The Last Holiday

by Gil Scott-Heron

Overview

The stunning memoir of Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winner Gil Scott-Heron, The Last Holiday has been praised for bringing back to life one of the most important voices of the last fifty years. Now in paperback, The Last Holiday provides a remarkable glimpse into Scott-Heron’s life and times, from his humble beginnings to becoming one of the most influential artists of his generation.

The memoir climaxes with a historic concert tour in which Scott-Heron’s band opened for Stevie Wonder. The Hotter than July tour traveled cross-country from late 1980 through early 1981, drumming up popular support for the creation of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. King’s birthday, January 15, was marked with a massive rally in Washington.

A fitting testament to the achievements of an extraordinary man, The Last Holiday provides a moving portrait of Scott-Heron’s relationship with his mother, personal recollections of Stevie Wonder, Bob Marley, John Lennon, Michael Jackson, Clive Davis, and other musical figures, and a compelling narrative vehicle for Scott-Heron’s insights into the music industry, the civil rights movement, governmental hypocrisy, and our wider place in the world. The Last Holiday confirms Scott-Heron as a fearless truth-teller, a powerful artist, and an inspiring observer of his times.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802120571
Publisher:	Canongate U.S.
Publication date:	12/25/2012
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.10(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

In a musical career spanning five decades, from Small Talk at 125th and Lenox to I'm New Here, Gil Scott-Heron (1949-2011) released twenty albums and many seminal singles including 'The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,' 'Home Is Where the Hatred Is,' 'Winter in America,' 'B Movie,' 'Johan nesburg,' and 'Lady Day and John Coltrane.' He was also the author of three previous books: two novels, The Vulture and The Nigger Factory and Now and Then: The Poems of Gil Scott- Heron.

Editorial Reviews

Leave it to Scott-Heron to save some of his best for last…The Last Holiday is an elegiac culmination to his musical and literary career. He's a real writer, a word man, and it is as wriggling and vital in its way as Bob Dylan's Chronicles: Volume One…This memoir reads a bit like Langston Hughes filtered through the scratchy and electrified sensibilities of John Lee Hooker, Dick Gregory and Spike Lee.
—The New York Times

Dwight Garner

Often called the godfather of rap, Scott-Heron released 20 albums and many singles, including the deeply influential “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.” Now, even after his death, Scott-Heron continues to mesmerize us in this brilliant and lyrical romp through the fields of his life. He carries us from his birth in 1949 and childhood in Jackson, Tenn., just east of Memphis, to his coming-of-age in New York City and his many and varied musical adventures with recording industry executives such as Clive Davis of Columbia Records. Scott-Heron recalls his grandmother talking to the junk man one day and the next thing he knew, an upright piano was being carried into the house; his musical career commenced when he started learning to play hymns on that piano. When the family got a second radio, he was able to listen to WDIA in Memphis, where Carla and Rufus Thomas and B.B. King were on-air personalities. When the interstate highway paved over their neighborhood, Scott-Heron and his mother moved on to New York, where his musical career took flight and soared. Scott-Heron’s memoir also gracefully calls out Stevie Wonder and his initially attempts and eventually successful campaign to establish Martin Luther King’s birthday as a national holiday. In this captivating memoir Scott-Heron movingly gives thanks for the “Spirits,” those intangible influences in his life that moved him and helped direct his life and to whom he gives back so fully through his gift of lyrics and music. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for The Last Holiday

“Leave it to Scott-Heron to save some of his best for last. This posthumously published memoir, The Last Holiday, is an elegiac culmination to his musical and literary career. He’s a real writer, a word man, and it is as wriggling and vital in its way as Bob Dylan’s Chronicles: Volume One.”—Dwight Garner, The New York Times

“A singular triumph. . . . It's [Scott-Heron’s] humility, combined with his gift for charming, unforced prose, that makes The Last Holiday such a fascinating memoir. . . . In ‘Home Is Where the Hatred Is,’ Scott-Heron sang, ‘God, but did you ever try / To turn your sick soul inside out / So that the world ... can watch you die?’ Most of us haven't; most of us have never had that kind of desperate courage. Gil Scott-Heron did, baring his imperfect soul to the world for decades. We're poorer for his loss, but richer for his words.”—Michael Schaub, NPR.org

