The introduction of Section 28 galvanised the disparate gay rights movement in the UK into action, with groups including Stonewall, OutRage! and Schools Out (originally The Gay Teachers Association) campaigning against the act, and pop stars recording songs in protest. Agitprop band Chumbawamba, keen supporters of LGBT rights, released the single ‘Smash Clause 28!’, and Boy George’s solo single ‘No Clause 28’ was a damning indictment of the government’s plans put to a thumping dance beat. If anyone in Britain was still questioning George’s sexuality, they were in for a rather rude awakening. In June, at the behest of Stonewall co-founder Ian McKellen, the Pet Shop Boys appeared at the anti-Clause 28 benefit Before The Act at London’s Piccadilly Theatre, performing their recent Number One hit ‘It’s A Sin’.
Formed in London in 1981 by Smash Hits staff writer Neil Tennant and Blackpool-born architecture student Chris Lowe, the pair had been making music together for a couple of years before Tennant was sent to New York to interview The Police: as luck would have it, he and Sting had been to the same school. Neil took advantage of the situation, taking a demo tape the pair had worked up to Hi-NRG producer Bobby Orlando (aka Bobby O), who had already achieved some success producing Divine. Tennant was a huge fan: ‘Meeting Bobby O was an even bigger thrill than meeting Sting. I have admired his production techniques with people like Divine as well as on his own records for a long time.’10
Bobby O would produce their first single, a prototype of their giant hit ‘West End Girls’. In all they would record 11 tracks with him – including early versions of hits ‘Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots of Money)’, ‘Rent’ and ‘It’s a Sin’. Released by Epic in the UK, this early version of ‘West End Girls’ failed to chart. The duo extracted themselves from their deal with Bobby O (Bobby had apparently turned down working with Dead or Alive in favour of the Pet Shop Boys)11 and signed to Parlophone in Britain, formerly home to the Beatles and part of the giant EMI corporation. Their second single for the company, a re-recorded ‘West End Girls’, quickly shot to the top of the singles charts. Leaving Bobby O behind cost them $1 million,12 but EMI had a monster hit-making machine on its hands.
Strange as it may seem now, in the 1980s the majority of Britain’s (resolutely closeted) LGBT pop stars were unmoved, at least publicly, by the crisis in our hospitals, our schools and in our daily lives. At a time when people could still be sacked from their job for being gay or lesbian, and when pubs, clubs and other businesses could refuse to serve you simply for being gay, the community needed a figurehead, someone that could appeal to both the gay and straight communities – yet very few people wanted to stick their head above the parapet. Not Freddie Mercury, not Elton John and not George Michael. It was up to Tom Robinson, Jimmy Somerville, Boy George and the Pet Shop Boys to educate people. In America, the situation was worse, with a capella act the Flirtations, fronted by gay activist Michael Callen, one of the very few groups brave enough to put the fight against HIV and AIDS at the very heart of their set: the group also appeared in the film Philadelphia, performing an a cappella version of ‘Mr. Sandman’.
When Elton and George Michael did decide to record together, the end product was the resolutely straight (and sexist) ‘Wrap Her Up’: neither of these two future gay icons was ready to risk harming their respective fan bases. Elton, who in 1984 married German recording engineer Renate Blauel, had ‘come out’ as bisexual to Rolling Stone in 1976, an act that was perceived to have damaged his career in the States, with letters calling John a pervert being sent to the magazine and many so-called fans refusing to buy his albums. It’s no wonder that he felt he had to conform. Besides, he was also dealing with an onslaught of lies peddled by British tabloid The Sun, which splashed everything from a supposed predilection for rent boys to animal cruelty (in the September 1987 ‘story’, ‘The Mystery of Elton’s Silent Dogs’) across its front page: Elton sued, was offered £1 million in damages and roughly half as much again in costs by The Sun before the case (just one of a total of 17 lawsuits Elton filed against the paper around that time), got to court and received a full apology. Editor Kelvin Mackenzie and owner Rupert Murdoch lost not only a considerable amount of money and face: the paper also suffered a substantial slump in sales. The British public were becoming sick of the relentless bullying.
‘Elton was out,’ Tom Robinson, who worked with John on the albums 21 at 33 and The Fox, insists. ‘He came out as bisexual and he subsequently fell in love with Renate and married her. That wasn’t him going back in to the closet, he genuinely was sexually attracted to her.’ Four years after marrying, the couple split and John came out as gay. ‘I honestly didn’t think it would hurt my career,’ John revealed to The Today Show host Matt Lauer in 2012. ‘It did a little bit. In America, people burned my records and radio stations didn’t play me’. Yet after his marriage failed and The Sun coughed up it became increasingly obvious that the public were ready to accept him for what he was.
