CULTURE Sylvester Disco. The Disquotays. The Cockettes. Stars. Words Andy Thomas in March 1979, in the dressing room of fi ve, he was being put on a milk crate cross gender.” With the Disquotays, he the San Francisco War Memorial Opera to sing spirituals like ‘Never Grow Old’ was honing his act, always aware of the House, Sylvester is making some fi nal for an adoring congregation. “Church future that awaited him – still a dream adjustments to one of his many fabulous is where he learned the spiritual power when the Disquotays split in late 1969. outfi ts while peaking on acid. Amongst of music, music that makes you move By this point, Sylvester was hanging the equally fabulous crowd waiting in your body,” says Gamson. “And he out at venues like the Whisky a Go Go front of the gardenia-adorned stage, sits would later bring that power to disco.” in an androgynous fl ower-child look – City Supervisor Harry Britt, the openly Sylvester’s other love was dressing bell-bottom Levi’s, fl oral shirts, platform gay successor to Harvey Milk, who had up – he was particularly fond of high shoes. With his head full of ideas, life in been assassinated in 1978. heels, fox furs and hats, for which he his hometown was increasingly stifl ing. “If Harvey Milk had been the increasingly turned to his grandmother “I could be any kind of person at all, and ‘Mayor of Castro Street’, Sylvester was Juju. She had been a blues singer and, no one cared,” he later remarked about its undisputed fi rst lady,” said Joshua said Sylvester, “She knew some queens his move to San Francisco. A psychedelic Gamson in his biography of the disco in the 1930s, and they were her running theatre/drag troupe called the Cockettes legend. The same prestigious venue had buddies.” Through his teens he fl itted in had recently been founded there in the held Milk’s memorial service; tonight’s and out of his mother’s house, where he’d creative fallout of the Summer of Love. show was “a big fat, juicy kiss-my-ass” dress up his sisters as his movie heroines, “We were freak theatre and avant-garde,” to his killer Dan White. “You are a star. like Mae West. But he needed a bigger says founding member Fayette Hauser. Everybody is one. You only happen once,” stage to act out his fantasies. “It was about a creative vision through Sylvester sang on the title track to new The Disquotays were a group of black psychedelics. The fantasies we had while LP Stars. And stardom was something LA drag queens who had made partying tripping were what we wanted to express.” he was, by now, revelling in. The Patrick an art form. “It was like Folies Bergère In the words of writer Alice Echols, the Cowley-produced ‘You Make Me Feel in the ghetto,” one member said. Even Cockettes “pioneered a hippie-infl ected (Mighty Real)’ had reached number 8 in this fabulous crowd, Sylvester stood drag in which the masculine and on the UK Singles Chart – it thrust the out. According to Gamson, “In a world feminine purposefully collided.” It was singer out of his underground status as where ‘ridiculous’ was the highest of to prove a perfect outlet for Sylvester. a Castro legend into the global spotlight, compliments, he was the most ridiculous Arriving at the Cockettes’ Haight a place he’d felt destined for through his of them all.” Creating a perfect rear and Street Chateau commune in early 1970, humble early days in South Central LA. hips out of foam, scribbling designs from he immediately felt at home. “The hippie Born in Watts in 1947, Sylvester old fi lms or obsessively scanningVogue sensibility was a new thing for him, and James was raised by his strict but doting for ideas, Sylvester was meticulous. “That broadened his sense of what the freedom churchgoing mother Letha, and the local environment was the fi rst place he really to ‘be strange’, as he’d put it, was like,” Palm Lane Church of God in Christ was got to play around with gender and drag,” says Gamson. “It also gave him a platform where he felt the full force of sanctifi ed says Gamson. “To have fun with it, to feel and an audience, and he really started gospel music. By the time Sylvester was what it could be like to unapologetically developing as a performer, and probably > 158 159 CULTURE | Sylvester in sequined trousers and outrageous Sylvester and the Tons live track – but the flower that bloomed on dance floors platforms below a gardenia-scented it became an anthem when it reached the across the world. “‘You Make Me Feel scratch-n-sniff flower: a heady cover for underground clubs. “I remember hearing (Mighty Real)’ was something I would an LP that found Sylvester mining all his ‘Over & Over’ at the Gallery, the Loft hear at almost every club I would go influences to date – from gospel and blues and the [Paradise] Garage,” says New to,” says Danny Krivit. The video was to psychedelic rock. It opened with a York DJ Danny Krivit. However much shot at London’s most glamorous gay version of Neil Young’s ‘Southern Man’, he enjoyed his stature as an underground spot, the Embassy Club on Old Bond the band’s soul rock providing a heavy legend, Sylvester wasn’t going to remain Street. At the Sundowner and Global backdrop for Sylvester’s towering falsetto. a cult artist. “Everything I’d been looking Village (now Heaven), Sylvester’s shows A future DJ at seminal San Francisco and working for did come,” he said. caused riotous scenes. DJ Mark Moore gay clubs, Lester Temple was working Despite ‘Over & Over’ being a hit recalls what he meant to London’s gay as a radio DJ in Sacramento. “Sylvester in Europe, the album sold poorly in the scene at the time: “Sylvester belonged to would stay at my house when he would US, but the lack of mainstream attention us. Sexuality no longer seemed complex play at Crabshaw Corner, the rock club didn’t effect the adoration he received but playful and uncomplicated when in downtown Sacramento,” he says. “He in the Castro. At the time, a divide was dancing to ‘Mighty Real’.” While it rang and the band were fabulous, bringing a appearing between the Castro clones out of mainstream discos worldwide, the gender-bending barrage of energy to the (Levi’s, checked shirts and buffed bodies) message in the music (of being real) was rock crowd.” On tour, the band played and the transvestites and queens who had heard loudest at the underground gay other covers like Allen Toussaint’s ‘Play done so much for the cause of liberation. clubs where Sylvester went to party. Something Sweet’ and Otis Redding’s But Sylvester symbolised freedom to Despite his fame, when not performing ‘Nobody’s Fault But Mine’ that would all the disparate groups: “He took the he would go to the club to dance with appear on second LP Bazaar. Meanwhile, crowd to a middle where everyone was friends just as he did back home. the free-spirited artist grew bored of the included,” says Joshua Gamson. Then the Trocadero Transfer opened recording process. With his label and ‘Over & Over’ had provided a taste in San Francisco in 1978, setting a new management struggling to market him, of fame but Sylvester was still unsure standard for theatrics in gay discos of the and sales stagnating, Sylvester was era. DJ Bobby Viteritti’s epic, atmospheric dropped shortly after Bazaar’s release. sets fit Sylvester’s fabulous disco, and his Having spent the money that came mix of ‘Mighty Real’ and ‘Dance (Disco in from Blue Thumb, he was forced to ‘SYLVESTER Heat)’ – the other notable track from sell his possessions and play basements 1978’s Step II – is about as dramatic as for a few dollars a night. But something REPRESENTS disco gets. “Sylvester was at the club all was stirring in San Francisco that would the time, he would just be there dancing give him a tailor-made platform. By 1975, AN IDEAL with his entourage,” he recalls. “And the Castro had become the gay centre of VERSION OF everybody just gave him his own space Live at the Whisky a Go Go, Los Angeles, 1972 the world. While Harvey Milk’s political because it was an educated dance floor.” campaigning played a vital role for gay WHO AND Sylvester played regularly at the club, as rights, the cultural progressions of the well as at gay hot spots like Dreamland, first realised that he might actually imagined himself as “Billie Holliday and Honolulu bordello: flower print, halter- period were of equal importance. In the WHAT WE I-Beam and Music Hall. I-Beam DJ be able to have a career as a singer.” other torch singers. He was forever top dresses; enamelled fruit, paper flowers aftermath of the 1969 Stonewall Riots, Steve Fabus (who runs San Francisco Hauser recalls the first time the singing around the house. He would sing and junk jewellery at strategic spots a host of gay bars and clubs had opened. COULD BE’ club Go BANG) explains why he meant collective heard him sing: “He came to while cooking in drag. He’d wear these between their breasts,” was how one news The new freedoms were being celebrated so much. “Sylvester represents, in many a rehearsal one day for one of the shows great 1940s dresses and cook soul food, report described a Pointer Sisters show.