Publisher's Synopsis
LGBT musicians have shaped the development of music over the last century, with a sexually progressive soundtrack in the background of the gay community's struggle for acceptance. With the advent of recording technology, LGBT messages were for the first time brought to the forefront of popular music. David Bowie Made Me Gay is the first book to cover the breadth of history of recorded music by and for the LGBT community and how those records influenced the evolution of the music we listen to today.David Bowie Made Me Gay uncovers the lives of the people who made these records, and offers a lively canter through the scarcely documented history of LGBT music-makers. Darryl W. Bullock discusses how gay, lesbian, and bisexual performers influenced Jazz and Blues; examines the almost forgotten Pansy Craze in the years between the two World Wars (when many LGBT performers were fêted by royalty and Hollywood alike); chronicles the dark years after the depression when gay life was driven deep underground; celebrates the re-emergence of LGBT performers in the post-Stonewall years; and highlights today's most legendary out-gay pop stars: Elton John, Boy George, Freddie Mercury, and George Michael. "Popular music is the great stealth art form, able to slip past our censors and explore all kinds of sexuality in ways closed to print or movies. Darryl Bullock's book is a wonderful encyclopedia of queer music, an encyclopedia with a plot: the history of one hundred years of social change. He not only connects the musical dots, but reveals dots I didn't know existed. Ambitious, wide-ranging, unpredictable, fast-paced, and highly informative, David Bowie Made Me Gay is also very entertaining."-Christopher Bram, author of Gods and Monsters and Eminent Outlaws: The Gay Writers Who Changed America"From 'Ma' Rainey to Adam Lambert?with Janis Ian, the Village People, k.d. lang, and Pansy Division discussed along the way?David Bowie Made Me Gay is a whirlwind tour through how queer musicians have changed the rhythm and the beat of music and culture for almost one hundred years. Everyone knows that music is sexy, and sex is better with the right music?and LGBT people have been pushing the boundaries of music and sex for decades. The 'soundtrack' for cultural liberation over the decades has been written and performed by gay people?and this book does not miss a beat documenting who, how, and why that happened. A must read for anyone interested in, or fascinated by, music and popular culture."-Michael Bronski, author of A Queer History of the United States and Professor of Practice in Media and Activism, Harvard University"A fun and enlightening read, Darryl Bullock's David Bowie Made Me Gay is to popular music what William J. Mann's Behind the Screen is to Hollywood filmmaking: a convincing account of the hitherto ignored influence of LGBTQ people in a popular medium. Although there are other studies of some of these decades, Bullock's treatment of the past 100 years is an engaging 'one-stop' of many genres-[its] detailed coverage of women's music is welcome-and uniquely inclusive of both the US and UK. A valuable addition to the history of popular music as well as queer studies, and should appeal to general readers of all sexualities."-Vicki L. Eaklor, author of Queer America
