“In fact, it’s the perfect country to put on weight. I can’t resist your pastries… You don’t find the same ones in America. In fact, the food here reminds me a lot of America”said in May 1981 the American singer and songwriter Marvin Gaye on Belgian television who lived for eighteen months in Ostend, Belgium.
The great star of the Motown label, plunged into depression, failure and drugs in the United States, recovered there, at the invitation of the promoter and Belgian DJ Freddy Cousaert who hosted him. Marvin Gaye loved to eat the small dishes of his host family, but his favorite was the chicken curry cooked for him by a very young, penniless cook, already a singer…
“And we were talking about life”
Hotel owner Freddy Cousaert asked the kitchen-savvy Arno to prepare meals for the soul music star every day for nearly a year: “In the past, I went to hotel school. When I was young, I worked in the kitchens. And that’s how I met Marvin, what…” confided Arno to the magazine “8:30 p.m. on Saturday” (replay).
“In the afternoons, we took walks on the beach… and we talked about life, specified the artist born in Ostend and disappeared on April 23, 2022, at the age of 72. I had problems with my girlfriend at the time. He said to me: ‘Listen Arno… You should never tell a woman that you are in love with her, except to your grandmother…'” Marvin Gaye, who composed his planetary hit Sexual Healing during this retreat, was killed by his father during an argument in April 1984 in Los Angeles.
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