Never-before-heard Marvin Gaye music found in Belgium

nme.com:

Marvin Gaye music that has never been heard before has been found in Belgium.The unreleased music has potentially lain hidden in Belgium for over 40 years, according to the BBC, alongside what is likely a highly valuable collection of stage costumes and notebooks.Gaye moved to the coastal city of Ostend in 1981 after taking the business card of a Belgian concert promoter in a nightclub while he was living in London.

At the time, he was a heavy cocaine user, but his move to Belgium helped him to beat his addiction. It was also during this time that he recorded one of his biggest hits, ‘Sexual Healing’.For a time, he lived at the home of a Belgian musician, Charles Dumolin, and it is Dumolin’s family who are claiming ownership of the material.“They belong to [the family] because they were left in Belgium 42 years ago,” said Belgian lawyer Alex Trappeniers. “Marvin gave it to them and said, ‘Do whatever you want with it’ and he never came back.

That’s important.“Each time a new instrumental started when Marvin started singing, I gave it a number,” he added. “At the end when I had listened to all the 30 tapes I had 66 demos of new songs.

A few of them are complete and a few of them are as good as ‘Sexual Healing’, because it was made in the same time.“There was one song that when I listened to it for ten seconds I found the music was in my head all day, the words were in my head all day, like a moment of planetary alignment.”The family of Dumolin, who died in 2019, undoubtedly own the collection, particularly in light of a Belgian law that stipulates that any property becomes yours after 30 years, regardless of how it is acquired.