Paper 3: Gender & Sexuality in the 1970s
onvab
Class22-DiscoSucks--MusicalMasculinityRedefined.pptx“Disco Sucks”: Musical Masculinity, Redefined
Rock, Hip Hop, & Revolution
History A383 Class 23 Prof. McGerr
Spring 2019
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I. Gay Liberation
II. David Bowie
III. Glam
IV. Disco
V. Backlash
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I. Gay Liberation
Key late 1960s development—wider conception of people deserving “rights”:
Beyond race & ethnicity to sexuality
This time focus on men
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1. Gay America
Closeted identities, McCarthy era,
1940s & 1950s
Laws: anti-“Sodomy”
Slurs: “Faggot”
Medicine: “mental disorder”
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2. Stonewall
Stonewall Inn, Greenwich Village,6/28/1969:
confrontation with police; beatings
Continued for several nights
Folk singer Dave Van Ronk arrested
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3. Coming Out
After Stonewall, new willingness to assert gay identity openly
& to call for “Gay Power”—equal rights
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4. Gay Liberation Front
New organizations
Gay Liberation Front, 1969:
Gay rights, anti-sexism, anti-war, anti-capitalism, pro-3rd World
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Gay Liberation Day March, 1970
6/28 (anniversary of Stonewall)
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5. Music & Liberation
Gay liberation rested on willingness of men to come out
& then changing other Americans’ conception of homosexuality
What role did popular music play?
“Tutti Frutti”
Popular music avoided gay identities
Little Richard, rock & roll star, 1950s
Ambiguous identity
“Tutti Frutti” lyrics censored:
“Tutti Frutti, good booty/ If it don’t fit, don’t force it / You can grease it, make it easy”
“Love Is a Drag”
1962 album of openly gay songs—male singer singing about “him”
But singer used a pseudonym
& record came out on small
label
II. David Bowie
Music as a means of creating a new identity:
An old story…..
but with a new ending
1. From Jones to Bowie
b. David Jones (London, 1947)
Talented dancer
Musician at 15: jazz, rock, blues
Modeling, 1963
Renamed David Bowie (1967)—
title of his first album.
But just David Bowie wasn’t good enough:
Career didn’t take off
2. Transformations
Space Oddity (1969)
The Man Who Sold the World (1970-71)
British cover:
Bowie in a “man dress”
3. “Oh! You Pretty Things”
From “Hunky Dory,” 1971, 4th album, 1st for RCA
Cover patterned after film star Greta Garbo
“Changes”
Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
Turn and face the strange
Ch-ch-changes
Oh, look out, you rock and rollers
Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
Turn and face the strange
“Oh! You Pretty Things”
Oh, you pretty things (oh, you pretty things) Don't you know you're driving your Mothers and fathers insane Oh, you pretty things (oh, you pretty things) Don't you know you're driving your Mothers and fathers insane Let me make it plain You gotta make way for the Homo Superior
Look out at your children See their faces in golden rays Don't kid yourself they belong to you They're the start of the coming race The earth is a bitch We've finished our news Homo Sapiens have outgrown their use All the strangers came today And it looks as though they're here to stay
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4. Ziggy Stardust
Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, 1972 concept album
Gay/Androgynous Identity
“The only thing that shocks now is an extreme. …. I’m gay and I always have been.”
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In-Authenticity & “Fabrication”
Bowie: “I took the idea of fabrication and how it had snowballed in popular culture. Realism and honesty had become boring to many jaded people by the early Seventies….I thought it would be such great fun to fabricate something so totally unearthly and unreal and have it living as an icon. So the story of Ziggy came out of that thinking….It was a way of creating myself.”
Precursors?
Elvis’s hips in the 1950s
Jimi Hendrix burning his guitar, Monterey Pop, 1967
Concept albums Sgt. Pepper & Tommy
5. “Ziggy” Comes to America, 1972
US tour, cross-country, Sept. to Dec.
“Theatricality”
Music as visual drama:
“Theatricality is the idea whose time has come for pop music this season. Theatricality in in dress, in manner, in presentation and in attitude. . . .”
Don Heckman, NY Times, Sept. 11, 1972
Bowie’s style
“on-stage androgynous sexuality, colorful theatrical effects and rudimentary dramatics”
Rejection: “A goulash of degeneracy”
Bowie, Alice Cooper, NY Dolls, Queen:
“Call it freak rock, transvestite rock or decadent rock, the uglies are the latest giggle on the pop music scene. …. What unites them is their use of standard hard rock music as a framework for kinky lyrics, bizarre costumes, garish makeup, and, most of all, flamboyant stage shows that blend homo-eroticism, and sado-masochism into a goulash of degeneracy. ” Grace Lichtenstein, NY Times, Sept. 24, 1972
Sexual Power Struggle?
