I was a 12-year-old disco bunny when I saw the Village
People perform live at the Montreal Forum back in 1978. The opening act was
none other than Gloria Gaynor, who won the only disco Grammy ever awarded, in
1979, for her classic I Will Survive.
Twenty-five years later I interviewed the Village People’s "Indian" character and real-life Lakota Sioux Native-American Felipe
Rose – along with Thelma Houston, KC and the Sunshine Band, Martha Wash and
others – for an HOUR magazine cover story I wrote on the legacy and importance
of disco (you can see HOUR's really fun cover in the “Bio” section of Felipe’s
website by clicking here). I was so
taken by Felipe, and we got along so well, that we have maintained contact ever
since.
But back in 1978, when I was a disco bunny, Rose – who was
inducted into the Native American Music Hall of Fame in 2007 – was having the
time of his life as the Village People topped pop charts worldwide.
“I used to drink stuff that could peel paint off the wall,”
Felipe told me once. “People still think we go out and party all night long,
but that’s not the case. We’re all getting older. Things have to take a back
seat. You reflect on your life and think, ‘What can I do to make this last
longer?’ It’s like a car. You clean it up, put it in the shop and give it a
tune up. I go to the gym, do my crunches and sit-ups. I watch what I eat. I
always have a beer after a show, but that’s because of thirst. I’m a light
social drinker but I love a great red wine with dinner.”
For years the world assumed (go figure) that the Village
People – who will headline their first-ever concerts in Quebec City on Dec
7-8-9 – were gay when, in fact, only original cowboy Randy Jones and Felipe
Rose are.
Felipe Rose
performing today
(Photo courtesy
Felipe Rose)
“I don’t think I’ve made a point of being ‘openly gay’ – I’m
just secure,” Felipe explains. “I don’t sit on TV and talk about it. I’ve never
done interviews for Out Magazine or The Advocate. When I speak about myself, I
speak in the solo sense. I don’t talk about the group’s private life. We’ve
always kept that aspect of our lives quiet and private. I have more straight
friends than gay friends and just because Jacques [Morali, the producer who
created the Village People] discovered me in a [NYC] gay club, well, it could
have been a straight club. My private life doesn’t play a role in what I do on
stage. People always tell me, ‘You helped me come out.’ I always reply, ‘You
did that on your own.’”
Gay life back in the day seems like it was way more
freewheeling. Rose knows firsthand, though, that the gay community paid a price
for those glory years: Almost every gay friend he had from that era has died of
AIDS, including Jacques Morali.
“I’m still at a loss for words – this horrible disease…” says
Felipe. “All I know is what we [Village People] can do. We do charity concerts
and AIDS benefits, but I’m exhausted. There’s no end in sight. We’ve lost so
many artists and writers and directors clear across the board. I’ve lost almost
everybody from that era. So to see the rising HIV [infection] rates freaks me
out. I’d be terrified to have a child today. I try not to think too much about
it because it makes me upset.”
Bugs and Felipe
backstage
at Montreal's Bell
Centre
Village People have sold over 100 million records, are still
performing to sell-out crowds around the world, and will headline three Célébration
Disco 2012 concerts in Quebec City on Dec 7-8-9.
Says Felipe, “We’ve had a helluva run. My partner says,
‘You’re at the top of your game.’ But another [35] years? No, no, no! Don’t go
that far! The next five years are looking pretty nice. Then I’ll look and see
if I’ve had enough.”
Notorious bon vivant Tallulah Bankhead - who died in 1968 at the age of 66 - once said, "My father warned me about men and booze, but he never mentioned a word about women and cocaine."
Summer has faded and it’s now time to show off your new wardrobe
during Montreal’s über-hot autumn cocktail season. But do you possess
the requisite glamour quotient to book a room at the Betty Ford Clinic?
To find out, answer the following quiz…
Studio 54 logo designed by Gilbert Lesser
If you could travel back in time, you would go to:
a) Nirvana’s Foufounes performance.
b) Woodstock.
c) Studio 54.
Your name isnot on the guest list at a nightclub. What do you say to the doorman?
a) Sorry for the trouble.
b) Do you know who I am?
c) I could have you shot, bitch.
You feel sexually attracted to your best friend (of the same sex). Do you tell him/her?
a) Never!
b) Only if he/she is gay.
c) Only is he/she is hot!
