My friend “George,” 88, a survivor of the pandemic but not dementia, died Thursday.
Quite frankly, Georgene Campion had been an unexpected friend.
Although my childhood swimming pool was public and George’s was country club private, it came to pass, George and I crossed paths.
And a decade ago, George became a beloved Sunday dinner companion with our friend Kate van Dyke; a trio taking turns in the chat and chew category, despite George’s delicious option of a country club reservation when it was her turn to cook.
Our three-generational gabfest — each of us separated by a 10-year age difference, became a lesson taught by an elder.
In George’s case, it was a course in radical acceptance; the life lessons of an only child of affluent working parents who knew what it was like to be alone.
“George didn’t let difficult things happening in her life make her a victim,” said van Dyke.
“She didn’t carry a grudge; she moved forward.
“Her generation was a couples world; her husband, Frank, died of cancer years ago; and George could have become a hermit and a miserable person because she had loved her married life,” added van Dyke.
“But George was going to be happy.
“She was going to have a good day.
“And along the way she made you feel great.”
I met George in her dotage; a widow; mother of two grown adults, Kate and Jeff; anda life far different from her halcyon days at the Indian Hill Club circuit of the North Shore.
Still adored by her trove of longtime friends, George opted to sell her family home to become the trailblazing occupant of what she described as her beloved “woman cave,” a modest condo in a new Glenview development.
I did NOT know George as the young model/photo stylist in 1950s-60s world of New York’s “Mad Men” advertising scene, where she met a “weird” shoe designer named Andy Warhol and the ultimately famous fashion photographer Richard Avedon.
I did NOT know George when she married Frank Campion, who worked for the Young and Rubicam marketing company in New York, and became part of the weekend Amagansett social scene hanging out with socialite Dina Merrill, daughter of heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post (original owner of Mar-a-Lago), and wife of actor Cliff Robertson.
By the time I met George, she was living on her own as an artist who had become an entrepreneur, a painter of flowers and dogs and things that do not go bump in the night.
A purveyor of magic, a giver of hugs, a shoulder to rely on, George was also a volunteer reader of books to needy children, fierce foe of gun violence, and early advocate of gun control — and the one who personally placed the newspaper in front of everyone’s door in her building.
A sum of so many moving parts, George loved accessories, crossword puzzles, newspapers, shopping at HomeGoods, making artichokes with hollandaise sauce, lunching at Costco where she knew every single person working the front door. She also liked their pizza and hotdogs.
And she timed her morning medicine intake exactly 30 minutes before she ate a breakfast slice of brown bag apple pie.
A collector of an army of Staffordshire dogs, George overpopulated her galley kitchen with blue and white china, tended to sick friends like her army of magnificent window sill violets, nicknamed every one of her cars, and was the smile in each of her beloved “woof” (dog) portraits.
Although the star of George’s living room was a stunning oil portrait of her commissioned years ago decked out in her favorite “hot pink” color, it shared star quality space across the room with “Buck,” the deer head she bought at a flea market and loved.
“There’s Buck,” she would say. “There he is for all to see in all his glory.”
Sadly, came a time when George’s stories were becoming more than repetitive, sentences becoming stumbles, words becoming lost, and a firestorm seemed to be moving quickly through her brain.
Her daughter, who had become a fourth member of our Sunday dinner threesome — adding another 10 years to our now four decades of generations — soon helped her mom transition into a world minus our Sunday dinners.
“Mom just decided early on she would always be happy — no matter what came her way,” said Kate.
“A lot of good things happened in her life, but a lot of good things didn’t when she was young. So she chose to be happy — and it was infectious.”
So it came as no surprise when I was told George had worn a hot pink feather boa when the residents at her facility celebrated Mardi Gras this year.
I’d like to think someone sweetly looked surrounded by a pink feather flourish and said:
“There’s George. There is George in all her shining glory.”
Sneedless to say . . .
It’s been a year of living dangerously.
Living in the cloister of the pandemic.
Enduring the chaos of the invisible schoolroom.
Listening to vaccine deniers, and the cancellation of good sense.
And the inconvenience of truth when political careers are on the line.
Then again, America, it’s spring.
The roses are coming, the tree peony is blooming, the roar of the mighty cicada is a whisper away, and the rare and elusive scarlet tanager flew into my backyard last week.
Good things.
Good juju.
In sight, a future of living safely.
Sneedlings . . .
Saturday birthdays: Naomi Campbell, 51; Julian Edelman, 35; and Morrissey, 62. . . . Sunday birthdays: Drew Carey, 63; Jewel, 47; Joan Collins, 88; and a happy early birthday to Marie Costello, 90, ageless and priceless.
White Sox players might not see eye to eye with manager Tony La Russa’s stance on the unwritten rules of baseball, but it’s not a big enough deal to divide a clubhouse that shortstop Tim Anderson said remains strong.
La Russa, 76, called out Yermin Mercedes for missing a take sign and hitting a homer on a 3-0 pitch against the Twins Monday. La Russa explained his position to the team. And everything is cool, Anderson.
