Her mother was close friends with his producer.Īt the time, Gaye was estranged from his wife, Anna Gordy, sister of Motown impresario Berry Gordy. “His sound erased all pain.” Hunter met Gaye when she was just 17. “His face expressed a gentleness that carried the same promise as : that life, lifted into melody and framed by harmony, never has to be harsh,” she writes. Hunter recalls her first time seeing Gaye in person.

Her mother, Barbara, was friends with Ed Townsend, Gaye’s producer, and he brought her to the studio to watch Gaye record. Janis Hunter met Marvin Gaye when she was 17. Marvin Gaye’s immense, undeniable talent for singing and songwriting, and his equally impossible-to-dismiss sex appeal, were accompanied by increasingly heavy drug use - freebasing cocaine eventually did him in - and erratic moods, a constant tug of war between thrills, love, lust and terror. “After the Dance,” a memoir by Gaye’s mistress-turned-wife Jan Gaye, written with David Ritz, recalls a love affair propelled by just these sorts of mind games. And yes, I do admit, it is exciting to watch you fall.” Marvin and Jan Gaye Courtesy of Jan Gaye “To watch purity turn to perversity is a fascinating thing,” he told her. She refused, the couple left and Gaye told her how he really felt about the fantasy that his prodding had made real. He told Hunter, “You go off with them if you want. The next night, when the other couple returned for more, Gaye’s enthusiasm had become something else. He didn’t participate but acted as ringleader, urging on the sexual proceedings between his hesitant, eager-to-please girlfriend, 17 years his junior, and the couple they had just met.Īfter, Gaye projected his joy at the event onto Hunter. “A small intimate orgy is just what the doctor ordered.” “I think they want to take this party to the next phase,” he said. The four had been smoking weed and snorting cocaine when Gaye noticed the pair sizing her up.

Janis Hunter was a mother of two in her early 20s when her longtime lover, father of her children and one of the world’s most lusted-after soul singers, Marvin Gaye, suggested an amorous liaison with another couple.

Mother Food by Beverly Morgan