Are you seeing someone right now?
a) I’m single, but there’s someone I want to sleep, uh, be with.
b) I’m in a long-term quasi-monogamous relationship.
c) Honey, I’m seeing everyone right now…
Your best friend gets dumped by their long-time partner or lover, so you:
a) Tell your friend, "Snap out of it! You’re giving depression a bad name!"
b) Tell them, "If all else fails, lower your standards. I did, and look at me!"
c) Go over to their place with Tahitian French vanilla ice cream
you bought at Laura Secord, talk them into incinerating their ex and
blast Tina Turner’s Better Be Good to Me on the stereo.
Tallulah Bankhead
Who said "Cocaine isn’t habit forming. I should know – I’ve been using it for years"?
a) Actress Tallulah Bankhead.
b) Your dealer.
c) The trick you tried to pick up in a toilet stall last night.
Which line most appropriately describes your worldview?
a) I used to snort coke but the bottle kept getting stuck up my nose.
b) I used to jog but the ice cubes kept falling out of my drink.
c) I used to have a drug problem but now I make enough money.
Who was it that said, "It is better to be hated for what one is than to be loved for what one isn’t"?
a) Canada's former Conservative Minister of Foreign Affairs John Baird.
b) Ricky Martin.
c) Writer André Gide.
Who was it that said, "Honey, I’m more man than you’ll ever be and more woman than you’ll ever get"?
a) Canada's former Conservative Minister of Foreign Affairs John Baird.
b) Queen Latifah.
c) Actor Antonio Fargas in the film Car Wash.
Antonio Fargas as the flaming Lindy in the movie Carwash
Bitch Number One walks past and slaps Bitch Number Two in the face. You…
a) Keep walking.
b) Were the one who started it.
c) Toss them weapons and appoint yourself referee.
Which character do you most resemble from the classic TV sitcomWill & Grace?
a) Will or Grace.
b) Jack.
c) Karen.
How important is your appearance?
a) Well, as long as you can’t smell me.
b) Pass me the Preparation H.
c) I paid too much for this nose for it to be not important!
You tell your lover, "Watersports sounds like fun but…"
a) I don’t feel like driving to the waterpark in St-Sauveur.
b) We’ve never been able to afford Club Med.
c) Wait a few minutes whilst I down a few lagers.
Which was the biggest orgy in history?
a) Michael Jackson’s last sleepover.
b) Rome’s Bacchanalian parties during the second century BC.
c) Your pre-Pride parade "underwear" cocktail party at home.
Love is:
a) The sweetest thing, darling, the one and only thing.
b) Fine for a couple of years, but after that it’s a bit like flogging a dead horse, isn’t it?
c) Just another four-letter word.
So just how fabulous are you?
Score one point for every letter A you answered, two points for every letter B and three points for every letter C. If you scored 15-24 points: You’re either a has-been or a never-was. You should get out more often. If you scored 25-38 points: Not bad. But remember, if you’ve never spat in the face of a maître d’, then you just haven’t lived, baby. If you scored 39-45 points:
Roll out the red carpet, the paparazzi are at the ready and you’re a
star, baby! You’re selfish, arrogant and morally corrupt. Well done!
Martha Wash performs It's Raining Men with Paul Shaffer on the October 1, 2012, broadcast of The Late Show with David Letterman, to mark the classic song's 30th anniversary (All photos courtesy Late Show with David Letterman)
There are great voices and then there is the voice of legendary dance
diva Martha Wash, whose soaring powerhouse vocals propelled such
classic hits as Everybody Dance Now, Gonna Make You Sweat and It’s Raining Men to the top of the charts worldwide.
Wash and her late friend Izora Armstead shot to international fame as Two Tons of Fun singing backup on great gay disco
superstar Sylvester’s disco classics You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real) and Dance (Disco Heat) which both peaked at number one for six consecutive weeks in 1978.
By 1982, Wash and Armstead renamed themselves The Weathergirls,
went solo and recorded one of the most difficult-ever songs to sing, It’s Raining Men – and they did it in 90 minutes flat.
Then Paul Jabara, who co-wrote the song with Canadian Paul
Shaffer of David Letterman fame, started pounding the pavement: "He took
acetates to all the DJs at all the clubs where it became a big hit
before radio picked it up," Martha told me.
