There were more questions about how the name came to be spelled with the hyphen in the early half of the seventies when I began recording and publishing. I would, of course, go through the process of describing how it came about; that my mother’s maiden name was my middle name and that the hyphen was a symbol of the joining of two families, The Scotts and The Herons.

     It was not and still is not an American tradition and that may not be why other Americans have done it. They may just think that it’s cool. I admit to feeling as though it was distinguished, artistic in a way, and initially I only used it to autograph my poems or songs. I went through grammar school and high school as simply Gilbert Heron or Gilbert S. Heron, eventually Gil Heron before  I determined that I preferred the lower case spelling and that the Scotts really were my primary family connect. I have signed things since 1967 or ’68 as ‘gil scott-heron’.

     It would be unreasonable to think I latched on to this description of myself as properly accurate, beyond objection, without investigation. I do little in the realm of automatic acceptance, however, but as my story unfolds you will see revealed my total involvement and credits for my successful evolution to The Scotts. Because that is who I am and what I am. I was identified and respected in Jackson as a Scott: ‘Bob Scott’s boy’. I was identified as though The Herons did not exist.

     My mother and father separated when I was one and a half years old. My father had decided to take an opportunity to do what I believe he always wanted to do: play football. Soccer. At the highest level. Against the best players. On one of the best teams. Celtic. In Scotland. It was, for him, the chance of a lifetime; something that has been beyond the reach and outside of the dreams of Blacks. To play with this team was a Jackie Robinson invitation for him. It was an opportunity to see who he was and what he was in the game with the best; to avoid sliding through fits of old age and animosity and spasms of ‘I coulda been a contender’ that no-one believes. It can even make you doubt yourself. What you knew. What you would have sworn to if anyone was willing to listen.

     I was and am a Scott-Heron. I was and am ‘Bob Scott’s boy’. My grandmother taught me ‘what her husband taught her’. But I am also the son of Gil Heron. No doubt. Placing me along the lines of those who preceded me was easy enough, but tracing the facets of who and what was responsible for which of my assets and debits were inherited from which direction was more difficult. Because the subjects were not available to testify and be observed and the witnesses at hand were all prejudiced either for or against.

     So, as a spindly legged youngster I made my faults and factors all mine. I lived in a solid, single storey brick square that sat comfortably like a Buddha watching the traffic creep past on Cumberland Street.

     The ‘Good man, Bob Scott’ folks were in Jackson. In South Jackson. That’s where all the Black folks lived. And they were liable to turn up anywhere I made an appearance. Suddenly. A substantial percentage of the community members were also from that generation. It seemed that the numbers were split between folks who were easing towards senior citizenry and those of high school age or less. The hole was in the middle, people who were my mother’s age. Those were the folks who had left Jackson and Tennessee for factory work and urban life in the north and further west: St. Louis and Memphis and Chicago. Somehow their Children, like me, all ended up in Jackson with their grandparents, aunts and uncles.

     I didn’t mind being connected to Bob Scott. I just didn’t know him. Bob Scott died the year before I was born. Under consideration I decided that most things that were important had happened just before I was born. My grandfather. My father. The Second World War. Jackie Robinson. The things that were important to the people in church or on the front porch at night. They had gotten all of their living done and accomplishments were strung out behind them like pearls on a leash. Lazy evening conversations would allow us all to take figurative walks through the gardens where those highlights of their lives had been planted.

     It was probably there that I decided I got my love for books from my mother the librarian, and my obsession about sports and games from my father. I grabbed that split of my gifts from my parents. And I held onto it until I heard about my grandfather’s pitching arm and heard my father’s poetry.

ACCORDING TO MY GRANDMOTHER I ARRIVED AT THE HOUSE ON SOUTH CUMBERLAND STREET WITH HER IN DECEMBER OF 1950. SHE HAD COME TO CHICAGO TO COLLECT ME FROM MY MOTHER AFTER THEY AGREED I WOULD BE BETTER OFF IN TENNESSEE WHILE EVERYTHING IN MY MOTHER’S LIFE WAS RESTRUCTURED. LIKE WHERE SHE LIVED, HOW SHE LIVED AND, TO BE BLUNT, WHO SHE DIDN’T LIVE WITH. SHE AND MY FATHER, GILBERT ST. ELMO HERON, HAD AGREED TO DISAGREE AND WERE TO MAKE THIS DIFFERENCE OF OPINION AS OFFICIAL AS THEIR AGREEMENT HAD BEEN, IN DECEMBER. I WAS NOT NEEDED AS EITHER REFEREE OR WITNESS TO THIS ACTION AND WAS SENT ON ‘THE SEMINOLE’ WITH MY MOTHER’S MOTHER. ACCORDING TO THE PLAN I WOULD BE WITH HER FOR SIX MONTHS. ONCE AGAIN, I WAS NOT CONSULTED.

AS I GREW UP I WAS BLESSED. I HAD THE RUN OF AN AGING NEIGHBOURHOOD IN THE SOUTH SECTION OF TOWN WHERE I WAS ALWAYS NEAR A ‘COUSIN’ OR SOMEONE WHO RECOGNIZED ME AS A DESCENDANT OF A FAMILY THAT WAS NEAR LEGEND IN SOUTH JACKSON, AN HEIR OF BOB AND LILY SCOTT. MY EVERY APPEARANCE WAS A REMINDER OF SOME HAZY HAPPENING FROM THE HALCYON DAYS BEFORE CUMBERLAND STREET WAS PAVED AND BEFORE JACKSON WAS LARGE ENOUGH TO BE SEEN ON MOST STATE MAPS.

