(The number for the London Gay Switchboard was etched into the runout groove.) A remastered version of their debut album Age of Consent arrived this month. Synth-pop group Bronski Beat’s debut single, Smalltown Boy, about a gay man leaving his homophobic home town, charted globally in 1984.
“There were stars in the 80s who were completely transparent about their sexuality from the start, and whose gayness was absolutely integral to their music.”
Come the 80s though, acts such as Bronski Beat and Frankie Goes to Hollywood became “the gay heroes of the decade”, says Paul Flynn, author of Good As You: 30 Years of Gay Britain. Queer male pop artists were previously few and far between: Little Richard’s lyrics about anal sex were cut from Tutti Frutti, and it only took Bowie’s arm draped over the shoulder of Mick Ronson on Top of the Pops in 1972 to send middle England reeling.
The winds of the gay liberation movement had been blowing strong for a decade: queer black men such as Sylvester had been at the heart of disco and the children of Bowie were coming of age just as MTV, a new medium that valued the high-energy visuals of queer nightclubs, was launched. The 80s was a perfect storm of male queerness for many reasons.
