66 Never-Before-Heard Marvin Gaye New Songs Found 40 Years After His Death
Sixty-six demos of unreleased songs by the late singer Marvin Gaye were discovered from the cassette tapes he left behind.
Four decades after the Prince of Motown was shot and killed by his father, Marvin Gay Sr., in their West Adams home in Los Angeles, California, in 1984, a never-before-seen collection of his stage costumes, notebooks and cassette tapes has been revealed.
Gaye left the items with Belgian musician Charles Dumolin's family in Belgium. For over forty years, they kept his collection in their home, according to the BBC.
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(Photo : John Minihan/Evening Standard/Getty Images)
"They belong to [the family] because they were left in Belgium 42 years ago. Marvin gave it to them and said, 'Do whatever you want with it,' and he never came back. That's important," said Alex Trappeniers, the Belgian lawyer who is a business partner of the Dumolin family.
"We can open a time capsule here and share the music of Marvin with the world. It's very clear. He's very present."
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He added that a few demos were as good as Gaye's hit track "Sexual Healing" from his final studio album, "Midnight Love," in 1982.
"Each time a new instrumental started when Marvin started singing, I gave it a number. In the end, I had listened to all 30 tapes. I had 66 demos of new songs. A few of them are complete, and a few of them are as good as 'Sexual Healing' because it was made at the same time," said Trappeniers.
"There was one song that when I listened to it for ten seconds, I found the music was in my head all day. The words were in my head all day, like a moment of planetary alignment."
While the Prince of Soul's collection belongs to the Dumolin family, and they could end up as the owners of the physical tapes containing Gaye's unreleased songs, they do not have the right to publish the songs, per the BBC.
(Photo : John Minihan/Evening Standard/Getty Images)
"I think we both benefit, the family of Marvin and the collection in the hands of [Dumolin's heirs]. If we put our hands together and find the right people in the world, the Mark Ronsons or the Bruno Mars... I'm not here to make suggestions but to say OK, let's listen to this and let's make the next album," Trappeniers said.
If they find a way to get Marvin Gaye's unreleased demos published, the tracks will follow the lead of the posthumous song "Now and Then" by John Lennon of The Beatles, released in November 2023.
It was released 50 years after Lennon wrote and recorded the demo at his Dakota home in New York in the 70s and over 40 years since he was assassinated and killed at age 40.
