What’s Going on With Marvin Gaye’s Unreleased Belgian Music?

In the final years of his life, Marvin Gaye spent a stretch of time in Belgium, recovering from drug addiction and recording some of his last hits, including “Sexual Healing.” Turns out, Gaye was even more prolific during this era than we thought. A glut of unreleased music by the soul legend has turned up in Belgium, as the BBC heard through the grapevine. When Gaye later left Belgium, he left his tapes, along with some costumes and notes, with the Belgian musician Charles Dumolin, whom he lived with. Dumolin died in 2019, and now his family owns a collection of tapes that includes, according to their lawyer, as many as 66 unreleased demos. (Gaye died in 1984.) “Marvin gave it to them and said, ‘Do whatever you want with it,’ and he never came back,” Alex Trappeniers told the BBC. According to Trappeniers, the demos include multiple complete songs and some that are “as good as ‘Sexual Healing.’” Ain’t nothing like the real thing, indeed.

The family wants to release the music, but what’s actually going on is more complicated. Legally, they would own the tapes themselves thanks to a Belgian law that grants ownership of property to someone after they’ve had it for 30 years, even if it wasn’t given to them. But since the law doesn’t include intellectual property, the Gaye estate would still have a claim to the songs on the tapes — making a release more complicated. Gaye’s family did not comment to the BBC, but lawyers for two of his children are now reportedly aware of the tapes.

Gaye’s estate has previously been protective of the soul legend’s legacy, winning a copyright lawsuit against Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams over similarities between their song “Blurred Lines” and Gaye’s hit “Got to Give It Up.” But Trappeniers said he and the Dumolin family would hope to work with the Gaye estate to finish and release some of the demos. “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 okay, let’s listen to this and let’s make the next album,” he said. Like the man himself said: It takes two, baby.