Music can be a very powerful thing when it comes to changing the world. Rock has been used to spread political and social messages. It has been used to enlighten, to educate, to motivate, and to protest.
These are the stories of musicians who weren’t afraid of admitting to their sexuality when society wasn’t ready to hear it. Pride Month is the perfect time to recognize the contributions and sacrifices made by various LGBTQ2 musicians during the era when you just didn’t talk about who you loved.
I’ll start by posing this question, although you know the answer, but I’ll ask it anyway. What do the following people have in common? Tchaikovsky, Handel, Schubert, George Gershwin, Beatles manager Brian Epstein, Freddie Mercury, B-52’s singer Fred Schneider, Morrissey, punk legend Bob Mould, and Michael Stipe of R.E.M.?
Here are a few more: Pioneering pre-rock guitarist sister Rosetta Tharp, Janis Joplin, Joan Jett, Mellisa Etheridge, Tegan and Sara, and St. Vincent.
All of the above — and many, many more — identify as gay, non-binary, bisexual, or someone LGBTQ2.
Who was the first rocker to come out of the closet? A good pick would be Little Richard, although he battled with his sexuality throughout his life. His image was always campy and fabulous and the original uncensored lyrics to his hit “Tutti Frutti” leave little doubt. But in 1957, right in the middle of an Australian tour, he had a crisis of faith after claiming to have dreamt of his own damnation, much of which had to do with being gay. He quit the music business and never again reached the rights he achieved in the 1950s.
The next major coming-out was David Bowie. He’s been sporadically attracting attention since 1964 when he appeared on British TV as the spokesperson for a made-up organization known as The International League for the Preservation of Animal Filament. He was just 17 at the time.
But Bowie had just started. In January 1970, he became one of the first pop stars to be interviewed by Jeremy, a gay magazine. The article had nothing to do with his sexuality, but the very fact that he appeared in a gay magazine was very radical. Just three years earlier, you could still be sent to prison for being a homosexual.
Ten months later, the cover of his The Man Who Sold the World album featured Bowie lounging in a long flowing blue dress designed by a man known as Mr. Fish. This was the most feminized male image of a rock star the world had ever seen. Many record stores (especially in the U.S.) refused to display or even stock the record, necessitating the release of a version with alternate artwork. Even so, the record sold less than 1,500 copies in America between November 1970 and June 1971. Such was the state of the world then.
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The real shock came in the Jan. 22, 1972, issue of Melody Maker, one of the U.K.’s big weekly music magazines when Bowie stated, “I’m gay and always have been.” It was largely a publicity stunt to set up the debut of his Ziggy Stardust character. But for certain people, the effect of those words was incalculable. Ziggy’s androgynous bisexuality, makeup, and glitter (along with what was described as a lewd performance on Top of the Pops) offered hope to closeted people around the planet.
Yet Bowie (via Ziggy) wasn’t the world’s first openly gay rock star. We might look to Lou Reed, whose parents sent him for electro-shock therapy as a teenager as a way to exorcise what they feared were “homosexual tendencies.”
In 1972, after leaving The Velvet Underground, he adopted a very glam image, wearing S&M and fetish gear, hair bleached almost white, and black painted fingernails. His songs often explored the kinky side of life, including “Walk on the Wild Side,” a top 40 hit that told the story of some of the more colourful real-life characters in Andy Warhol’s world: Candy Darling, Holly Woodlawn, Joe Dallesandro, and Joe “Sugar Plum Fairy” Campbell.
Even though Lou married a woman in 1973, many just supposed he was gay. Was he? Certainly bisexual at the very least, but he never was public about it.
The first rock singer to be unambiguous about being gay was Jobriath. Born Bruce Campbell, he was a former member of a forgotten California band called Pigeon. From there, he got into musical theatre, performing in productions of Hair. He was also a part-time drug addict and occasional rent boy.
In the early 1970s, he acquired a manager named Jerry Brandt who almost immediately struck a half-million-dollar deal with Elektra Records. His debut album was recorded with help from Peter Frampton and John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin. To launch the record, Elektra paid for a $200,000 billboard of a nearly-nude Jobriath in the middle of Times Square. Full-page ads appeared in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Vogue, and even Penthouse.
Another $200,000 was spent on a stage production that was supposed to open at the Paris Opera House, which included a 40-foot model of the Empire State Building that was supposed to symbolize…well, you know. And in interviews, Jobriath referred to himself as “a true fairy.”
But it all came crashing down. The Paris shows never happened, and after two poorly-selling albums, Jobriath disappeared. He bounced between New York and Los Angeles, not doing much of anything because of a punishing iron-clad managerial contract. By the early ’80s, his bathhouse habits caught up to him and he contracted HIV/AIDs. He died on Aug. 3, 1987, one week after his 10-year contract with Jerry Brandt expired.
Years later, thanks mostly to a contingent of fans who discovered him after his death — Morrissey is one of his great admirers and promoters — the world came to know about Jobriath’s contribution to LGBTQ2 history.
We need to acknowledge a few others. A British folk-rock band called Everyone Involved sang a few pro-gay songs as early as 1972. There’s a 1973 song by Chris Robinson entitled “Looking for a Boy Tonight.” A German band, Flying Lesbians, appeared briefly in 1975. Steve Grossman was an openly gay folk-blues singer in the ’70s. And in 1978, The Gay/Lesbian Freedom Band, which billed itself as the first openly gay musical organization in the world, was founded in San Francisco.
One of the great things about ’70s punk rock was the concept that music belonged to everyone and that anyone should be able to make music, regardless of age, economic background, musical ability, gender, or sexual orientation. Punk allowed gay performers such as Pete Shelley of The Buzzcocks, Elton Motello, Jayne (formerly Wayne) County, and Ricky Wilson of The B-52’s (who tragically may be the first rock performer to die of AIDS).
There were others, too. While no one in the New York Dolls was gay (at least we don’t think so), they were the first band to really push androgyny as part of their image with makeup, big hair, and of course, plenty of spandex (history records that they seem to have been the first group to perform in spandex.) Big Boys were a Texas punk band into skateboarding long before it was mainstream. Frontman Randy “Biscuit” Turner was loudly and proudly out. New Wave took the campy elements of disco and featured hundreds of techno-pop acts with effeminate men and androgynous performers.
By the early ’80s, many bravely played up their sexuality. Think Boy George of Culture Club, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, and Canada’s Carole Pope in Rough Trade, a name taken from gay subculture. She was up front about being a lesbian. “Yeah, I’ve got different ideas about sex. You wanna make something of it?” Pretty bold stuff for dull, boring, conservative Canada.
As the ’80s faded into the ’90s, projections and demonstrations of non-heterosexuality became mainstream. There’s still homophobia and prejudice, but most music fans today could care less about whether a performer is gay, straight, queer, or trans. And we wouldn’t have arrived here if it were not for those brave early pioneers.
Happy Pride, everyone.
