ON THE EVENING of 28 September 1979, Caesars Palace in Las Vegas felt like the centre of the universe. Sugar Ray Leonard was fighting Andy Price for the North American Boxing Federation (NABF) welterweight title. In the crowd, sports legends like Joe DiMaggio and Joe Louis mingled with entertainers like Smokey Robinson and Cary Grant. Diana Ross sat ringside, next to Motown founder Berry Gordy. And in Price's corner, amid the television cameras and cigar smoke, sat Price's manager, Marvin Gaye, feeling like his whole life was on the line.
Gaye often spoke in boxing metaphors, and in 1979 - in the wake of a costly divorce from his first wife, estranged from his second, gripped by cocaine addiction, and badly in debt to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) - the image of the pummelled prizefighter became particularly potent to him. "I was hanging onto the ropes. I was punch-drunk," he told writer David Ritz in his biography Divided Soul. "I kept telling myself that good news was around the corner, but there wasn't anything around the corner except some big IRS dude ready to mug me. I was tired of getting beat up."
Gaye's relationship to boxing wasn't merely metaphorical. He'd dabbled in the sport as far back as adolescence, and he remained a fan throughout his life. He even managed a couple of fighters in the mid-70s, though they both proved disappointing.
At a 1978 benefit for a congressional candidate, he actually got in the ring with Muhammad Ali. Highly competitive and seemingly delusional about his abilities - never mind that the whole thing was meant to be a lark - Gaye was intent on actually boxing Ali.
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Back to the Grind - The Clipse broke up when a spiritual path called to one of the brothers from Virginia. Now, one of the greatest duos in rap returns
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The Mix - String Theory - On new album Odyssey, Nubya Garcia conducts sweeping strings over her innovative saxophone playing to mark herself out as a unique star of the UK jazz world
There are clichéd 'difficult second albums', and then there are those where you start almost from scratch. The difficulty with jazz prodigy Nubya Garcia's second LP, Odyssey, came when she decided that this new batch of songs she had written needed the sweeping majesty of a string section, before deciding to learn how to write and conduct it all herself.
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To quote one Bob Dylan: "the times they are a-changin." After 14 years of Tory rule, 4 July saw a changing of the guard in British politics as Sir Keir Starmer stood on the steps of Downing Street to mark the start of a new Labour government and - according to the man himself - a decade of national renewal.Not that the result was ever in doubt, however. A cursory look at polls over the preceding year showed that a Labour landslide was very much on the cards, and it seemed like those aforementioned Dylan lyrics were about to ring true.
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