Filming the song’s memorable video – it featured hunky bodybuilders falling from the sky – was difficult.
"God, that was a cheesy video!" Martha laughs. "We filmed it in
an abandoned building [in NYC] in the dead of winter. There was no heat
and everybody was wearing [winter] coats. That part in the video where
we fall out of the sky, well, we landed on these mattresses and found
out [the next day] they were infested with bugs. For days afterwards
Izora and I were scratching [ourselves]! It was awful!"
It's Raining Men turned 30 years old this past week (Tweeted Martha, "Over 7 Mill sold and 30 yrs later Columbia Rec awards me with a plat
plaque for It's Raining Men") and to mark the occasion she sang it live with Paul Shaffer on The Late Show with David Letterman (watch the original video as well as the Letterman 30th anniversary clip below).
"People used to say ‘disco sucks’ and ‘disco died’ but they still
keep playing it," Martha says happily. "Today they call it dance music,
but it’s still the same. It’s happy music. And as long as people want
to keep on dancing, I’ll keep on singing too!"
Click here for the official Martha Wash website, and here for her official Facebook fan page
Jean Guida – a.k.a. legendary Montreal drag queen Guilda (or "transformist" as Jean Guida insisted he be called) –died on June 27, 2012. He was 88.
There is a chapter in Guilda: Il
était une fois, the 2009 autobiography of Jean Guida – a.k.a. legendary Montreal drag queen Guilda – about the time he and two
Jewish friends were rounded up by the Gestapo in Nice,
France, during World War II
and sent packing on a “death train” to the Buchenwald
concentration camp.
“For the first time since the beginning of
the War I was genuinely afraid,” Guida wrote. “At the time we did not know what
we know today. We did not even know that death camps existed. We knew nothing.”
But Guida knew enough to be wary of the Nazis
and escaped from the train by climbing down through his wagon’s manure-filled
toilet reservoir to the tracks below when the train pulled into a station.
Guida escaped when the train chugged away, but wrote, “My two comrades never
had this chance – years later I learnt they had died at Buchenwald, like their parents.”
Guida was born in France on June 21, 1924 and, in his
first autobiography, 1979’s Elle et Moi, wrote that his father
was French and his mother was a Sicilian countess by the name of de Mortellaro.
But Montreal journalist Alan Hustak – who interviewed Guida in 2004 – reports the
Mortellaro name is nowhere to be found in the Librod’Oro della
Nobilta Italiano, the official registry of Italian aristocracy.
Whether Guida’s Italian aristocratic roots are true or not,
by the time he died on June 27, Jean Guida – his stage name “Guilda” was named after
Rita Hayworth in the 1946 movie Gilda
– was Canada’s oldest female impersonator and indisputably a star in Montreal’s
nightlife scene for over 50 years.
Jean Guida got his showbiz start as a make-up artist with
the Ballets de Monte Carlo when he was just 17, later scoring a small role as a
transvestite in director Yvan Noé’s 1946 film La Femme qui est coupe en morceaux which was filmed at Studios La
Victorine (today called Studios Riviera) in Nice. But Guida – who moonlighted
as a female impersonator – would really hone his chops working for legendary
cabaret artist Mistinguett, who herself used to work at the Moulin Rouge.
Guida was brought to New York
by renowned impresario Lou Walters (father of Barbra Walters) who booked
“Guilda” in his clubs in NYC and Miami.
When his U.S. work visa
expired, Guida moved to Montreal
where his act was an instant smash at Chez Paree in 1954. He sold out Montreal’s Salle
Wilfred-Pelletier at Place des Arts in 1965, then during Expo 67 opened his own
cabaret, Chez Guilda, in the old El Morroco nightclub across the street from
the Montreal Forum.
“Guilda” would also headline Montreal’s notorious Casa Loma
in the red-light district as well as the posh Caf Conc in the Chateau Champlain
Hotel and, for 33 years until 2000, regularly performed at Montreal’s Théâtre des Variétés (today La
Tulipe live rock venue on Rue Papineau).
