Gil Scott-Heron -

Pieces of a Man

Posted: September 13th, 2008

Date: 1971
Release: FLYING DUTCHMAN
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When Richard Nixon became president in 1968, the country was ripping itself apart culturally, politically, racially, generationally. Every aspect of American society was under transformation; the rules and relationships were being rewritten. So with the nation in chaos, Nixon turned his attention abroad and left domestic issues to his administration. Seeking to disempower and discredit the two most politically active, outspoken groups of Americans - blacks and young people - Nixon’s ambitious aides stepped up the criminalization of drugs, turning the law and its enforcers violently against the winds of change. There was one drug, however, that escaped attack: television, opiate of the masses. As the Sixties became the Seventies, the hippie flower wilted, and poverty, racism, violence, and drug addiction were institutionalized, millions of Americans plugged into the alpha beam of primetime TV and drifted off, high as a lost balloon, untethered from reality.

While the government may have overlooked this debilitating drug, a New York City writer and street poet named Gil Scott-Heron blew the whistle in 1971. Over the urgent, thoroughly wicked groove of bassist Ron Carter (!), drummer Pretty Purdie and flutist Hubert Laws, Scott-Heron opens his emotional testament Pieces of a Man by declaring that social change could never come from watching television, that, in essence, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.” Tough answers to real, neighborhood problems will not be found on unreal TV shows!

“The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon blowing a bugle and leading a charge by John Mitchell, General Abrams and Spiro Agnew to eat hogmoss confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary”

Gil explains in his distinctive deep rasp, the voice of a black man, of an inner-city black man with knowledge and history and love in his heart.

“Women will not care if Dick finally got down with Jane on ‘Search for Tomorrow’ because black people will be in the street, looking for a brighter day.”

This entire recording rises above because it expresses legitimate hope and compassion as well as anger and despair. Gently grooving tunes “Save the Children” and “I Think I’ll Call It Morning” could only be sung with such sincerity and tenderness by a truly political artist fueled by his convictions. Gil is a junkie on “Home Is Where the Hatred Is,” fighting to “kick it, quit it, kick it, quit it” as Burt Jones‘ electric guitar punishes him with pleasure, while on “Lady Day and John Coltrane” he is the doctor, prescribing a double dose of aching soul and ascendant jazz to heal your troubled soul.

If TV is a drug, then music is the medicine. Hubert Laws spins sweetness with his flute and his saxophone. Bassist Ron Carter takes a break from his brilliant session play at CTI to anchor Gil’s groove. Pieces of a Man is poignant, potent music - tight, propulsive jazz-funk bringing vividly to life the visions and confessions of a poet observing his country destroy and rebuild itself all at once.