Cole Porter

At the time he sang second tenor in the Glee Club at Yale, Cole Porter (1891-1964) also appeared in stage roles and performed cabaret sets at private parties. It became his habit to step out of the chorus just before the choir’s last number to sit at the piano to accompany himself in a solo performance of songs and patter, much of the clever and cheeky material his own. Although he was listed just once in the program, the audience usually kept him there until he had gone through 10-12 encores. Reviewers called him the “highlight” of the concerts, “a clever imitator, strong singer and comedian”. Then, as later in life, Porter wrote both the words and music to his songs.

After one year he dropped out of Harvard Law School, where he had resided with Dean Acheson, the future Secretary of State. His unwavering D-grades in all his law courses resulted in a transfer to the School of Music in 1914 for his second year at Harvard. For a time he studied music with Pietro Yon, who went on to become famous as organist at NYC’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

Porter, who was exclusively homosexual, met his future wife Linda at a 1918 wedding reception in Paris, where he had lingered after serving in France in a volunteer ambulance unit during the final year of WW I. At least that's what he told Linda. Although Cole appeared on the streets of Paris in various military uniforms, later biographers revealed that Porter never served in the military of any country. Porter maintained a luxury apartment in Paris, where he entertained lavishly. His parties were extravagant and scandalous, with a little of everything sprinkled in for good measure – much gay and bisexual activity, cross-dressing, international musicians, Italian nobility, and a large surplus of recreational drugs. For a twenty-something boy born on a farm in Peru, Indiana, things were moving fast.

Linda Lee Thomas (at right), a fabulously wealthy socialite divorcée, was descended from the Paca family (one of whom was a signer of the Declaration of Independence) as well as from the Lees of Virginia. Linda was well aware of Porter’s homosexuality, but they nevertheless married on December 12, 1919, and remained based in Paris as bon vivants of hedonistic high style until 1937, when war clouds forced their return to the U.S. Many of their circle suspected that Linda might be lesbian or bisexual, while others thought of her as asexual. Whichever was true, their marriage was without sex, but certainly not without love. They adored each other. Years later Linda miscarried, but it is not certain whether Cole was the would-be father. Linda was known to have affairs of her own, but it cannot be determined if they were sexual. It’s all a cloud of ambiguity.

After their honeymoon in southern France and Italy, Cole sought further formal musical training, enrolling at the Schola Cantorum in the Latin Quarter of Paris. He soon abandoned his notion of writing serious orchestral music, however, and did not complete the curriculum.

Linda, thirteen years older than Cole, provided him with a passport to social landscapes he could never have traversed on his own. Their world was a fusion of outrageous Bohemianism and mad-cap Roaring Twenties liberation, tossed together with moneyed misfits, exiled royalty, show business personalities and assorted impoverished creative geniuses. Included in their social circles were Coco Chanel, Lauritz Melchior and Arthur Rubenstein, who loved to sit down at the piano to play Cole Porter songs. In short, they knew anyone worth knowing.

Soon after their marriage, Linda bought a much larger Parisian residence in 1920 at 13, rue Monsieur, a street just one block long, not far from Les Invalides and the Rodin Museum (and purchased for more than $10 million in today’s money). The rear garden backed up to the house of Nancy Mitford, the British novelist, biographer and socialite, who was involved in a romance with the homosexual Scottish aristocrat Hamish St. Clair-Erskine. But I digress.

Linda’s house in Paris was so large that they rented a suite of rooms to Howard Sturges, a close friend of Linda’s who became Cole’s dearest life-long friend. Sturges lent Linda a beautiful painting by Christian Bérard, which hung for years in their Parisian drawing room. Sturges, a witty, old-money Boston socialite, was a trained violinist who kept a pet bear and walked a pig on a leash through the streets of Paris. I’m not making this up.

Hostess Elsa Maxwell (a closeted lesbian) leans over a smiling Cole Porter. The legendary society maven was a huge fan and patron.



Sturges often traveled with Cole and Linda, wherever their journeys took them, and Cole and Howard made this three-way friendship more complicated when the two men entered into an affair. The Porters were peripatetic to the extreme. They always traveled with an entourage of servants and friends, usually picking up the tab for their guests, and quickly became acquainted with Egypt, Monte Carlo, Italy, London, Biarritz, Spain and New York. To say that the Porters lived large is understatement.

Cole and Linda befriended wealthy American ex-pats Gerald and Sarah Murphy, and together they made the South of France a fashionable year-round resort destination. There were striking parallels in the lives of the Murphys and Porters, not the least of which was the fact that both Gerald and Cole were married homosexual men.

In 1923 Cole’s wealthy grandfather died. Long disapproving of Cole’s choice of a career, he made no mention of Cole in his will. Of the four million dollars left to Cole’s mother, however, she gave half to her son, then 32 years old, who later said the inheritance didn’t spoil or ruin his life – it just made it wonderful. Well, not everything was wonderful. It was about this time that Porter tested positive for syphilis.

Soon Cole and Linda became part of the social set of Prince and Princesse Edmond de Polignac. The princess, based in Paris, was heir to the singer sewing machine fortune. She was a captivating lesbian married to a homosexual (and financially destitute) prince, who was himself a talented amateur composer. They hosted private musical salons that drew on the talents of Stravinsky, Fauré, Satie, Ravel and Milhaud. The Polignac’s musical afternoons were for decades the most important and influential venue for new French music.

For five summers during the 1920s, the Porters descended upon Venice, renting the fabulous Palazzo Rezzonico. During the summer of 1925 Cole became completely smitten with Boris Kochno, a Russian poet, librettist and Ballet Russes dancer who was Diaghilev's collaborator. Their correspondence survives, and Porter comes across as a love-sick puppy. Soon thereafter, Porter returned to the U.S. to write shows for Broadway and Hollywood. While living in New York, Porter found that paying for sex was less complicated emotionally, and it allowed him to indulge his taste in sailors, marines and assorted prostitutes.