THE MOST POPULAR SPORT IN THE SOUTH WAS BASEBALL AND THE STANDS FOR THE LITTLE LEAGUE GAMES WERE ALWAYS FAIRLY CROWDED WITH MATURE COMMUNITY EXPERTS. MY GAME WAS SOMEWHERE BETWEEN MEDIOCRE AND ALRIGHT, BUT MY PITCHING REMINDED THEM OF ‘STEEL ARM’ BOB SCOTT, MY GRANDFATHER, WHO ONCE PITCHED FOR THE LOCAL TEAM. MY RIPPING AND RUNNING IN GENERAL THROUGH THE DUSTY STREETS BROUGHT BACK STORIES OF THE FOUR SCOTT CHILDREN THAT HAD RUN AND RIPPED TWENTY YEARS BEFORE I ARRIVED. EVERYONE REMEMBERED THEM SO JACKSON WAS LIKE A TOWN FULL OF PARENTS AND GRANDPARENTS. I WAS WELCOMED EVERYWHERE.

I WAS FAIRLY POPULAR AMONG MY SCHOOLMATES AND FELLOW COMPETITORS ON THE VARIOUS TEAMS. MY GRADES WERE VERY GOOD THROUGH ELEMENTARY SCHOOL. A FEMALE CLASSMATE NAMED MARY ELIZABETH MONROE TOLD ME IT HAD BEEN DETERMINED THAT I WOULD HAVE BEEN HANDSOME IF MY LIPS WEREN’T SO BIG. BUT I FIGURED I WOULD NEVER MAKE IT BECAUSE THERE WAS NOTHING I COULD DO ABOUT THAT.

THOUGH MY GRADES WERE GOOD AND I DID WELL IN SPORTS THERE WAS STILL ONE AREA WHERE I COULD NOT AVOID BEING THE BUTT OF EVERYONE’S JOKES, MY BIRTHDAY. IF I HEARD IT ONCE I HEARD IT A THOUSAND TIMES: ‘AH-HA! APRIL FOOL!’ I HEARD IT SO MUCH I ALMOST WISHED I WASN’T SO POPULAR AND WELL KNOWN.

THERE WAS NO HISTORICAL PRECEDENT. APRIL 1 WAS UNLIKE ANY OTHER HOLIDAY. WHEN JESUS WAS AROUND THERE WAS NO CHRISTMAS HOLIDAY. COLUMBUS WAS JUST CHRISTOPHER AT HIS HOUSE. HIS BIRTHDAY WAS HIS DAY, BUT IT WASN’T ‘COLUMBUS DAY’. I WAS BORN ON APRIL 1 AND IT SORT OF BECAME MY DAY.

IT WAS CURIOUS THE WAY MY LIFE AND PEOPLE IN MY LIFE HAD COLLISIONS WITH HOLIDAYS AND EVENTS OF ONE FORM OR ANOTHER ON CALENDARS. MY GRANDMOTHER WAS BORN ON VALENTINE’S DAY. MY MOTHER WAS BORN ON ‘D DAY’, JUNE 6. MY WEDDING ANNIVERSARY WAS ‘PEARL HARBOUR DAY’, DECEMBER 7. I WILL LEAVE IT UP TO YOU TO DETERMINE WHICH ONE OF ALL OF THESE DAYS DRIPS WITH IRONY.

I WAS ROMPING AND STOMPING AND RIPPING AND RUNNING THROUGH THE FIELDS OF JACKSON, TENNESSEE, FIRST PAST THE SIX MONTHS THAT HAD BEEN PLANNED IN DECEMBER OF 1950 AND THEN PAST THE SIX YEARS THAT GOT ME TO THE SAME SCHOOL MY MOTHER HAD ATTENDED, ST. JOSEPH’S, BEING TEASED ABOUT MY BIRTHDAY, TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AWAY FROM A JOURNEY BACK AND FORTH ACROSS THIS COUNTRY AND CANADA TRYING TO HELP STEVIE WONDER MAKE SOMEONE ELSE’S BIRTHDAY MEMORABLE. YOU SIMPLY NEVER CAN TELL WHERE AN ADVENTURE WILL TAKE YOU OR HOW REWARDING IT CAN BE.

One glance at Now and Then and it becomes evident that this is not merely a collection of a songwriter’s lyrics. The song-poems of this undisputed “bluesologist” triumphantly stand on their own, evoking the rhythm and urgency which have distinguished Gil Scott-Heron’s career.

This, the first ever collection of his poems to be published in Britain, carries the reader from the global topics of political hypocrisy and the dangers posed by capitalist culture to painfully personal themes and the realities of modern day life. His message is black, political, historically accurate, urgent, uncompromising and mature and as relevant now as it was when he started, back in the early seventies.

The Vulture relates the strange story of John Lee’s murder – telling it in the words of four men who knew him when he was just another kid working after school, hanging out, waiting for something to happen. Just who did kill John Lee and why? A hip and fast-moving thriller.

The Nigger Factory is a biting satire set on the campus of Sutton University, Virginia. The failure of Sutton to embrace the changing attitudes of the sixties has necessitated has caused disaffection among the black students and revolution is nigh.