Troublemakers or trailblazers? Bronski Beat’s The Age Of Consent packed political punch and pop hooks galore, sending the unintended superstars stratospheric with their mix of artwork and activism…
Bronski Beat’s Prime Of The Pops debut on 7 June 1984 might have lacked the visible impression of David Bowie draping his arm round Mick Ronson or the Rasta-inspired androgyny of Boy George, however by way of making a press release about sexual politics, their efficiency of debut single Smalltown Boy mentioned all of it. A pulsating slice of synth-pop, it was not solely probably the most genuine testimonials to rising up homosexual ever dedicated to vinyl, but additionally a showcase for probably the most distinctive voices of the last decade.
Extremely, frontman Jimmy Somerville had by no means even entertained the thought of a profession in music till a yr beforehand – totally intent on utilizing mentioned voice to ship political platitudes somewhat than pop music. “I didn’t got down to be a pop star,” he wrote within the liner notes to a reissue of The Age Of Consent in 2018. “I got down to be a troublemaker. My function was fact. My feelings, my wishes, my hopes, my sexuality, my life. I used to be given the final word platform for dissent.”
Platform For Dissent
Smalltown Boy was Jimmy’s autobiographical tackle buying and selling his troubled adolescence in Glasgow, the place homophobia and the specter of violence was a every day incidence, for the longed-for acceptance and anonymity of London in 1979. Shopping for himself a one-way ticket to the capital the day earlier than his 18th birthday, he was plunged into maturity, pressured to endure an existence of intercourse work, squats and house-sharing (together with for a time with future Pet Store Boy Chris Lowe). A suggestion of a no-strings-attached attic in the home of a Hampstead physician gave him the required mounted abode to safe a gradual job in Heal’s division retailer – the primary steps to creating London his house.
After holding down the job for 4 years, Jimmy started his transition into his subsequent unlikely profession transfer – pop star. Having at all times possessed a powerful ardour for music – notably soul, disco and blues – he indulged it by turning into an ardent acolyte of the kink and drink of London’s nocturnal playground, frequenting bars and nightclubs comparable to Heaven, Spats, Comptons, The Pink Panther and, most importantly, The Bell. Well-known for its various tackle homosexual nightlife, eschewing pop and pounding hi-NRG in favour of punk, goth and synth-pop, the pub’s clientele was as keen about politics because it was its music, and The Bell served because the HQ for a lot of a profit or rally centred round social injustice and sexual politics. Impassioned by activism, shut alliances had been shaped.
Impassioned By Activism
It was right here that Jimmy grew to become half of a big group of like-minded creatives that shared comparable views and pursuits which included Richard Coles (later his associate in The Communards) and Larry Steinbachek. The latter was working as an engineer for British Telecom on the time and had a fascination with synthesizers and electronics and had a mini house studio wherein he favored to experiment. Residence was a shared home in Brixton together with his associate Steve Bronski (additionally a Glaswegian) and, when a room in the home got here up for hire, Larry invited Jimmy to maneuver in.
The flatmates nearly instantly progressed to unintended bandmates because of the GLC (Higher London Council), which was making Framed Youth: The Revenge Of The Teenage Perverts, a documentary about younger, homosexual folks by younger, homosexual folks. Jimmy had performed an energetic position within the documentary and, because the low price range manufacturing had no funds to licence music, sought contributions from the documentary’s members to function its soundtrack. Jimmy recited a self-penned poem referred to as Screaming over a sparse drum machine, not realising he had inadvertently written his first track.
As Larry and Steve had been experimenting with their very own musical concepts at house, Jimmy revered their opinions and sought their suggestions on the observe. Steve later recalled being “astounded” by what he performed for them – not solely his visceral lyricism, but additionally his supply, struggling to equate the upper register of his vocals with the gruff Scottish brogue of his talking voice.
Visceral Lyricism
Screaming ignited a inventive spark which led to them collaborating on extra music collectively as a trio and marked the delivery of the band. Simply 5 months later, Bronski Beat (named as a riff on Roxy Music) made their reside debut at September In The Pink, a homosexual and lesbian arts competition – a efficiency which generated intense file firm curiosity.
Nonetheless bewildered on the depth and momentum of the eye they had been attracting, Jimmy, Steve and Larry rapidly booked some gigs and wrote extra materials. Their first official present, at their previous stomping floor The Bell in King’s Cross, went down a storm. Comprised of six tracks, Screaming, Cadillac Automotive, Pink Dance, Run From Love, Junk and Strolling, their set obtained a rapturous response from the gang (which additionally included distinguished trade figures).
As the thrill surrounding the group intensified, a handful of gigs had been rapidly organized and the boys readied new materials to flesh out their units. “It was weird and fairly overwhelming,” Jimmy later advised The Impartial. “It was all so fast and was one thing that I had by no means dreamed would occur to me, as a result of I truthfully didn’t have any need to be in showbiz.”
