By 1980 Marvin Gaye was living in Europe as a tax exile, hoping to stave off the tax man. He was also ready to leave Motown and strike out on his own.
Marvin's attorney, Curtis Shaw was able to get him released from Motown for two million dollars and got him signed to Columbia Records. By the time the ink was dry on the agreements, Marvin was already working on his debut album for Columbia.
Around the same time author David Ritz was writing Marvin's autobiography and was writing down his story a little bit at a time. During one of those sessions, he noticed some magazines that had pornographic art. Ritz told Gaye that \"this was some sick sh*t, you need sexual healing\".
That phrase attracted Gaye's attention and told Ritz to write some lyrics. At the time writer Odell Brown had submitted a music track that he thought Marvin would be interested in and Ritz used the melody to write some lyrics. He wrote the first chorus in four minutes. Marvin took the lyrics and made some changes to them as well as the arrangement of Odell's music track and a hit was born.
They tried making the music track with live musicians, but it was not coming together so they discarded those sessions and started working on the song with synthesizers. Marvin ended up playing drums, electric piano, synthesizer, organ and congas. The guitar part was played by Gordon Banks who also sang background vocals with Harvey Fuqua and Marvin.
When the song was released, Ritz was distressed that his name was not included in the credits. He approached Marvin asking for a \"taste\" (royalties) who responded that his name was already on the album. That did not give Ritz any share of royalties, so he hired a lawyer and took him to court.
Gaye passed away April 1, 1984 so his estate took up the fight and ultimately lost in the ruling that finally came in 1988. Ritz was given co writer credit and a share in the royalties.
The song proved to be a huge hit, spending ten weeks at #1 R&B, spent three weeks at #3 on the Hot100 and peaked at #12 on the disco chart. It was for many years the longest reigning #1 R&B hit.
