Album Reviews

Mobile Fidelity's One-Step reissue of Marvin Gaye's groundbreaking album What's Going On is long out of print but still deserving of a short review.

Berry Gordy founded Motown Records to produce pop hits that would appeal to young people across the racial and ethnic divide and of course he succeeded. But by the early 1970s world events, especially the war in Vietnam had become the focus of the generation called upon to fight it and the music makers of the time took note. At around the same time the record business's "studio system" had also begun to break down as musicians demanded greater control over both the music and the production.

Marvin Gaye already had almost a dozen albums to his credit but here for the first time he assumed complete creative control of the music and the production. Created as a song cycle with one song segueing into the next, and backed by a lush string section with added sound effects and "walla", the album was more Sergeant Pepper's... than the usual Motown formula of a few chart hits with filler. The subject matter ranged from the war in Vietnam, to police brutality to drug addiction, to ecology and the environment. In other words it was a protest album that could have been written last year. Gaye had got through a "rough patch" and had turned introspective.

The multi-layered music mixed soul, funk, jazz, gospel and even classical. Despite Berry Gordy's dislike for the album, it resonated with all of the music buying audience, reaching the Top Ten (Gaye's first to do so) and remained on the charts for almost a year, selling over two million copies.

I compared my original RCA mastered and pressed original (Tamla TS310) with Mobile Fidelity's 2008 1/2 speed mastered reissue (MFSL 1-314) and then with this "1 Step" version (UD1S 2-008) pressed on the new MoFi "Supervinyl" manufactured by NEOTECH and it's difficult to believe these are sourced from the same tape. The "one step" destroys the others by a wide margin.

The resolution of musical and spatial detail that's smeared on the other versions is huge. I've heard complaints about there being "too much bass" but I think that's what's on the tape that's previously been rolled off. This reissue is a major sonic step forward both for Mobile Fidelity and for vinyl reissues generally. It would be interesting to compare it to the master tape.

The only downside was the need to split up one of the segue ways ala 8-track tape (!), but it was done artfully and doesn't really detract from the presentation, which for fans of this album who have lived with the original, has probably proven to be mind-blower (to borrow an expression from that era), though this was never an "audiophile spectacular" to begin with.

Given the quality of the production, I just wish Mo-Fi would be more adventurous in its reissue choices. It's starting to sound like going to an audio show.

Here's where it all started for Motown: in this cramped little studio barely big enough to fit the piano (though there are small side isolation rooms).