Re: NYTimes.com Article: A Ravaged Musical Prodigy at a Crossroads With Drugs

From: rw:fresh (rob1@audiogalaxy.com)
Date: Tue Jul 10 2001 - 20:02:15 CEST

  • Next message: Marco: "RE: In My CD Changer"

    I saw Gil Scott-Heron a year or two ago in Atlanta. Some friends of mine refused to go because they didn't want their impressions of him sullied by the haggard drug addict he was
    rumored to have become. I went anyway. He looked awful, frail and much oder than his fifty-something years, and he was visibly shaking with what looked liked parkinsins(sp?) when he
    sat down at his Fender Rhodes.

    But he sounded amazing. All shaking stopped as soon as he stabbed out the opening chords of "The Bottle." His voice was deep, soulful, and still very powerful, and his playing was
    inspired, as was his band (including the amazing Bilal Suni Ali from the Midnight Band on sax).

    I can only wish the man the best in all his struggles, whatever they may be. Lord knows his music has helped plenty of us in too many ways to count.

    /rob

    mentalchatter@sympatico.ca wrote:

    > This article from NYTimes.com
    > has been sent to you by mentalchatter@sympatico.ca.
    >
    > hey Wax (and all those interested),
    > Sorry, didn't realize that other people would have to go through the whole signing in/password biz. Here's an emailed version of the piece. Hope this makes it through okey dokey.
    >
    > -db-
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    >
    > A Ravaged Musical Prodigy at a Crossroads With Drugs
    >
    > By AMY WALDMAN
    >
    >
    >
    > he judge in State Supreme Court in Manhattan stared sternly through
    > her glasses at the defendant, whose body trembled. "You have been
    > around this planet for a long time, and you've been using drugs for
    > a fairly substantial amount of time as well," she said. "What I
    > want is for you to go and get some help with this problem."
    >
    > She was giving Gil Scott-Heron a choice. He could go into a
    > lengthy drug rehabilitation program. Or he could go to state
    > prison.
    >
    > Mr. Scott-Heron, the musician, writer, spoken-word poet and
    > activist whose politically pointed lyrics in the 1970's helped give
    > rise to rap, reached a crossroads on July 2. After years of reports
    > about his drug use, and after 10 days in jail, the gaunt 52-
    > year-old pleaded guilty to felony possession of cocaine, and agreed
    > to enter a residential treatment program in September.
    >
    > In return, Mr. Scott-Heron, the onetime prodigy whose albums full
    > of anthems about race, economics, love and addiction have found
    > fans across several generations, was allowed to leave the country
    > for a European tour that was already supposed to have been under
    > way.
    >
    > That moment of courtroom reckoning has inspired dismay among
    > friends who see him as a victim of punitive drug laws, and hope
    > among others who want him to get help, but little surprise. Mr.
    > Scott-Heron has always denied having a drug habit, and continues to
    > do so, a d a m EMAIL souljazzantly. "Most of the people who comment, I've never
    > smoked a joint with," he said. But friends, relatives, fans and
    > professional associates have concluded differently. Cocaine, they
    > believe, particularly crack cocaine, has had him in its grip for
    > years.
    >
    > His body, if nothing else, would seem to give him away. His cheeks
    > are sunken, many of his teeth gone, his physique emaciated, his
    > deep, rumbling voice sometimes slurring into unintelligibility. A
    > reviewer described him as "a raggedy old man." A fan wrote on the
    > Internet last week: "Life, and the elements within, has beat the
    > brother down pretty bad, as many of you who have seen him perform
    > recently will attest."
    >
    > Mr. Scott-Heron is certainly not the only famous person to battle
    > addiction, or even the best known. His case, like that of Robert
    > Downey Jr. or Darryl Strawberry, shows how fame adds an
    > excruciating public cast to private disintegration, but also how it
    > can insulate a person against the worst consequences of his habit.
    > Drug user or not, Mr. Scott- Heron is still a profitable commodity
    > to many people, whether promoters, publishers or band mates, who
    > know that to confront him about his drug use could mean losing his
    > favor.
    >
    > Mr. Scott-Heron said in an interview last week: "The people who
    > have the most access to me — people who I've played music with for
