How the Homosexuals Saved Civilization - Cathy Crimmins [57]
It’s doubtful that the many straight fans of The Who ever thought of Pete Townsend as potentially queer or even queer-friendly in the seventies and eighties, although much homophobia erupted when he was arrested in January 2003, charged with owning child pornography. (Townsend, who claimed he was researching an idea he had that he was abused as a child, was set free on bail, and no charges were filed.) The Who, like the Stones and later glamrock and heavy-metal bands, put on a really good show, filled with high-voltage queer theatrical ity. Tommy, their rock opera, is a good example of an essentially effeminate form (rock) revamped as a macho-queer extravaganza.
Another sexually ambiguous guy is Ray Davies of the Kinks, who’s never talked about what he does under the covers. The Kinks’ biggest hit was “You Really Got Me,” but the group has passed into gay rock history for the sly, clever novelty song “Lola,” which is rumored to have been based on a real incident that occurred in Ray Davies’s life.
The narrator of “Lola” meets a beautiful woman in a bar and goes home with her, only to discover that she is a transvestite. It’s a cheeky, fun song that appeals to all sorts of audiences, with a frisson at the end that leads the listener to believe that the guy slept with Lola anyway.
Or at least that’s what I always thought. That’s before, in looking around the Web, I encountered a hapless victim of the Liberace Syndrome who seemed to have no feel for gay themes. This was a poor fellow with the apt screen name “Pee-brain,” a hopelessly heterosexual male Kinks fan who wrote a plaintive posting on a Kinks fan site about the song “Lola.” He was in deep denial, it seems, about the song’s final lyrics: “Well I’m not the world’s most masculine man/but I know what I am, and that I’m a man/so is Lola.” I don’t think I’ve ever read a funnier stream-of-consciousness epiphany:
Now that [last line] can be looked at 2 different ways. Lola is glad he’s a man because he gave her a good time that night with his manness.
or
Lola is also a man . . . Now why I never saw that other meaning until now . . . beats me . . . but no . . . no i dont like it . . . that’s scary . . . cause I use to repeatedly listen to this song thinking about this babe I met at a retreat who was very sexy but talked in a low voice like a man hahaha hillarious . . . but there’s no way she was a man . . . way too fine a girl for that. but anyways. There should be a warning label on gay songs like this like “Warning: This song is gay.”
Dave Davies, Ray’s brother and fellow Kinks member, was asked about the whole issue of the Kinks’ gayness in a Trouser Press interview in 1979. “When we first came over here [to the States] all the people who came backstage were all guys,” he told Eliott Cohen. “Other bands used to attract female groupies, but we would only get guys—gay guys, straight guys. A lot of people used to comment how amusing it was to see so many guys backstage after a gig.”
Noting that “part of Ray’s personality is to act campy,” Dave Davies wondered why so many people wanted to categorize Ray as a homosexual. The campiness, he said, was “just an expression of what he is; I don’t think it has anything to do with whether he’s actually gay or not.”
Gay or not, we should all thank Ray Davies for his contributions to a genre rare in rock music. In movies and onstage, transvestites and drag queens are a dime a dozen. It’s rarer to find a lusty, funny rock anthem to sexy guys in dresses.
Groin Control to Major Tom: The Father of Glam Rock, David Bowie
In the family tree of rock, as I said, many singers seem to descend from Little Richard. David Bowie could have been formed out of his rib. Both artists are enthusiastic transvestites and flamboyant performers. The amazing difference between them, and the reason that Bowie has gone on to deeply influence the course of rock performance, perhaps more than anyone else, is that Bowie was actually marketed as a homosexual!
Bowie’s manager,