Bernard Manning and his outdated cohorts would have had a fit had they met Sleazy Christopherson and Neil Andrew Megson, aka Genesis P-Orridge, two men who made art from uncompromising sexual imagery and unsettling industrial sounds. The genderfluid Genesis (they prefer ‘third gender’) was once vilified by the British media as ‘the most evil man in Britain’ for their fixation with death cults, fascist iconography and occultism. The two (with Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti) would form Throbbing Gristle, invent industrial rock music and spawn first Psychic TV and then Coil, the first out-band to be based around a gay couple: Peter ‘Sleazy’ Christopherson and his boyfriend (and former member of Psychic TV) John Balance. Coil were at the forefront of British avant-garde music and were resolutely, unapologetically, in-your-face gay with a capital G. The front cover of the band’s debut album featured a male backside framed by an upturned crucifix; they provided the soundtrack to two Derek Jarman films and contributed the music to the documentary Gay Man’s Guide to Safer Sex. As well as working with P-Orridge in both Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV, Christopherson was a designer and photographer, and one of the three partners of the album cover design group Hipgnosis, who produced iconic artwork for albums by Pink Floyd, Genesis, XTC and many others. For all of their chutzpah, Coil were only ever going to appeal to a fringe audience – unlike their sometime collaborator Marc Almond.
‘Soft Cell came from punk,’ says Almond (born Peter Mark Sinclair Almond in Southport on 7 July 1957: he changed his name to Marc in tribute to his idol Marc Bolan), ‘Punk made me realise that I didn’t need to be brilliant at playing instruments or making art – I could just create. It was about free expression.’13 After meeting keyboard player David Ball whilst they were both studying at Leeds Polytechnic, he formed Soft Cell in 1977. A self-described ‘garage band that used electronic instruments instead of guitars,’ their initial, self-funded EP release Mutant Moments garnered interest from several record companies and the pair signed to Some Bizzare, the record label set up by Billy’s DJ Stevo Pearce, issuing the single ‘Memorabilia’ and a track, ‘The Girl with the Patent Leather Face’ on the compilation Some Bizzare Album, which also featured future hit-makers Blancmange, The The and Depeche Mode – the group that would beget Erasure. ‘Memorabilia’ wasn’t a hit, but their follow-up, ‘Tainted Love’ (originally recorded by Bolan’s girlfriend Gloria Jones), proved to be a massive international success. ‘Tainted Love’ was the biggest-selling record of 1981 in the UK and was quickly followed by their debut album, Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret.
Almond has gone on record to say that, as Soft Cell were climbing the charts, he was being encouraged by his PR team to play the straight card: ‘I was informed by my press department that they had come up with “girlfriends” for me,’14 yet Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret was easily the most outlandish album to grace the British charts at that point. It’s resolutely seedy and dark, and with its S&M overtones and colourful lyrics, the record is fiercely, defiantly queer. If Marc’s TV debut, dressed from head to toe in black, festooned with bangles and we
aring more eyeliner than any of the female artists on that week’s episode of Top of the Pops hadn’t been enough of a clue, then you’d have had to have been blind and deaf to ignore the gayness of Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret. Marc’s look and obvious feyness were quickly lampooned (on hit British comedy series Not the Nine O’Clock News in 1982): taking the piss out of homos was still a-OK by the BBC.
Also signed to Some Bizzare, Coil covered ‘Tainted Love’ to raise funds for HIV/AIDS charity the Terrence Higgins Trust in 1985, issuing what would be the earliest fundraising record for AIDS awareness in the UK. Almond appeared in the video and would collaborate with Coil on their first two full-length albums, Scatology and Horse Rotorvator. Balance died on 13 November 2004, after he fell from a second-floor landing at the home he shared with Christopherson near Weston-Super-Mare. Christopherson relocated to Thailand, and died there in his sleep just over six years after his partner, on 24 November 2010.
