Third Man Books has reissued Ben Edmonds’ Marvin Gaye: What’s Going On and the Last Days Of The Motown Sound. Edmonds’ book is a study of Marvin Gaye’s landmark album, What’s Going On, that came out in 1971. Gaye famously fought with Motown founder Berry Gordy Jr. to release the politically conscious album that was a response to the Vietnam War, drug addiction, and poverty. Renaldo “Obie” Benson of the The Four Tops told Edmonds how he witnessed anti-war protesters being attacked at Berkeley’s People’s Park and how his conversation about it with songwriter Al Cleveland led to the creation of the single, “What’s Going On.” Benson offered the song to his bandmates, who rejected it on the grounds that it was a protest song. Gaye accepted Benson’s suggestion that he sing it and he added his own elements to the song and recorded it with famed Motown musicians The Funk Brothers. Edmonds’ book was originally published in 2001 and he explained in his introduction the purpose of revisiting What’s Going On.

“This is not simply about a singer and a record album. It is the story of an idea, formed out of the mixed ethers of social anger and spiritual longing, that Marvin Gaye articulated with a cast of brilliant accomplices and fought to get recorded and released. From that idea, and with that help, and out of that struggle, something was fashioned that continues to touch souls more profoundly than even its creator could have imagined.”

Marvin Gaye: What’s Going On and the Last Days Of The Motown Sound is available from Third Man Books and physical and online booksellers.