Guilda sang live, often staged elaborate productions, with
grand costumes and with as many as 40 performers, including dancers and a live
band. Guilda did uncanny impersonations of Marlene Dietrich, Edith Piaf,
Mistinguett, Barbra Streisand, Marilyn Monroe and Rita Hayworth. Guilda also
met many other stars while headlining cabaret halls and nightclubs the world
over, including Edith Piaf, Maurice Chevalier and Josephine Baker.
But in Montreal Guilda broke down social barriers and taboos
as her gay and straight audiences mixed as far back as the 1950s. When news of
Guilda’s death broke in Montreal,
grandparents throughout the city all had stories about the time they saw
Guilda.
“At first it was the women who wanted to see me,” Guida once
said. “And at the time it wasn’t the gays who grabbed my ass, but the
upstanding, heterosexual family men.”
A public funeral for Jean Guida was held July 6 at Outremont’s Saint-Viateur
Church, where veteran Montreal gossip columnist Michael Girouard
told reporters, “For me Guilda was not a transvestite, but a real artist. He
forged ahead because he was a determined person, and had he stayed in Las Vegas, he would have
become a huge star.”
The bisexual Jean Guida claimed to have been married three
times and said he had fathered four children.
La Presse newspaper reports Guida is survived by his
daughter Gaye, grandchildren Pierre and Leia, his great grandchildren Christina
and Sara, as well as his sisters Hélène, Mireille, Christiane and Simone, and
his sisters-in-law Josiane and Pauline. The cause of death has not been
released. Jean Guida was 88.
Rod Stewart, Elton John, Paul Myers and Long John Baldry's life partner Felix "Oz" Rexach pay tribute to Baldry (pictured above), who died in Vancouver
in 2005
British blues legend Long John Baldry passed away in Vancouver on July 21, 2005, and since I had
never interviewed him, I did the next best thing: I interviewed the very
gracious Felix "Oz" Rexach, Baldry’s life partner, days later.
"John was not well accepted as a gay man by the blues community – it’s
a very macho industry," Oz told me. "But he was more than
well-accepted as a performer in his field."
So when I blabbed on the phone some years ago with Paul Myers, Berkeley-based
brother of comic actor Mike Myers and author of the bestselling
bio It Ain’t Easy: Long John Baldry and the Birth of the British Blues,
Paul told me, "Yeah, I used your column in my book. I’m so pleased we’re
doing this interview."
When
I first met rock singer Sass Jordan some years ago, it was at the
opening bash of the gorgeous Nelligan Hotel in Old Montreal after way
too many glasses of Moët & Chandon champagne. I kept yakking away
while Sass took off her shoes and told me, “My feet are fucking killing
me.”
That’s all I remember.
When I interviewed Sass a couple years later, she actually remembered me. “You were awesome!” Sass laughed.
Bugs and Sass
OK,
awesome might be a tad overstating it. But once again Sass and I got
along like a house on fire and we ended up blabbing about her portraying
one of my idols, the original woman rock star, Janis Joplin, in the critically-hailed
off-Broadway musical Love, Janis.
“It
was the hardest goddamn thing I ever did,” Sass told me. “It was four
nights a week for three months. It was exhausting. I was never a fan of
Janis until I did [the play]. Singing [like] Janis isn’t an easy thing
to do but I did really, really well.”
These
days it takes someone like Sass Jordan to generate new interest in an
old singer like Joplin, who died in October 1970. In my case, it took
Janis Joplin to interest me in another female blues singer, Bessie
Smith, who died back in September 1937.
World War II queer underground resistance superhero Gad Beck - the last known gay Jewish survivor of the
Holocaust - passed away on June 24, 2012, in Berlin
I scoured Israel
and Germany
in 1998 to find World War II queer underground resistance superhero Gad Beck.
When I found him, Gad gave me one of the most memorable interviews I’ve ever
done. The last known gay Jewish survivor of the
Holocaust, Gad
passed away on June 24, 2012, in a retirement home
in Berlin,
just six days short of his 89th birthday. Here is my December 1998 interview
with Gad Beck. RIP.
OOO
Gad Beck remembers falling in love with
Manfred Lewin , another Jewish gay teenager who lived in a poor Berlin neighbourhood in
Nazi Germany.
