Description

Marvin Gaye's most serious album needed a serious face, and the weather supplied it. Motown sent photographer Jim Hendin to Gaye's home on Outer Drive in Detroit, most likely in March 1971. Over a couple of days Hendin shot him at the piano, playing basketball and jogging around the neighbourhood. The cover shots were the last ones taken. "Marvin went out into his backyard, and as I clicked away, it began to snow," Hendin said. "The drizzle added everything to the shots."

The chosen frame shows Gaye looking up past the camera, his trenchcoat soaked and its collar turned up, with wet weather around him. It gave a record about war, poverty and the environment exactly the gravity it needed. Art director Curtis McNair picked the slide he thought would make the best cover, but his supervisor disliked it, complaining that the low angle showed "too much of Marvin's nostrils." Gaye happened to be at the Motown building on Woodward Avenue that day, so the decision went to him. He chose the picture now known around the world.

The backyard hid a small secret. Outtakes later showed children's bicycles and a kiddie slide just out of frame, details nobody noticed for decades. The album came out on 21 May 1971 on Motown's Tamla label, an album Berry Gordy had at first resisted releasing, and the rain-soaked portrait became the face of one of the most admired albums in American music.

Credit

Photography by Jim Hendin; art direction by Curtis McNair