The Secret Public
How Music Moved Queer Culture From the Margins to the Mainstream
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Jon Savage, the author of the canonical England's Dreaming, explodes new ground in this electrifying history of pop music from 1955 through 1979. In demonstrating that gay and lesbian artists were responsible for many of the greatest cultural breakthroughs in the last half of the twentieth century, he shows that it was their secretly encoded music--appealing to a closeted but greatly oppressed public--which led to the historic dismantling of discriminatory gay laws and the fusion of queer and straight culture. Fittingly, Savage's kaleidoscopic work begins with the pomp-and-pompadour appearance of Little Richard, whose relentlessly driving sound, replete with gospel shrieks and sexual contortions, enthralled a generation of 1950s stultified white teenagers. Things soon went mainstream, as Elvis enthralled a nation with his seductive low moans and bump-and-grind twists, heavily derivative of Black music, while James Dean and Rock Hudson became the face of 1950s Hollywood; yet this explosion of queer expression remained covert and could not be accepted for what it was. While music, with supporting roles from cinema and fashion, became the key medium through which homosexuality could be clandestinely enacted, overt expressions of gay behavior were met with arrests and crackdowns. While hippies reveled in 1967's "Summer of Love," gays remained "harassed by police, demonized by the media and politicians, imprisoned simply for being who they were." J. Edgar Hoover, himself a closeted homosexual, continued to spy on homosexual deviants; CBS's Mike Wallace aired an invidious show about homosexuality; and the New York police continued to raid gay bars. Yet the music itself produced a cultural eruption that simply could not be stanched. While Bette Midler sang "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boys" to a Continental Baths audience of 600 gay men, all naked except for towels, David Bowie "blew the whole topic wide open" and "became the most totemic pop star of his generation." Even though roadblocks remained, the gear-grinding crunch of the music signaled that the gay civil rights movement could no longer be suppressed. Ending the narrative with the sudden collapse of disco, The Secret Public asserts then that the genie was out of the bottle, that queer culture had finally entered the mainstream, producing a transcendent vision of pop culture that could never be marginalized again.
About this Author
Hailed by the New York Times Book Review as "the definitive history of the English punk movement," England's Dreaming established Jon Savage as one of the foremost pop culture historians of his generation. The winner of the Ralph J. Gleason prize, he lives in North Wales.
Reviews
"The story Savage tells is a rich and fascinating one, shedding new light on familiar icons and bringing forgotten ones out of the past . . . the legacy of performers like Sylvester continues to inspire new generations of queer artists and audiences, and The Secret Public is an invaluable guide to anyone wanting to understand how it all got started."
"With kaleidoscopic detail and exhilarating verve, [Savage] tells the intertwined, transatlantic story of pop and the struggle for LGBTQ+ emancipation...The depth of Savage's research is one reason why this book feels so definitive. As well as hidden B-sides and underground films, he excavates long-lost gay artefacts and personalities...Savage handles his mountains of material with total authority and control, and in the course of doing so reveals the way that pop music was able not just to point the way to a more liberated existence, but also to realise dreams that had previously seemed unreachable."
"Magisterial.... In an overcrowded field, [Jon Savage] is the essential and pre-eminent British writer on pop culture and pop art.... The Secret Public might be the book he was born to write."
"In today's climate, where anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric has found renewed prominence in political discourse since Trump's return to office, Jon Savage's insights become particularly relevant. The acclaimed British pop culture historian and journalist reminds us that fully comprehending our current circumstances requires us to examine the transformative musical movements that have shaped LGBTQ+ history and progress."
"Encyclopedic in scope, [The Secret Public] ... is stuffed full of arcana about singers and songwriters, their managers, and the gay and lesbian venues they frequented... Savage is right to point out that something changed in the postwar years. A new popular culture and a new queer subculture grew up in tandem, shaping each other in profound ways."
"This is a meticulously researched tome...but Savage's central achievement is to wear all his knowledge lightly, to tell us these stories as easily and engagingly as if we were stood in line with him, waiting to go into a gig....The Secret Public is constantly in motion, spinning outwards from its glimpses of individual stars and managers into the collective story of entire nations, not just of LGBTQ+ people. Readers who come for the insights into certain schools of music, or particular singers, will also find a book that is brilliant on shifting ideas of postwar masculinity in the UK and US, and the wider cultural consumption of the era."
"England's Dreaming was a triumphant achievement that Savage has now equaled... I will not spoil the final sentence, a line of such haunting beauty that it leaves the reader breathless and near tears. Such is the power of The Secret Public."
"Jon Savage, the author of the epic punk history England's Dreaming, returns with an even longer examination of the dual histories of pop music and gay life . . . [T]horough and interesting."
"The Secret Public is an astounding achievement. Few volumes on queer history and culture have taken on as much as Savage has here. Savage has decades of first-hand knowledge and has supported it with an enormous amount of research. All this is made exciting by his love of his topic.... The Secret Public is required reading for anyone interested in queer history and popular music."
"Impressive not only in its scope and detail but also in its subtlety.... The Secret Public can surely have no peers."
"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.... 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.... A keenly intelligent, comprehensive survey of some of the bravest artists in history."
"Masterful . . . Savage is a writer of keen insight with a knack for the telling detail . . . He discusses gay liberation, glam, camp, and disco, Brian Epstein and Lou Reed, the New York Dolls, Harvey Milk, the Village People, and more, all within the framework of how a minority subculture went mainstream. Astute, sharp, and savvy."
"Exuberant . . . Savage offers a rich analysis of the symbiosis of gay subculture and the dominant postwar youth culture, both yearning for more sexual freedom, and backgrounds his narrative with the story of the evolving gay rights movement . . . Perceptive and elegantly written, this captivates."
"The Secret Public is the missing story of the heart of pop, the untold story of bravery and love."
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