“For us, it’s OK,” said Anderson, the vocal leader and the most prolific “Change The Game” face of the Sox franchise. “Tony is like the dad, we’re like his kids. We’re like the bad kids that don’t listen. But we all get along.”
And they’re all winning together, which is what matters more than anything.
“So we’re just going to keep pushing and he knows,” Anderson said. “We’re going to go out and play and have fun. The ultimate goal is to get wins and enjoy the game. Hopefully we can just keep pushing and move on past this.”
Welcoming back reigning MVP Jose Abreu after he missed the Twins series with a inflammation in his ankle, the Sox entered a weekend series against the Yankees with the best record in the American League. The widespread commotion throughout baseball caused by La Russa apologizing to the Twins for Mercedes’ homer should be quieting down any day now after a five-day news cycle.
When the Sox caused a commotion by hiring La Russa out of retirement last offseason, how he would mesh with the new breed of player — Anderson in particular because of his fun-loving, bat flipping style — was an instant concern. But so far, it remains a non-issue.
“It’s really just noise,” Anderson said. “That goes for people that don’t really know me, for me to not get along with him. I get along with everybody. The clubhouse is great. Everybody is happy, enjoying the moment.
“Regardless of what Tony said to the media, he’s still our manager. We’re getting along just fine. He’s going to put us in the best position to be successful. That’s what he’s been doing.”
The Sox entered Friday with a 26-16 record, winners in 10 of their last 13 games and leading the majors with a plus-73 run differential. They had outscored their opponents 88-43 in their last 15 games.
Told that Anderson described him as a dad, La Russa smiled.
“Well, I think any father would like being a dad of a son like Tim because his bad just means he went from very, very good to just good,” La Russa said. “There’s no bad with Tim.
“That’s why I made it a point to explain the 3-0 deal. Once they understood it, it’s just a matter of opinion, but they knew where I was coming from and I was coming from a place that truly meant to protect our team.”
Presumably to protect players from getting thrown at, which is what Twins pitcher Tyler Duffey and manager Rocco Baldelli did anyway and got fined and suspended for Thursday. Mercedes took a fastball thrown behind him the day after his controversial homer.
“The Twins throwing, it’s definitely showing a sign of weakness,” Anderson said. “You got a guy [Mercedes, a rookie] who has been playing really well. He doesn’t know better in that situation. There’s really no right or wrong.”
Anderson and teammates are supporting Mercedes to keep his confidence from wavering, “because at the end of the day, it’s really about us,” Anderson said. “We are trying to win. That’s really about it.
Think old-school Tony La Russa must have “unwritten rules” tattooed somewhere on his body? In fact, he doesn’t even particularly favor the term.
“They’re just common sense, you know?” he said this week, his most challenging of the season with the White Sox. “We were taught from Day 1: Respect the game, respect the competition, respect the opponent.”
La Russa isn’t going to come around and agree with the army of critics ripping him for his disapproving opinions about Yermin Mercedes’ ninth-inning homer — on a 3-0 count, with the Sox ahead by 11 runs and a position player on the mound for the Twins — Monday in Minneapolis. He doesn’t even buy that his critics are all that convinced he was wrong.
“Beating one club up — I’ve been on both sides of it — I’m not sure fans enjoy that,” he said. “So if a guy hits a home run against a position player, I don’t believe they think it’s exciting.”
La Russa sure doesn’t believe he was over the line in any way by chastising — and apologizing for — Mercedes in comments to reporters.
“OK, I repeat: What did I say publicly?” he asked. “I said the young player made a mistake, which, by the way, he did.”
There might not be much about baseball that La Russa, 76, is ever going to see anybody’s way other than his own. And that’s fine. He’s the manager. Just ask him.
“If there’s a disagreement [with a player],” he said, “you remind them you’ve got the office and they’ve got the locker. That’s the way this manager is going to play it.”
Like him or not, the second coming of La Russa on the South Side is going to be interesting to observe. Fun, too, if you ask me. Then again, I sometimes find humor in dark, uncomfortable places. Did I mention I’m secretly counting down the days until La Russa’s first all-out blow-up at reporters in this, his fourth big-league managing gig?
These days, La Russa seems to be making an effort to keep his aggravation level low in daily Zoom press conferences. Perhaps the virtual buffer helps with this. He sits, considers his words, speaks almost softly. It’s nothing like he appeared after games during his long run in St. Louis, where he’d stand and grip a podium and stare at questioners in a manner rarely described as friendly.
By Friday, before the Sox took on the Yankees in New York, La Russa was sick of explaining himself on the Mercedes front.
“This is the last time I’m going to try it,” he said. “I’ll give it one more shot.”
Again he stayed calm, but there were subtle signs of Temperamental Tony in his answers. After all, there are only so many ways to say the same thing.
“Respect for your profession and your peers, is that something that’s not important anymore?” he said. “That’s what everybody is telling me about the way this game should be played, everybody that is negative about it. But do you feel like you should respect your profession? Do you feel like you should respect your peers? Is there anybody that doesn’t believe that? I’d like for them to tell me now why they don’t think respect is important.
