Gil Scott-Heron was fusing a Funk backbeat with radical poetry before they'd thought of calling it rap. The words are still scathing and the music is still breaking new ground.

In more senses than one, Gil Scott-Heron is a man with a voice; on record it can put the fear of God into you, in person it frequently provides a cue for infectious laughter. But in this country at least, it is his radical voice that he is best known for, and for his music which as far back as 1974 pioneered the fusion of poetry and Funk — now known as rap — which has had such a predominant influence on present day rhythm music.

Although his description of himself as a 'Bluesologist' is somewhat tongue in cheek, his deepest influences are from Blues players like Lightnin' Hopkins, Bobby Bland, Jimmy Witherspoon and Muddy Waters, who were prevalent musicians on the radio back in Tennessee where he was raised.

"I appreciated not only the fact that they were describing the sort of lifestyle I was going through, which was in the southern part of the States, but also the fact that they individually had the sort of personalities that were easily identifiable by listening to it. You could tell in the first 20 seconds who was who and what they were going to be talking about."

Other influences range from the Washington Go-Go to Johnny Cash — "Johnny Cash was an influence; he influenced me not to be like Johnny Cash" — but although his music encompasses tracks as widely varied as the African influenced Johannesburg and Ain't No Such Thing As Superman, and the hip-hop style Re-Ron, his music remains faithful to the standards of his heroes, always highly descriptive and instantly recognisable.

He calls himself a piano player, but these days his main preoccupation is with his poetry and developing the highly textured vocal style that he uses to deliver it. His earlier writing methods owed more to the improvisatory Blues tradition, although new electronic instruments have given him the opportunity to work with greater precision.

"I used to work with a click track and go in and lay it down on a piano, then bring people in — the bass and the guitar — and have them work from that. So having the bassline and the drum machine that you can incorporate in those sort of things to start off with gives you more of a firm footing as you are beginning your recording."

While lyrics provide the starting point for many of his songs, their domination of the musical material is not rigidly enforced. His approach is more inspirational than structural.

"Johnny Cash was an influence; he influenced me not to be like Johnny Cash"

"Generally I have a plot, like I lay the rhythm then I lay the additional things. And I'm working from a good guide vocal — a guide that may well be the final vocal. I sing it when I first lay it, but if I see things develop as I add sweeteners and horns and voices then I'm willing to go back and overdub the vocal, or do another one if I see certain possibilities that I didn't see when I was first setting it down. There's no standard pattern, it's not always the lyrics first, it's more organic. If I had a pattern I suppose they'd all sound alike."

But it is his vocal style that provides the focus and the character for most of his music. On Re-Ron Bill Laswell used an AMS delay on Gil's voice to give it a menacing metallic timbre, a device which the singer was none too happy with.

"I like people to understand what I'm saying and hear it clearly. I've worked a long time on my voice an' on my articulation so I don't need delays."

However, he did experiment with delays and other effects on earlier recordings, using them to more subtle effect.

"When I worked with Bob Thiele I put a filter on my voice so I sounded like one of the Viennese choirboys instead of the natural baritone that I have. I have used harmonisers, I have used delay that gives the double vocal impression, but most of the time, like on The Clan and on Your Daddy Loves You, it's just me singing all three or four parts. The harmonisers are very good because no one sings better harmony with you than you do. No one's voice blends with you like you do, so for the most sympathetic blend I would do it myself, or I would use a harmoniser on the delay to make the delay harmonic."

For most of the last decade Gil Scott-Heron has produced his own records and, like the times, his attitude to recording has changed. The changes that have occurred, though, have been more influenced by his own personal taste than by the glossy sound of top 40 radio. Since he has no desire to get into the top 10 he is not influenced by the Michael Jacksons and the Hall and Oates' of this world.

"We used to do it primarily live, I mean most of the stuff would be played simultaneously in the studio. It would give a kind of live feeling, a raw feeling. But when it started sounding more raw than live I started trying to tighten up the production aspects. By the time we did Angel Dust in '78, we had almost totally committed ourselves to doing studio production and using as many different studio advantages as we could get our hands on."