Until recently Porter's piano (right) stood on the cocktail terrace of the lobby of the Waldorf Astoria hotel in NYC, where Cole and Linda Porter kept an apartment* in the Waldorf Towers, the residential wing of the hotel. The 1907 Steinway grand, with a hand decorated walnut case, was a gift from the hotel in 1945. Upon Porter's death in 1964, the piano went downstairs to the lobby.


Monty Woolley, who often joined Cole to cruise New York City's waterfront bars and bordellos, recounted that one night, a young sailor they approached by car asked outright, "Are you two cocksuckers?" Woolley responded with, "Now that the preliminaries are over, why don't you get in and we can discuss the details?"

Cole’s numerous male lovers included Nelson Barfeld (a dancer/choreographer who was a former U.S. Marine), Robert Bray (a married Californian) and Jack Cassidy (a character actor). Not to mention architect Ed Tauch, director John Wilson and longtime friend Ray Kelly, whose children still receive half of Porter's copyright royalties. After relocating to  Hollywood, he was a regular guest at George Cukor's Sunday all-male pool parties, but soon the two became rivals. While renting a beautiful Hollywood home owned by renowned homosexual actor-decorator Billy Haines, Porter held competing all-male parties, and Cole’s became the more valued invitation. Porter was not discrete. A recent biography recounts that in his later years, Cole kept "breaking appliances so he could lure cute repairmen into his lair". As well, Scotty Bowers's recent Hollywood tell-all recounts that Porter had a decided taste for giving oral sex to Marines while suffering verbal abuse and humiliation. The homosexual relations were not casual. All of Porter's sexual activity was homosexual, and he became more brazen in the more open and permissive atmosphere of Hollywood. Linda reacted by staying away from California, sailing back and forth between her residences in Paris and New York. She was quietly making plans to divorce Cole.

Then in 1937, Cole was involved in a tragic horse riding accident and fractured both his legs. This was especially debilitating and humiliating to the ego of a vain man who placed enormous value on looks and a dashing appearance for both social and sexual reasons. He was in the hospital for months as his mental and physical health waned. He was in constant pain from his leg injuries and underwent 34 operations, all ultimately unsuccessful. Linda changed her plans and returned to Cole's side; they shared quarters at the Waldorf Towers in NYC, and before long he returned to writing songs.

Porter hired a driver and a personal assistant, who tended to details such as getting Cole into and out of wheelchairs, elevators and buildings. Soon enough Porter was reviving his lusty male/male activity. Once he graduated from a wheelchair to a cane, he maintained a small house overlooking the ocean at Lido Beach on Long Island, which he used for male/male trysts. Frank Walsh, a soldier stationed at Governors Island, recalled attending a party at Porter's Lido Beach residence, describing it as "a drinking and sex party, nearly orgiastic, with fifty or more soldiers kissing, drinking and engaging in lots of very graphic sex." At about this time Cole tripped on a stair and broke his left leg again, causing a major setback to his recovery.

Cole Porter portrait by Richard Avedon, 1950.

In 1945, he lent his permission to the movie project Night and Day, allegedly about the life of Cole Porter. Although a great boost to his ego, the plot was a wildly fictionalized biography. His friends thought it hysterically funny, knowing the divide between fact and fiction. The movie overlooked Porter’s overly pampered and controlled youth, his notorious gay life and his sexless marriage of social convenience; instead it lent credence to the tall tales Cole spread about himself, such as his (fake) war record and injuries. According to friends, Cole enjoyed the movie's wildly fictional account, and he especially savored having closeted movie star Cary Grant play a heroic, straight version of himself. Fortunately Porter did not live to see the 2004 film De-Lovely, a wretched misstatement of facts and an utter bore. I do not know how it was possible to make the extravagant, over-the-top lives of Cole and Linda Porter, portrayed by Kevin Kline and Ashley Judd, appear so dull.

Porter's greatest hit musical came late in his career. Kiss Me Kate (1948) is a play within a play about a troupe putting on Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew. W. H. Auden even called it a much better piece of theater than The Taming of the Shrew (!). A film version hit movie theaters in 1953, also to great acclaim, but Porter's risqué lyrics had to be sanitized to avoid the Hollywood code censors, thus robbing the musical of much of its comedy. The film was originally released in 3-D.

A major blow came with Linda’s death in 1954. She died after a long illness from chronic respiratory problems at their apartment in the Waldorf Towers in NYC. Although they had separated only to reunite several times, they remained devoted to each other. She left an estate of over $1.5 million, in which Cole had a lifetime interest (Cole had also inherited the bulk of his mother's half million dollar estate, but needlessly worried about money constantly). He was given Linda's Williamsport, Massachusetts, estate outright (description below), as well as all of Linda's personal belongings.

Unfortunately, Porter descended into further creative silence and social isolation in 1958, when his right leg was finally amputated. Porter was embarrassed and incapacitated by the surgery. Linda Porter had acquired a 40-acre estate in Williamsport, MA in 1940, and after her death, Cole became a virtual recluse at Buxton Hill**, as the property was named (current photo below). In a bizarre act Porter ordered the Tudor-style main house razed after  Linda's death and moved a caretaker’s cottage to the location of the original house. According to one of his biographers, visitors to Buxton Hill became fewer and fewer, because most weekends Porter was wicked drunk and ignored his invited guests, some of whom dubbed the farm, “the torture chamber.” At Cole’s death from kidney failure in 1964 (at a nursing home in Santa Monica), the Buxton Hill estate went to Williams College, but returned to private hands a few years later. It recently served as a luxury inn, with tennis courts and a 30' X 50' swimming pool. And the whole shebang (structures and 40 acres of land) subsequently hit the market for $4.5 million. 1425 Main St., Williamstown, MA. It has since gone off the market.

