THE TIRED REVOLUTIONARY

THE TIRED REVOLUTIONARY

Remembering the furious poetry of Gil Scott-Heron ...
From THE ECONOMIST online
It has been a week since Gil Scott-Heron died, aged 62. When the reckoning comes, there will be few musicians who will compare as commentators on social strife, racism and the lot of American ghetto dwellers.

His many obituaries reveal that people have different takes on which album was the definitive one. Some say it was his first, "Small Talk at 125th and Lenox", which consists mainly of his poetry recited to a live audience. His 1974 classic, "Winter in America", has a lot of fans too. Others say his best album was his last one, "I'm New Here", released in 2010 after a hiatus of 15 years. We probably shouldn't be surprised by the debate, given a canon that spans four decades.

But for me, Gil Scott-Heron's finest work was his second album, "Pieces of a Man", released in 1971 and the first recorded with a full band. It opens with what might be considered his signature tune, "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised", which tapped into the growing unrest among poor American blacks, when much of middle America was settling into a life of cosy consumerism:

The revolution will not be right back after a message
About a white tornado, white lightning, or white people.
You will not have to worry about a dove in your bedroom,
A tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl.
The revolution will not go better with Coke.
The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath.
The revolution will put you in the driver's seat.
The revolution will not be televised?...The revolution will be live.

It was not the first time he had recorded the song—a pared down version was also the first track on "Small Talk". The later version of "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" seems to be a hinge between the old and new Gil Scott-Heron. Where the instrumentation on "Small Talk" is sparse—just his spoken voice laid over a rhythm tapped out on a pair of congas—the more famous "Pieces of a Man" version introduces a funky bassline and the jazzy flute of Brian Jackson, itself set to become something of a Gil Scott-Heron signature. Yet the composition remains sparse, with just three instruments and without the piano or rhythm guitar featured on the rest of the album.

But the song is a hinge less for its sound than for its content. "Revolution" is a call to arms against racial injustice. And "Small Talk at 125th and Lenox" is full of such fury. On "Whitey on the Moon", for example, Mr Scott-Heron talks of how he should send his medical bills to NASA, because America is more concerned with space exploration than with clearing its ghettos of rats.

But this is out of keeping with the rest of "Pieces of a Man", and arguably everything that he subsequently recorded. From his second album, Mr Scott-Heron began a change from angry young man to social commentator. "Home is Where the Hatred Is", this album's fourth track—and if I were forced to pick, his finest—is a desperate song, describing the isolation of a junky in the face of liberal indignation:

Stand as far away from me as you can and ask me why,
Hang on to your rosary beads, close your eyes to watch me die

There is no fire in this song's belly. It is a description of impotence, not a demand for revolution. With time, his albums grew bleaker. By "Winter in America" in 1974, there was little prescription, only sadness.

Perhaps the most unluckily prophetic song on "Pieces Of A Man" is "Lady Day and John Coltrane", about two jazz pioneers whose lives were blighted by drug addiction. Mr Scott-Heron would soon follow this path, but with a difference. John Coltrane in his darkest days of heroin penned "A Love Supreme", perhaps the greatest jazz album of all time. But for Mr Scott-Heron, drugs merely led him into musical stasis. He barely released a record after 1982, although he did continue touring. I watched him perform at London's Jazz Café in 2000. He slurred his way though a set, although he never hit a bum note on his Rhodes or missed a vocal line. As he walked off the stage, a drunk in the audience threw up on his shoes. It all felt sordid. Yet still you felt yourself in the presence of genius.

Mr Scott-Heron was often described as the godfather of rap—a moniker he apparently bristled at. Yet it is impossible to listen to him recite "The Revolution will not be Televised" and not hear the way he anticipated Public Enemy, KRS-One and other rappers, who sought empowerment in the angry poetry of disenfranchised black America, and set it to a potent beat.