Hitler had been crowned chancellor nine years
earlier, in 1933, when Gad was just 10-years-old. By the time Gad realized he
was attracted to men, though, Germany’s
burgeoning gay movement embraced by the pre-Nazi Weimar Republic
had been all but crushed. Over 100 gay bars and political organizations had
been wiped out in Berlin
and Himmler himself later boasted the Nazis had killed a million gay men
between 1938 and 1944.
“When I was 17 or 18 there weren’t a lot of gay bars for Jewish
gays.” Gad said. “This was the problem – I had no place [to go]. So I was a bit
lonely.”
Until he met Manfred. But it was October 1942 and the Nazis
were transporting Jews east. When Manfred’s family was rounded up by the
Gestapo, Gad borrowed a neighbour’s Hitler Youth uniform and marched into the
transit camp in a bid to free his first love.
Beck, classified as a half-Jew or “half-breed” by the
authorities (his father was Jewish, but his mother had converted to Judaism),
convinced an officer to put Manfred into his custody temporarily. Once outside
the camp, though, Manfred stopped dead in his tracks.
“I was going out with him from the ‘locker’ and I sad,
‘Manfred, now you are free – come!’ And he said no,” Gad explained. “And it’s
important to understand this: Manfred
said, ‘I will never be free if I am not near my family. They are old and they
are ill and I have to help them.’ And he went back to the locker without saying
good-bye to me. I never saw him again. His entire family died in Auschwitz.
“It was then I decided to help my friends before they [too]
were put on the list,” Gad told me.
Within a year he was the leader of Chug Chaluzi – the Pioneer Group – which helped feed, shelter and
transport over 100 Jews as part of the Europe-wide Zionist resistance movement Hechalutz, the Pioneers.
THE REAL THING
Gad’s Pioneer group included his twin sister
Miriam (a.k.a. Margot). “We had very good help from The Pioneers in Switzerland,”
Gad said. “I got from their Swiss attaché money and information – I learned
what was happening and what would happen.”
While Gad stated unequivocally that his
sexuality didn’t motivate him to fight the Nazis – “For them I was Jewish” – it
did influence the way he fought back.
“If you are a member of a minority there is a
place where you can find yourself. Every night I thought, ‘Tomorrow I will be
sent to the camps.’ But every night I was not alone. Love was the only thing that
gave me strength to fight Hitler and his politics. I had the love and loyalty
of my friends. Love gave us the force to fight.”
Gad, whose translated memoir Gad has Gone to David was published in America in 1999
as An
Underground Life: Memoirs of a Gay Jew in Nazi Berlin,
felt a similar solidarity within the gay civil rights movement. “I feel I have
to fight for more liberty for gays. Even today we are not liberated. We are
just beginning.”
He scolded me when I insisted he was. “Look,
if I am a hero, I am a little one. Everyone has to fight sometime on their
life.”
HERO AND SURVIVOR
After the war Gad helped transport Jews to Palestine,
fought in Israel’s
war for independence and worked as a psychologist in Tel Aviv for 12 years. But
in 1978 he returned to Berlin
to become director of the Jewish Adult Education Centre. His sister Miriam
(Margot) remained in Israel
with her five children. “She is very happy and very fat!”
It was only after returning to Europe, though, that Gad met
his second ‘husband,’ Julius Laufer (15 years his junior), in Vienna.
“I met this beautiful young man in a coffeehouse and he
could only speak Czech,” Gad recounted. “It turns out his father was my comrade
in the underground, fighting for me and my group in Prague [during the war]. One day, the Gestapo
took his father to prison and he ended up in a concentration camp in Austria. And
now here was his son.” Gad’s voice swelled with emotion. “I will never leave
this man. He is my great love.”
[Note: Gad is survived by Julius, his partner of 35 years.]
Gad met his first husband, Zwi Abrahamssohn, decades earlier
when he was captured during the last days of the war. They were betrayed by a
Jewish girl. “More than six SS officers took me and Zwi and put us into a
basement cell [in the Jewish Hospital] in Berlin from February 1945 to April 1945.”
It was here that Gad, feverish and wounded when the Allies
bombed the city, convinced the Gestapo chief not to kill 1,000 Jews to
celebrate Hitler’s birthday on April 20. Meanwhile, the battle of Berlin raged on in the
streets above. “I told the Gestapo chief, ‘The Russians are one kilometre away
– I will be the winner, not you,’” Gad recalled, pointing out Russian mercy
could be negotiated if the Gestapo spared the 1,000 lives.
