Memoir Mondays — The Last Holiday by Gil Scott-Heron
A posthumous memoir that he had been working for over a decade, Gil Scott-Heron’s focus is as compelling as the lyrical wit and charm that graces those chapters — both skills being the equal in what drew listeners to him in the first place.
Here’s how it CATCHes readers:
Character — This book is dedicated to a purpose greater than retelling the author’s linear biography. It’s dedicated to the musicians, especially Stevie Wonder, who were successful in their struggle to establish Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday as a national holiday. The author’s trademark poetic phrasing and lighthearted smoothness is essential to the astute portrayal of those events. It, of course, ultimately tells the story of the kind of man he was and the kinds of things he cared most deeply about.
Adventure — The central narrative during the book is Stevie Wonder’s Hotter Than July tour. The events of that tour are the framework with anecdotes from the author’s life in America’s South, North, and other places across the country. His Jamaican father’s history as a professional soccer player in Scotland and his mother’s Southern roots also helped layer the geographical action that he would later trace as a touring musician.
Tribulation — Interestingly with the focus of this memoir being the tour and it’s purpose, the author avoids talking about the drug and prison problems that many new troubled his later years. Although some of these might have answered questions for some fans of his music, it may have also detracted from the story. The difficulties he chooses to focus on are about his path as an artist and the literal deaths of inspiration around him (including Bob Marley and John Lennon).
Culture — A voice of post-Civil Rights era Black music, Gil Scott-Heron’s life is impossible to separate from that culture itself. Nearly every anecdote and especially the central retelling of the Hotter Than July tour’s efforts to establish MLK Day as a national holiday (hence the memoir’s name) speaks to the cultural climate of the time. It’s a culture that the author was as much as it was one he was part of.
“I still wanted to believe I was a better lyricist but there was mounting evidence to the contrary on an album of surgical sensitivity called Hotter than July. I left my dressing room during the solo section of Stevie’s set to listen to lyrics that were more than something to say while playing piano.”
Honesty — There are moments of chilling truth in this memoir, one being an admission near the end where the author questions whether or not he has the capacity to love. Another, more musical, confession comes when a fairly cocky Gil Scott-Heron is left baffled by the talent he’s opening for. Stevie Wonder along with Bob Marley (whom the author replaced on the tour after the reggae star became sick) humbled Gil-Scott as an artist and as a man. It’s this humbleness, perhaps, that stuck with Gil-Scott years later and compelled him to tell his story primarily as an ode to Wonder’s unsung work.
CATCH score: 10/10