THE SECRET PUBLIC

Songs of freedom.

When Little Richard’s “Tutti Frutti” landed in November 1955, homosexuality was a crime in Britain, and gay bars in the U.S. were routinely violently raided by the police. Politicians and major media in both countries referred to people we now call LGBTQ+ as “morally repugnant”—or worse. “Experts” attributed queerness to mental illness that could be “cured.” But as the openly gay American rocker Jobriath (1946–1983) sang in 1973’s “Rock of Ages,” his ode to gay liberation through rock ’n’ roll, “A Little Richard goes a long long way.” Savage, a deeply knowledgeable British music journalist whose subjects have included the Sex Pistols, Joy Division, and teenage culture, tells this enthralling story by focusing on five moments between 1955 and 1979, when gay culture and popular youth culture, in tandem, took quantum leaps into public consciousness, along with the civil rights and women’s rights movements. Savage zooms in and out, from close-ups on artists who pushed the limits of queer art’s popularity in the world at large, to views of the effects they had on British and American societies. His encyclopedic scope ranges from the famous—James Dean, Andy Warhol, the Kinks, David Bowie, Bette Midler, Sylvester—to the less known but no less consequential contributors. This is a longtime project of Savage’s. “As I engaged with performers, fans and other writers during the early 1980s and beyond,” he writes, “I realised that the topic…wasn’t just about freedom for gay people; it was about freedom for all.”

A keenly intelligent, comprehensive survey of some of the bravest artists in history.