It worked.
“I was liberated by a Jewish soldier of the Russian Army and
he asked me in Yiddish, ‘Are you Gad Beck?’ I said I was. He was so beautiful I
could have fallen in love with him. ‘Brother,’ he told me, ‘now you are free.’
And he kissed me.”
OOO
When I first went to Israel’s Holocaust museum, Yad
Vashem, in 2007, I thought Gad Beck should be properly honoured there and so began
correspondence with the museum. Before I revisited Yad Vashem in 2011 during
Gay Pride in Tel Aviv, they contacted me and acknowledged Gad’s incredible work. Hopefully one
day they too will honour Gad Beck.
Back in Berlin, Gad was an
active member of the local gay community, organizing gay singles meetings at
the Jewish Adult Education Center where he worked, and every year he partook
in Berlin’s Gay Pride parade, in the very city
where Hitler wiped out the Weimar
Republic’s burgeoning gay
movement decades earlier.
Gad
passed away this past Sunday, on June 24, 2012, in a
retirement home in Berlin,
just six days short of his 89th birthday. He is survived by
Julius Laufer, his partner of 35 years.
Montreal drag icon Mado La Motte greets her public at Mascara which will hold its 15th edition at Jacques-Cartier Pier in the Old Port, where Divers/Cité has moved their festival site for 2012 (Photo courtesy Divers/Cité)
The times they-are-a-changing.
The single most important and influential gay event in the history of
Montreal was the police raid of the Sex Garage loft party on the night
of July 14, 1990, in Old Montreal, which directly inspired Bad Boy Club Montreal
to organize the BBCM’s first Black & Blue
circuit party in 1991, as well as laid the groundwork for Montreal’s Divers/Cité Queer
Pride March that Puelo Deir co-founded with Suzanne Girard in 1993.
Together, over the next decade, Divers/Cité and Black & Blue
would transform Montreal into a choice gay tourism destination, pushing
Tourisme Montréal to create a gay tourism template since adopted by
tourism authorities worldwide.
In 2007 Fierté Montréal (Montreal Pride) took over the parade and community day previously organized by Divers/Cité, while Divers/Cité continued on as Montreal's internationally-renowned Divers/Cité queer arts and culture festival, which in 2012 runs from August 2 - 5.
But 20 years after Divers/Cité and Black and Blue put Montreal on the international gay map, this year Divers/Cité is moving their festival site from the Gay Village to the Jacques-Cartier Pier in the Old Port.
"Motivated by a desire for growth and by the increasing constraints of
its previous site, the organization has made the decision to move its
outdoor stages to a space better suiting its needs and the expectations
of festival-goers," Divers/Cité explains in a prepared statement. "The recent move of Terminus Voyageur to Berri
Street, the reduction of available space in Émilie-Gamelin Park and the
sector’s recent vocational changes have made further development
perspectives for the Festival in the area near impossible"
Up until last year the City of Montreal was actually pressuring
Divers/Cité to move to the city’s new Quartier des Spectacles. The hope
was Divers/Cité would move some of its mega-events there, like Mascara, 1
Boulevarde des Rêves and Le Grand Bal.
“We got an order from our board to move [last year]," Divers/Cité's director general Suzanne Girard told me on the eve of last summer's festival. "But we
couldn’t because the First Peoples’ Festival – usually held during the
summer solstice [in June] – have Place des Festivals [at the same time].
They were forced to do their festival then because Spectra moved their
FrancoFolies festival from August to June.”
Thus the move this year to the Jacques-Cartier Pier in the Old Port.
The move will also likely help bolster Divers/Cité's finances. Canadian PM Stephen Harper and his ruling Conservative Party government began cutting funding to gay events across Canada in 2009, when Divers/Cité saw its federal tourism grant slashed by $155,000.
This year's 20th edition of Divers/Cité runs from August 2 - 5. Meanwhile, Fierté Montréal runs from August 9 - 14 in the Gay Village.
Says Patti LaBelle, "Gay men are my glam squad. They are all my children."
(Photo courtesy Patti LaBelle)
Soul sister Patti LaBelle is looking for a pair of pink pumps given to her by supermodel Naomi Campbell when Joy, her housekeeper, interrupts to announce three boxes of brand new shoes have just been delivered.
LaBelle – a big-haired holy roller of a woman known for blowing other singers off the stage as well as for kicking off her shoes in the middle of gut-busting, gospel-stomping rave-ups – gives up the search.
The pumps are stacked somewhere among the thousands of other pairs of shoes in her Philadelphia home, a number I put at 3,000 in the course of our conversation. But if you ever doubted "Miss Patti Boom Boom" is a platinum member of the diva club, she dispels that notion when she tells me over the phone, "No, I’ve got 5,000 pairs and counting."
Mavis Staples
(Photo courtesy Mavis Staples)
It isn’t shoes that make a diva, of course. It’s inner strength and fortitude, a larger-than-life persona and voice, something LaBelle boasts in spades.
But two-inch eyelashes, fab hair and shoes go a long way.
"I say, ‘A diva got to do what a diva got to do.’ I’m a diva," LaBelle says. "I can’t deny that. But you have to pay your dues and I’ve paid mine."
So has gospel legend Mavis Staples, who with The Staple Singers rode I’ll Take You There straight to Number One and into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
But if LaBelle is a cosmic diva – the late Luther Vandross, onetime teenaged VP of Patti’s fan club and a soul legend in his own right, once noted, "If there was an intergalactic singing competition, I would suggest that Earth send Patti LaBelle" – then Mavis Staples is the earthly anti-diva.
"I think people use the word ‘diva’ in the wrong way," Staples told me. "And Mavis ain’t no diva."
For Deborah Cox, divahood is less a state of mind than being blessed with a big voice. When it comes to big voices, Cox – who like the late Whitney Houston was discovered, signed and groomed by music biz legend Clive Davis – was long compared to Houston until she matched Whitney chop-for-chop on the 2000 duet Same Script, Different Cast.
Deborah Cox
(Photo courtesy Deborah Cox)
In the studio Houston told her, "You can sang! You’re in the club now!"
Says Cox, "When I think of Mavis Staples, I think of her raspy, raw, soulful voice and inspirational music that resonated throughout my home when I was growing up. And Patti is an inspiration. I’ve been to many of her shows and she always gives it her all."
Just two weeks after our June 2005 interview, I saw Cox share the stage in July 2005 with LaBelle (who wept onstage before dedicating a gospel number to Luther Vandross, who had passed away a couple days earlier, on July 1) at the Montreal International Jazz Festival, the same summer Mavis Staples made her much-anticipated festival return in nearly a decade co-headlining with the Blind Boys of Alabama, who themselves recently pulled off one of the biggest comebacks in rock history.
Thank God for the devil’s music
"I’m so glad the Blind Boys decided to stretch out [on their recent string of Grammy-winning albums] because that’s what got them to this era," says Mavis Staples about the band that was formed at the Alabama Institute for the Negro Blind in 1939.
Now 72, Staples remembers when her cotton-picking guitarist father, Roebuck "Pops" Staples, brought her to see the Blind Boys when she was a child, and her mother used to cook them all dinner back home in Mississippi. Pops Staples founded The Staple Singers in 1948 and they finally cracked the top 40 eight times from 1971 to ’75, reaching number 1 with the funky, inspirational classic I’ll Take You There in 1972.
That’s when they were dubbed "God’s greatest hit makers."
"I’ll never forget that time," Mavis says. "The Staple Singers at number 1! That was the best thing in the world. You just had to stop and listen to the radio. The DJs just jumped on the song and [Memphis-based Stax Records] didn’t have to promote it. That’s when [people] wanted to put us out of the church! They said we were singing the devil’s music!"
Born Patricia Holt 68 years ago, Patti LaBelle grew up singing in church too.
When word of a new lead singer at Beulah Baptist Church in southwest Philly spread, audiences flocked from all over the city. In 1959, 15-year-old Patti formed The BlueBelles and renamed herself Patti LaBelle. Cindy Birdsong left the girl group in 1967 to replace the late Florence Ballard in The Supremes, but not before the quartet recorded Patti’s signature song Over the Rainbow.
"My voice lends itself to high notes and I love to scream," LaBelle notes with considerable understatement.
In the 1960s she opened for The Rolling Stones. When she opened for James Brown, the Godfather of Soul was so jealous of The BlueBelles’ standing ovations he had the curtain closed before the audience stopped clapping.
