The Secret Public: How Music Moved Queer Culture From the Margins to the Mainstream [Hardcover]

One of the preeminent music and culture writers of his generation . . . Savages strength is an expansive interdisciplinarity: his ability to read a magazine cover, a brocaded coat, and a performance on a television special in light of one another . . . The sophistication of The story Savage tells is a rich and fascinating one, shedding new light on familiar icons and bringing forgotten ones out of the past . . . the legacy of performers like Sylvester continues to inspire new generations of queer artists and audiences, and With kaleidoscopic detail and exhilarating verve, [Savage] tells the intertwined, transatlantic story of pop and the struggle for LGBTQ+ emancipation...The depth of Savages research is one reason why this book feels so definitive. As well as hidden B-sides and underground films, he excavates long-lost gay artefacts and personalities...Savage handles his mountains of material with total authority and control, and in the course of doing so reveals the way that pop music was able not just to point the way to a more liberated existence, but also to realise dreams that had previously seemed unreachable. Magisterial&. In an overcrowded field, [Jon Savage] is the essential and pre-eminent British writer on pop culture and pop art&. In todays climate, where anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric has found renewed prominence in political discourse since Trumps return to office, Jon Savages insights become particularly relevant. The acclaimed British pop culture historian and journalist reminds us that fully comprehending our current circumstances requires us to examine the transformative musical movements that have shaped LGBTQ+ history and progress. Encyclopedic in scope, [ This is a meticulously researched tome&but Savages central achievement is to wear all his knowledge lightly, to tell us these stories as easily and engagingly as if we were stood in line with him, waiting to go into a gig&. Jon Savage, the author of the epic punk history Savage, a veteran chrolƒ@