Musical Motion
Colin Bell (advertising and marketing supervisor for London Data) had been an early supporter of the band since seeing them at September In The Pink and understood their ethos completely, one thing The Bronskis held in excessive regard as they met with representatives from Virgin, RCA, Motown and ZTT. The latter shaped a very aggressive marketing campaign to signal the group. In addition to attempting to tempt them with samples of as-yet-unreleased tracks from the Artwork Of Noise to display the manufacturing expertise on provide from Trevor Horn, the label outlined plans to monopolise the group’s stance on being brazenly homosexual and to spotlight points and injustices, although ZTT’s imaginative and prescient for the band was very totally different to Jimmy’s.
“If we’d signed to ZTT, Trevor Horn would have had 100% management over the manufacturing, and that may have additionally meant that ZTT would have had complete management of the picture and all the things else,” he later advised The Guardian. “That wasn’t what we had been all about; we didn’t wish to be managed by anyone. We knew what we needed to do and I’m sort of glad that we didn’t observe the path of the cash as a result of they’d some express concepts learn how to current us that I didn’t like to start out with. It was simply earlier than the ‘Frankie Say Calm down’ T-shirts and somebody concerned with them advised us to get T-shirts printed with ‘Cum’ and ‘Queer’ and ‘Bent’ on them. Properly, I don’t assume so! Additionally, don’t neglect the way in which Smalltown Boy sounded – it’s uncooked and really emotional. That will have all been fully flattened out by Trevor Horn.”
Haunting Melodrama
After a lot deliberation, Bronski Beat signed to London Data in 1984, after enjoying simply 9 gigs. The label understood them and provided them full assist – each artistically and politically. Producer Mike Thorne recalled calling the label throughout recording periods to substantiate a few of the extra arresting lyrics can be allowed to stay within the songs uncensored and the reply was unanimously sure. Seeing their artwork as an extension of their activism, this was the group’s main concern. Understated somewhat than overblown, delicate somewhat than sensationalist, the boys had been assured of their selection after they noticed the ZTT stratagem performed out with Frankie Goes To Hollywood.
Whereas Calm down was punchy and controversial, Bronski Beat launched with the haunting melodrama of Smalltown Boy in Might 1984. Jimmy’s story resonated not solely with different homosexual males, who recognised their very own expertise on file for the primary time, however had wider attraction, talking to anybody that had ever felt like a misfit. The track crashed into the Prime 10, peaking at No.3 because of its documentary-style video and memorable Prime Of The Pops performances which showcased Jimmy’s distinctive voice. Continually requested about the place it got here from, he joked that the one coaching he’d ever had was singing alongside to his idols Donna Summer season and Sylvester.
With such a giant hit on their fingers, the stress was mounting to ship an album. Going into the studio with Mike Thorne, the group polished and re-recorded a few of their earlier tracks, comparable to Junk and Screaming, in addition to penning new songs comparable to Heatwave and No Extra Warfare. Covers of Donna Summer season’s I Really feel Love and Want-A-Man Blues and Gershwin’s It Ain’t Essentially So accomplished the tracklist.
Sturdy Social Message
As Smalltown Boy had established the three-piece as having a powerful political slant, a follow-up with a powerful social message was advised. They headed to New York Metropolis to finish the album, taking day trip to go to infamous BDSM bars comparable to The Mineshaft and The Anvil. A battle exterior the latter loosely influenced Why?, a hard-hitting story of a homophobic assault which accomplished the album.
Launched in October 1984 to rave opinions, The Age Of Consent went platinum within the UK, reaching No.4 and yielding 4 Prime 20 singles. The album was heralded for its bravery. In addition to tackling points in its content material, the file got here packaged in a sleeve which documented the age of consent for homosexual males all over the world together with the phone quantity for the Homosexual & Lesbian Switchboard, prompting an inflow of calls.
A Legacy That Lives On
As a result of his fame and success had been nearly unintended somewhat than pursued, Jimmy was fearless about shedding it within the face of standing up for what he believed in. “I had such an idealistic perception that I may change the world, that I may make a distinction, that I may very well be a voice for a unvoiced neighborhood,’ he mirrored to The Age in 2014. “I used to be motivated by a ardour and a hearth.’’
Sadly, his view was at odds with these of Larry and Steve, each of whom favoured firming down the politics in a bid to chase business success, a compromise Jimmy was unprepared to make. He left the group to type The Communards in 1985. Steve and Larry went on to recruit a succession of singers with reasonable success. As an entity, Bronski Beat might have been short-lived, however their legacy lives on because of the succession of brazenly homosexual artists that felt emboldened sufficient by them to observe of their Doc Marten-booted footsteps.
