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One of my recent reads was Jon Savage's "The Secret Public" (2024), which I thoroughly enjoyed. The more descriptive subtitle of the book is "How LGBTQ Performers Shaped Popular Culture (1955-1979)".

The book starts with early pioneers like Johnny Ray and Little Richard and ends with the disco hits of Sylvester and the Village People. In addition to musical artists, managers and producers Savage also writes in depth about the history of the LGBTQ movement(s) in the UK and USA. I found this part of the book equally fascinating.

Although the book is quite long (with the notes section more than 700 pages), it doesn't try to cover everything that happened during these 25 years. Savage has divided his book into five main chapters, each of which mainly concentrates on the events of one year (1955, 1961, 1967, 1973 and 1978). This makes the amount of material in the book manageable, but obviously ends up leaving out many interesting stories. For example, I was expecting that the colourful - and gay - producer Seymour Stein might pop up at some point during the book, but he never did. Luckily Stein's own autobiography ("The Siren Song: My Life in Music", 2018, written with Gareth Murphy) is a fun read and provides quite a bit of insight on these issues as well.

Some of the key people in Savage's book include producers like Joe Meek, managers like Brian Epstein & Robert Stigwood and musical artists like Dusty Sprigfield, David Bowie & Tom Robinson. The career of Andy Warhol is also a major part of the discussion, and not only because of his role as a manager of the Velvet Underground.

At a couple of points Savage is surprisingly careless with his musical history. For example, he mentions (on page 516) that the songwriter-producer Van McCoy joined Scepter Records, "where he worked on hit singles by Ruby & the Romantics, Erma Franklin, Jackie Wilson and Betty Everett", when in fact none of these artists recorded for the label. But while there may be other factual inaccuracies that I didn't spot, I still found his general arguments and the outline of his story quite compelling.

I really liked the way Savage chose to end his book, leaving his characters frozen at the end of 1979. I think we all know what happened next.

For a slightly more extensive review of the book, you may want to read Alex Needham's text in the Guardian:

theguardian.com/books/article/

The cover of John Savage's book "The Secret Public. How LGBTQ Performers Shaped Popular Culture (1955-1979)". The cover includes a black & white picture of Little Richard being kissed on the cheek by a female fan.
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