“I’m waiting.”
That old temper is in there, though not boiling yet. It took only six games of the season for it to arrive in 2011, La Russa’s last season before this one. The Cardinals started out with a 2-4 homestand, mustering a puny 15 runs in all. Reporters asked him about — what else? — the lack of offense.
“I repeat: It’s the first week of the season,” he said, dismissing the line of questioning early on.
But he got mad right after that, shouted at a local beat writer, accused the writer of intentionally trying to upset him and stormed out of the press room. Oh, and then the Cardinals went and won the NL Central and the World Series. Almost forgot to mention that.
I’m not trying to goad La Russa, but maybe that’s the formula. Go off on the next scribe he sees, then win the World Series with the Sox. No? You’re right, that’s a stupid premise. Never mind.
But La Russa’s temper has always been one of the things that has fueled his greatness as a manager. And that temper is coming sooner or later. This is a man who, while with the A’s, once heaved a bat into the screen behind home plate in a game against the Sox. That was an extreme circumstance — one of his players had been hit in the head by a pitch — but what a spectacle.
There was the time he got so fed up with questions about steroids in baseball — shortly after Mark McGwire’s public admission — that he swore on the radio. There was the time he called Brewers fans “idiots.” There was the time, before a series against the Cubs, he refused to answer questions from anyone with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch because of a lighthearted story that poked fun at the Cubs’ championship futility. That one ended with a storm-out, too.
We’re going to meet that guy again at some point, one can only assume. And here’s a thought: It just might make some of his Sox-fan critics kind of like him.
Chicago-via-Michigan rapper Smba plies pop-punk aesthetics to make hip-hop tracks soaked in melancholy. These songs could tentatively be described as Soundcloud rap, since that term (which took hold of hip-hop four years ago) has already been stretched far enough to include any MC with a Fall Out Boy T-shirt, but they have enough dimensions that not even the loosest label can contain it.…Read More
Chicago police work the scene where a 2-year-old girl was shot in the leg in the 2800 block of West 26th St. in the Little Village neighborhood, Friday, May 14, 2021. | Tyler LaRiviere/Sun-Times
David Contreras, 18, and Rodolfo Irigoyen, 21, were arrested Wednesday after officers saw them in the Honda Accord used in the attack, Chicago police said.
A group of Two-Six gang members believed they were targeting rival Latin Kings when they followed an SUV and shot at the vehicle near the Leighton Criminal Courthouse last week.
Instead, they struck and wounded a 2-year-old girl who was riding in the SUV with her parents and 9-month-old sister, Cook County prosecutors said Friday.
The toddler is recovering at Comer Children’s Hospital and will need surgery on her knee cap and physical therapy, Assistant State’s Attorney James Murphy said.
David Contreras, 18, allegedly admitted to firing at the SUV on May 14 after he was arrested this week and charged with attempted murder. The 9-mm handgun believed to have been used in the crime was found under the seat of the Honda Accord Contreras and Rodolfo Irigoyen were riding in at the time of their arrest, Murphy said.
Irigoyen, who admitted he had been driving his mother’s Accord during the shooting, has been charged with aggravated battery, but the 21-year-old may also be charged with attempted murder, Murphy told Judge Charles Beach.
A preliminary analysis of the 9-mm handgun showed a “high confidence correlation” to the shell casings found at the crime the scene and Contreras said the weapon was used in the shooting, Murphy said.
A third gang member who was in the Accord at the time of the shooting and gave the order to open fire is also being sought by police, Murphy said.
“I’ll note that this happened at 6 p.m. when a lot of civilians — normal people — are going to and from work, with their families, going to dinner, [and] are out on the roads,” Beach said before ordering Contreras and Irigoyen held without bail. “This put so many people in jeopardy.”
The wounded girl’s family had been traveling north on California Boulevard in a 2017 Buick Encore and did not know they were being followed by Two-Six gang members in a minivan and the Accord, Murphy said.
The uncharged co-defendant in the Accord with Irigoyen and Contreras was allegedly communicating with his fellow gang members in the minivan with his cellphone as both vehicles pursued the SUV.
When the family stopped at a traffic light at 26th Street, the uncharged co-defendant told Irigoyen to pull up to the SUV and ordered Contreras to “shoot, shoot, shoot,” Murphy said.
Contreras extended his handgun out the Accord’s window and fired at least five rounds, Murphy said.
After the family in the SUV pulled over on 26th Street and saw that the 2-year-old was wounded, they drove to Mount Sinai Hospital.
The girl was the youngest of 48 people shot last weekend, the most violent of the year so far, according to the Chicago Sun-Times’ records.
Authorities were able to track the Accord to an address in the Back of the Yards after part of its license plate was captured by a Chicago police POD camera, Murphy said.
Contreras and Irigoyen live with their parents, an assistant public defender said Friday. Irigoyen works for a food products supplier and Contreras works for a medical supply company, the defense attorney added
Black journalists are still largely MIA from nightly national newscasts as anchors, mostly invisible on editorial boards and as news directors of television networks.
