‘Marvin Gaye Live!’ Celebrates 50th Anniversary With Digital Deluxe Reissue
The full show will finally be available for the first time on March 28.
Marvin Gaye Live!, a 1974 album from Marvin Gaye, is getting reissued. A new, digital deluxe edition of the album has been announced, pulling together Gaye’s complete Oakland show performance for the first time. It will be released on March 28. The digital deluxe includes four rare tracks: “Flying High (In the Friendly Sky),” “Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology),” “Come Get To This,” and “Keep Gettin’ It On.” In addition to the digital deluxe, the standard audio presentation of the original 9-track version will also land on digital platforms for the first time. Both versions are newly remastered will be available in Dolby® ATMOS.
Let’s Get It On, released in 1973, was Gaye’s best-selling album, and one of the best-selling in the history of Motown. In January of 1974, he delivered his first proper live show in years. Luckily, it was all recorded. The resulting performance was released in June of that year, and quickly went to #1 on the Soul/R&B Album Chart, helped in part by Gaye’s incredible rendition of “Distant Lover,” which was later nominated for a Grammy.
The success of the show was not assured. As legend has it, the Oakland Coliseum concert was planned extremely quickly. (The singer had committed to an early date but balked, and the rescheduled date didn’t leave much time to prepare.) Rolling Stone reported a chaotic scene backstage at the event, with an orchestra that had never rehearsed in the room and a stage that hadn’t even been built until an hour or two before the performance. However, when Gaye did finally take the stage, all doubt faded away. “Marvin Gaye’s return was not a concert, it was an event,” wrote a reviewer in the San Francisco Chronicle, “a gathering of Black pride and stargazers.” That night at the Coliseum, preserved on Marvin Gaye Live! and is as good an argument as any of Gaye’s singular musical talent.