    > 20 years — the fact that they're still around, either they have the
    > I.Q. of a plant or I don't have a problem." He pleaded guilty, he
    > said, only because he had to keep his tour commitments: "I had to
    > say what I had to say to go where I needed to go."
    >
    > When he began his career with an explosive brilliance, there was
    > no hint that a judge would be deciding his fate 30 years on. Born
    > in Chicago, raised in Tennessee and New York, he won a scholarship
    > through his writing to the prestigious Fieldston School in the
    > Bronx. He went on to Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, and at 19,
    > wrote his first novel. At 21, he released his first album, which
    > included the iconic "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised." He was,
    > wrote Nat Hentoff, the columnist, a "protean phenomenon."
    >
    > He set angrily political poems about black pain and what he
    > regarded as American hypocrisy to funk. He wrote of the race into
    > space in "Whitey on the Moon":
    >
    > A rat done bit my sister Nell.
    >
    > (with Whitey on the moon)
    >
    > Her face and arms began to swell.
    >
    > (and Whitey's on the moon)
    >
    > I can't pay no doctor bill.
    >
    > (but Whitey's on the moon) . . .
    >
    > He penned lyrics about
    > Watergate, illegal immigrants, and, in one of his biggest hits,
    > "Johannesburg," apartheid. He rapped about Ronald Reagan in
    > "Re-Ron."
    >
    > And he empathetically addressed addiction's cost and chokehold.
    > "You keep sayin' kick it, quit it, kick it quit it! God, did you
    > ever try to turn your sick soul inside out so that the world could
    > watch you die?" he wrote in "Home Is Where the Hatred Is."
    >
    > People said hearing his music changed their lives. In 1975, he was
    > the first artist signed to the Arista label, where he made 11
    > albums. He was seen as a legend in the making.
    >
    > Today, although rappers like Chuck D of Public Enemy cite his
    > early work as a major influence, he is seen as someone who did not
    > make it as far as his talent merited. Many artists become less
    > productive or reliable over time even without drugs, and many
    > struggle with record labels, as Mr. Scott-Heron has. (He was
    > abruptly dropped by Arista in 1985.)
    >
    > But it seems likely that some of his promise was squandered
    > through drugs. Since 1984 he has made only one new studio album,
    > the 1994 "Spirits." He has continued to tour regularly, and sell
    > out shows often, but also has earned a reputation for failing to
    > show up for concerts. And he has been arrested on drug charges in
    > England, Canada and Australia as well as New York.
    >
    > "Has anyone seen Gil Scott-Heron?" one fan wrote on the Internet
    > after Mr. Scott-Heron did not appear for a performance.
    >
    > Another fan wrote, "This happens a lot when Gil is supposed to
    > play," adding, "Go and see him before it's too late."
    >
    > Still, Mr. Scott-Heron has maintained enough function, including
    > writing a nonfiction manuscript that he says is 800 pages, to cite
    > it as evidence that he is not a regular drug user. "It's hard to
    > have a habit when you're working all the time," he said at the
    > apartment in a drug-infested part of Harlem where he lives.
    >
    > Prickly when the subject of drugs arises, he is otherwise charming
    > and funny. An avid sports fan, he said of the Mets, "I think
    > they're having a worse year than I am."
    >
    > To his younger half brother, Denis Heron, that ability to get by
    > is the problem. "I guess we were hoping he would hit bottom, and we
    > could jump in," Mr. Heron said. "But he's a survivor. He's learned
    > how to hover right above crashing."
    >
    > The challenge that his situation has posed for his family, friends
    > and the criminal justice system is whether, and how, to force help
    > on someone who denies that he needs it.
    >
    > "I sort of lost interest," said Mr. Heron, who barely sees his
    > brother anymore, adding that he saw nothing to do "short of
    > grabbing him and throwing him in a room and saying, `One of us
    > isn't walking out until we're both sober.' "
    >
    > In the end, Justice Carol Berkman of State Supreme Court did
    > resort to coercion — threatening prison to force treatment.
    >
    > "He didn't want to do this, he had to be pushed," said Mr.
    > Scott-Heron's Legal Aid lawyer, Robert Kitson. "He had to be put in
