The Secret Public

This is much more than a book about pop stars who happened to be LGBTQ. It’s a history of pop as a soft power: a performative space of possibilities, alternative realities, and freedoms. Pop made the marginalised and hidden visible, gave strength to young queer people, and offered liberation from restricting socially imposed gender roles to everyone.

Savage shows how pop, from Little Richard and Elvis onwards, undermined gender norms and was crucially informed by queer people, styles, images, and sensibilities. Running alongside the pop history is a history of gay life in Britain and America which reveals the complex but close relationship between the pop, politics, and lifestyle. The gap between the utopian visions of pop and the show more reality of life for gay people is sometimes sobering: sixties rock stars growing their hair long, and adopting increasingly flamboyant clothing and androgynous personas, while gay men in the real world kept their hair short and dressed conventionally in order to avoid exposure, social ostracism or imprisonment.

I thought some of this territory might be over-familiar (Warhol/Bowie/New York Dolls/Disco) but Savage’s research has thrown up a wealth of information and stories that were new to me. It’s a book full of insight and surprises: a wide-ranging, impressively detailed work of cultural history, and also a great read. show less