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I was recently commissioned to produce an illustrative spread for Issue 1 of ‘XI – North American Soccer Quarterly‘. My contribution was a piece titled ‘Celtic’s Black Arrow: A Portrait of Father and Son’, which looks at the fascinating backstory of Gil Heron.
Not only was he the first black player to play for Celtic’s first team but also the estranged father of famous poet-musician Gil (Scott) Heron – who penned the seminal classic The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.
I had a lot of fun working with the guys over at XI and took part in this audio interview in the build up to the magazines launch, hope you enjoy the images.
Zlatan Ibrahimovic illustration done as part of my ongoing A-Z project
I’m a huge Celtic fan, since birth pretty much, being born a Scottish catholic, its not really a choice, even if you never saw a game of football in your life, you were Celtic. I knew of The Black Arrow, before my time, I had no memory of him, just knew that a Jamaican had played for Celtic and they called him the Black Arrow, the Black Flash too I think.
By the time I heard that I was living in Nottingham, England. I heard it from another Jamaican guy who realizing I was Scottish asked me if I supported Celtic because that was his team. Seemed a bit weird to me, till he told me that a Jamaican player had played for Celtic so he started supporting them, and still did.
A year or two later, I think I was 17, I went to a northern soul alldayer at the Palais De Danse in Nottingham, I was just getting into soul music, influenced initially by my Jamaican friends and this was my first big soul event. Once I got into the event I was way to scared to get on the dance floor, northern soul people can dance, in fact dancing is everything, there is nothing else, just the music and the dance floor.
After about an hour the DJ, Chris King, played ‘The Bottle’, I can remember as clear as yesterday, uno dos, uno dos tres, cuatro. I don’t really remember the rest of the song, I just remember the feeling of I dunno, enlightenment or detachment, or something, it was like literally walking out of a dark room into an open field. When the song finished I was no longer on the carpet, terrified of the dance floor, I was in the middle of it, and there was a guy hugging me, he was talking but I couldn’t hear him, but I felt what he was saying. I hugged my way to the stage, climbed up, went over to Chris King and said ‘who the fuck was that?’ He picked up the 7 inch vinyl from the deck and showed it to me, Gils name burned into my memory.
I’ve saw Gil live at every possible opportunity, and missed him at many others when Gil didn’t show up, but it was probably another 10 years before I finally made the connection that these two were father and son. Still blows my mind. I think of them every time I watch the hoops play, and I still listen to Gil pretty much daily. Nice work, thanks for the memories.
Absent friends, Slainte!
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