I am an American journalist in deep dark Black skin. And I have borne, over a 36-year journey in American journalism, the weight of “reporting while Black.”
I know well that among some white colleagues the skin I’m in too often ignited their presumption that I was somehow “less than,” not up to snuff, unqualified or unprepared for the job. This was my constant anvil to bear.
Truth is, by the time I arrived at theChicago Tribune in 1989, many of my Black colleagues and I were college degreed up with journalism internships to the hilt. And yet, my sense was that Black journalists were always “incompetent” until proven “competent.”
I later learned that some white reporters who became foreign or national correspondents and major section editors did so without having even one college degree.
I also learned, perhaps too late, that to break your silence on matters of race or on your news organization’s glaringly biased coverage, was to risk being labeled a whiner or malcontent. It meant risking possible career castration.
I got the sense early on that “diversity” in American newsrooms was a game of cat and mouse. I sometimes wondered whether our Black faces were simply window dressing for the diversity firestorm the Kerner Report lit in 1968 with its scathing critique, “that the news media have failed to analyze and report adequately on racial problems in the United States.
“…Slights and indignities are part of the Negro’s daily life, and many of them come from what he now calls ‘the white press’—a press that repeatedly, if unconsciously, reflects the biases, the paternalism, the indifference of white America,” the report continues, saying this is, “not excusable in an institution that has the mission to inform and educate the whole of our society.”
It is still inexcusable.
By the time I began entering American newsrooms as an intern in the mid-1980s, it was clear that Black faces were at least present. But whether we were celebrated or valued was an entirely different matter.
As a Black journalist, I always had the sense that my voice — and my pen — no matter how celebrated beyond the newsroom were not as valued within it. That a “Black” story told by a “white” reporter always held greater “legitimacy” and “authenticity.”
And this: That to examine racism in America, reporters never need venture beyond the American newsroom.
“Some would say you’re an affirmative action hire,” a white female colleague once said as we stood in the New York Times Chicago bureau, where I was then a national correspondent.
Hmmm… Years earlier, she was just an intern when I was already a full-fledged Tribune reporter. I had more degrees, more experience and had arrived at the Chicago bureau at least a year before she had. But I was the affirmative action hire? Puh-leeze.
Fifty-three years since the Kerner report, Black journalists are still largely MIA from nightly national newscasts as anchors, mostly invisible on editorial boards and as news directors of television networks — something Mayor Lori Lightfoot pointed out this week to a lot of people’s chagrin.
She didn’t lie, though she clearly stepped on toes.
Dear Mayor Lightfoot, Thank you, for acknowledging the decades-old journalism elephant in the room.
Black journalists’ perspectives, insights and ideas remain sparse on the daily platter of American journalism.
This despite the Kerner report’s recommendation long ago that news media hire, promote and retain reporters and editors of color. This amid the perpetual lie that, “We can’t find talented journalists of color.”
Truth is, I never wanted to leave Chicago. But to achieve my journalistic dreams, I had no other option. It’s simply my journey of reporting while Black.
On the second anniversary of her taking office, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot committed a heinous sin. She spoke the truth.
Last week, Lightfoot sparked a firestorm over the lack of diversity in the media, declaring that on her anniversary day, she would grant one-on-one interviews only to journalists of color.
“I ran to break up the status quo that was failing so many. That isn’t just in City Hall,” the mayor tweeted Wednesday. “It’s a shame that in 2021, the City Hall press corps is overwhelmingly White in a city where more than half of the city identifies as Black, Latino, AAPI or Native American.”
In-depth political coverage, sports analysis, entertainment reviews and cultural commentary.
It’s an abiding shame long borne by national and local media. So, it’s no surprise that Lightfoot’s decision drew widespread, national scorn in the media. The so-called truth tellers did not want to hear it.
Fox News Host Tucker Carlson blared that Lightfoot was racist, likened her to Adolf Hitler and called he “a monster.”
The pleas and promises for more newsroom diversity are decades old, but the progress falls short.
In 1978, the American Society of Newspaper Editors pledged that the percentage of minorities working in newsrooms would be at parity with the nation’s minority population by the year 2000. That goal was missed and reset for 2025. Broadcast news organizations are similarly challenged.
Today, that aim is more elusive than ever. The crush of media consolidation and digital transformation in the media has crippled diversity efforts. Friday’s news that the “vulture” hedge fund Alden Global Capital has acquired Tribune Publishing will certainly hurt.
While high-profile and powerful elected officials stepping up to this bully pulpit is nothing new, they are most welcome.
In the mid-1980s, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and his Operation PUSH pounded away at that cause. For four months, PUSH picketed the headquarters of WBBM-TV, to protest the demotion of its respected Black anchor, Harry Porterfield.
CBS-TV eventually cried “Uncle!” and hired the station’s first African American station manager.
Harold Washington, Chicago’s first Black mayor, frequently called out the media for the whiteness in the City Hall press room.
