Gil-Scott Heron is a groundbreaking musician/poet whose work was sampled by many hip-hop artists. His song “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” is one of the most iconic protest songs of all time. Unfortunately, his career – and his genius – was curtailed by drug addiction.
Marcus Baram is the author of Gil Scott-Heron: Pieces Of A Man which was created through over 150 interviews and several years of reporting.
“I first spoke to him back in the 80’s when I was in college. So I didn’t see him when the did the earliest stuff and when I was a schoolteacher in 1991 I went to go see him in concert and was blown away. I basically talked to him backstage. He used to perform at this club in downtown New York and I used to go see him. Years later in 2008, I was a journalist and I profiled him for New York magazine. And then we kind of kept in touch until he passed in 2011.”
Baram says that Heron, who is definitely unsung, was a hitmaker in the 70’s, with classic songs of the era like “Johannesburg,” “The Bottle” and more. But as the music industry changed, Heron’s hits declined, he was dropped by his label and he fell deeply into addiction. His work may have been forgotten but for hip-hop sampling.
“Kanye, Common, Mos Def, The Game, they’ve all sampled him. He had mixed feelings about that. A lot of the early hip hop of the 80’s was violent, misogynistic and sexist. He didn’t like that. He thought it was crude. But by the time of the Tribe Called Quest, he saw artists who were more poetic. He saw people taking that poetry to the next generation. And he performed with some of those artists like Common,” Baram says.
Baram’s Gil Scott-Heron Pieces of A Man is available here.
Click the link above to hear the interview!
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