Having already acted as the lynchpin to two major chart acts in the space of three years – Depeche Mode (who, like Coil and Soft Cell, had started their recording career at Some Bizzare) and Yazoo (with Alison Moyet), in 1983 keyboard player Vince Clarke was working on one-off collaborations with singers including former Undertone Feargal Sharkey and Paul Quinn. Andy Bell had long been a fan of Clarke’s work, and answered an ad he placed in Melody Maker looking for new vocalists. ‘We’d auditioned about 40 people and Andy was the 43rd,’ Clarke told Paul Strange of Melody Maker. ‘He was like a breath of fresh air’.15 ‘Electronic music just seemed to flow in my blood, especially Dare by The Human League,’ Andy says. ‘I had always loved “soft” punk, ska, electro and Motown … the weirder the better sometimes: Nina Hagen, Lene Lovich, Siouxsie, X-ray Spex, Japan, Donna Summer and of course the Pretenders and Blondie – my favourite band.’ Unlike Vince, Andy had no previous experience in the music industry, his singing experience having been limited to a church choir in his native Peterborough and fronting local band The Void before recording a one-off single (‘Air of Mystery’) with friend Pierre Cope as Dinger (the name taken from Andy’s nickname: “Dinger” Bell). ‘It was pretty nerve-wracking, auditioning for Mr. Clarke but he was very much a hero of mine. I felt his music was so left field and unique, and I somehow felt that we belonged together. It took me quite a while to overcome being overly enamoured with him. I wasn’t surprised I was chosen but I think I was a bit taken aback by how naïve I was to the whole business.’
His association with Clarke wasn’t instantly successful: Erasure’s first three singles all flopped in the UK, however their fourth – ‘Sometimes’ – peaked at Number Two in 1986 and began a string of major hits for the duo. It would take another couple of years before the band saw any kind of success in America, but they quickly became major stars in Europe and Asia. Bell was open about his sexuality from the off: ‘There was no difficult decision. I remember having “discussions” with my then-partner/manager who thought it was a bad idea to come out! I was like “no way! It’s important and I’m doing it anyway”!’
Dressed in feathers, plastered in glitter or wearing ABBA-esque pantsuits, Bell brought a camp sensibility to Erasure that was at odds with the more strait-laced Depeche Mode or Yazoo (who, renamed Yaz in the States, scored four Number Ones in the US dance charts) and, unlike those other acts the relationship has endured. Erasure have now been together for more than three decades, although Bell’s brand of campery hasn’t always been to everybody’s taste: ‘One gay San Francisco paper voted that I should go back in [the closet],’ he once laughed.16 Bell has continued to talk openly about being a gay performer, telling Billboard that ‘my real obligation to the world is to show people that I am a happy person who happens to be gay. To me, it comes down to how you feel deep down inside. You can’t change the world if you feel miserable and hate yourself.’17 As he says today: ‘You often felt there was a correlation between the media catching on that you were gay and radio airplay going down. Especially in the US. You knew about all the others who were getting away with it but hey, I’m glad I did it in an honest way. Our shows in North and South America were like Gay Pride parades!’
AIDS had decimated the disco scene, and the disease would have far-reaching effects on all forms of entertainment, with movie stars, painters, photographers, dancers and TV personalities felled by the scourge. Like Soft Cell, Department S had their roots in the punk scene and, like them, were also influenced by the emergent Blitz Kids. Lead singer Vaughn Toulouse (born Vaughn Cotillard in July 1959) was, like Marc Almond, also a huge Bolan fan: the band’s early live set featured a cover of the T. Rex hit ‘Solid Gold Easy Action’. Toulouse was openly gay and he named his band after the camp cult TV series of the late 1960s starring out-gay actor Peter Wyngarde. The group, which evolved from an earlier punk band Guns for Hire (who issued on 45 on Korova), released their first single, ‘Is Vic There?’ in December 1980, first on Demon and then – in March 1981 – via RCA. It became their biggest hit, reaching Number 22: the follow-up, ‘Going Left Right’, peaked at 55.
Department S called it quits in 1982. Toulouse went to work as a DJ under the name Main T and was signed to Paul Weller’s Respond label, enjoying a minor hit with the Weller-composed ‘Fickle Public Speaking’. Vaughn became part of Weller’s extended Council Collective, writing sleeve notes for the Style Council (as The Cappuccino Kid) and appearing on their miners’ benefit release ‘Soul Deep’. Toulouse died in 1991 from complications of AIDS. AIDS proved to be no respecter of international borders, either. Federico Moura, leader of hit Argentinean pop band Virus, died from AIDS in 1988, just a year after he had come out. Brazilian songwriter Cazuza (Agenor de Miranda Araújo Neto), whose band Barão Vermelho (Red Baron) played the inaugural Rock In Rio festival in January 1985 with Queen, the B-52s and others, died on 7 July 1990. Cazuza, who was openly bisexual, gained a huge amount of media coverage as someone living with and fighting against AIDS, and his openness helped to change public perceptions and attitudes about HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment in South America.18
Klaus Nomi had drawn some attention already, performing as dancer and backing vocalist for Bowie’s perverse appearance on the American late-night live television sketch show Saturday Night Live in December 1979. Bowie, naturally, got all of the press for the oddball performance that saw him perform ‘TVC15’ in a skirt and climaxed with a puppet Bowie whipping his puppet penis out. For one song, ‘The Man Who Sold The World’, Bowie wore an immobile costume inspired by Tristan Tzara’s 1921 Dada play The Gas Heart – which would, in turn, inspire the costume worn on stage by his acolyte Nomi.
Or was Bowie the acolyte of this opera singer from outer space? Certainly it was Nomi that Bowie was keen to work with, spotting him and performance artist Joey Arias in New York’s Mudd Club where, as Arias recalled, ‘David exclaimed “Oh my God, Klaus! I just got back from Berlin and everyone is talking about you. We have to get together”.’19 Whichever way it worked, Nomi was so impressed with Bowie’s Dada costume that he adapted it for the huge plastic tuxedo that he would wear on the cover of his first album, in videos and on stage.
Born in Bavaria in 1944 (as Klaus Sperber), Nomi gave his first performances in Berlin, singing operatic arias in the city’s gay discos before moving to New York in 1972 and settling in the artistic, bohemian East Village. He acted, sang, appeared at the alternative cabaret New Wave Vaudeville and earned money by working as a pastry chef at the World Trade Center. His startling, mime-like make-up and his unique sound brought together elements of pre-war Berlin cabaret, Bowie’s showmanship and the world of opera. He was truly extraordinary; one reviewer claimed he sounded ‘like Pinocchio on helium’. When he first sang opera at the New Wave Vaudeville, the audience did not believe that he was not miming to a recording. It is no surprise that Bowie loved him, nor that Morrissey would also fall under his spell. Klaus Nomi seemed to have come from another world. ‘Some people think I’m not human,’ he once revealed20. ‘My mother visited me two years ago … she was so
shocked. I had black fingernails and black lipstick, and she said: “You look like the Devil – I can’t believe it.” I said “Mother, I AM the Devil!” That was enough for her.’
Signed to Bowie’s record company, RCA, Nomi’s eponymous debut album appeared in 1981 and included a mix of original songs, operatic arias and contrary covers of Chubby Checker hits; ‘I always loved rock n’ roll,’ he told the Soho Weekly News. ‘I bought an Elvis Presley EP, King Creole. I hid it in the basement, but my mother found it. She went to the record store where I bought it and exchanged it for Maria Callas’ operatic arias. Well I was very agreeable to that too. I like each as well as the other’. It was an intriguing mix, but something that was almost impossible to market successfully. A second album, Simple Man, was simply odd: the standout track (and lead single) was an insane electropop version of ‘Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead’ from The Wizard of Oz. Nomi’s musical career, which showed so much promise, was cut short when he was diagnosed with the still virtually unheard-of AIDS. Though his health was fading fast, his handlers kept him on the road, milking their cash cow even as his body failed him. He died in New York on 6 August 1983, at the age of 39, just three days after Jobriath had succumbed to the same disease; one of his last performances was as backing vocalist on his friend Man Parrish’s ‘Six Simple Synthesisers’. In 2007 the remnants of an opera that Klaus had worked on for a number of years appeared, reworked, as Za Bakdaz. Andrew Horn’s excellent documentary film about the Klaus Nomi phenomenon, The Nomi Song, appeared in 2004.
Klaus Nomi in concert, 1981
Klaus Nomi had caused a small sensation when he appeared on the British TV show The Old Grey Whistle Test in 1982, but by that time audiences were becoming used to seeing the bizarre on their TV screens; Bowie’s ‘Ashes To Ashes’ had introduced people to Steve Strange and the Blitz Kids, Soft Cell had already racked up a Number One single, and in Liverpool – undergoing a musical renaissance with New Wave acts Echo and the Bunnymen, the Teardrop Explodes and others – a new band with an very unusual name had recently formed. That band, which took its name from a headline about Frank Sinatra making movies, would cause shockwaves in the music industry that are still being felt today.
David Bowie Made Me Gay Page 28