Here, My Dear CD

Personnel: Marvin Gaye (vocals, keyboards, synthesizer); Gordon Banks, Wali Ali (guitar); Ernie Fields (alto saxophone); Charles Owens, Fernando Harkness (tenor saxophone); Nolan Smith (trumpet); Frank Blair (bass); Bugsy Wilcox (drums); Gary Jones, Elmira Colins (percussion).
Reissue producer: Cary E. Mansfield.
Recorded at Marvin Gaye Studio, Hollywood, California. HERE MY DEAR was originally released on Tamla (364) as a 2 LP set. Includes liner notes by David Ritz and Curtis M. Shaw.
Digitally remastered by Bill Inglot & Dan Hersch (DigiPrep Studios).
Pre-dating the voyeuristic tendencies of reality television by 20 years, Here, My Dear is the sound of divorce on record -- exposed in all of its tender-nerve glory for the world to consume. During the amazing success of I Want You and his stellar Live at the London Palladium album, Marvin Gaye was served with divorce papers from his then-wife Anna Gordy Gaye (sister of Motown Records founder Berry Gordy). One of the conditions of the settlement was that Gordy Gaye would receive an extensive percentage of royalties as well as a portion of the advance for his next album. Initially, Gaye was contemplating giving less than his best effort, as he wouldn't stand to receive any money, but then reconsidered at the last moment. The result is a two-disc-long confessional on the deterioration of their marriage; starting from the opening notes of the title track, Gaye viciously cuts with every lyric deeper into an explanation of why the relationship died the way it did. Gaye uses the album, right down to its packaging, to exorcise his personal demons with subtle visual digs and less-than-subtle lyrical attacks. The inner sleeve had a pseudo-board-game-like illustration entitled "Judgment," in which a man's hand passes a record to a woman's. One side of the sleeve has Gaye's music and recording equipment, while the other side of the board included jewelry and other luxurious amenities. Musically the album retains the high standards Gaye set in the early '70s, but you can hear the agonizing strain of recent events in his voice, to the point where even several vocal overdubs can't save his delivery. Stripped to its bare essence, Here, My Dear is no less than brilliantly unsettling and a perfect cauterization to a decade filled with personal turmoil. ~ Rob Theakston
A concept album of some magnitude, although the subject matter could hardly have been comfortable listening for Anna, Marvin Gaye's ex-wife. She was the subject of Gaye's public 'divorce album', a clever idea if there were no real people involved. The illustration on the sleeve depicts love, marriage, pain and divorce, in addition to the scales of justice (equal). This lengthy album (originally a double vinyl) was poorly received by the critics, although now it has grown in stature, and it really does have considerable depth and melody. Let's face it, if Gaye sang a gardening seed catalogue from cover to cover it would be brilliant.Rolling Stone (1/25/95, p.53) - Voted Best Reissue Album in the 1995 Critic's Poll.
Q (3/00, p.126) - Included in Q Magazine's "Best Relationship Albums Of All Time" - "...due to the chaotic state of his finances Gaye was ordered to give the profits of his next album to his ex-wife [Anna Gordy]. Result: this bizarre but gripping double, a bitterness concept album designed to make as little money as possible..."
Uncut (p.102) - 5 stars out of 5 -- "[T]he most audacious, outrageous, darkly fascinating, musically complex and compelling work of Marvin's career."
Alternative Press (5/01, p.104) - Included in AP's "10 Essential Breakup Albums" - "...Some of the most personal material he ever recorded..."
Magnet (p.115) - "HERE, MY DEAR is arguably the most untethered ode to the dissolution of love ever recorded....One of pop's defining concept works."
Vibe (5/94, p.105) - "...incorporates all of his techniques: sweet doo-wop romanticism...pop-gospel yearnings...and soul abandon...amid what could be called his most personal of records...Gaye may have been at his most lucid: vocally inventive, musically experimental, and finally, emotionally unrestrained...."
Q (Magazine) (p.122) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "[T]he artist within prevailed and his flaying of every slippery, hurtful machination two people could possibly immerse themselves in during divorce gave way to a blunt appraisal of the relationship..."
Mojo (Publisher) (p.123) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "[A] collision of warm singing and playing behind coolly calculated verbal stilettos..."
Blender (Magazine) (p.104) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "[T]his is Gaye's most playable album....Gaye was the rare overextended romantic wreck who could make something of his failures."
Record Collector (magazine) (p.100) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "[W]ith his heart worn firmly on his sleeve and with music at turns mournful and transcendental....Thirty years on it still sounds dangerous, illicit and thrilling."