ABSTRACT
Since its very beginnings rock music has been extolled for its liberating and empowering qualities. It has provided a space wherein performers and fans have explored identities and played with societal conventions of gender and sexuality. In the early 1970s, for example, musicians from David Bowie and Lou Reed to the New York Dolls delved into androgyny and role-playing, sparking the glitter and glam rock movement. Yet as music critic Adam Block (1951-2008) points out in his essay written for gay lifestyles magazine The Advocate, rock musicians have rarely embraced an openly homosexual, public identity. Block’s essay is essentially a travelogue examining the relationship between rock and gay identity, taking the reader through rock’s first quarter century, stopping at the point in the early 1980s where MTV was beginning to introduce American audiences to a new wave of British musicians such as Soft Cell and Pete Shelley. Had Block written his article a year or two later he might have mentioned Culture Club’s cross-dressing Boy George or Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s gay anthem “Relax.” Still, even considering these examples, and the many more that have followed, it is worth reiterating Block’s comments and complaints even today, more than three decades later. To what extent has rock served as an expressive medium for gay performers? And in what ways has rock spoken to gay audiences?
