AUDIO: Gil Scott-Heron (1976)
Cliff White, Rock's Backpages audio, February 1976
The soulful polemicist talks about his and Brian Jackson's Midnight Band; his diverse influences and the Spirit of the Drum; being a successful musician while doing other work; how he started writing prose as a kid; how black artists and writers are not recognised in the USA; 'Johannesburg' and apartheid; the value of correct information, and 'We Almost Lost Detroit'; writing his first novel and starting to record; 'The Bottle' as message and dance groove, and finally he and Brian Jackson explain how they write together...
Read a transcript of this interview