**When Cole Porter formed his own publishing company, he named it Buxton Hill.

* Porter’s 5-bedroom apartment in the Waldorf Astoria was available for rent last year at the rate of $150,000 a month. No lie. The Porters had lived in several apartments at the Waldorf Towers from 1939 to 1954, but Cole moved into this much larger unit just after the death of Linda. When Porter moved to apartment 33-A (1955-1964), he hired Billy Baldwin to do the interior design work. Baldwin was so well-known for his love of slipcovers that Cole Porter joked that he didn’t want to come back to find his piano slip covered! After Cole Porter died, Frank Sinatra moved in. Quite a pedigree for Waldorf Towers apartment 33-A (floor-plan porn below).

Of note: Porter’s wildly successful 1934 musical Anything Goes was revived on Broadway in 2011, and a touring company took the show to audiences all across the country.

His body of work includes some 1,400 songs. Some are one-offs which continue to astonish listeners today. For example, in Miss Otis Regrets (1934) we are told by a servant of a polite society lady how her employer was seduced and abandoned. In just a few lines of lyrics, we learn that Miss Otis hunted down and shot her seducer, was arrested, taken from the jail by a mob, and lynched. The servant conveys Miss Otis's final, polite, apologetic words to her friends: "Miss Otis regrets she's unable to lunch today." There is not another song like it.

Carmen McRae's impassioned reading of "Miss Otis Regrets..."




Among Cole Porter’s classic American standards are:


Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye (1944)
Ray Charles and Betty Carter’s classic reading of Porter’s extraordinary tune and lyric:

When you're near there's such an air of spring about it.
I can hear a lark somewhere begin to sing about it.
There's no love song finer, but how strange the change from major to minor
Everytime we say goodbye.





Begin the Beguine (1935)

Don’t Fence Me In (1934)

From This Moment On (1950)


I Love Paris (1952)

I Get a Kick Out of You (1934)

I’ve Got You Under My Skin (1936)

In the Still of the Night (1937)


Let's Do It, Let's Fall In Love (1928)

Night and Day (1932 - one of ASCAP's top 10 all time money makers)

You’re the Top (1934)






True Love (1956)
Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly sing a duet aboard the yacht True Love in High Society, the musical remake of Philip Barry’s 1939 stage play, The Philadelphia Story (made into an acclaimed film in 1941).

 

Some songs have remained inexplicably obscure. After You, Who? was a great favorite of Mabel Mercer, but I had not heard anyone else sing it in years. Imagine my surprise when John Barrowman included it on a recent album.



After You, Who? - The Gay Divorce* (1932)

Though with joy I should be reeling that at last you came my way,
There's no further use concealing that I'm feeling far from gay,
For the rare allure about you makes me all the plainer see
How inane, how vain, how empty life without you would be.

After you, who could supply my sky of blue?
After you, who could I love?
After you, why should I take the time to try,
For who else could qualify - after you, who?
Hold my hand and swear you'll never cease to care,
For without you there what could I do?
I could search years but who else could change my tears
Into laughter after you?

* Hollywood codes forced the 1934 film version to be called The Gay Divorcée. Censors would not concede that a divorce could be something joyous. I kid you not.

Trivia: Cole Porter was left handed and found it awkward to write down music on staff paper. He worked out a solution by turning the paper at a right angle, so that the staff lines were vertical. True.

Aiden Shaw

British-born model, writer and former porn star Aiden Shaw (b. 1966) had a traditional upbringing in England. He came from respectability and has returned to it again, but there’s no ignoring that wild detour in the early 1990s when he established himself as a popular star of gay porn. What set him apart from his adult film peers was that he was a man of intellect.

Shaw made over 50 pornographic films, earning several industry awards along the way. He stood out from the pack of blonds and their smooth all-over-tanned bodies. Shaw didn’t shave his chest and obviously didn’t sunbathe in the nude – in fact, his sharply defined tan line became a trademark. He was further distinguished by his British accent, although his porn roles required limited use of his speaking voice. Shaw’s screen persona was that of a traditionally handsome natural man possessed of a spectacularly generous endowment (and a rose tattoo on his arm). In fact, his penis was as much discussed in the 1990s as international playboy Porfirio Rubirosa’s(*) was in the 1930s (we're all of us too young to remember – just Goggle him). Many of Shaw’s fans noticed a startling facial resemblance to Richard Gere (see photo below).

*OK, I've received numerous E-mails about this, so here's a hint. To this day in Paris, if a restaurant patron wants one of those tall wooden peppermills, he says, "Waiter, may I please have a Rubirosa?" I kid you not.

He became one of the most popular global adult male stars before retiring from the porn industry in 1999 (he was diagnosed HIV positive in 1997). Although a car accident brought a hiatus to his porn career – for a time he was paralyzed and in a wheelchair – he made a return with four more adult videos in 2003/2004.

Nevertheless, it is difficult to reconcile his current appearance as a classically handsome, mature man with salt and pepper hair and a beard with his actual age – 52. He looks years older, in a good way. Talk about aging gracefully.

He comes across as a confident, worldly man, the perfect type for promoting luxury goods. He has modeled for GQ Magazine in Berlin, Le Figaro and El Pais, as well as in other print venues. That his present appearance renders him nearly unrecognizable from his days as a porn star is surely to his advantage, although the rose tattoo is an identity giveaway.

Shaw has worked in diverse fields, as an editor of an interior design magazine, a poet, an HIV activist, vocalist, producer, escort, composer and writer. Print modeling is merely his latest career turn. He undertook formal studies in film, television, photography and video, subsequently taking post- college jobs directing and art directing music videos. Shaw wrote and produced two albums of music, performing lead vocals with his band "Whatever". Individual tracks are available on iTunes.

The first chapter of his autobiography, My Undoing: Life in the Thick of Sex, Drugs, Pornography and Prostitution (2006), begins: “All I could see were pretty shapes and colours, my dick going in and out of his white cheeks.” From his days as an escort, his comment on how to have sex with men who repulse him: “Well, the thing is, very few men physically repulse me. Like a good whore, I can always find something about a man that I like.”

From an interview with Daniel Lee in NYC in 2003:

DL: What makes you laugh hardest?
AS: Getting treated special because I have a big dick.