Now Lightfoot, the first Black female and openly lesbian mayor of this minority-majority city, is entering the fray.
So, for one day, just one day, white reporters did not get their usual VIP access to a mayor. They’ll live.
For thousands upon thousands of days, journalists of color have been living with the reality that they are usually left off the bus.
As Lightfoot notes, the disparities go beyond an elite assemblage of reporters who cover the mayor. The “overwhelming whiteness and maleness” she describes extends to management, editorial boards, specialty reporters and more.
The media cannot claim to cover communities of color fairly and accurately unless they staff that coverage with diverse voices and lived experiences.
Some of Lightfoot’s critics say she is trying to change the subject from reporting on her mayoral shortcomings. If so, that certainly didn’t work.
Others suggest that Lightfoot was looking for “softball” coverage from unqualified journalists of color. That didn’t work either. The suggestion is insulting.
Those beside-the-point arguments are exactly why Lightfoot’s stand matters. A year into America’s national reckoning on race, there is no better time to insist that our storytellers represent America’s rainbow.
Chicago’s press corps — white, Black Latino, Asian, all — are among the best of the best. They should and will continue to hold the Lightfoot administration accountable.
While we are at it, we must hold our profession accountable, too.
Chicago’s most important news of the day, delivered every weekday afternoon. Plus, a bonus issue on Saturdays that dives into the city’s storied history.
This afternoon will be partly sunny with a high near 85 degrees. Tonight’s low will be around 69 with isolated showers. Tomorrow there will be isolated showers with a high near 86.
In two federal lawsuits filed today, Lake Forest High School faces accusations that two former teachers sexually abused students.
The suits were filed in Chicago by seven former students against the school and Lake Forest Community High School District 115. One also names former Lake Forest High School driver’s education teacher Cynthia Martin, and the other names former teacher David Miller as defendants.
The lawsuit accusing Miller says he targeted boys facing difficult circumstances at home to “groom and sexually abuse male students for nearly 35 years.”
In the other suit, Martin is accused of “using her home and the provision of alcohol to sexually abuse a female student.”
Both suits, which seek unspecified monetary damages, say school officials were aware of the allegations and did nothing.
Rose and Monty, the piping plover pair who became famous in Chicago after mating on one of the city’s crowded beaches, are growing their brace.
The endangered birds have produced four eggs at their breeding grounds at Montrose Beach Dunes Natural Area on Chicago’s North Side.
A wire enclosure protects the nest and eggs from predators. Monty and Rose can freely enter and exit to take turns incubating their eggs.
Monty, a piping plover, sits on the eggs in a wired enclosure put up by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services to protect the nest from predators. Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times
With teammates rallying around Yermin Mercedes and vowing not to let the flap involving manager Tony La Russa distract them, the White Sox are like a band of brothers, Daryl Van Schouwen writes.
As city aldermen attempt to corral rogue tow truck drivers, we want to know: What do you think about the tow truck industry in Chicago?
Reply to this email (please include your first name and where you live) and we might feature your answer in the next Afternoon Edition.
Yesterday, we asked you to tell us about when you adopted a pet and explain how you knew they were the one. Here’s what some of you said…
“My husband and I went to Chicago Animal Care and Control to find a cat. We didn’t want a kitten. My husband was suffering from depression and the doctor suggested a pet. We were walking through the cat area and all of a sudden a paw shot out of a cage and stopped Joe in his tracks. Harry rubbed up against the cage and wanted Joe to pet him, purring away. The volunteer took Harry out and he climbed right in Joe’s arms. He chose us. He was Joe’s buddy for years. When Joe passed away Harry and I mourned together. He is now my baby!” — Roberta Nunziato
“Our friend was moving to an apartment where she could not have her dog. We helped her, and the pup instantly became a part of our family. Little did we know three of our dogs would die within two years. So this dog became the love we needed at that time.” — Donna Schraeder
“Molly was 3 months old when I got her, and she was classified as a male at first (that’s how overlooked she was). They had us choose three dogs to meet and I saw this small little thing huddled behind all the dogs jumping around. She peeked through and saw me, wiggled out and came up to the glass. Had to meet her. They have you sit in a room and bring in each dog separately, letting the dog come up to you and see if there’s something there. The first two dogs were sweet and all, but when Molly came in she ran straight to me like she knew me. I mean, instant connection. She had scars all over her face and had that scared look in her eyes constantly, just a quivering mess under my legs. But the people there said it was the most out of her they had seen. My girl will be eight in October. She’s still afraid of loud noises and big balloons among other things but she’s the best companion ever.” — Andrew Malort
“While waiting for her adoption paperwork to get approved, my favorite song (which is not popular or well known) started playing. I knew immediately it was meant to be.” — Angie DeRosa
Thanks for reading the Chicago Afternoon Edition. Got a story you think we missed? Email us here.
Fifty years ago, vibrating with agitation and energy, Marvin Gaye headed down the wood steps into a Detroit studio and made his anthem for the ages.
“What’s Going On,” a poignant musical masterpiece crafted in a season of unease, persists as a timely backdrop to another heated time, half a century later, when the world feels upside down.