    > jail and threatened with the end of his tour before he went into
    > rehab."
    >
    > Outside the courtroom, the person pushing the hardest has been Mr.
    > Scott-Heron's former girlfriend Monique de Latour. She has
    > confronted his band mates for their failure to act. She has urged
    > promoters not to book him, saying that supplying him with cash
    > supported his habit. She has pressed prosecutors to put him in
    > treatment. And on July 2, she faxed Justice Berkman a letter
    > arguing for rehabilitation, not prison.
    >
    > Many of Mr. Scott-Heron's friends see her as a woman scorned
    > venting her fury. They say that she is trying to ruin his life, and
    > that she has betrayed him by publicly discussing his drug use and
    > helping ensnare him in the criminal justice system.
    >
    > Ms. de Latour is "vicious and malicious," said Alistair Abrahams,
    > Mr. Scott-Heron's manager in Europe, who was busy last week trying
    > to reassemble the pieces of a tour. Mr. Scott-Heron said he had not
    > seen Ms. de Latour in 18 months, and called her a "very unhappy
    > woman."
    >
    > Ms. de Latour, an artist whom Mr. Scott-Heron met in Australia in
    > 1995, is undeterred. "If they want to blame me, that's fine, if
    > it's going to get Gil some help," she said. His band mates "think
    > he needs to be on stage, whatever it takes," she said. "My point
    > is, he may drop dead next week, and then you won't have anyone to
    > be on stage."
    >
    > His band mates talk not about drugs, but about Mr. Scott-Heron's
    > generosity. Larry McDonald, who plays in Mr. Scott-Heron's band,
    > Amnesia Express, said, "No matter how people perceive someone with
    > problems like this, he is one of the nicest people I've ever been
    > around, and probably the closest I've come to working with true
    > genius."
    >
    > Mr. Scott-Heron's case poses a question: does friendship mean
    > helping someone to live as he wishes or forcing him to live as he
    > should? Some friends see drug use as a personal choice. "I think
    > someone should be free to do to themselves what they wish," said
    > Jamie Byng, publisher of Canongate Books, which is reissuing Mr.
    > Scott-Heron's novels and poems in the United States. He blamed "the
    > absurd war on drugs" for Mr. Scott-Heron's plight.
    >
    > Mr. Scott-Heron's lawyer agreed, pointing out that his client now
    > has a felony on his record for possessing 1.2 grams of cocaine.
    >
    > Mr. Byng did say that he has so worried over Mr. Scott-Heron's
    > health over the years that he feared getting a call saying he was
    > dead. But, he and others said, it was not their problem to solve.
    >
    > "I didn't realize that playing God was something I was supposed to
    > do," said Larry Gold, the owner of S.O.B.'s, the club in Manhattan
    > where Mr. Scott-Heron often plays.
    >
    > Some argue that there has always been a connection between drugs
    > and art. And some wonder how sobriety would affect Mr. Scott-Heron.
    > "There's certainly the possibility that when somebody sobers up
    > they're not as vital, not as creative, not as charismatic," said
    > Anuj Desai, editor of Black Book magazine, which published a
    > rhyming piece by Mr. Scott-Heron this month.
    >
    > It is hard to assess Mr. Scott-Heron's creativity now, because so
    > little of it has been made public of late. The manuscript of his
    > latest book, "The Last Holiday," which he has been working on for
    > at least eight years, has just been delivered to his publisher. It
    > is his extended riff on a tour with Stevie Wonder in the early
    > 1980's to help make the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday
    > a national holiday.
    >
    > The success of an 18-to-24-month rehabilitation program, the
    > length the judge suggested, is hard to predict. Long-term treatment
    > is considered the most effective, but coerced treatment has yielded
    > mixed results.
    >
    > Last week, Mr. Scott-Heron, overjoyed to be free, and free to
    > tour, seemed unconcerned. In September, he said, he would try to
    > convince the judge that she had been wrong about him. If not, he
    > would agree to her conditions — rehab or prison.
    >
    > Asked if he had ever been in a program before, he replied, "I was
    > on `Saturday Night Live.' "
    >
    > http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/10/nyregion/10GIL.html?ex=995792509&ei=1&en=239234965ad3e948
    >
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