Welcome to Pushback. I'm Aaron Mate.

Joining me is Brian Jackson. He is a multi-instrumentalist who in the 1970s put out a string of legendary albums with his musical partner, Gil Scott Heron.

He has a brand new album out on the label, Jazz is Dead. Brian Jackson, thank you for joining me.

Thank you, Aaron.

I want to start with your run with Gil Scott Heron in the 1970s.

Just a very prolific era for you and putting out albums that really had a huge influence on music.

How do you look back on that time now?

Well, it's kind of still a bit amazing to me because I, none of us, we didn't do it for that.

We didn't do it for fame and, you know, recognition.

We basically did it because it was something that there were things that there were

issues that we felt needed to be, needed to be addressed. And we were basically looking for the

maximum impact, the way that we could bring these issues to the fore. And we had been looking at, we were both, you know,

in the TV generation. And one thing that we had noticed about television and about then what was

the advertising Mecca, Madison Avenue, was that they were using popular idioms,

musical idioms, to sell their products.

And, you know, it occurred to us that maybe, and since there were our musical idioms to begin with,

we thought maybe it might be a good idea if we

would use those same type of formats to sell revolutionary thought.

All right, so then this leads me to one of your most popular songs, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.

This was basically a satire of the kind of commercialism you're speaking about, if I have it right.

Talk to us about that song and how it came about.

Oh, you have it exactly right. As I told you, we were members of the television generation.

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