The Secret Public: How LGBTQ Resistance Shaped Popular Culture (1955-1979) by Jon Savage
Published by: Faber 6th June 2024
Jon Savage’s new book is a huge but hugely readable history of the crossover between LGBTQ culture and popular music. It covers the decades from Little Richard to Sylvester, with some unexpected diversions, on both sides of the Atlantic.
I once had a theory that gay men saved pop music in the 1980s. This book ends in 1979 (for a good reason) but it seems to show that gay men, and occasionally women, were saving – or, even, recreating – pop music all along.
Music journalist turned music historian Jon Savage has already written some definitive pop histories. England’s Dreaming, his story about punk rock in the UK, has pride of place on my bookshelves. This new volume, covering gay culture’s influence on pop culture (and vice versa), feels equally definitive.
Whether you’re LGBTQ or not, this is a fascinating story and a great read. It’s long but cleverly structured in five sections, each covering a significant moment in time as we travel from the mid-’50s to the late ’70s. Each short chapter can stand alone as a socio-cultural essay in its own right but together they create a momentum that sheds light on cultural change and slow but significant progress.
In 1955, Little Richard was admired in the music press for his “compelling personality”, and Johnnie Ray, was criticised by the gossip magazines for his “outbursts of femininity”. Later, a film magazine describes Elvis’s “long hair” as “one of today’s badges of the psychologically feminized male”.
As Savage explains it, that’s the point. Musicians, along with film stars like James Dean, were challenging traditional gender roles and conventional sexuality. And that is part of a wider cultural shift: books, art, film and fashion are part of the story too. In one of the numerous unexpected facts in the book, it turns out that the teddy boy uniform had its roots in a “subterranean gay subculture”.
But if that sounds too much like fun, there’s also a lot of detail about what life was like for gay men in the US and Britain in the 1950s, legally, culturally and socially. The post-war “demonisation of homosexuality” meant there was a long way to go before most of them – famous or not – could stop hiding who they were.
Along with the pop culture story, the book has a parallel narrative about the wider culture: the fight for gay liberation and rights. So the story is not just about the gay pop stars or their gay producers and managers, it’s also about the gay community and gay activists and allies.
In 1962, the story is of outsiders like producer Joe Meek or managers Larry Parnes and Brian Epstein, finding a place in the entertainment business and transforming pop music. Meanwhile, there is a changing mood in society and the start of campaigns for equality.
By 1967, there are women in the story (Dusty Springfield, Janis Joplin, Janis Ian). There’s also, in the UK, partial decriminalisation of homosexuality. In the US, there’s “gay power” and a new civil rights movement.
By 1973, there was glam, gender confusion and Bowie’s groundbreaking statement that he was gay. In the US, the aftermath of the Stonewall riots. And in 1978, there’s “Glad To Be Gay” and disco.
Along with all this, there’s the film Victim, the novel Absolute Beginners, David Hockey’s Cliff Richard painting and Andy Warhol’s record collection. What’s good about Jon Savage’s writing is that it combines an academic’s eye for detail and surprising connections with a journalist’s instinct for storytelling. I learnt a lot and was greatly entertained along the way.
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The Secret Public is available at all good book stores.
Words by PENNY KILEY. You can read her Louder than War reviews at her author profile, and her archive music journalism on Substack.
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