THE SONGS
1 WHY?
After the success of Smalltown Boy affirmed the band was on the proper path with its mixture of pop and politics, they adopted it up with Why?, a hard-hitting depiction of anti-gay prejudice and violence. It was impressed by a good friend of the group, Martin, who launched into a relationship with a person beneath the age of consent within the UK (21 on the time) and was vilified by his associate’s irate household, branded a paedophile, and threatened with violence.
2 IT AIN’T NECESSARILY SO
A canopy model of the George & Ira Gershwin and DuBose & Dorothy Heyward commonplace from 1935 opera Porgy And Bess, It Ain’t Essentially So had at all times been controversial within the sense that it questioned the content material of the Bible and the way its teachings associated to the evolution of man. It was the proper riposte to people who used the Bible to problem homosexual existence (“Adam & Eve, not Adam & Steve” and many others). Launched because the band’s third single, it reached No.16 within the UK.
3 SCREAMING
The track that began all of it. Starting as a poem by Jimmy Somerville recited over a easy drum sample for 1983’s Framed Youth: The Revenge Of The Teenage Perverts documentary, it was adopted and tailored by Larry and Steve, who added the synth line and cleaned up the manufacturing to develop into the primary Bronski Beat track. The biographical purging of its lyric established Somerville’s ethos from the outset. “My man love, my old flame/ My closetness and ache/ My mendacity, my deceiving,” he sings.
4 NO MORE WAR
A plaintive cry for peace is relayed over understated electronica for the self-explanatory No Extra Warfare, which brings down the tempo. Somerville’s haunting vocal ranges from pleading to primal, showcasing his unbelievable vary, whereas a shuffling soundscape soothes beneath. Lambasting a world wherein governments prioritise funding battle efforts over poverty and homelessness, it’s extra related in the present day than ever.
5 LOVE AND MONEY
Regardless of its sultry sonics, replete with a saxophone solo evoking sensuality, Love And Cash sees the titular belongings instantly correlated to ache and exploitation. Somerville’s private experiences with utilizing intercourse as a transaction for foreign money to be able to survive when he first moved to London give the track a darkish undertone, attested by the repeated chorus of “Cash is the basis of all evil” and the track constructing to a extra aggressive tempo.
6 SMALLTOWN BOY
Smalltown Boy is heralded as a basic, not just for its brutally trustworthy storytelling but additionally as a incredible piece of music. The throbbing beat, the deceptively upbeat synth line and the haunting vocal all work in symbiosis. Although it is extremely a lot Jimmy’s personal story and that of hundreds of homosexual boys, for whom shedding their houses and the love of their households was the brutal actuality of being gay, Smalltown Boy is a common story, one relatable to anybody who has felt like an outsider or skilled bullying.
7 HEATWAVE
Essentially the most uncommon observe on the album, Heatwave is just about Peggy Lee-meets-Delicate Cell. Clearly impressed by Lee’s Fever (one in all Somerville’s favorite songs) and the kitchen sink-cabaret of Delicate Cell, throw in an omnipresent faucet dancer and lyrics opining “tattoos and muscle, ardour and sweat” and you’ve got the quirkiest track on the album. The band had a lot stronger tracks of their canon, so Heatwave’s place on the album is unquestionably solely to supply some mild reduction amongst the extra severe topics tackled.
8 JUNK
Though very a lot a doc of pop and politics as they had been in 1984, a lot of The Age Of Consent has proved to be remarkably prescient, notably Junk, which offers with in search of stimulation from medication, tv and processed meals and the hazards that come up from that. One of many earliest compositions by the trio, it was a staple of their first handful of reside reveals and is among the strongest tracks on the album.
9 NEED-A-MAN BLUES
As an enormous Donna Summer season fan, the group take her 1975 slice of sensuality and switch it right into a militant assertion of injustice. Because the age of consent for homosexual intercourse was 21 in Britain in 1984, in comparison with 16 by means of a lot of Europe and for heterosexual intercourse within the UK, the track spoke to the homosexual males beneath 21 that skilled the identical emotions and urges as everybody else however had been dominated by legislation to not act on them till they reached the age of 21.
10 I FEEL LOVE/JOHNNY REMEMBER ME
The second Donna Summer season cowl on the album, I Really feel Love mirrored all three members’ love for Summer season and for producer Giorgio Moroder. When it got here to be the fourth single from the album (re-recorded as a duet with Marc Almond), a minor backlash ensued after alleged anti-gay feedback had been attributed to Summer season, blaming the homosexual neighborhood for the AIDS disaster. It reached UK No.3 in 1985 – the ultimate Bronski Beat single to characteristic Somerville.
For extra on Bronski Beat click on right here
Bronski Beat The Age Of Consent deluxe reissue
Learn Extra: Make It Massive – The Story Of 1984
