Record Rewind

From the onset, Marvin Gaye's life was tumultuous at best, a pattern that he would never evade.

Gaye was the eldest son of Alberta Cooper Gay and Marvin Gay Sr., a minister of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, from a sect called the House of God.

The religious group could be described, rather generously, as extreme. Gay Sr.'s church combined the strict teachings of Orthodox Judaism and Pentecostalism, a recipe that reflected heavily on his rough personality.

Growing up, Gaye's home life was all but void of celebration; as a child he did not celebrate holidays and was forced to adhere to a rigid dress code, while refraining from dancing, watching television and participating in athletics.

Gay Sr. would also test his children on the Bible and its passages, handing out beatings in return for incorrect answers.

This physical abuse, combined with Gay Sr.'s certainty that Gaye was not his son, led the junior to often rebel against his father's will, most often through music.

Gaye learned to sing in the choir, where his mother took to his vocal abilities. He worked diligently on his craft, while learning drums and piano as an escape from his paternally inspired pain.

This remedy began his trek to success; he was discovered by Bo Diddley in 1958, and while playing in Detroit, Michigan the next year, Motown's Berry Gordon Jr. acquired him as a session drummer and songwriter.

In this capacity, Gaye would pen several hits, including "Dancing in the Street," while drumming on such successful tracks as "Please Mr. Postman."

In 1970, he took to the studio to record the anthemic and politically minded "What's Going On." The resulting album completely changed the landscape of soul music, both at the Motown hit machine and across the United States.

But Gaye's success came with intense drug use and an ever growing subversive nature. By 1979, Gaye was bankrupt and living in a bread van in Hawaii.

After the success of "Sexual Healing," in 1982, the singer's drug use intensified and he moved back to his parents' home the next year.

This would prove to be the end of Gaye, largely due to his ever-worsening relationship with his father.

Between the early emotional scars, his father's refusal to support Alberta Gay's recovery from kidney surgery in 1983 and a questionable home sale, the two became progressively more violent.

On April 1, 1984, the day before Gaye's 45th birthday, his father renewed an argument about an insurance policy document, by shouting up to his wife, blaming her for the loss of the paper.

Gaye marched to the top of the stairs and shouted down to his father to speak to his mother directly. An angry Sr. bounded up the stairs; Gaye pushed his father to the ground and kicked him repeatedly.

His father grabbed his .38 caliber pistol from his bedroom and shot Gaye twice in the chest, killing the singer almost instantly.

On Nov. 2, 1984, Gay Sr. was sentenced to five years in prison for the attack, a punishment which was immediately suspended.