DL: Would you prefer not to be treated special because you have big dick?
AS: No way!

Well, there you have it.

Shaw’s writing is described by Michael Musto of The Village Voice as prose that “can tug at your heartstrings and your crotch at the same time.” His first novel, Brutal, appeared in 1996, the same year he published a collection of poems titled If Language at the Same Time Shapes and Distorts Our Ideas and Emotions, How Do We Communicate Love? (it sold out), followed by two more novels, Boundaries (1997) and Wasted (2001).

Shaw completed a master’s degree in Creative Writing in 2007 at Goldsmiths University of London, followed by publication of a second autobiography, Sordid Truths (2009). In 2011, Shaw completed training to become a qualified English teacher.

Shaw was recently profiled in the Spring/Summer 2012 issue of Hercules Universal – One Last Colony, the Havana Affair – in which he models luxury men’s clothing (click on link).

http://models.com/mdx/?p=14427

At present Mr. Shaw divides his time between residences in London and Barcelona. In 2016 he reverted to his birth name: Aiden Brady. Here is a sampling of his recent modeling work. You're welcome.

Kander and Ebb

After studying music composition at Oberlin and Columbia, John Kander (b. 1927), at left in photo, settled in New York City, where he worked as an arranger, accompanist, and conductor. He met lyricist Fred Ebb (1928-2004), at right, in 1963, and they formed a four-decade-long song writing team that produced such stage hits as Cabaret (1966) and Chicago (1975), both of which were made into award-winning films.

In 1965 Kander and Ebb joined forces with Harold Prince and George Abbott on a show called Flora, The Red Menace, which made a star out of nineteen-year-old Liza Minnelli, who won a Tony Award for her performance. In fact, Miss Minnelli and Chita Rivera went on to debut much of their material. The rest is Broadway history: The Happy Time/1968, Zorba/1968, 70, Girls, 70/1971, The Act/1977, Woman of the Year/1981, The Rink/1984, And the World Goes 'Round/1991, Kiss of the Spider Woman/1993, Steel Pier/1997 and The Visit/2001. Most of their collaborations were shows that explored the dark side of relationships, and few resulted in a happy ending.

Their contribution to the film score of Martin Scorsese's New York, New York/1977 yielded one of their most celebrated songs, sung by Liza Minelli in the film; however, it is Frank Sinatra’s cover that has become the most enduring interpretation.

Kander and Ebb – their two surnames were indivisible – it was impossible to say one without the other. Both were openly gay, and it was wrongly assumed by many that they were long-term lovers. In 2003, Kander, who has lived for nearly thirty years with Albert Stephenson (a choreographer and teacher) addressed those rumors in an interview in which he described the nature of his non-professional relations with Ebb as "his 40-year partner in creativity but never in domesticity, much less romance."

Marvin Hamlisch said of Kander and Ebb, "All I can remember is that working with Fred Ebb was a lot of fun. You know, John Kander and Fred Ebb wrote as a team. So, most of the songs that were written when we usually worked with Liza (Minnelli) were written by them. However, when it came to doing arrangements and working on Liza with a Z and putting things together, I loved working with Fred Ebb. We had the best time. He and I were really good friends. It was just delightful. He was a very, very smart man. And he was very funny. And he was very caustic. I think he probably wrote for her better than anyone in the world could have written for her. He just understood her so well."

After Ebb succumbed to a heart attack* in 2004, Kander continued working on the unfinished collaboration Curtains/2007, a murder mystery musical for which David Hyde Pierce won a Tony Award for best actor in a musical. Rupert Holmes supplied additional lyrics to complete the work. Alas, Curtains was not A-list Kander and Ebb. On a happy note, in 2010 John Kander wed his long-time partner, dancer and choreographer Albert Stephenson. Kander, who turns ninety this year, continues to work at his life-long profession. His most recent musical is The Landing/2013, with book and lyrics by Greg Pierce.

*Frank Ebb is buried at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York, also the final resting place of Leonard Bernstein.

Update: July 28, 2014

John Kander was present at the White House to receive a prestigious award presented by President Obama, who spoke these words:


The 2013 National Medal of Arts (is given) to John Kander for his contributions as a composer. For more than half a century, Mr. Kander has enlivened Broadway, television and film through songs that evoke romanticism and wonder and capture moral dilemmas that persist across generations.

Shane McAnally

38-year-old Shane McAnally is a Nashville anomaly – an openly gay country songwriter, singer and producer. Writing scores of songs a year to wild success, McAnally has written or co-written hits for Kenny Chesney, Lee Ann Womack, The Band Perry, Miranda Lambert and Kelly Clarkson, among many others. As well, he has penned songs for the hit ABC television series "Nashville".

According to McAnally, success finally landed on his doorstep after he came out. “My career really took off when I came out. When I stopped hiding who I was, I started writing hits.”

Shane has a definite propensity for mega-hit songs. Since November 2010, he’s co-written seven No. 1 country singles and dozens of other hits for the likes of Luke Bryan, Lady Antebellum, Reba McEntire and Kacey Musgraves.

McAnally writes chart-topping country songs from an office on the grounds of the Nashville home he shares with his husband and their 7-month-old twins. Last September, Shane married his partner of six years, Michael Baum, a former mortgage specialist who now runs McAnally’s production and publishing companies. The couple’s daughter and son, Dylan and Dash McAnally Baum, were born last December.

A Texas native, Shane appeared on the TV talent show “Star Search” while still a teenager. He lost, but went on to perform in Branson, Missouri, the country-music resort town. He dropped out of the University of Texas, Austin, to move to Nashville to pursue a career as a country singer. He signed a publishing deal with Curb Records and in 2000, he released his self-titled debut album. “I was sure I was going to be a superstar.” Although he shared a manager with Alabama and Kenny Chesney and opened for those acts on tour, the album flopped.

“The truth is, I probably would be dead if I had become a star, because at that point I was so closeted and so afraid of people finding out I was gay. There was no telling what would have happened.”

