David bowie made me gay
David Bowie Made Me Gay
‘Lovingly detailed and exhaustively researched – easily the most readable and comprehensive guide I’ve seen to this fascinating hidden history’ Tom Robinson, musician, broadcaster and long-time LGBT rights activist
From Sia to Elton John, Dusty Springfield to Little Richard, LGBT voices have changed the course of new music. But in a world before they gained understanding and a place in the mainstream, how did the queer musicians of yesteryear fight to build foundations for those who came after?
Pulling back the curtain on the colourful world that shaped our musical and cultural landscape, Darryl W. Bullock reveals the inspiring and often heartbreaking stories of internationally renowned stars, as well as lesser-known names, who have led the revolution from all corners of the globe. David Bowie Made Me Gay is a treasure trove of moving and provocative stories that emphasise the right to be heard and the need to keep up the clash for equality in the spotlight.
PLAYLIST: David Bowie Made Me Gay
I always have song playing while I perform, and on any given day I could be listening to a mix of Almodovar soundtracks, Beatles outtakes and obscure outsider records. Writing David Bowie Made Me Gay gave me the opportunity to immerse myself not only in the work of the more obvious and open LGBT artists but also in a world of little known and seldom played music from the decades before decriminalisation. As well as writing about the journey that the LGBT community has made over the last century I also embarked on a journey of my own, discovering and (in some cases) becoming immersed in, the careers of artists I had previously ignored – some of which you can find below.
David Bowie – Starman
It was Bowie’s death, and my feeling reaction to it, that kicked this book in to life, and it was during this performance, at the moment that Bowie smiled straight in to the Top Of The Pops camera then draped his arm across Mick Ronson’s shoulder that many other lives began. For a generation of LGBT kids life would never be the equal again. Just
David Bowie Made Me Gay : 100 Years of LGBT Music
From the birth of jazz in the red-light district of Novel Orleans, through the rock 'n' roll years, Swinging Sixties and all-singing and all dancing disco days of the '70s, to modern pop, electronica and reggae the LGBT community has played a crucial role in modern music.
At the turn of the twentieth century, recording technology for the first noun brought the messages of LGBT artists from the cabaret stage into the homes of millions. Their personal struggle and threat of persecution during decades of political and historical turmoil - including two world wars, Stonewall and the AIDS crisis has led to some of the most significant and soul-searching music of the last century.
Through exclusive fresh interviews and contemporary reports, Bullock pulls back the curtain on the colourful legacy that has shaped our musical and cultural landscape, revealing the inspiring and often heartbreaking stories of internationally renowned LGBT artists from Billie Holiday and Dusty Springfield to Frankie Goes to Hollywood and George Michael and of nu
Identifying and Identifying with the Thin White Duke: Darryl Bullock’s “David Bowie Made Me Gay: 100 Years of LGBT Music”
Morgan Woolsey on Darryl Bullock’s “David Bowie Made Me Gay” and the difficulties identifying exactly what “gay music” is.
David Bowie Made Me Gay by Darryl W. Bullock. The Overlook Verb, 2017. 320 pages.
THE TITLE OF Darryl W. Bullock’s latest book, David Bowie Made Me Gay: 100 Years of LGBT Music, raises a few questions. Is this a memoir, detailing the author’s coming to terms with his own identity through the sexually protean Thin Pale Duke (or Ziggy Stardust or Major Tom or Aladdin Sane or, for the more cinematically minded queer babies of my generation, the Goblin King)? If so, how will this intimate and personal narrative intersect with the promised examination of a century of LGBT music? Spoiler alert: It won’t, really. Bowie is positioned at the beginning of the book both as an emblem of the monumental boomer music losses of 2016 (Prince, Maurice White, Glenn Frey, George Martin, Leonard Cohen, Pete Burns, and George Michael, to name a f