Lew Siegel, National Publicity Director, Capitol Records:
“Rock ‘n’ roll came right after the G.I. era of the ’40s. There was a great fascination with the sex goddess and rock was a revolt against that female cultural domination. That’s why most of the groups were male; they were banding together to reassure each other. … Today much of David Bowie’s appeal is the novelty of pushing in exactly the opposite direction, against male cultural domination.”
6. Musical Activism?
Bowie on “bisexual expectations”:
“I’ve felt that from city to city. There have been vast delegations of gay lib coming in. It’s very nice, but I do worry because I can’t do that much for any organization. I’m not a banner waver for any cause because I am not a cause.”
But Still: Pain & Community
“At the concert’s closing, climactic moment, Bowie/Ziggy stands at the edge of the stage, reaching out for the hands of those who have pushed their way down the aisle to be near him. As he sings ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide,’ he seems to touch his audience the way he most wants to touch them—emotionally. It’s a song about agony and pain, but he comforts: ‘You’re not alone . . . Gimme your hands.’” Robert Hilburn, LA Times
Oh no love! You're not alone You're watching yourself but you're too unfair You got your head all tangled up But if I could only make you care
Oh no love! You're not alone No matter what or who you've been No matter when or where you've seen All the knives seem to lacerate your brain I've had my share, I'll help you with the pain You're not alone
Just turn on with me and you're not alone Let's turn on with me and you're not alone Gimme your hands 'cause you're wonderful Gimme your hands 'cause you're wonderful Oh gimme your hands
“And the hands reach up for Bowie. Not the way the audience reaches for Elvis Presley, or the way it reached for the Beatles, but, a little like the desperate, emotionally involved way it used to reach for, yes, Judy Garland. Bowie couldn’t have asked for more.”
Judy Garland:
“An Elvis for Homosexuals,”
The Advocate
“Friends of Dorothy”
“The name Judy Garland is nearly synonymous with gayness….She’s…a symbol of emotional liberation, a woman who struggled to live and love without restraint. She couldn’t do it in real life, of course, and neither could her fans. But she did it in her songs….” Advocate, 1998
So, despite rejection of ‘60s counter- cultural focus on community,
Bowie/Ziggy was about the creation of community after all—but a community of pain and struggle rather than revolution and utopia
(Rather like James Taylor)
Focus on Future Change
“What frightens me . . . Is that people are holding on to a century that is fast dying. That includes a lot of young people as well; those, for example, who are into the idea of communal living. I think that things are going to change so incredibly and so drastically that we should really start developing our ideas along a different tangent. I don’t know which way we should go but what with the pill and sperm banks and with all those trimmings, things have got to change very drastically. It’s going to be a brave new world and we either join it or we become living relics.”
Not an activist—but building community around a new set of values in the hope of changing the future……
Isn’t that musical activism?
7. Impact: A Fan
Penny Nugent: “I’ve never seen such a concert where the music was so physical but the end effect was not—I mean I felt no desire to dance and jump about because it was my mind that was freed and that was dancing. … I feel different now that Friday the 20th is come and gone.”
“All you have to do is turn around, face yourself, see the good parts and the bad parts, get up the courage to say, ‘hi!’ and recognize yourself for what you are, and then carry on living and trying because you’re not alone. I guess that was the message, no? And the medium was Bowie . . . .”
III. Glam
Bowie part of a broader musical movement in the early 1970s: “Glam” or “Glitter” rock
New, post-60s outlook & aesthetic
1. Platforms & Glitter
Glam only loosely defined by distinctive sound
Rock, rooted in 1960s psychedelic music & British “art rock”
Glam more defined by visual styles:
Long hair
Unisex & cross-dressing fashions
Lots of makeup
Glitter!
Dyed hair
Platform boots
2. Glam Heroes: “Friends of David”
Bowie
sponsored &
produced
other acts,
Including
Iggy Pop»»»
David Bowie, Iggy Pop, & Lou Reed
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T. Rex (Mark Bolan)—inspiration for Bowie
Queen (incl. Freddie Mercury)
New York Dolls
Alice Cooper
3. Ideology of Glam
Guiding ideas or dispositions:
Break with 1960s counter-cultural faith in “revolution”
Re-emphasis on gender & sexuality
(but now ambiguous, adrogynous, bi-sexual, homosexual)
