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-
/-------------------- advertisement -----------------------\
Let NYTimes.com Come to You
Sign up for one of our weekly e-mails
and the news will come directly to you.
YOUR MONEY brings you a wealth of analysis
and information about personal investing.
CIRCUITS plugs you into the latest on
personal technology. TRAVEL DISPATCH offers
you a jump on special travel deals and news.
http://email.nytimes.com/email/email.jsp?eta5
\----------------------------------------------------------/
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
/-----------------------------------------------------------------\
Visit NYTimes.com for complete access to the
most authoritative news coverage on the Web,
updated throughout the day.
Become a member today! It's free!
\-----------------------------------------------------------------/
HOW TO ADVERTISE
---------------------------------
For information on advertising in e-mail newsletters
or other creative advertising opportunities with The
New York Times on the Web, please contact Alyson
Racer at alyson@nytimes.com or visit our online media
kit at http://www.nytimes.com/adinfo
For general information about NYTimes.com, write to
help@nytimes.com.
Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Tue Jul 10 2001 - 19:05:53 CEST