After The Dance by Jan Gaye

Every once in a while, I like to read a celebrity memoir. It is interesting to see into the lives of those we see on the big screen, or rock stars that have lived that rock'n'roll life..glitter, glam, glory...
Jan Gaye, second wife of soul singer Marvin Gaye, has written about her life with the super star and it is a real eye opener.
They met when she was just seventeen, he was thirty four. He was also married to Berry Gordy's sister, Anne. They were the powerhouse duo running Motown records and managing Gaye's career.
Her mother was a drug addict, who had left her in a "foster home" with an abusive woman. When she was fourteen she moved back home with her mother, and as she tells it, they were drug buddies. It was her mother who took her to a recording studio to hear Marvin Gaye..basically offering her young  daughter to him. At seventeen. The two lovers moved in together and  received the wrath of Anne Gordy, someone Gaye couldn't quite give up. By the time she was 21, Jan had given Marvin two children.  Drugs and sex fueled their relationship, as his music climbed the charts. It was like watching a train wreck, as I read each chapter..Marvin Gaye for all his music and talent, really didn't have two cents in the bank. It was all spent on drugs and lackeys and bad decisions. Really, at the end of the book I wondered how Jan had survived..because I knew Marvin hadn't.
A real glimpse into the excesses of the sixties and seventies, this book will certainly satisfy a taste for celebrity gossip,,as Jan Gaye drops quite a few names.
The book will be published mid-May..just in time to take it to the beach on Memorial weekend. And like a fan magazine, you won't be able to put it down until you have flipped through all the pages.