“Striking. . . . Vivid. . . . [Scott-Heron’s] memoir is distinguished by the beauty of his images.”—Rob Tannenbaum, Rolling Stone (four-star review)

“Gil Scott-Heron’s posthumous memoir, The Last Holiday, plays back the life of a musician whose scorching political writings and recordings reflected the social injustice faced by African-Americans, inspiring today’s rappers.”—Elissa Schappell, Vanity Fair

“His tales of growing up in the South and North, of emerging as a writer and then as a singer and musician, are blunt, funny, caustic, fair-minded and occasionally loopy, just like his music.”—Jim Higgins, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“Much like his poetry, Scott-Heron's style is spare and effective, offering up jagged observations on fame, friendship and political and racial injustice. . . . Engaging and immensely human. And it is made all the more affecting with the knowledge of the calamities that were yet to come.”—Fiona Sturges, The Independent (UK)

“Even after his death, Scott-Heron continues to mesmerize us in this brilliant and lyrical romp through the fields of his life. . . . [a] captivating memoir.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Praise for Gil Scott-Heron

”Gil Scott-Heron [was] a poet and polemicist whose lyrics have inspired and galvanized generations.”—GQ

“Gil Scott-Heron is timeless.”—The New York Times

"[Gil Scott-Heron] was a warm, sensitive, altruistic and highly complex man whose music, lyrics and poetry will continue to inspire.”—The Independent (UK)

“Gil Scott-Heron, who died on May 27, 2011, aged sixty-two, was a composer, musician, poet, and author whose writings and recordings provided a vivid, and often stinging, commentary on social injustice and the black American experience; his declamatory singing style, allied to the overtly political content of his work, made him widely recognized as one of the inspirational figures of rap music. . . . Scott-Heron refined an intoxicating hybrid of jazz, Latin, and Afro idioms that established him in the vanguard of black American music in the 1970s.”—The Telegraph (UK)

From the Publisher

A delight, full of with and alliteration and studded with passages of verse . . . it is a heartbreaking read as the last testament of a much-loved man, but it should certainly be read.

Herald

One of the great pioneers of late-twentieth-century music.

Independent Whig.

A marvellous documentary of black America and life lived in the raw

Spectator

For more than two decades, [Gil Scott-Heron] has been committed to examining those facts of the human condition that most of us would rather forget . . . he is an artist who has crafted witty but crucial insights for Black America.

Washington Post

Engaging and immensely human . . . Much like his poetry, Scott-Heron's style is spare and effective, offering up jagged observations on fame, friendship and political and racial injustice.

Independent on Sunday

The formative incidents of Scott-Heron's life are placed in their cultural and historical contexts with great delicacy and precision.

Sunday Telegraph - Ben Thompson

Scott-Heron is such a fine writer . . . As readers and fans alike, we are left to mourn the passing of surely, the least likely pop star ever, one with a truly brilliant mind.

Sunday Times - Rob Fitzpatrick

This memoir reads a bit like Langston Hughes filtered through the scratchy and electrified sensibilities of John Lee Hooker, Dick Gregory and Spike Lee . . . about his own music, he could not be more simple or elegant. "I was trying to get people who listened to me," he writes, "to realise that they were not alone."

New York Times - Dwight Garner

An impressively lucid book . . . both candid and guarded . . . his final admissions are heart-rending.

Metro

Gil Scott-Heron is timeless.

New York Times

An impressively lucid book . . . both candid and guarded . . . his final admissions are heart-rending.

Metro M D

This isn't just a memoir of Scott-Heron's being raised by his grandmother in Jackson, TN, and eventually becoming a preeminent musician/songwriter, often called the godfather of rap. More important, it's also about his joining a 41-city tour in fall 1980, organized by Stevie Wonder, that aimed to build momentum for the creation of a national holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Alas, Scott-Heron died in May 2011; his book remains an important testament to a life lived in—and beyond—music.

Library Journal