Racial tensions, police controversy, environmental anxieties, a globe on edge — they were the topics on the front burner when Gaye rebooted his musical career and took control of his creative vision inside Motown.
His voice — voices, actually — hit the tape the second week of July 1970.
“There’s too many of you crying … there’s far too many of you dying …”
The song with the silky, layered vocals and an emphatic protest message was topical when Gaye cut it in 1970. It was still relevant when a newly freed Nelson Mandela recited its lyrics for a packed Tiger Stadium in 1990. And it resonates in 2021, in the wake of George Floyd’s death by police.
“In these times of crisis and challenge, we still go to those lyrics for strength,” said Detroit author and historian Ken Coleman.
The making of “What’s Going On” is a pillar of Detroit music lore.
Three years after the 1967 riot and rebellion that transformed his adopted hometown, the 31-year-old Gaye was in a deep and evolving head space. Shaken by the death of singing partner Tammi Terrell, haunted by the Vietnam War stories of his younger Army vet brother, Gaye was an emotional lightning rod waiting to be zapped with creative energy when Motown’s Obie Benson and Al Cleveland brought him their new composition about troubles across the land.
His textured recording was constructed over a series of sessions in 1970: the instrumental foundation in June, the vocals in July, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra’s sweetener in September. “What’s Going On” then sat for several months, a hot potato for Motown Records brass who fretted it was too controversial.
When the single finally went public in January 1971, it was an instant, massive hit. A full album was quickly commissioned, and four months later, Gaye’s groundbreaking LP of the same name was out.
The “What’s Going On” single, which reached No. 2 on the Billboard pop chart, was a mainstream breakthrough for conscious soul music. Its stature remains immense — Rolling Stone ranks it No. 4 on its “500 Greatest Songs of All Time” list — and it set the stage for themes now essential to hip-hop, resounding through artists such as Kendrick Lamar, Meek Mill and Joey Badass.
“It allows someone experiencing oppression and trauma — all these tragic moments that the government is often ignoring — to just ask the questions,” said Eldric Laron, a Detroit musician and spoken-word artist. “It’s so relevant today because that’s what a lot of us are doing. We’re asking questions before acting: the whats and whys and whos and whens. Saying ‘what’s going on?’ is a good starting point for yourself.”
And Gaye’s song, he says, has special meaning as a homegrown treasure.
“Being in Detroit, which is birthed from arts and Black experiences and Black stories, it reminds me of how blessed I am to be a Black man from such a city. I could have been born anywhere,” said Laron. “The song allows me to remind myself of my own power and uniqueness.”
“What’s Going On,” with the silky, layered vocals and an emphatic protest message was topical when Marvin Gaye cut it in 1970. And it resonates in 2021, in the wake of George Floyd’s death by police. BPI
To say “What’s Going On” captured a moment doesn’t entirely do it justice. The song is certainly of its time, a snapshot of a strained America as the ’60s bled into the ’70s. But unlike many other protest songs of the era, it shimmers with a spiritual quality. When it comes to endurance, the song is far more “We Shall Overcome” than “Eve of Destruction.”
Gaye’s masterwork is assertive but not aggressive. It’s as much pain as anger, as much news broadcast as sermon. Like the best popular music through the decades, it achieves the universal by going personal — addressed to “mother,” “brother,” “father,” “babe.” The song is a call for tolerance, a plea for trust.
Gaye was the ideal messenger for that job. He wasn’t new to opening up emotionally: The Washington, D.C.-born artist made his name singing the ups and downs of romantic relations, including a hit two years earlier — “I Heard it Through the Grapevine” — that stood as Motown’s bestseller to that point.
Now he was directing that bold vulnerability to something bigger.
“He was highly sensitive. He would talk about being afraid,” recalled Louvain Demps, a member of the Andantes vocal group and a longtime friend of Gaye. “But to stand next to him, it was like he had all the confidence in the world. Like he wasn’t scared of anything.”
Some great music, like much important art, gets mythologized late. Courage is easy to endorse with the comfort of time.
But “What’s Going On” resonated immediately in its hometown in 1971, said Matt Lee, who grew up in Detroit and was close to co-writer Benson: “This thing lived and breathed right there and then.”
“It was Marvin’s statement of independence and artistic freedom,” Lee said. “But it was also a commentary on who we were, in real time. The impact of that record is impossible to overstate, not only in retrospect, but for what it meant at the time.”
The song had arrived “by some sort of divine guidance,” as Gaye told the Detroit Free Press in 1971.
Benson, on tour with his group the Four Tops, had conceived the song during a visit to San Francisco, where he watched police clash with hippie protesters.
As Benson reflected for Ben Edmonds’ 2001 book, “Marvin Gaye: What’s Going On,” an indispensable account of the song and album:
“The police was beatin’ on them, but they weren’t bothering anybody. I saw this and started wondering what the (expletive) was going on. What is happening here? One question leads to another. Why are they sending kids so far away from their families overseas? Why are they attacking their own children in the streets here?”