"When I worked with Bob Thiele he put a filter on my voice so I sounded like one of the Viennese choirboys"

Re-Ron, the satyrical ode to Ronnie Reagan's re-election, marked a change in the poet's output, since at Arista's behest he handed over the production of the song to Bill Laswell and his celebrated New York dance/art cronies. An admirer of Laswell's work, Gil was glad to have the opportunity of collaborating with him, but unfortunately the outcome proved to be the source of a certain acrimony. The clash really came as a result of the pair's differing approaches to music.

"I don't feel as if there's any criteria for hostility there; they did a good job but I could have done a better job because it's mine. I would have had the poem out front and they had the music out front. I would like the people to hear the words rather than have to read them."

His attitude to production differs from the mainstream primarily because words are his biggest concern and the part of the music about which he feels most protective.

"You want to present the music in as clean a fashion and as pleasant a background as you can, cause you want people to hear things. The difference between my idea of what state of the art is and what someone else thinks is that sometimes it seems as though they're using it to keep people from hearing what they're saying by putting a lot of buzz in the way. I'm using that to highlight and to emphasise rather than to distort."

Organic is a word that frequently crops up in Gil's conversation, especially in connection with his poetry, and it was the straightjacketing of the lyrical form of Re-Ron that he felt was most damaging to the effect he was aiming for.

"It was a vortex; it just kept going round and round the same way, and I like to feel that specifically my poetry is more organic than that, like there's no set place where the refrain's going to come in. I write until I get to what it was I was trying to say then bring back whatever it is I'm looking for — to make a point. In the end, their not being able to understand the context of certain lines caused them to take certain lines out. I was just deliriously happy that they had seen fit to be editors as well as producers... (laughs)... because that was a liberty I didn't afford them and shan't be criticised for affording anyone else in the future."

It may have been that Arista's idea was to cash in on the popularity of hip-hop music, however Gil had no such aim in doing Re-Ron.

"I was doing rap music before a lot of these cats was even performing so for me to go back to something I've done that long ago just for the hell of it wouldn't be valid. To go back to it because it's more communicative, because it's more accepted, I might do that."

"I think those who can do it, do it, and those who can't get cynical about it"

At present on tour in the UK, Gil Scott-Heron's band consists of Kim Jordan on keyboards, Robert Gordon on bass, crazy left-hander Ed Brady on guitar, Ron Holloway on tenor sax and Steve Walker on drums, with Gil himself adding a bit extra on Fender Rhodes and Yamaha CP20. The music they play ranges from Reggae to Bebop so obviously his musicians have to be versatile. I wondered what other qualities he looked for in the musicians he likes to play with.

"They'd have to have rehearsed before we called them, because it's too late to practise afterwards."

The infectious laugh starts up again.

"No I'm serious. A lot of times people call by or send in tapes, and you can see that their not having a position is what's kept them from getting in a position to have one. They've worked independently as far as they can go and now they need to be with some people in order to improve themselves."

For better or worse, the once fondly held idea that music and song could change the way we live has been largely dispelled in the rush for Pop megabucks. That view has never really played a large part in American popular culture, and Gil remains one of the few American musicians to maintain a consistently radical stance. So can one still hope to say anything more than 'Baby I love you' or 'Boogie on down' through the medium of popular music?

"Sure. And I think the number of people that come to see us is indicative of the fact that music that's about change is still attractive, because everybody knows that that's what my music is about; it hasn't kept anyone away from the shows. I think those who can do it, do it, and those who can't get cynical about it."

And on that note, 95% of the black music that comes over from the States these days does in fact say little more than 'Get down Baby!'and there has been a lot of criticism of it recently in the music and elsewhere for this reason. Is Soul music sick then? Has black music become insipid?

"None of the stuff that I play at my house is!"