So what’s so special about Boy George? Sylvester was wearing make-up and frocks on stage in 1978 and he is openly gay and will talk about it. When Sylvester had his big hits with ‘You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)’ and ‘Disco Heat’ there were sensationalised ‘Transvestite/Gay’ stories in the press but then he was completely forgotten over here. Was it simply that the straight world wasn’t ready for androgyny as a mass culture? Or was he just too open and honest? When Sylvester was here for a short tour I went to find out about the man behind the voice. What I found wasn’t an outrageous singing drag queen but a warm open person ready to talk about any and everything to do with life – gay or not.
Sylvester lives in San Francisco where he was brought up. He has been singing since the age of 8 but his ‘queen of disco’ image doesn’t quite fit when you hear that he seldom goes out to the clubs – gay or otherwise. “I work in them and don’t enjoy the endless noise,” he says. When he’s home he visits friends. His religious faith is very important to him: “I go to Walter Hawkins’ church (remember the Edwin Hawkins singers?) – The Weather Girls go there too and we all sing in the choir. It’s real fun. We get a lot of tourists in because we’re well known but everybody’s welcome. That’s how it should be.” Sylvester has never experienced problems in reconciling his gayness with religion: “In my church people are allowed to be what they are – my faith teaches me to respect all human beings and I am respected in return for that.”
‘Respect’ is a word Sylvester uses a lot. Sylvester is well known on the gay scene in San Francisco – he has helped raise money for AIDS research and has appeared with people like Debbie Reynolds and Jane Fonda in an attempt to allay peoples fears about AIDS. But he expressed a slight disapproval about the so-called ‘gay life style’: “I’m not really a part of the gay community as people think I am. I try to keep aware of what’s going on and I do my bit to help but at the same time my life does not revolve around being gay. I don’t think it’s healthy to restrict yourself to a gay community. I mix with all sorts of people all over the world. They know I’m gay but even Royalty and the Presidents accept me because when they meet me they respect me as a human being with views and values and they treat me with the respect that I show them. I think that one of the biggest problems with gay life and gay politics is gays end up ghetto-ising themselves. We’re so exclusively proud to be gay that we have almost withdrawn from the world and become sexual beings rather than human beings. I don’t want to be that. I feel you should be open to all experiences. The irony of AIDS is that only under the threat of death has the gay community pulled itself together. Before AIDS there was just separatism and sex. Of course gay men are oppressed. Of course gay women suffer from sexism. Of course the world discriminates against gays. But it has taken AIDS to bring together all sections of the gay community to work for the same thing. It is only when support is not forthcoming from the outside that we support each other. That’s terrible”
“Even now we continue with stupid categorisation- you have to wear leather to get into this bar, you have to wear a check shirt and jeans to get into this one. This whole dress-code thing is so dumb when it stops you going places. The gay community is obsessed with bodies and sexual imagery rather than what someone is like. Being butch or non-butch, drag or no drag. It’s real funny to me- I know people who have wardrobes for every occasion. As real people gay men are not simply butch or non-butch but these bars make people label themselves.” Sylvester was equally critical about the craze for the so-called HiNRG music: “What is the fuss all about? All my disco records are high energy – that’s what dancing is all about. The respect people have for me as a performer is because they simply enjoy the music and not because they are following some craze. I’m not out to shock anyone. The bottom line of talent is that you can stand there and perform, and perform well. I always sing live, and what I look like comes secondary. People are often amazed and say I sound just like my records. Why should they be? It’s me!”
Sylvester also commented on the Boy George phenomenon: “When I first was a hit over here I used to wear sort of dresses because that was the sort of drag I was into at the time. We all wear drag, whether it be dresses or leather or jeans – But people were shocked at the time. When they worked out that I was a man and the gay papers asked me the same stupid questions like ‘When you are singing are you being homosexual or just sexual?’ and I said ‘What do you mean?’ “ When I’m singing sex is the furthest thing from my mind. I suppose it was new then and a shock to them.”
“Yet now, the press probably see me as boring and passé. I’m almost expected to dress up on stage or else they ask me if I’m not well. Things have changed so much over here – why when I arrived over here I couldn’t believe what I saw on the streets. I must look as boring as a pet rock now. I was shocked. I rushed back and phoned tim, my manager and said ‘you won’t believe the queens over here. They’ve taken things to new extremes like you’ve never seen and it hasn’t crossed the Atlantic yet’ I have stood up for my gay rights all my life and never compromised. When I hear the things that Boy George or others say to be outrageous because it’s chic now – it bothers me quite a bit because I know what it was like when it wasn’t alright to be.
I’ve survived all that”
Sylvester feels he’s proved that he’s not a fifteen minute wonder but equally he does not seem interested in pushing himself into mega stardom. He just wants to make good music. He stopped recording for his first label, Fantasy records because, despite the world-wide success of the two early singles they wanted him to change his direction more to a laid-back soul. He refused to sing and lived off his savings. It was signing with Megatone records that put Sylvester back on the map in a big way . Although the ‘Do You Wanna Funk’ and ‘Don’t Stop’ singles recorded with Patrick Cowley weren’t mainstream chart hits in the country they sold in huge numbers all over the world and are now almost disco classics. ‘Call Me’, his second for Megatone poorly promoted over here, has achieved wide acclaim.
Over the next year we’re going to hear a lot more of Sylvester. ‘Take Me to Heaven’ the new single will be released at the end of this month. His new album will be released in the late autumn and is a bang up to date mixture of highly produced street beat, breaking and scratching and funk, but with a couple of ballads as well (Sylvester believes that one of these is the best thing he has ever done, that commercial or not it is destined to become a classic – it’s called ‘Shadow of the Heart’) There is a major concert tour planned early in the New Year which will consist of a few big shows featuring amongst others, Martha of The Weather Girls on backing vocals. Sylvester is also signed up to play ‘Albin’ in the European tour of the Broadway Hit musical ‘La Cage Aux Folles’. Albin will of course be played in drag.
I had gone to interview Sylvester expecting to be given about half an hour of his time but we ended up talking for nearly two hours. After the show, which was at a straight club in my home town he asked me to take him out on the local gay scene. On the way there I asked him if he preferred to play straight clubs or gay ones. “Neither,” came the reply. “I’m just there to entertain”
For LGBT History Month 2022, we are publishing four historic GAY TIMES Magazine features from our archives and making it available on our digital channels for the first time ever.
It follows the groundbreaking campaign from SKITTLES®, GAY TIMES, Switchboard and Queer Britain last summer – titled Recolour The Rainbow – which breathed new life into archive imagery from Pride’s past to acknowledge and celebrate those who have come before us in the fight for LGBTQ+ liberation.