McAnally then decided to head to West Hollywood, the gay epicenter of Los Angeles, which blew his mind. He had never imagined that there was a place where gay men could walk down the street holding hands and kissing. From 2000-2007 he worked in Los Angeles as a bartender, all the while writing and performing under the name Shane Mack. Five “Shane Mack” songs found their way onto the soundtrack of the film “Shelter,” a gay-themed romantic melodrama. In the video for the movie’s theme song, “Lie to Me,” scenes of Shawn McAnally singing and playing acoustic guitar are intercut with clips from the movie. Have a look/listen:



McAnally returned to Nashville in 2007 to try his hand at country songwriting, but this time as an out gay man. The week he returned, country torch singer Lee Ann Womack recorded “Last Call,” co-written by McAnally with Erin Enderlin. It went to No. 3 on the country music charts and virtually established Shane’s career as a songwriter.




Shane scored a number one hit in 2010 when his song “Somewhere With You” was recorded by Kenny Chesney. In this video McAnally tells the story behind writing the song and then sings it himself.




McAnally has given up his youthful goal of being a country music singing superstar. “One of the greatest tools you have as a songwriter is anonymity,” Shane says. “If listeners know too much about the songwriter, they don’t get to insert their own characters. I don’t want the audience thinking that the guy who wrote the song is gay. Whether it’s a gay or straight guy or gal in the audience, I want them all to hear a song and say, ‘That’s my story.’ ”

Note: Most of the info for this post comes from a New York Times profile published in late May. I’ll wrap up this post with “Fade into You,” a duet written by McAnally for the ABC television series “Nashville”, renewed last month for a second season.

Juan Gabriel

Born in Mexico as Alberto Aguilera Valadez (1950), the life of singer Juan Gabriel is a rags-to-riches story. He grew up poor, working as a craftsman at age 13, to become a legendary singer of Mexican ranchera music, as well as a star in the genres of Latin pop, mariachi music and Latino ballads. After several years spent honing his musical composition skills in a boarding school away from his family, he decided to escape at the age of 15. Taking advantage of having daily garbage duty, one day Alberto walked out of the school with garbage in his hand, headed for the dumpsters, and never returned.

He soon established himself as a performer in Juárez and Mexico City. In 1971, at the age of 21, Alberto signed a contract with RCA and changed his name to Juan Gabriel (Juan, in honor of a schoolmaster whom he held in high regard, and the surname Gabriel, after his deceased father, Gabriel Aguilera). He has become a legend in Latino music as a singer, composer and entertainer, selling in excess of 100 million albums.

As a philanthropist, Gabriel has consistently given large sums to support Mexican orphans. He has four adopted children of his own. To be an out-and-proud entertainer in Hollywood is one thing, but in rigidly traditional Mexico it is another, so when asked if he were gay, Gabriel famously responded, "What is seen does not need to be asked. I don't have to tell you things that do not concern you or others. I think that I am an artist who has given much with my music" (Lo que se ve no se pregunta. Yo no tengo por qué decirle cosas que a usted, como a muchas otras personas, no les interesa, yo pienso que soy un artista que he dado mucho con mis canciones). However, proving that actions speak louder than words, he recently confirmed that he was engaged to marry his male partner, 23-year-old Spanish singer Jaz Bael, shown below.

Gabriel has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and there is a statue of him on Mexico City's Plaza Garibaldi, a favorite performance area for mariachi bands. The sculpture, erected in 2001, was crafted by artist Oscar Ponzanelli.


In this live performance clip Gabriel performs his signature tune Querida:

David Bowie

Openly bisexual British rocker David Bowie (b. 1947) has been reinventing himself for over four decades and still records at age 66, although his last live performances were in 2006. He cut his teeth on glam rock in the early 1970s (the Ziggy Stardust persona), but has blown through blue-eyed soul, folk, industrial, adult contemporary, and jungle genres. Throughout his career, he has sold an estimated 140 million albums. In the U.K., he has been awarded nine Platinum album certifications, 11 Gold and eight Silver, and in the U.S., five Platinum and seven Gold certifications. In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him 39th on their list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time", and 23rd on their list of the best singers of all time.

While a student of art, music, drama and design at a technical school, Bowie learned to play piano, recorder, ukelele and saxophone, and he sang in his school choir. He formed his first band, The Konrads, in 1962, and within a decade had established his androgynous persona that made him famous all over the world.  His Ziggy Stardust shows were ultra-theatrical affairs filled with shocking stage moments, such as Bowie stripping down to a sumo wrestling loincloth and simulating oral sex with a band member’s guitar. In spite of the debilitating effects of cocaine and heroin use, Bowie achieved superstar status by 1980, and by 1990 he was dubbed a megastar with a solo musical career, an acting career (on both stage and screen) and a revived career as a band member.

In a September 1976 magazine interview Bowie said. "It's true – I am a bisexual. But I can't deny that I've used that fact very well. I suppose it's the best thing that ever happened to me.” Ava Cherry, Bowie’s backup singer, reported that Mick Jagger and Bowie were really sexually obsessed with each other. “Even though I was in bed with them many times, I ended up just watching them have sex.” Nevertheless, Bowie married twice and has a son, Duncan Jones, an English film director, from his first marriage.

If business or pleasure takes you to London this spring or summer, queue up for the Victoria and Albert Museum’s special exhibit that forms the first international retrospective of the career of the extraordinary rock musician David Bowie. More than 300 objects in display will include handwritten lyrics, original costumes, photography, film, music videos, set designs and Bowie's own instruments, as well as items from collaborations with artists and designers in the fields of fashion, sound, graphics, theatre, art and film. The exhibit will feature Ziggy Stardust bodysuits (1972) designed by Freddie Burretti, photography by Brian Duffy, album sleeve artwork by Guy Peellaert and Edward Bell, visual excerpts from films and live performances including The Man Who Fell to Earth, music videos (such as Boys Keep Swinging) and set designs created for the 1974 Diamond Dogs tour. The evolution of his creative ideas will be revealed through personal items, such as never before seen storyboards, handwritten set lists and lyrics, Bowie’s own sketches, musical scores and diary entries.

