Fell Together: A Conversation With Gil Scott-Heron
by Jalylah Burrell
I think I'm speaking to Gil Scott-Heron when I call him Tuesday but I've got his cellular voicemail. Wednesday, the 59-year-old father of three is to begin two nights at lower Manhattan's SOB's, which he later pronounces his favorite performance venue. He has graced their stage quite often in the recent past, providing plenty opportunity for admiring New Yorkers to catch a glimpse of and a gruff note by the downtown-bred renaissance man. Much has been made of his health and legal challenges but I call because I'm interested in his work. I reach the easy-laughing artist on his home phone shortly thereafter and we dive into his early biography and music.
VIBE: I was familiar with your poetry but I think you've written a novel as well.
Scott-Heron: I started off as a novelist. The first thing that I ever got published was a novel. One of the characters was a poet... So the first things I ever had done were a novel and a book of poetry. I followed them up with another novel before I went to Johns Hopkins to get my master's, which was in Creative Writing, but novels were really my first love and poetry and other things followed behind that.
Now, do you find yourself still exploring that genre as an avenue of expression?
I am doing something that is nonfiction. I am working on a book about Stevie Wonder's campaign to get Dr. King's birthday legislated as a national holiday.
Have you talked to Stevie recently?
Last fall was the last time I talked to him before he got involved in the inauguration. When they did the program at Radio City with Aretha and John Legend and Carlos Santana, I went down and saw him and we talked for a while.
I'm wondering since you mentioned Stevie and the inauguration, what are your thoughts on the campaign and if they changed during the campaign?
I became aware of Obama at the previous Democratic National Convention in 2004 and felt at that time that he had some potential as a national leader because of the way he touched the crowd and the atmosphere and the energy that he put into them. Naturally, I watched the campaign and the work he did to get nominated and I've just been very, very thrilled with it. I've read his books. He has a future as a writer. If he hadn't become president, he had a future as a writer because there were some things that he did that, literarily, were matchless.
I'm been very impressed with him on all levels. He seems to be a fine family man and a good father and those are things that I would like to be myself. I'm a good family man and a mediocre father. I could do a better job... I still have one child who is ten years old and I'm struggling to understand what it is that she's talking about. She got the Wii system for Christmas. I had no idea. When my first daughter was small and she wanted a Black cabbage patch doll that smelled like baby powder, I had to go down and fight some old ladies to get that... You try to keep up with your kids but every once in your they take a couple of turns that you didn't see coming. So I'm shuddering now to find out, what it is and try and relate as I get further and further away from my childhood. I didn't know what the Wii system was and that were a lot of different ways to get into it.
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