to sing in public. In my heart, I could no longer pretend to sing love songs for people. I couldn’t perform,” he later said.
Though he eventually came back with the remarkable What’s Going On album, which threw questions all around a the state of the world, but things were never the same again. Many biographers have noted how Marvin never got over Tammi’s death, but instead it became the start of his descent into drink, drugs and depression leading to his own untimely death 14 years later, in what feels like a 20th Century twist on the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet.
The final words go to Marvin: “Her death hurt so much, not because she and I were lovers. I wish we had been, but the relationship was platonic. I was hurt because such a talented and beautiful human being died so young.”