The exhibition David Bowie is... opens March 23 at the Victoria & Albert Museum and runs through July 28, 2013. Info about advance tickets sales, hours, etc., at:

www.vam.ac.uk/content/exhibitions/david-bowie-is/visitor-and-ticket-information/

*Bowie’s new album The Next Day will be released on March 11, 2013. Where Are We Now? (see music video below) was released on January 8, Bowie’s 66th birthday.

Lou Reed

UPDATE: Lou Reed died of liver disease on October 27, 2013. He had undergone a liver transplant the previous May.


Lou Reed (b. 1942) is a bisexual American rock musician, songwriter, and photographer. He is best known as guitarist, vocalist and songwriter for The Velvet Underground (1965-1973), but has enjoyed a decades-long successful solo career.

Reed grew up in a middle-class Long Island, NY, Jewish household, but he was greatly at odds with his parents. While a teenager, his parents had him confined to a mental hospital, where he was forcibly administered electro-shock treatments and various drug therapies to counter his nascent homosexual tendencies. I’m not making this up. Nevertheless, he survived undeterred and played in amateur bands until he left for Syracuse University, where he experimented in free jazz and avant garde musical forms. At some point during these college years Reed decided to become a writer, declaring a major in English Literature (he graduated with honors). While at Syracuse he had his first gay love affair, but for the next decade Lou dated both men and women in a sexually ambiguous, drug-fueled haze.

Post college, Lou found himself in New York City, where he joined with several other musicians to form The Velvet Underground in 1965. Pop artist Andy Warhol became their manager and sent them out on tour. Warhol designed the now-famous album cover of a peelable banana. Several albums received luke-warm reception, and by 1970 Reed had resigned from the group and moved back into his parent’s home on Long Island, working at his father’s accounting firm. He worked on a solo album that was released in 1971, again garnering little notice. Assisted by his fans David Bowie and Mick Ronson, he was given a glam makeover to accompany the issue of his second solo album, Transformer (1972), which contained a bona-fide hit, Walk on the Wild Side, a top-20 song that celebrated drag queens, male prostitutes, and a gay lifestyle. The subjects of many of his lyrics were drag queens and heroin.

Throughout the 1970s, Lou Reed alternated between commercial and artistic success and failure. Significantly, he married Betty Kronstadt in late 1972, but they divorced within a year. Lou Reed married Sylvia Morales in 1980 after meeting her in a gay SM club. Amazingly, their marriage lasted for more than a decade. After quelling his personal demons and self-destructive habits, Reed hit his stride in the 1980s, although he was quoted at the time, “I have such a heavy resentment thing because of all the prejudices against my being gay. How can anybody gay keep their sanity?” He also made this statement, “I just wouldn’t want listeners to be under a false impression. I want them to know that if they’re liking a man, he’s a gay one – from top to bottom. You want to know the real Lou Reed? Turn around. Now bend over.”

Well, there you have it.

In the 1990s he began a successful collaboration with performance artist Laurie Anderson and theatre director Robert Wilson. In 2007 Reed revived his 1973 Berlin album, touring in a mixed media performance. Reed married Anderson in 2008, and so far as I can determine, their relationship endures in a home they share in Greenwich Village. Reed, who also has a home in Southampton, Long Island, continues to record and tour, and is now regarded as a respected and influential rock music veteran, although he continues to send out mixed signals about his sexual orientation. As he makes outrageous contradictory statements about his life and philosophy, we realize nothing’s changed in all those years.

Frank Ocean

When the Grammy Awards nominations were announced earlier this month, openly gay/bi singer/songwriter Frank Ocean was nominated in six categories:

1. Best new artist
2. Album of the Year (Channel Orange)
3. Best Urban Contemporary Album (Channel Orange)
4. Record of the Year (Thinking Bout You)
5. Best Rap/Sung Collaboration (No Church in the Wild)
6. Best Short Form Music Video (No Church in the Wild)

The Grammy Award winners will be announced on February 10, 2013.

Ocean, who was born Christopher Breaux (known as Lonny to close friends), is twenty five years old. As a teenager in New Orleans he washed cars, mowed lawns and walked dogs to save up enough money to rent studio time. In 2005 Hurricane Katrina destroyed his recording facility, so he dropped out of college and moved to Los Angeles, where he made a living writing lyrics for Justin Bieber, Beyoncé and John Legend. Just a year ago he conceived and recorded his singing debut album – Nostalgia, Ultra – inventing a new persona. Songwriter Lonny Breaux became singer Frank Ocean (a tribute to Frank Sinatra and Ocean’s 11). Nostalgia, Ultra, an R&B album, was released in February, 2011 as a free download.

With the mid-2012 release of his first studio album – Channel Orange – Ocean came out on his blog, making reference to an unrequited love for a man (Ocean was nineteen at the time of this same sex longing). Ocean says he “cried like a baby” when he made the July, 2012 Tumblr blog post revealing his gay past: “I don't know what happens now, and that's alrite. I don't have any secrets I need kept anymore... I feel like a free man.”

On the songs Bad Religion, Pink Matter and Forrest Gump, Ocean sings about being in love, but the word used to identify the lover is “him” and not “her.” Thus Ocean became one of the first major African-American music artists to announce that he had fallen in love with someone of the same sex, notable because the industry is known for expressions of homophobia. In this instance, however, Ocean's sexual revelations were met with praise and support from throughout the music industry.

Channel Orange debuted at number two on the US Billboard 200, selling 131,000 copies in its first week, The album garnered rave reviews from music critics, who praised its idiosyncratic production, musical scope, and Ocean's songwriting. It was promoted with four singles, including Ocean's highest charting single "Thinkin Bout You", and his North American supporting tour in July 2012. At present the album has sold approximately 400,000 copies.

