The Life and Death of Marvin Gaye

After nine months, he returned to L.A. to find his financial problems intact. He reluctantly agreed to a concert tour of Europe in 1981, then stayed abroad three years to avoid the IRS back home.

He took up with Eugenie Vis, a blonde groupie he bedded after a concert in Amsterdam.

Vis had expected romantic lovemaking from the sex-symbol singer. Instead, she said, Gaye made love "without any feelings of warmth," then went impotent when she cried over his lack of romance.

Vis told author Turner that Gaye introduced her to group sex and voyeurism.

She said, "He liked to be the master. He also liked to experiment. Once he had a whip and he played with it. Another time he asked me to sleep with some other women because he wanted to see that, but he never hurt me or let himself get out of control."

While he was abroad, Motown released its final Gaye recording of new material, "In Our Lifetime." The company had pressured him to produce the record for years, but Gaye had dallied. The label finally issued the record without the singer's approval, and he was furious.

"I hadn't completed it," he said. "Can you imagine saying to an artist, say Picasso, you're been fooling with this picture long enough?"

His relationship with Motown was irreparably damaged, and in 1982 the label sold his contract to CBS Records.