“I’m not gay!” How Bowie backtracked on his bisexualy for Let's Dance | Lour

Contents:

• WAS HE GAY, BISEXUAL OR BOWIE? Y
• “I’M NOT GAY!” HOW BOWIE BACKTRACKED ON HIS BISEXUALY FOR LET'S DANCE
• BOWIE: ‘I’M GAY AND ALWAYS HAVE BEEN’

WAS HE GAY, BISEXUAL OR BOWIE? Y

Bowie, 69, was not jt a pop idol but a the days sce his ath, lbian, gay, bisexual, and transgenr fans have shared how the rocker fluenced their liv and helped brg queer culture to the mastream the 1960s and 1970s. “Feelg those sentiments was important, pecially as a gay youth who was not out at the time. “I’m gay, ” he said to the journalist Michael Watts 1972, “and always have been, even when I was David Jon, ” his name at years later, an article for Rollg Stone tled “Straight Time, ” Mr.

Bowie, who married two women and had two children, would still face the qutn terviews years later: Was he gay or bisexual? ” In other words, he was not a mpaigner for gay rights, but Mr.

Lowr ntued, “but, pecially at the begng of his reer, he was regnizably ‘gay. It had jt eight songs and, of them, the tle track and Cat People had already been released, Cha Girl was a new versn of a song he'd wrten wh Iggy Pop 1977, and Crimal World was a ver versn of another 1977 release by Brish band Metro – a song that had been banned by the BBC for allns to gay sex. “He is not gay, whatever he may have blurted out 1972, ” wrote terviewer Kurt Lor, “nor was he ever a transvte, thank you.

“I’M NOT GAY!” HOW BOWIE BACKTRACKED ON HIS BISEXUALY FOR LET'S DANCE

Released as a sgle 1977, Metro’s Crimal World had been banned by the BBC for s ‘sexual ntent’: allns to cross-drsg and gay sex.

Wrten 1974, jt five years after England and Wal legalised homosexual sex between men over the age of 21 (and six years before Stland would do so), Crimal World raised a playful eyebrow at a (supposedly crimal) world where “the boys are like baby-faced girls” and “the girls are like baby-faced boys”. “It was a satire on androgyny, sexual ambivalence, posturg, pretendg to be gay or whatever, ” says Godw. I'm straight but I have a lot of gay iends and I'm very fortable a gay, or cross-genr i, always have been.

Suggtively gay.

BOWIE: ‘I’M GAY AND ALWAYS HAVE BEEN’

” In the words of Bowie expert Chris O’Leary, he had “turned a gay-themed le to one that Vce Neil uld’ve wrten.

A generatn of gay fans had felt liberated by Bowie’s claim to be bisexual a earlier. ”I thought, 'He don't want now to be associated wh somethg that is too gay-iendly or suggtive'. A lot of people the mic bs were gay or at the very least bisexual, but the biggt taboo you uld break those days was to e out and say, y’know, ‘I swg both ways’.