Rejection of Authenticity for Artificiality & Theatricality
4. Musical “Coming Out”
1972 Bowie song for glam group, Mott the Hoople, laid out key ideas.
Sexuality:
All the young dudes (I want to hear you)
Carry the news (I want to see you)
Boogaloo dudes (And I want to talk to you all of you)
Carry the news
Now Lucy looks sweet cause he dresses like a queen
But he can kick like a mule
It's a real mean team
But we can love oh yes we can love
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Anti-60s counter culture:
And my brother's back at home
with his Beatles and his Stones
We never got it off on that revolution stuff
Lou Reed, Transformer, 1973
Bowie-produced album
“Make Up”: “No we’re coming out/ out of our closets and into the streets”
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Holly came from Miami, F.L.A. Hitch-hiked her way across the USA Plucked her eyebrows on the way Shaved her legs and then he was a she She says, Hey babe Take a walk on the wild side Hey honey Take a walk on the wild side
Female impersonator Holly Woodlawn
“Walk on the Wild Side”
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IV. Disco
Another 1970s genre
1. Monti Rock III
b. Joseph Montanez, Jr., Bronx, NY, 1942
Puerto Rican-American
Celebrity hairdresser & TV talk show guest
Openly bi-sexual
Monti Rock: “ I [was] the first openly gay man in the 50s and 60s that got on television. The story should start with that…being openly gay was very romantic in that era….Everyone knew I was gay. I was very over the top, darling! If you donned long hair and beads and wore pancake makeup in 1961, if that wasn’t openly gay, what was it?”
2. Disco Tex & the Sex-O-Lettes
Group formed with producer Bob Crewe
1974 #10 hit, Get Dancin’
1975 #23, “I Wanna Dance Wit’ Choo (Doo Dat Dance”
1975 LP “Disco-Tex and the Sex-O-Lettes”
Audience-centered music—dancing (eventually long-playing 12-inch singles)
Instrumentation: Focus on rhythm section
Keyboards, drum machines, fast tempos
But lush orchestration, slick production
Simple Lyrics—focus on the beat
Like earlier pop music,
After rock’s move away from dancing,
disco was music for dancing
“The Hustle”
“Le Freak”
3. Outsiders’ Music
Like heavy metal and punk, disco became popular initially without much radio play or publicity
Gay Roots
Disco roots in gay dance clubs
Record producer, 1979: “hot records usually start off in gay discos . . .Gays are open to new sounds.”
“The music is a symbolic call for gays to come out of the closet and dance with each other” (Fantasy Records producer)
Racial Roots
Disco also emerged from black and latino clubs
The Hustle originated as line dance in Hispanic clubs in NYC & Miami in the 1970s
4. Cross-Generational Appeal
Like country—and unlike heavy metal and punk, disco appealed across generational divide.
“Disco is for all ages. Rock wasn’t. Disco is mainly for the 18-to-35 group, but there are teen discos, even kiddie discos with soft drinks, and senior citizen discos. The music hasn’t divided parents and children, as previous popular music did.”
5. A-political music?
“It’s total escape. The music is happy, up-tempo, you have fun, you loose yourself in the lights and the sound. It isn’t thinking. It’s total feeling.” Washington DC club manager
Rejection of ‘60s political “message” music
“….the other acts…were trying to put messages across and people are getting bored with messages. They want fun and they want to see something as well as hear it….I’m getting a rhinestone bicycle made so I can ride round on stage…..”
Another side of the Me Decade?
DC Club manager: “Americans are very involved right now in the release of energy—running, exercise, and now disco.
There’s a new-found body consciousness—health, good food, fitness. And, having taken care of our bodies, we want to display them. Disco is the release of energy. Disco fashions—color, glitter, tight fit or sheer—are the display.”
6. Cross-over Music
In effect, disco in gay clubs was a site where regulars could come out and adopt a new style
While visiting heterosexuals could begin to explore and accept gay/black/Latino culture
In this respect, a very political music
Monti Rock III played a DJ in the 1977 hit crossover film Saturday Night Fever
(John Travolta as Tony Manero, 19, from Brooklyn)
V. Backlash
One sign of disco’s political strong backlash against the music
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1. “Disco Sucks”
Chicago radio DJ Steve Dahl’s anti-disco crusade
Invading disco clubs and throwing marshmallows at the dancers
“Disco Demolition Night,” Chicago White Sox, Old Comiskey Park, July 12, 1979
“Disco Demolition Night” got out of control; forced cancellation of second game of doubleheader
2. Anti-black, Anti-Gay
John Rockwell, critic: “There’s a darker side to all this....Even with the embrace of disco by the white masses, symbolized by John Travolta and the Bee Gees, disco is still regarded by rock loyalists as a black and homosexual phenomenon. It’s not always clear when whites profess a dislike of disco as to whether they dislike the music or whether they dislike those who like it.”
3. Anxiety Over Decline of Working & Middle Classes
Rockwell: “Sitting in the Palladium, listening to a hall-full of white rock fans chanting their anti-disco slogans over and over, is just a bit too reminiscent for comfort of Lumpen-proletariat proto-Fascism.”
Conclusion
Disco & Glam reflected:
Break with/end of 60s counterculture
Leading edge of sexual revolution— especially gay rights movement
In that sense, a return to traditional political function of popular music: dance music mediating gender & sexuality
“Caravan Tonight”
Glam & disco marked important change
But music industry almost completely avoided openly gay artists
Mercury Records issued Steven Grossman’s Caravan Tonight, 1974
And that was it.
Songs included:
“Out”
“Many Kinds of Love”
“You Don’t Have to Be Ashamed”
