'I guess," says Gil Scott-Heron after a pause, "that I'm coming off as if I don't want to do this interview, but it isn't really so." This was certainly a welcome statement given the futility of the exercise up to that point - several bizarre moments as I tried to tune in to planet Gil. He was sounding extraordinarily vague and extremely tired but, little by little, an occasional chuckle began to indicate his growing co-operation with the process.
That said, just about every tack taken seemed to cause him problems, especially when asked about the very thing for which he is rightly celebrated.
"Words were always very important," he says, "I started off like all babies, I couldn't talk and in order for people to understand me, words were very important." And then, just as I was about to bail, this most erudite and droll of men finally decided to get it together and donate a little information to the cause.
"I started with short stories in mid-school - like sixth grade. And I was also in various singing groups, but you never can tell how far you can go with something. But, very early on, I was interested in being a lyricist and working as a songwriter. And I think that the more you work at something, the more you become aware of how important it is to study things. And now I'm pretty pleased - I'm very pleased - that people enjoy the lyrics."
Born in Chicago on April Fool's Day, 1949, Scott-Heron grew up in the Hispanic section of New York's Chelsea district. His Jamaican father - "The Black Arrow" - had once played professional football for Glasgow Celtic, but because of an early divorce it was his librarian mother who had most impact on the young Gil. As a teenager, he took to poetry, attended the Fieldston private school and later progressed to Pennsylvania's Lincoln University, where, in 1968, he wrote his first novel, The Vulture. He felt he was faithfully following the example of those writers who had propelled the Harlem Renaissance.
"As something separate from the rest of our culture, I guess the Harlem Renaissance had to be pointed out to me. I was introduced to people like Langston Hughes and it was very important because I wanted to be a writer, and I knew if I did well they'd put it in a book. And my novel, The Vulture, was somewhat different because everybody was writing autobiography at the time. Mine was not another one about getting out of the ghetto or escaping your lifestyle."
A second novel, The Nigger Factory, was published in 1972 and there have also been volumes of lyrics and poetry.
Although he dropped out of Lincoln University after a year to pursue his writing, Scott-Heron is aware that it was education which opened up so many creative possibilities for him - firstly by simply making him aware of other black writers. He is also grateful to the women in his early life - his mother and his grandmother, who constantly encouraged rather than pushed. "I can't really see that I was chained to the desk," he says. These days, though, he is pushing himself and, finally, book number three is in the pot.
"It's the story of Stevie Wonder's campaign to get Dr King's birthday ratified as a national holiday. I've done about 800 pages on that. Canongate is putting it out and we'll have it ready by next year. I try to get something done every day, but the spirit doesn't move me every day to add pages in any sort of direct order. But I just like to feel that I've sat down and put some hours in. And if I get something out of it that I can use, that's good. And at least I know I wasn't just f***king off."
The gap between books is probably down to the fact that his early promise as a novelist was accompanied by early promise as a musician. It was at Lincoln that he met his greatest collaborator - the then 15-year-old Brian Jackson. For the next 12 years, their partnership produced some extraordinary music, peaking with Pieces of A Man, which included the indispensable The Revolution Will Not Be Televised and Winter in America, which featured The Bottle. It was powerful stuff - a unique mix of groove and lyric.
"We were writing songs for the love of it - just trying to enjoy ourselves. It was becoming independently notorious, but it was all just circumstance. It wasn't really what we were planning to do because didn't even have any ambition to record. We were in college, we were enjoying ourselves, we wrote songs but we weren't trying to have some sort of cultural revolution. We were kids."
His response is remarkably throwaway given the clout of what they were turning out. It was heavy political and social comment and it's hard to believe that they didn't give serious consideration to the potential of what they were doing. Surely, it wasn't just simply a case of kids enjoying themselves?
"Of course we always thought carefully about what we were saying. And we did want to say something significant. But it's like this: when you're doing homework and your subject is the Irish revolution, well, now, you're not necessarily trying to start another one! But it's still pretty important what you say, and you want to write about the people who participated with the kind of respect you want folks to know they need to have. But if you're asking me if I compared myself to some of the people who had done these things before, no, of course not. Sorry, but we were just kids having a good time."
Scott-Heron continued his recording career and his reputation as a spokesman grew. He signed to Arista Records in 1974 and formed The Midnight Band. The 1976 album From South Africa to South California unleashed yet another big song: Johannesburg.
Jackson left in 1978 but Scott-Heron - with the new Amnesia Express - continued as a fairly singular voice of protest and comment. It was hugely influential stuff and, on his 1994 album Spirits, he sent out a warning to those many rappers who were citing him as their inspiration.
In Message to the Messengers, he advised that if they were going to talk about things on a record they really ought to know their onions first. Despite the blunt strength of that message to the rappers, he doesn't seem quite so concerned about any of it now.
"I think that most rap artists are like 18 and .. They're not talking to me, they're talking to kids their age, and what the hell. I'm not interested to try and sum up a 20-year-old's career and figure out what his contribution was to the black movement. He's still trying to find out how he's going to live long enough to be able to drink legally."
But what about music that might be aimed at adults? What about those serious black artists who really have been influenced by Scott-Heron and themselves have something significant to say? He cites Ben Harper and Michael Franti as people he rates and it's a benediction they would certainly welcome. They, and not the production-line rappers, are the true heirs - believers in that old Scott-Heron dictum that "pop music doesn't have to be shit". That is, if the great man ever said it at all.
"Well, I'm saying that we don't have to listen to it if it is. I've said that."
Gil Scott-Heron plays Vicar Street, Dublin, on July 7th and the Savoy, Cork, on July 8th
John Kelly returns in September