‘I Want You’ Back

MARVIN GAYE’S 1976 MASTERPIECE RETURNS ON VINYL

Just as it has previously done with other Marvin Gaye albums of the 1970s – including What’s Going On, Trouble Man, Let’s Get It On, Here, My Dear and In Our Lifetime? – Universal Music yesterday shipped a new edition of I Want You, to mark the 50th anniversary of the original Motown release.

Vinyl is the focus of this particular return to market, and it’s part of the company’s well-received Vinylphyle LP series. These are reproduced from original sources, using all-analogue mastering, and pressed on 180g vinyl by California-based Record Technology, Inc. (RTI). In the U.S. the line’s previous titles include Erykah Badu’s Mama’s Gun, Bob Marley & the Wailers’ Exodus and Nat “King” Cole’s The Christmas Song.

Vinyl virtues aside, this release comes in a gatefold sleeve, with reproductions of the original tape boxes and a new essay by Grammy-nominated producer Salaam Remi. He has been involved with previous Gaye reissues, including a four-track remix, Save The World, in 2021.

“I’ve been listening to I Want You repeatedly in different ways for most of my life,” Remi enthuses in the liner notes, “and have gotten a perspective of it over time. I realised this album is when I realised my adulthood…[it] gives me all the things I look for in music.”

Concurrently, there’s a second package from Universal Music Enterprises (UMe), the parent company’s catalogue division: I Want You 2, a two-LP set featuring the bonus tracks, alternate takes and rarities which were first offered on compact disc in 2003, plus a new mix of the title song.

In tandem with these physical offerings is a digitally-available “Soon I’ll Be Loving You Again,” remixed by Remi from the original I Want You track. “You feel the complexity of Marvin from the soles of your feet to the crown of your hair,” the producer says, declaring it to be his all-time Gaye favourite.

Then, on March 27, UMe puts out a three-track digital EP, I Want You Remixed, including an Afro-beat take by songwriter Fatima Diakité (TikTok ID: TimaLikesMusic) and a previously-available old-school remix by John Morales.

‘THE MOST HAPPY TIME’ IN MARVIN’S LIFE

As for the creation and legacy of Marvin Gaye’s fourth Top 10 album – I Want You peaked at No. 4 on the main Billboard charts in June ’76 – there has been no shortage of prose on the subject. The singer’s own recollections appear, of course, in David Ritz’s biography of Gaye, Divided Soul. But the music maker whose project it was at the start has claimed his share of the narrative, too. Leon Ware wrote “I Want You” with Arthur (T-Boy) Ross to help secure a recording deal for Diana’s brother. When Berry Gordy heard the demo of the song, he felt it was ideal for Gaye, which ultimately led to him and Ware collaborating for the entire album. (West Grand Blog’s earlier overview of Ware’s career can be found here.)

In 2003, a deluxe CD reissue of I Want You included substantial liners by Richard Torres, commissioned by UMe vice president Harry Weinger, who also included recollections from the album’s original arranger, Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson. “I wrote the album blind, and fast,” said the musician known as “Perk.” He added, “The rhythm tracks were unbelievable, but I didn’t know where they were going to go, so I gave them the whole orchestra.”

***All-analogue mastering and 180g vinyl***

When I Want You turned 40, Pitchfork published an analysis by Jason King, who had previously curated a series of events in New York to mark Motown’s 50th. Ware took part in one of those sessions (with Weinger) and reminisced with enthusiasm. “The time when we did I Want You had to be the most happy time in Marvin’s life,” he said, “because he was freshly in love, and the album exhibits that atmosphere.”

Ware was similarly engaging years earlier, when he spoke to me about Gaye and the album for The Billboard Book of Number One Rhythm & Blues Hits. “It was a very uncanny relationship,” he said. “We were spiritually one for a long time. The album took a year and a month to do. And it wasn’t because we found it hard to work with each other – we were having a lot of fun. I’d say that 60 percent of that time was work, and 40 percent was fun.”

Ware also remembered the last few times he connected with Gaye. “When he was in Hawaii [in 1979-80], he called me. He sounded so down. ‘I’m getting ready to take a trip to Europe for a while,’ he told me. I didn’t hear from Marvin then for a couple of years, and it was when ‘Sexual Healing’ came out, that’s when I saw him again. I saw him at Carlos ’n Charlie’s, the day he was doing the video. In fact, my wife’s in that video. He and I embraced each other, glad to see each other again.”

Another virtue of this newest version of I Want You? That the LP packaging does justice to the classic Ernie Barnes oil painting, The Sugar Shack, on the front cover. The idea for the image came from a teenage Barnes’ attempt to get into a show to see Clyde McPhatter & the Dominoes; later he met Gaye through the mother of the latter’s second wife, Jan Hunter. “Your picture does what no other picture can do,” the singer told Barnes. “It makes the music come alive.”

What better endorsement as the music comes alive once more?

West Grand Blog is taking a short break. See you on the other side, with luck.