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“The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”
-- Gil Scott-Heron (1970)
Muslims in street protests in Mumbai denouncing India’s new discriminatory laws in November 2019. Occupy Wall Street activists voicing their outrage over income inequality in the United States in September 2011. Anti-nuke protesters marching in Hyde Park, London, in October 1983. Black Lives Matter protestors marching in the streets of Washington in 2020, after the murder of George Floyd.
Activists at each of these protests around the world held signs declaring “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” borrowing the title of Gil Scott-Heron’s incendiary 1971 song to showcase their message of righteous anger and political assertiveness. It’s a slogan that has resonated through the decades, inspiring generations of rebels and dissidents--as well as advertising gurus and headline writers who have coopted the phrase for their own less- than-revolutionary purposes.
Back in 1969, 19-year-old college student Gil Scott-Heron could hardly have foreseen the song’s global impact when he first came up with the lyrics while watching baseball games on TV at his dorm room in Lincoln College outside of Philadelphia. It was a heady time on campus, amid the political ferment over Civil Rights and the Vietnam War exploding across the country. And Gil, who was one of three black children to integrate his middle school in Jackson, Tennessee, back in 1961, was right in the in thick of it, organizing protests at Lincoln to demand better health care for students, among other rights.
“The revolution will not be televised” was already a catchphrase shared in black militant circles. And the idea of putting words and music to that sentiment was already on Gil’s mind--a few months earlier, he had invited the Last Poets, a group of poets and musicians, to perform their song, “When the Revolution Comes,” at Lincoln. Inspired by
their example, his mother’s acerbic wit, the wordplay style of Langston Hughes, and the commercials that aired in between the Mets and Phillies games, he started writing lyrics that highlighted the disconnect between the consumerism celebrated on TV with the protests happening on the streets of America. He and his pals, including musical partner Brian Jackson, mused about the power of advertising to lull an audience of even the most politically-engaged couch potatoes into passivity.
In the song, Gil recites advertising slogans for some of America’s most famous brands-- Coca-Cola, Listerine, Hertz, Dove, Exxon--totems of the consumer culture of the 1950s and 1960s which had inculcated themselves into the country’s mythology and folklore. And he name-checks popular TV shows and movie stars—“Green Acres,” “The Beverly Hillbillies,” Natalie Wood, Steve McQueen--the demigods of America’s popular culture. His voice dripping with sarcasm, Gil mocks their triviality and insignificance because when the revolution comes, “black people will be in the street looking for a better day,” because “there will be no highlights on the 11 o’clock news.” He continues:
The revolution will not go better with Coke The revolution will not fight the germs that cause bad breath The revolution WILL put you in the driver's seat The revolution will not be televised WILL not be televised, WILL NOT BE TELEVISED The revolution will be no re-run brothers The revolution will be live
Long before he stepped into a recording studio, Gil already saw the poem as a song, a classic 12-bar blues track. And the next year, when he worked on his first album, “Small Talk at 125th^ and Lenox,” he recorded the lyrics to the poem, accompanied by congas and bongo drums, in front of a small group of friends sitting on folding chairs in a studio in midtown Manhattan. It was later re-recorded with a full band, including his pal Brian Jackson on flute, as the B-side to his 1971 single, “Home Is Where The Hatred Is” for an album produced by Bob Thiele, who had also worked with John Coltrane and poets like Jack Kerouac.
The song and the album were an early example of a creative work going viral, decades before the launch of Twitter and Facebook. It didn’t get much airplay on radio, due to its incendiary lyrics, but it spread by word of mouth in black neighborhoods around the country, in campus coffee shops and nightclubs in West Philadelphia, Harlem, Watts, Chicago’s South Side, and Atlanta. Poet Nikki Giovanni remembers seeing Gil perform the song at a store in Harlem and feeling encouraged that his voice--strong, black, political, poetic--was out there, shaping the minds of his generation.
The song became an anthem for a revolutionary era, honored as one of the top 20 political songs in history, and compared to Allan Ginsberg’s “Howl” and Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues.” Later, it became recontextualized and distorted into a message that became the medium again as a slogan on T-shirts and endless headlines that misunderstood the original meaning of the song. In a bitter irony, Gil himself allowed
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.
You will not be able to stay home, brother
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag
And skip out for beer during commercials, because
The revolution will not be televised
The revolution will not be televised
The revolution will not be brought to you
By Xerox in four parts without commercial interruptions
The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon blowing a bugle
And leading a charge by John Mitchell, General Abrams, and Spiro Agnew
To eat hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary
The revolution will not be televised
The revolution will not be brought to you by the Schaefer Award Theatre
And will not star Natalie Woods and Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and Julia
The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal
The revolution will not get rid of the nubs
The revolution will not make you look five pounds thinner, because
The revolution will not be televised, brother
There will be no pictures of you and Willie Mae
Pushing that shopping cart down the block on the dead run
Or trying to slide that color TV into a stolen ambulance
NBC will not be able predict the winner
At 8:32 on report from twenty-nine districts
The revolution will not be televised
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down brothers on the instant
replay
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down brothers on the instant
replay
There will be no pictures of Whitney Young
Being run out of Harlem on a rail with a brand new process
There will be no slow motion or still lifes of Roy Wilkins
Strolling through Watts in a red, black, and green liberation jumpsuit
That he has been saving for just the proper occasion
"Green Acres", "Beverly Hillbillies", and "Hooterville Junction"
Will no longer be so damn relevant
And women will not care if Dick finally got down with Jane
On "Search for Tomorrow"
Because black people will be in the street looking for a brighter day
The revolution will not be televised
There will be no highlights on the eleven o'clock news
And no pictures of hairy armed women liberationists
And Jackie Onassis blowing her nose
The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb or Francis Scott Keys
Nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom Jones, Johnny Cash
Engelbert Humperdinck, or The Rare Earth
The revolution will not be televised
The revolution will not be right back
After a message about a white tornado
White lightning, or white people
You will not have to worry about a dove in your bedroom
The tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl
The revolution will not go better with Coke
The revolution will not fight germs that may cause bad breath
The revolution will put you in the driver's seat
The revolution will not be televised
Will not be televised
Will not be televised
Will not be televised
The revolution will be no re-run, brothers
The revolution will be live
