Poet, musician, novelist, cultural revolutionary, social activist, visionary: all pieces of the man, Gil Scott-Heron, age 62, who joined the ancestors Friday, May 27, 2011.
I first learned about Gil’s death Saturday morning from a posting on a friend’s Facebook wall. Throughout the day, friends posted their favorite Gil Scott-Heron songs and commented on his musical genius. There seemed to be a consensus that Gil Scott-Heron wasn’t afraid to speak the truth. Gil gave a voice to the black struggle for freedom and equality here in America. His concerns were global, though, for he spoke out against injustices at home and abroad.
Some of the songs, words from songs or comments about favorites posted this past weekend included: “The Bottle” and “Angel Dust,” songs about the perils of alcohol and drug addiction; “Lady Day and Coltrane,” which celebrates the artistry of Billie Holiday and John Coltrane; “Your Daddy Loves You,“ a father’s song to his daughter; “We Almost Lost Detroit,” which addresses the possibility of nuclear meltdown; and one of my favorites, “Winter in America.” According to obituaries in the mainstream press, Gil Scott-Heron was best known for “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” listed by The New Statesman as one of the “Top 20 Political Songs”.
Gil had help. Many of the songs written in the 1970s were the result of collaborations with Brian Jackson, keyboardist, flautist, singer, composer, and producer. Jackson, known as “Stickman,” is prominently featured on the Rhodes electric piano and flute in many compositions such as “The Bottle" and "Rivers of My Fathers."
And then there was the eight-piece Midnight Band, featured on the first Scott-Heron album I bought, “Midnight Band: The First Minute of a New Day.” It was 1975 and I was a senior in high school. Most likely, I had heard songs from the album on the Connecticut College Radio station or was impressed by the gorilla sitting in a wicker chair on the album cover, clock behind him set at a quarter to midnight. On the back cover, the gorilla was an urban “guerilla” sporting commando fatigues, ammunition belt with a grenade in the belt buckle, machine gun in his left hand, a joint in his right. As he prowled some ghetto alley, a half- moon shining in the night sky, a clock on a building in the background was set at midnight.
Songs on the jazz-blues-rhythm and blues-spoken word fusion dealt with liberation, revolution, oppression, environmental injustices and spirituality. Rain as a metaphor for cleansing and helping to usher in change and a new world was a thread that ran through most of the songs including my favorite, “Winter in America.”
I recall a friend of mine spending much too long in a phone booth (remember them?) talking to his girlfriend and passing off the lyrics from the songs written in the album cover as his own. She was impressed by his wisdom and words, he told me later.
Pieces of a Man. Like all men, Scott-Heron had his struggles, contradictions. How could someone who spoke so eloquently about the perils of substance addiction fall into hard drug use in his later years? I’d asked myself upon hearing of his travails with cocaine, which lead to jail time on Rikers' Island in New York as recently as 2006. It was as though he became the junkie in his 1970s song “Home Is Where The Hatred Is.” “You keep saying, kick it, quit it, kick it, quit it, but have you tried? It might not be such a bad idea, if I never come home again, home again.”
Gil came home to the recording studio, releasing a new album, “I’m New Here” and embarking on a tour last year. “People keep saying I disappeared. "Well, that's a gift I didn't know I had,” Scott-Heron told writer Sean O’Hagan, who interviewed him for an article, Gil Scott-Heron: the godfather of rap comes back, which appeared in the U.K-based Observer in February 2010.
No, he didn’t disappear. He was still performing, Gil said. And his music of the 70s and 80s inspired a whole new generation of musicians, spoken word and hip hop artists. I suspect Gil Scott-Heron’s work will continue to inspire future generations of artists.
Peace Be Unto You, Brother Gil.
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