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Not even the California Raisins could fuck this one up. Gladys Knight and the Pips took "Grapevine" to #2 in 1967, a full year before Gaye's was released, but when was the last time you heard Knight's version? Gaye's take on the song remains perhaps the darkest, fuzziest, most unglued moment in Motown history. Gaye's voice was usually an ecstatic lilt, but here it's a frozen paranoid sneer, the sound of a man collapsing inward into doubt and regret and hate. Gaye clamps down on the "you mean that much to me" line with so much venom that we know it isn't really true, not anymore. The murky Funk Brothers arrangement offers no respite: the organ bubbles, the Bernard Herrmann strings screech, the guitars echo and moan, and you know just as well as Gaye does that his life is about to end. There's no hope anywhere in the song. It's terrifying. --Tom Breihan |
