Rocking Out – Male Musicians Straddle the Closet

In hearing Mika brush off media speculation that he might be gay, one can sense the marketing savvy beneath the privacy issue façade. “I never talk about anything to do with my sexuality,” he said in a widely-quoted 2007 interview attributed to PR-Inside.com Entertainment News. “I just don't think I need to. People ask me all the time. But I just don't see the point. In order to survive I've kind of shut up different parts of my life, and that's one of them, especially this early in my career."

Already a smash success in Europe, and hoping to break big in the U.S., cocksure Mika says he fears no ingrained social taboos about rock stars looking and sounding gay. He's quick to point out that his song “Billy Brown” is about a homosexual love affair. Is Mika's attempt to keep his sexuality private really just a marketing strategy of playing gay for the gays and straight for the straights?

When asked about what he thinks of artists such as Mika and Martin, who seem gay, promote themselves to gays, yet dance around the sexuality issue, Chuck Panozzo doesn't mince words. “It saddens me to see artists playing that game,” he says. “I can understand it at the beginning of their career, but after all, this is the year 2007. Especially since there are young musicians around who are willing to say ‘I'm gay'.”

Jake Shears of the disco/pop/glam band Scissor Sisters is openly gay, but claims he is not interested in singing about being gay. In a 2007 www.me-me-me.tv interview he bristled: “I want the music to be accessible. I don't want to appeal to just a tenth of the population. I couldn't give a f*** about being gay. I'm not a gay man first and foremost.”

Shears's words may come back to haunt him. One might make the case that he needn't feel obligated to make “gay art” simply because he's gay. But early on, the Scissor Sisters purposely chose to make gay-gay-gayness their startup image and marketing strategy.

Lately Scissor Sisters have been floundering somewhat in their quest for mainstream U.S. success. Perhaps they seek to lose some of the “gay taint” surrounding them. Are “the gays” to blame for holding them back from larger commercial success, or are Scissor Sisters wrong to dis those who put them on the map in the first place?

There's no doubt today's new wave of young bands are more at ease with homosexuality than their old-school forbears. Musicians now are more likely to shrug it off, write songs about it and even discuss it with the press.

Chuck Panozzo concurs. “It's nowhere near as bad now as it was before. One can now see young openly gay artists getting record deals and at least getting out there and performing. It's exciting for me to see this happen. When I was young, I had no role models. There was no one to take me by the hand and say, ‘Now Chuck, do it this way and don't do it that way.'”

Critically acclaimed Brit art/punk band Bloc Party features gay singer Kele Okereke, who is becoming an eloquent spokesman for disaffected, lonely youth with several songs with openly gay lyrics. Okereke spoke of his goals to ArjanWrites.com: "To speak to young people in their impressionable formative years,” he says, “and say something that could help them make sense of their lives. Lessen the sense of alienation and isolation that they might have. I think that's something that definitely... I'd be proud of.”

Also from Britain, upbeat soft-rock group The Feeling stars Dan Gillespie Sells, who is poised to become the new gay heartthrob in rock. Armed with stylish, preppy good looks and perfect coif, h e only came out publicly in 2006, but arrives with some fascinating gay credentials. "My mum's gay, my uncle too, so I grew up thinking it was perfectly normal,” he admitted in Attitude magazine, noting that he marched in his first pride parade at age 4.

As they seek to make it big in the U.S., Brits Okereke and Gillespie Sells wisely came out of the closet early so as to preempt any U.S. media innuendos. Their gay orientations are already a non-issue with their fans.

Young musicians in today's rock scene have witnessed the very public outings of their rock predecessors — think Elton John, Freddie Mercury, George Michael. They've seen Kurt Cobain don a dress. They see openly gay characters and actors on TV and in films. They are even aware of the many openly gay acts that have been out from the outset and forged careers mainly within gay culture, including homocore favs Pansy Division, gay pop icons The Village People and singer/songwriter Rufus Wainwright.

“They grew up during a time in the '90s when sex and gender were discussed more openly and in creative contexts,” notes journalist Jean Fury in Decibel, “as opposed to the '80s when 'gay' meant 'AIDS.' As a result, the younger bands are more likely to have out-of-the-closet friends.”

Kids raised on MTV were acclimated to all things queer early on in their lives via the wildly popular videos of uber-gay rock acts such as The B-52's, Culture Club and Human League. Since their heyday in the 1980s, gay frontmen Fred Schneider of the B-52's and Boy George of Culture Club have gone on to become highly visible celebrities in their own right, lending their fame to a variety of pro-gay causes.

Young rockers today can even look back on a considerable lineage of self-described straight and/or ex-gay musicians who have, at one time or another, played the “gay card” to advance their careers. Anti-hero type idols such as Alice Cooper, David Bowie, Kiss and Marilyn Manson sensationalized gay fantasy, homoeroticism, gender-bending and camp glamour. Even these “fake” gay acts helped open up entrenched conservative sexual mores across the U.S.

“The fact is,” Panozzo concludes, “we are all musicians and professionals. Music is a universal language. There is power in what we are doing. It strips away all the crap and makes us human. Once we can all understand that, there should be no fear, if you are a straight musician, of sharing the stage with a gay musician. The main purpose is to perform and share musical talent with each other.”