In February 1983, Marvin Gaye was apparently at the top of his game, enjoying his miraculous comeback and selling a lot of Midnight Love albums.

But he also had a lot of money worries courtesy of his divorce with Jan Hunter. And then Father moved back to the family home on Gramercy Place, Los Angeles, after a spell in Washington DC. Marvin’s short spell as ‘head of the household’ was over.

So he found himself spending a lot of time at the Olympia Boulevard apartment of his younger sister Zoela (AKA Sweetsie), and it was there on the evening of 12 February that he worked with MD Gordon Banks on a new arrangement of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ to perform before the next day’s NBA All-Star game at The Forum in Inglewood.

Accompanied by just a minimal drum-machine groove and a few keyboard pads, Marvin’s spellbinding performance was one of the greatest moments of his last five years. (Intriguingly, he also changed the words slightly, singing: ‘O say, does thy star-spangled banner’). Reportedly he loved performing for some of America’s greatest athletes, and it’s pretty clear that they loved it too.

Postscript: Ten days later, on 23 February 1983, Marvin won the only two Grammy Awards of his career: Best Male R’n’B Vocal and Best R’n’B Instrumental Performance, both for ‘Sexual Healing’.

Further reading: ‘Divided Soul’ by David Ritz