Bad Religion (Channel Orange) is a makeshift therapy session about unrequited love, taking place in the back seat of a taxi:

(sampling of lyrics)

It's a bad religion to be in love with someone who could never love you.
This unrequited love – to me it's nothing but a one-man cult & cyanide in my styrofoam cup.
I can never make him love me, never make him love me.

Jay Brannan

Jay Brannan (b. 1982) is a Texas born singer, actor, and songwriter. An openly gay tenor who plays folk/pop acoustic guitar, he has forged a career based on the strength of his intimate YouTube videos and self promotion.

After a brief stint at the University of Cincinnati’s acting school, he moved on to Los Angeles and ultimately to New York City, where he was cast in the 2006 film Shortbus, directed by John Cameron Mitchell. He won the part, which required him to perform an explicit sex scene, by submitting an audition tape. Brannan also contributed a song to the film’s soundtrack, Soda Shop, which was his first professionally recorded track.

Brannan subsequently produced an EP and acted in Holding Trevor (2007) as the promiscuous best friend of the protagonist. Since then, he has toured and released two well-received albums. He has achieved cult status among gay men. Since 2008 he has been able to support himself from earnings from his concerts and music sales. His second album, In Living Cover (2009), reached number ten on the Billboard Top Heatseekers chart for the week of July 25, 2009. Brannan promoted the album in an interview on ABC News Now in July, 2009.

Jay’s newest video is a departure from his shy persona. "Rob Me Blind" delves into the frustrating experience of "missed connections." Instead of reticence and missed opportunity, Jay acts on his impulses. In this video he exchanges flirtatious glances with a stranger while waiting for an elevator. As the doors open at each new floor, Brannan plays out a scene in which he imagines their future life together.

"I'm way too shy to ever approach anyone on the street, on the subway, in an elevator or even at a bar," Brannan says, "so it was fun to make a video involving chemistry-at-first-sight, where the characters didn't just end up going home to check the 'missed connections' listings on Craigslist."



After completing a tour of Australia this weekend, Brannan begins a US tour July 18 in Boston, ending August 25 in NYC (Highline Ballroom). The complete tour covers 28 cities, a radical departure for Brannan, who typically tours only 4-10 cities at a time. It’s a true sign of his increasing stature and popularity.

Complete tour details here:

http://jaybrannan.com/tour

Gavin Creel

Openly gay actor Gavin Creel is set to play the lead role of Elder Kevin Price in the national tour of the musical The Book of Mormon. The tour will launch in Denver (August 14-September 2, already completely sold out) and will play in 16 other cities: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Detroit, Chicago, Boston, Washington DC, Des Moines, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Rochester, Pittsburgh, Toronto, Buffalo and Cleveland.

Gavin (b. April 18, 1976) is an Ohio-born activist, actor, singer and song writer who is also one of the three founders of Broadway Impact, an organization fighting for equality and the LBGT community. He came out publicly in a 2009 interview with Brandon Voss in Advocate magazine. As well, he has three solo vocal albums to his credit – the third, titled Get Out, was released last month on March 20, 2012.

He was recently in a production of the musical Hair on both Broadway (2009) and London’s West End (2010). Creel earned Tony Award nominations for Hair and Thoroughly Modern Millie (2002). He has also appeared on Broadway in La Cage Aux Folles (2004) and in the West End production of Mary Poppins. He’s come a long way since his first stage appearance in which he was a high school sophomore cast as Sir Sagamore in Camelot; the part had a grand total of two speaking words: “And mine.”

Gavin Creel wrote and performed this call to action song,  Noise – an Anthem for Equality:

Michael Stipe (R.E.M.)

As lead singer for R.E.M., Michael Stipe (b. 1960) headed one of the most influential alternative rock bands of the 1980s and ‘90s. R.E.M. was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007, in recognition of having produced a string of classic hits such as Losing My Religion, It’s The End of the World As We Know It, The One I Love, Man on the Moon and Everybody Hurts – a testament to Stipe’s unique style of singing and songwriting ability. R.E.M.’s debut album, Murmur (1983) received critical acclaim, beating out Michael Jackson’s Thriller for Album of the Year in the Rolling Stone Critic’s Poll. In 1996, R.E.M. signed the largest contract of its kind with Warner Brothers Records, valued at $80 million.

After Stipe wore a hat in 1992 that proclaimed, “White House Stop AIDS,” rumors began circulating about his sexual orientation. At the time Stipe responded that he was an “equal opportunity lech,” and did not call himself gay, straight or bisexual. In 1994 he stated publicly that he was attracted to, and had relationships with, both men and women. Finally Stipe ended years of speculation by coming out in Time magazine in 2001. He revealed that he had been in a three-year relationship with an amazing man and referred to himself as a queer artist. He divulged that he felt that public figures and celebrities should be open about their sexuality in order to “help kids somewhere out there.” Subsequently Stipes became known for his social and political activism – all the while turning out hit after hit, featuring his surreal lyrics.

On September 21, 2011, the members of R.E.M. announced their retirement in a news release on the band’s website. The band had been performing for thirty-one years, and Stipe was 51 years old.






“To our Fans and Friends: 
As R.E.M., and as lifelong friends and co-conspirators, we have decided to call it a day as a band. We walk away with a great sense of gratitude, of finality, and of astonishment at all we have accomplished. To anyone who ever felt touched by our music, our deepest thanks for listening – R.E.M.”

Bad Day (2006)

Gene Raymond

Raymond (above) with Dolores del Rio in Flying Down to Rio* 1933.

His wife of 28 years, Jeanette MacDonald, was much more famous, but Gene Raymond (1908-1998) had a solid career as a leading man of stage, film and TV. He had a strapping physique with blond hair and blue eyes. He was also a singer and composer, writer, director and producer – and a decorated military pilot.

Louis B. Mayer of MGM studios arranged the marriage to prevent MacDonald from marrying her on-screen partner Nelson Eddy, which would have ruined her career. Mayer was concerned that a MacDonald-Eddy marriage would end in divorce, due to their temperaments, then he would lose his lucrative box office team. MacDonald had an affair with Eddy anyway, and Gene Raymond continued to have affairs with other men. In fact, on their honeymoon MacDonald caught Raymond in an embrace with actor Buddy Rogers.

