How the Homosexuals Saved Civilization - Cathy Crimmins [63]
In Rob Halford’s first interview as an “out” homosexual, he talked to The Advocate about his gayness and his time with Judas Priest. Unlike many gay entertainers, Halford never pretended to have girlfriends. He said that the other members of Judas Priest were aware of his sexual orientation. They would have to be, I’d think, by the look he created for the band.
“The imagery I created was simply out of a feeling that what I was doing before the leather and studs and whips and chains and motorcycles didn’t fit me,” said Halford. “Priest was going onstage in very flamboyant saggy pants. It was very extroverted and fluffy in its visual tone, but I didn’t feel right.”
So Halford went to a gay S&M shop to buy outfits for the band. It felt, he said, “right,” even though he realized the irony of outfitting himself and fellow musicians in homosexual leather gear. “OK, I’m a gay man,” Halford says he thought, “and I’m into leather and that sexual side of the leather world—and I’m gonna bring that onto the stage.” No one seemed to notice the gay overtones at the time. Halford had unwittingly borrowed from a gay aesthetic that appealed enormously to tough heterosexual men. They loved his handcuffs, whip, chains, and especially his motorcycle. The motorcycle look, which started in blue-collar heterosexual communities in the 1950s, had soon after been adopted in gay circles. In the eighties, the leather look passed into the straight world again with a vengeance and was a favorite of teenagers everywhere. Halford was part of the great homosexual/heterosexual circle of life, bringing to his straight audiences a gay twist on a straight standard.
The sports world has adopted a new anthem in the last few years, Queen’s “We Will Rock You.” It was featured in the Disney Mighty Ducks hockey movies and is sung at hundreds of sporting events all across the country. The 2004 Super Bowl Pepsi commercial with Britney Spears in a gladiator suit featured the song, as did Miracle, the movie about the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team win. With its hand-clapping, foot-stomping, and rhythmic chanting, “We Will Rock You” has become far more popular than “Take Me Out to the Ball-game” or “The Boys Are Back in Town.” Yet how many heterosexual sports fans, as they shout the song at the top of their lungs, realize that it was written by a gay man?
Freddie Mercury, lead singer of Queen, has been described by critics as “the Cecil B. DeMille of rock.” When he announced on November 21, 1991, that he had AIDS and then died on November 24, his fans were stunned. He had kept his disease a secret, as well as his sexuality. Mercury was born to Persian parents in Zanzibar, off the Tanzanian coast, in September 1946. He started off life as Far as Faroukh Bulsara and attended boarding school in India. If Mercury hadn’t been born during the rock-music era, he probably would have been a composer of opera or show tunes. Certainly, both forms showed up in his work. His brilliant song “Bohemian Rhap sody” makes fun of operatic and theatrical conventions, with shouts of “Scaramouche, Scaramouche!” and trilling arias. And yet another one of his hits was the very Old Western, macho-sounding “Another One Bites the Dust.”
Mercury was a fascinating character, very influential in the development of the rock song, and a poster fixture in many a heterosexual teen’s bedroom.
Queen was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ten years after Freddie Mercury’s death. An off-Broadway show about Mercury’s life opened in January 2004: