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Gil Scott-Heron grew up with a distrust of television. As his grandmother, who helped raise the young poet, told him, "Anything I've got to watch is dangerous."
Son of a librarian and her estranged husband, a Jamaican-born soccer player, Scott-Heron is best known for his timeless commentary on media and activism, 'The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.' The revolution will take place at the moment when minds are changed, he said -- before the advertisers arrive: "The theme song will not be written by Jimmy Webb or Francis Scott Key, or sung by
Glen Campbell,
Tom Jones,
Johnny Cash, Engelbert Humperdinck."
Besides his intense social conscience, Scott-Heron became known for his unblinking portrayals of the perils of substance abuse in songs like 'Angel Dust' and the dance-oriented 'The Bottle,' the biggest "hit" of this hip-hop godfather's modest commercial career. So it came as a disappointment to many of Scott-Heron's fans when his long, frequent absences from performing beginning in the late 1970s were attributed to a lifelong struggle with booze and drugs.