'The state failed me, but Gil Scott-Heron didn't'

Al Nasir became good friends with Scott-Heron and was even given a "precious" private performance of his favourite song

Malik Al Nasir grew up in the care system, "where trauma was heaped upon trauma", and believes he could have ended up in prison, like many of those who had a similar experience, but for the influence of music legend Gil Scott-Heron.

The poet, film-maker and academic, who has written a book about the pair's extraordinary friendship, says how a young man from Toxteth in Liverpool came to be taken under the wing of the US musician and poet, who was often called the Godfather of Rap, is a story of chance, generosity and a shared determination to seek social justice.

He says it began in 1984, when Scott-Heron was playing in the city's Royal Court Theatre as part of a UK tour.

It was, Al Nasir says, the hottest ticket in town and a show that every member of the city's black community wanted to be at.

However, he was jobless and homeless and the 18-year-old's chances of getting in were slim.

Al Nasir, who had discovered Scott-Heron's music while trying out some of the records in his brother's collection, decided to go along regardless, hoping that he would find a way in.

He struck lucky, spotting a photographer he knew in the crowd and managing to get past security under the guise of being "her assistant".

Scott-Heron's show in Liverpool (pictured above) left Al Nasir so impressed, he talked his way backstage to say thanks

The show was everything he hoped it would be and he says Scott-Heron left him "mesmerised".

"He might have been singing a song, but it was as if it was part of the collective soul in that room," he says.

"You could almost feel the atmosphere surrounding you.

"Gil had a word for it - the 'Vibeosphere'."

He said he was so impressed by the gig, he talked his way backstage to thank the singer personally.

The pair had a short conversation, but as Al Nasir turned to leave, Scott-Heron said: "Hold on brother, I hear y'all had some riots."

Without hesitation, the 18-year-old began to fill the "titan of the US black protest movement" in on what had happened in the city three years before.

Hundreds of residents and police officers were injured during days of rioting in Toxteth in 1981

The arrest of Leroy Alphonse Cooper on Selborne Street in Toxteth on 3 July 1981 had been watched by an angry crowd and led to a confrontation in which three police officers were injured.

In the following eight days, the local community's sense of social and racial injustice erupted into riots which saw hundreds of residents and police officers injured and more than 70 buildings demolished or burnt down.

"Earlier in the day, Gil had heard from the Liverpool Black Caucus about the struggles of local blacks and now he was hearing it directly from a kid on the streets," Al Nasir says, adding that it has taken him years to process the gravity of that moment.

Scott-Heron invited the young fan back to the band's hotel, but before arriving there, Al Nasir says the performer turned to his road manager and said: "I wanna see for myself."

Al Nasir says he took the music legend on a personal tour of the area, pointing out significant landmarks and filling him in on what had happened across those nine nights.

Starstruck but keen to keep the conversation going, he says he asked Scott-Heron if he could cook a meal for him the next day.

To his surprise, the singer agreed.

A day later, Al Nasir prepared a meal for the singer and his band at a friend's flat, as he was staying in a homeless hostel at the time and says he "gave them the full works".

"I cooked Jamaican-style snapper fish with rice and peas, served with mango juice [and] I played a cassette of the best black music show in the North West at the time - Mike Shaft in Manchester."

He had bought food with the last of his fortnightly unemployment benefits and says Scott-Heron guessed he could not afford the outlay, but he refused the singer's kind offer of reimbursing him.

The night ended with Scott-Heron inviting Al Nasir to join him on tour when he returned to the UK two weeks later and from there, a friendship formed that would last for the rest of the singer's life.

Gil Scott-Heron

• The son of New York opera singer Bobbie Scott and Celtic's first black footballer Gil Heron, Scott-Heron was born in Chicago in 1949 and grew up in Tennessee before moving to New York

• His material spanned soul, jazz, blues and spoken word, and his 1970s work heavily influenced the US hip-hop and rap scenes

• His work had a strong political element - one of his most famous pieces was his 1970 debut single, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, a fierce critique of the role of race in the mass media and advertising age

• He received a posthumous Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012, a year after his death, and in 2021, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Al Nasir went on to work in retail and advertising and as a merchant seaman, but wherever he was, he would write to Scott-Heron, sending him his poetry, which his mentor would critique and give him advice about the next time they met up.

He says it was Scott-Heron who inspired him to "get an education".

"He had a very high IQ and could make very complicated ideas sound simple," he says.

He says in the years between that first meeting and Scott-Heron's death in May 2011, he shared the highs and lows of the singer's life.

Al Nasir drove Gil Scott-Heron around the UK on his final European tour

He was there when Stevie Wonder and his band gave Scott-Heron the soul legend's dressing room and later enjoyed a "very precious intimate" performance of his favourite song, Cane, but also visited the singer in prison after he was jailed for possession of cocaine.

He also drove Scott-Heron to his UK shows on the singer's final European tour in 2010, which he says was a "special time [when] we shared a lot".

"The last time I saw Gil was the final date of the tour in Rome," he says.

"Before his gig, he did a performance in a 15th Century monastery.

"He just went to the piano and played.

"Nobody had a clue who he was, only [his publisher] Jamie Byng and I and we thought it was hilarious."

Later that evening, he watched some footage of an interview which Byng did with Scott-Heron.

"In the interview Gil started talking about his grandma and her words, 'If you can help somebody why wouldn't you?'," he says.

"I just burst into tears thinking about where I had come from.

"I had a Masters degree, and my life was totally different.

"More than 30% of men in prison have been in care and that could have been me.

"The state failed me, but Gil didn't."

Malik Al Nasir's memoir Letters To Gil is out now via HarperCollins Publishers