1) Main Theme From Trouble Man (2); 2) 'T' Plays It Cool; 3) Poor Abbey Walsh; 4) The Break In (Police Shoot Big); 5) Cleo's Apartment; 6) Trouble Man; 7) Theme From Trouble Man; 8) 'T' Stands For Trouble; 9) Main Theme From Trouble Man (1); 10) Life Is A Gamble; 11) Deep-In-It; 12) Don't Mess With Mister 'T'; 13) There Goes Mister 'T'.
General verdict: A soundtrack, but not so much to a movie as to the artist's own troubled relations with the world at large.
A peculiar fact of Marvin's career is that he
only acted as sole writer and producer on two full LPs in his lifetime, and the
first one of these was a soundtrack — although even here, the proposal to
compose it came from Motown, what with «blaxploitation» movies being all the
rage in the early Seventies and soundtracks such as Shaft and Superfly being
legitimately counted among the great masterpieces of contemporary R&B and
all. Most of those actual movies had far more social value for their time than
artistic merits, and allegedly Trouble
Man, a crime flick about a private detective exploring the bowels of life
on the black-and-white fringe, was no exception. But the soundtrack has
survived, and despite its predictably low share of actual songs, endures as
sort of a minor classic in the Marvin Gaye canon.
Since, unlike Isaac Hayes and Curtis Mayfield, Marvin's
emphasis was almost always confined to the soul aspect of the business rather
than to the harsh-rockin' grooves, Trouble
Man emerges or, rather, looms as
an anthemic suite of suspense, foreboding, dark alleys, shady deals, neuroses, panic
attacks, and necrologies. In fact, it makes for a perfect companion to What's Going On: if that record was
more of a general prayer for the healing of the world's troubles, Trouble Man opens up an actual window
on those troubles themselves — it is grim, bleak, mournful, with not really a
single melody or vocal piece that would offer a ray of light; sorrow and
melancholy are probably the sweetest emotions that could be associated with
this music.
The centerpiece is ʽTrouble Manʼ itself, a song
whose lyrics apply equally well to «Mr. T», the movie protagonist, and to
Marvin himself. Compositionally, it's not much to speak of — a crude, simple
blues-rocker that might as well be written by Bad Company; what matters is the
arrangement — half-muted, creepy-sinister bass, piano, guitar and brass that
seem to be stalking the listener from the shadows — and Marvin's falsetto
delivery: this is not the tender-loving kind of falsetto, but rather the
painfully-weeping kind of falsetto, the get-your-balls-in-a-vice-for-three-and-a-half-minutes
kind of falsetto. The key moment of the song is the key change from
"there's only three things for sure — taxes, death and trouble" to
"this I know, baby, this I've known, baby"; the way he says it, you
almost get the feeling that Marvin Gaye truly knows more about taxes, death and
trouble than anybody else, even if it might be factually incorrect. There's
also a musically impressive rise and cliff-jump at the end of each chorus — not
on progressive rock level, perhaps, but a good suspenseful hook that finally
turns the melody into something bigger than a proto-Bad Company blues rocker.
Several variations on the same melody are made
into two different versions of the ʽMain Theme From Trouble Manʼ, not very
different from each other and featuring extended sax solos from different
session musicians. However, the other instrumental tracks are surprisingly
diverse and actually seem to show a bigger interest in pure music-making on
Marvin's part than even What's Going On.
There are some smooth funky grooves on which Gaye himself is credited for
playing synthesizers (ʽT Plays It Coolʼ, ʽT Stands For Troubleʼ); ballads (sometimes
with minimal vocals) that walk a thin line between smooth jazz and avantgarde
classical (ʽPoor Abbey Walshʼ, with its paranoid dissonant piano chords
unexpectedly breaking the smoothness of the flow); Moog solos that sound as if
they were taken out of prog-rock's textbook (ʽDeep-In-Itʼ); and sentimental
passages that seem influenced by Sixties' soundtracks to French romantic movies
(ʽDon't Mess With Mr. Tʼ). None of this stuff is truly breathtaking on its own,
but the tracks do fall together in such a way that the album looks like a
musical portrait — of one man's physical hassles and never ending spiritual
torment.
It seems obvious to me that the album might
have gained even bigger acclaim if its soundtrack status never existed in the
first place — it is definitely more of a soundtrack to Marvin's own state of
mind and, even bigger, to the state of things in the world of 1972's black
America than to some long-forgotten movie about an African-American private
detective. And it offers an excellent reflection of Gaye's character, too: the
man was never about anger or violence as he was about sorrow and pity, so that Trouble Man spends most of its time
weeping rather than cursing, mourning rather than calling to action — the title
character is a person hopelessly locked in a karmic cycle with little hope of
redemption. Even if there are musical elements here that instantly date the
package (the use of this particular mix of strings, horns, and Moogs is a bit
of a musical cliché), it still stands out from the typical fare of 1972, just
because the artist has bothered to put a little bit more of his own soul in the
music than was usually required for such matters.
But the more you think about it, the more
unsettling it becomes — it's as if the naïve inner child of What's Going On, asking his innocent
questions and hoping for a little bit of light, has matured here into a
psychologically unstable and thoroughly pessimistic desperado. It is no
surprise, perhaps, that Marvin would almost completely abandon «socially
relevant» subjects in the following years and totally concentrate on amorous
subjects instead: Trouble Man is the
album of somebody who is so deeply disgusted in the world around him that the
only possible solutions are either to take your own life, or to stop paying
this undeserving world any attention. Ultimately, I guess, Marvin chose both
(if you look at his killing not as an unfortunate accident, but as a sort of
inevitable denouement).
What a review. I've had this for years but never listened to it. Better go listen.
ReplyDeleteNice info. In my country I never heard of this band. I will try to listen, and if I find that I like it, I will sincerally thank you!
ReplyDeleteGreat review of this classic. I actually discovered this album thanks to a superhero film. Since you found this album dark, I can't wait to hear your take on Here My Dear.
ReplyDelete