When Gaye died in 1984, people didn’t call it that—but the short answer would seem to be yes. Of course, Gaye’s sexual proclivities were overshadowed by his death: Gaye was shot to death by his father, an Apostolic preacher. Gaye had retreated to his parents’ house to try to clean up but spent his final months periodically demanding cocaine and pornographic videotapes. For years, he had sought out smut in any format available–even postcards–with particular interest in S&M magazines and the European bondage cartoonist Georges Pichard. (He also recorded some notorious bootlegged tracks that his friends considered homemade pornography, such as 1979’s sexual satire “Dem Niggers Are Savage in the Sack,” not released during his lifetime, and 1983’s “Sanctified Pussy,” both of which surfaced in sanitized posthumous versions on the 1985 collection Dream of a Lifetime.) When Gaye’s biographer David Ritz visited his home in Ostend, Belgium, in 1982 and saw the collection of porn that Gaye had amassed, he told Gaye that he needed some “sexual healing”–providing the title for Gaye’s last big hit single.

(Excerpted from the 2006 book Is Tiny Dancer Really Elton’s Little John?: Music’s Most Enduring Mysteries, Myths, and Rumors Revealed, published by Three Rivers Press, written by Gavin Edwards.)