Back in Detroit, Benson fleshed out his creative kernel with Motown house writer Al Cleveland. Benson’s own Four Tops didn’t want the song and he thought it would be perfect for Gaye.
Feeling through the composition in the living room of the latter’s northwest Detroit house — Benson on guitar, Gaye on piano — Gaye was moved, but was eager to present it to the Originals, a Motown group he was now producing.
Benson pressed his case: This piece was perfect for Marvin. It needed to be his. He offered Gaye a songwriting credit.
“Marvin already felt like this,” Benson told Edmonds. “He was a rebel, and a real spiritual guy.”
Gaye relented, committed and promptly “fine-tuned the tune,” as Benson put it, tacking on jazzy flourishes and a sense of realism.
“He added some things that were more ghetto, more natural, which made it seem more like a story than a song,” Benson said. “He made it visual.”
Then a decade into his Motown tenure, Gaye was at a career crossroads, restless to grow. Inside the studio that summer, he took firm control of the recording process: With this new song at hand, he had the opportunity to make not just a social statement, but a musical declaration — a sophisticated step forward.
Unable to read or write music, Gaye detailed his sonic vision to jazz arranger Dave Van De Pitte, who set about translating to the musicians. As chronicled in Michael Eric Dyson’s book “Mercy, Mercy Me,” the “weed smoke was thick” in the studio nicknamed the Snakepit as the Funk Brothers laid down the track’s instrumental bed on June 1.
The open spirit produced some happy accidents, including the distinctive opening sax line by Eli Fontaine — plucked from his warm-up noodling.
In July, Gaye did four days of vocal work, stumbling onto an effect that would become his signature production technique.
Having cut multiple lead vocals, Gaye asked engineer Ken Sands to create a stereo tape with two strong takes — one in the left channel, one on the right — so he could take notes. While the singer listened, Sands inadvertently switched the playback to mono. A pair of velvety Marvin Gaye voices now rode along together.
“That’s where the multiple lead vocals came from,” said engineer Bob Olhsson. “He liked the sound of both. It was a process. You don’t preconceive that it’s going to be like this. You don’t know where it’s going to go.”
More voices were recorded that week in July, including a track of party chatter by a group of friends that included Detroit Lions Lem Barney and Mel Farr.
And then there was the background singing, added during an evening session with the Originals and the Andantes — the unheralded female trio whose voices adorned countless Motown hits.
Gaye set a fitting mood that night in the studio, soprano Demps recounted.
“By his request, we sang with the lights out,” she said. “That session was really different than any other, because there were a lot of specifics that he wanted. There were intricate notes that weren’t really easy to do. They were sounds in his head and heart. It was beautiful.”
On Sept. 21, the track got its final piece as musicians from the Detroit Symphony Orchestra recorded at Motown’s Studio B on West Davison.
“We knew it was something pretty special,” said Olhsson.
“What’s Going On” was richly Detroit. Gaye had been “all over the city, soaking up Detroit’s vibes and moods as he was recording,” wrote the Freep’s Bob Talbert, who was tight with Gaye at the time. With its seasoned jazz and big-band players, Motown’s ace Funk Brothers and the DSO, the track was a collective hometown feat.
“People always talk about various influences out of Detroit. This really was a hometown effort that went worldwide. It captured that community sensibility and coming-together during a challenging time,” said Chris Collins, a music professor and director of jazz studies at Wayne State University. “The production — the openness of the music involved — was a pretty spectacular example of what can come out of that.”
Collins said his 20-something son is enamored with the song and album.
“It’s in his musical life as a young person,” said Collins, also director of the Detroit Jazz Festival. “I think that speaks to the power and sincerity of that recording. It spans generation and communities.”
If Gaye was scanning the front pages of the Detroit Free Press landing on his doorstep in July 1970, he saw plenty of headlines setting the mood he would take to the vocal booth — a daily drumbeat of stories about protesters clashing with police, Detroit air pollution, congressional battles over the Vietnam draft. All there in a visceral black-and-white.
“What immediately strikes me about the time Marvin was recording and where we are in 2020 is that he uses the term ‘brutality,’ which is certainly front and center in the news today,” said Coleman, the Detroit historian. “Within that context, people like Marvin Gaye were saying ‘Black lives matter’ before it became part of the American lexicon.”
That forceful turn wasn’t met well by Berry Gordy Jr. Though Motown had recently hit big with a pair of politically tinged Norman Whitfield productions — the Temptations’ “Ball of Confusion” and Edwin Starr’s “War” — Gaye’s leap made the label chief nervous.
American soul singer Marvin Gaye visits the Mangrove Cafe in All Saint’s Road, London, in 1976, and is mobbed by admirers on the way out to his car.Getty Images
Gordy worried Gaye’s move into social commentary would derail a long-cultivated image as a romantic crooner. For 10 years, he’d had helped groom the mercurial singer into a suave star making the charts with the likes of “I’ll Be Doggone.”
