The months leading up to Gaye's death had been turbulent even by the standards of a life that had already seen more than its share of disorder. He had returned to the United States from a long self-imposed exile in Europe — first Ostend, Belgium, then London — where he had retreated after a difficult divorce and severe financial problems. The European years had yielded Midnight Love, his 1982 comeback album, and its lead single "Sexual Healing," which won him two Grammy Awards and seemed to signal a new chapter.

But the personal demons that had pursued him for years had not been left behind in Europe. Gaye had struggled with cocaine addiction, depression, and paranoia for much of the preceding decade. In early 1984 he moved into his parents' home on Gramercy Place, a decision driven by financial necessity and, some who knew him later said, a kind of fatalism. He told family members in those final weeks that he did not expect to live much longer.

The argument between Marvin Gaye and his father, Marvin Gay Sr., had multiple triggers — a disputed piece of mail, long-simmering tensions, and an escalating confrontation that became physical. Gaye attacked his father. Marvin Gay Sr. then retrieved a .38 caliber revolver — one that Gaye himself had given him as a Christmas gift — and shot his son twice at close range.

Gaye was taken to California Hospital Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead. He was 44 years old. He would have turned 45 the following day.

Police initially believed Gaye had died from the gunshot wounds, but an autopsy revealed an additional finding: he had been beaten severely before the shooting, with injuries suggesting Marvin Gay Sr. had also physically attacked his son before firing. The shooting, the autopsy confirmed, was the cause of death.

Marvin Gay Sr. was charged with first-degree murder. While awaiting trial, doctors discovered he had a previously undiagnosed brain tumor — a meningioma — which his attorneys argued had affected his judgment and behavior for years. Based in part on this medical evidence, prosecutors allowed Gay Sr. to plead no contest to voluntary manslaughter. He was sentenced to a six-year suspended sentence and five years' probation, and served no prison time.

The sentence struck many observers as inadequate. The brain tumor finding complicated simple moral judgments about the case while doing nothing to diminish the loss. Marvin Gay Sr. died in 1998.

Marvin Gaye's body was cremated, and his ashes were scattered in the Pacific Ocean. The home on Gramercy Place where he died still stands in the West Adams neighborhood, a few miles west of downtown Los Angeles and a few miles east of the ocean.

His musical legacy is unambiguous. What's Going On, released in 1971 against Motown's explicit objections, is regularly cited as one of the greatest albums ever recorded — a meditation on war, poverty, and environmental destruction that had no precedent in popular music and few successors of equal quality. Let's Get It On followed in 1973. Midnight Love followed in 1982. The voice that ran through all of it — supple, searching, capable of moving from anguish to tenderness in a single phrase — remains one of the most recognized sounds in American music.

He was 44 years old when his father ended his life. The question of what the next decades might have held is one that has never stopped being asked by anyone who loved what he made.