Raymond and wife Jeanette MacDonald (below).

But it gets even messier. Raymond, whose career peaked during the 1930s and 40s, was arrested three times for having sex with men, the last of which occurred in England during WWII. In 1938 Raymond began sharing a house with a 19-year-old actor and was arrested on a morals charge following a raid on a homosexual night club, requiring MacDonald to bribe police in order to obtain his release. An enraged Louis B. Mayer ordered the couple to resume the appearance of a happily married couple. Although he had arranged the marriage, Mayer had Raymond blacklisted following his 1938 arrest for homosexual activity; he made only 7 films from 1940-1948, whereas he had averaged four movies a year prior to the 1938 arrest. Raymond also had affairs with Rock Hudson, Cesar Romero and Robert Stack.

He appeared opposite W.C. Fields, Humphrey Bogart, Ann Southern, Charles Laughton, Loretta Young, Bette Davis, Jean Harlow, Dolores del Rio, Fred Astaire, Joan Crawford, Robert Montgomery, Carole Lombard, Robert Mitchum and his own wife, who recorded “Let Me Always Sing,” which Raymond composed. Jeanette MacDonald also sang several of Raymond’s songs in her concerts. In 1948's Million Dollar Weekend, Raymond was also director and writer, in addition to being a cast member.

Raymond remarried after Jeanette MacDonald’s death but continued to attend meetings of the Jeanette MacDonald International Fan Club. He retired from the Air Force in 1968 as a colonel. For his contribution to the motion picture and television industries, Raymond has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame: at 7003 Hollywood Boulevard and 1704 Vine Street, respectively.

Enjoy this clip from Flying Down to Rio (1933) with Delores del Rio. Raymond is very blond and a very young 25:

Justin Utley

Out country singer/songwriter Justin Utley occupies a spot more rarified than out professional athletes. Country music is about the last frontier waiting to be conquered by gay men. But wait! He’s also a Utah born-and-bred Mormon. Well, a former Mormon. He was able to escape the clutches of the church and take his act to New York.

That was quite a change for a kid who once was a best-selling Christian artist in Salt Lake City's Mormon community. Justin’s charismatic stage moves and commanding vocal presence have made an impact on the New York music scene. His debut album as a solo artist, "Runaway," blends singer/songwriter sensitivity with hard-rock attitude, all delivered with plenty of hungry big-city energy served up in a country/folk style.

"I was the prince of Mormon pop with a couple of Mormon albums that did pretty well when I was 15," Utley confesses with a laugh. "The Mormon Church also has its own movie industry, and I've written songs for some of those films. There's this strange alternate universe of Mormon film and music in Utah. You go to the multiplex and you have the major nationwide releases playing right next door to a missionary movie."

Utley grew up in a conservative house and was "forced into taking piano lessons" at a young age. He put music aside until high school, when he returned to the keyboard and started writing songs to release the emotions he couldn't get to any other way. He also found his way into musical theater.

"My mom got me into a play singing Disney songs, and that kinda spawned my career," he says. "As I got older, I was in everything from 'Bye Bye Birdie' to 'Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.' When I told her I was gay, she said, 'I thought you just had commitment issues, but I should have known. You spent too much time alone with those He-Man action figures.' "

After high school, Utley started Found, a mainstream rock project that won a Slammy (awarded by Salt Lake's indie newspaper The City Weekly) for best new band. He also won Best Singer and Songwriter and was a featured performer at the 2002 Winter Olympics, but Salt Lake City was getting too small to contain his musical ambitions. "After the Olympics, I realized I had to get out of town to make the next step. There's a punk rock scene, but it's very localized. You rarely get noticed from outside. The gay scene is very underground in its own little sphere. Gay Pride draws about 30,000 people, but there's only one gay club in the entire city."

Before he left, Utley decided to come out, which was a generally positive experience. He also left the Mormon Church. "Brent, my first boyfriend, passed away suddenly during the process of coming out, and that was difficult. When I told my mom, she said she was sorry she didn't get to meet him, that he never came over for dinner. Everyone I told remained a part of my life and was supportive – except my Mormon bishop, who told me that Brent died because God did not approve of that kind of relationship.”

After coming out, Justin became a noted activist and advocate for civil rights and LGBT equality in the United States, and an outspoken personality against the Mormon church's use of conversion therapy, a method Utley endured for two years at Evergreen, after serving a two-year full-time mission for the church.

"I wrote a letter to the church excommunicating myself. They say they allow everyone to worship as they please; yet they create an environment that's closed and make plenty of pro-family anti-gay contributions. They don't really live by the live-and-let-live rule they profess to follow."

Utley worked on "Runaway" while he was in the process of moving to New York, bouncing between sessions in Salt Lake and the Big Apple. He played most of the instruments himself, but invited Lance Yergensen, his band-mate from Found, to lay down some shredding electric guitar parts. The music has a bright live feel, bursting with energy and confidence. "Goodbye, Goodbye" is a rocking kiss-off to a faithless lover with a big anthem-like chorus; "Little White Lies," based on Utley's disillusionment with the Mormon Church, has a '50s R&B feel and searing guitar work from Yergensen, while "Crash & Burn," one of Utley's most requested songs in his live set, is a bittersweet tune about overcoming life's difficulties, marked by Utley's pleading, emotional vocal.

Utley wrote and produced "Runaway" by himself. "My studio has digital and analog equipment because analog captures something digital can't. It opens up the soul of the music a bit more. "Runaway" has an introspective feel, with lyrics that I wrote before and after coming out, so the images are open enough that everyone can relate to them.

In June 2010, Utley released "Stand for Something." a single written to inspire and motivate to take action towards securing LGBT equality in America, ending youth homelessness, and increasing community awareness. The single was nominated by the LGBT Academy of Recording Arts for 4 OutMusic Awards, including Best Songwriter and Artist of the Year, winning Best Country/Folk Song of the Year.