In his 1994 memoir — where he owned up to his shortsightedness — Gordy recounted their contentious first phone call about “What’s Going On,” as Gaye declared his wish to “awaken the minds of mankind.” Gordy thought the idea was “crazy.”
He fought “What’s Going On” all the way through its release in early ’71, when the single was quietly greenlighted by several key Motown execs for a limited pressing.
Gordy’s issue with the track wasn’t just its lyrical theme. He may have regarded the music as too good for its own good. Musically, “What’s Going On” had a cosmopolitan feel that sent alarm bells ringing for an entrepreneur whose first musical venture was an east-side jazz-record shop that flopped.
“Berry actually thought it was a cool record. He just couldn’t see Marvin restarting his career,” said Olhsson. “In fact, if anything, Berry was hesitant about it because he was such a jazz lover. It’s almost like, if he liked something too much, he was afraid of it from a commercial point of view.”
While the parallels between now and 1970 are clear and daunting, there were changes afoot. Three years after Gaye’s recording, Detroit elected its first Black mayor, Coleman A. Young, who, in 1976, appointed the city’s first Black police chief. A civilian police commission — long called for by groups such as the NAACP — soon followed.
“That was revolutionary,” said Coleman. “And I think music like ‘What’s Going On’ helped people realize these changes could happen.”
With the 1980s and the rise of hip-hop, reports from the street and calls for justice became staple material.
At Wayne State, ethnomusicologist Josh Duchan’s course on 20th century popular music zeroes in on “The Message,” the pioneering 1982 rap hit by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.
“A song like that — which is much more explicit in its lyrics — is kind of the extension of what Marvin Gaye and ‘What’s Going On’ did years earlier,” he said. “It’s looking around at the world and saying: These are not the conditions we all hoped for.”
Detroit poet Jessica Care Moore, author of “We Want Our Bodies Back,” teamed with techno music producers Jeff Mills and Eddie Fowlkes for “The Crystal City is Alive,” released last July.
They dubbed themselves “The Beneficiaries” — a nod to the Detroit greats whose legacy they’ve inherited.
“Artists who are radical don’t always get the record deals, the radio play, the attention,” said Moore. “Marvin’s piece did, and that was really remarkable.”
Like Gaye in 1970, Moore is fueled by the moment at hand. Having felt “frozen” during the first weeks of the COVID-19 outbreak — which hit Detroit early and hard — she said she has returned to the front lines of art, galvanized by Floyd’s death. Moore has been prolifically writing, frequently appearing online, and performing at one of comic Dave Chappelle’s socially distanced Ohio gatherings in June.
“There’s a lot of weight on artists,” said Moore. “We may not have Marvin Gaye now. But we have a lot of Marvin Gayes, speaking to the times and pushing culture forward.”
Golfers call Fore! to make others aware of mis-hit balls. Etiquette is less clear on what to do when a four-door Lincoln sedan is barreling across fairways and doing doughnuts on greens.
Such was the case about 10 a.m. Thursday at Jackson Park Golf Course when a 37-year-old man drove a car onto the South Side course and cruised around for about 20 minutes before police stopped him.
All the while, stunned golfers looked on.
Officers, lights and sirens activated, pulled over the man on the course and, guns drawn, arrested him.
“I was like ‘Oh s—! This guy’s driving on the course,'” said Brian Pino, 41, who was about to putt for a birdie when the man drove on the green next to his ball and right over the flag.”
“He was as calm as an old lady in a parking lot trying to find a space.”
Allan Ryan was about to hit a 3-wood when he looked up in disbelief.
“There’s this car going across the fairway running over the 150-yard marker,” said Ryan, a retired business executive from the North Side.
Tanisha Wembley was scolding a man who didn’t pick up his dog’s poop along a sidewalk that borders the golf course along 67th Street when she looked up and saw police, guns drawn, yelling “Get out of the car! Get out of the car!”
The man complied.
“And all the people playing golf continued playing golf as this was happening and were just kind of looking over like ‘Wow! Entertainment!'” said Wembley, 49, who was in the neighborhood visiting a friend.
A golf course employee followed the man in a golf cart.
Police investigate after a man drove onto Jackson Park Golf Court Thursday.Provided
“But there wasn’t much I could do,” he said.
The car also drove over a soccer field adjacent to the first hole and plowed through the net of a goal.
“Thank God there weren’t kids playing out there,” said the employee.
The driver, Scott Chapman, whose home address is about four blocks south of the golf course, was charged with criminal damage to property and simple assault because he drove his car at an employee, said Sally Bown, a spokeswoman for the Chicago Police Department.
Calls to Chapman went unanswered Friday.
No one was injured.
“He kind of ripped up one of the greens a little bit, so the groundskeepers were a little upset,” Bown said, noting there was about $10,000 in damage.
A golfer plays at Jackson Park Golf Course on Friday, a day after a man drove onto the South Side course.Pat Nabong/Sun-Times
It’s unclear why he did it, Bown said.
Pino, who shot a video of the incident on his phone, said it was a wild round of golf but it didn’t affect his game.
“You know what’s funny, I shot the best round of my life,” he said.
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