(Incidentally, I got the last-ever sit-down interview with James Brown in December 2006. Mr. Brown would died just days later, on December 25. But I digress.)
The BlueBelles were even chased out of Texas by the Ku Klux Klan. During that tumultuous decade, Patti got engaged to Otis Williams, lead singer of The Temptations. Says Patti, "Honey, the ring was so big I could have used it as a headlight."
1970s disco funk queens LaBelle
(Photo courtesy Patti LaBelle)
Patti hit her stride fronting ’70s funk trio LaBelle, whose song about a New Orleans prostitute, Lady Marmalade, was a huge hit in 1975. Legendary hitmaker and New Orleans native Allen Toussaint - who produced the smash hit - once told me, "Patti was so professional. I remember her sitting down on a stool in the studio singing softly. She is such a great talent."
That same year, 1975, Patti's sister Viviane died of cancer. Then her best friend Claudette, 34, died of cancer. Her second sister, Barbara, would die of colon cancer in 1982. Then her third sister Jackie died of brain cancer. But LaBelle adopted and raised all of their children.
"Day by day I got stronger," Patti says. "My sisters would have wanted me to be a leader and take over. When they went through their chemo, and getting ready for their transition, I don’t think they knew they were leaving but they knew I was a survivor. I think about them every day. I got to be the mother of their children."
LaBelle was starring on Broadway with Al Green in the gospel musical Your Arm’s Too Short to Box With God when she learned backstage that her sister Barbara was dying. "I said [to Green], ‘Please take over for me.’ And he told me, ‘It’s not my fault your sister is dying’ and refused to give me time off."
So LaBelle lost it, smashed her glass of Courvoisier and lunged at Green. "I think he was going through something that made him mean and vicious. I hope he’s better."
Whitney Houston and Deborah Cox
Staples, meanwhile, finally received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005. But she is most happy "Pops" was alive when The Staple Singers were inducted into the Rock Hall of Fame in March 1999. (Pops died of a heart attack on December 15 that year.)
"Daddy’d been sick [for a while]," Staples recalls. "But he said, ‘I’m getting my tuxedo ready ‘cuz I’m going to that!’ I was angry [when he died]. I got sad and depressed. ‘What am I gonna do?’ I said, ‘Daddy, you left me here and I don’t even know what key I sing in!’"
LaBelle’s vocals reign Supremes
After years of being guided by Pops Staples, and then by Prince, Mavis Staples won her first three solo W.C. Handy Awards (a big deal in the R’n'B community) last month for her latest album Have a Little Faith.
Patti LaBelle has also risen from the ashes a living legend, in the process rubbing other divas the wrong way.
But it is her rumble with Diana Ross that is the stuff of legend: When the BlueBelles and the Supremes were on the same bill, Ross would sneak into their dressing room, see what Patti was wearing, and have her gofer buy her the same outfit.
Then at Motown Returns To The Apollo 1985 Diana Ross showed up to sing the last song, I Want To Know What Love Is. She asked the rest of the star-studded cast for a little help and LaBelle pretty much blew Ross off the stage (click here for the video or watch it below).
"I have strong pipes," LaBelle says. "I think I have one of the loudest voices in showbiz. It’s not intentional. That’s just the way I feel."
Which finally brings us to the ever-loyal audiences of LaBelle, Staples and Cox: Gay men.
Patti LaBelle
(Photo courtesy Patti LaBelle)
"I think it’s the big-voice syndrome," says Deborah Cox, whose song Absolutely Not has become a gay anthem. "Singers like Donna Summer, Martha Wash and Patti are adored by the gay community because of the bigness of our voices and the bigness of our femininity. Gay icons have lifelong careers and I am grateful and accept their love and affection."
"Bless them," Patti agrees. "They’re my glam squad. They are all my children. They look to me as a mother, a sister or a real good girlfriend. Because I am strong and I fight for their rights. I fight when I see a gay person denied like I fight for my children."
But it is Mavis who sums it up best. "Everybody is the same," she says. "I am no better than you and you’re no better than me. We are all God’s children."
When asked if she would singAin’t Nobody at the Montreal International Jazz Festival, Chaka replied, laughing, "Are you kidding? If I didn’t I would risk a lynching!"
I finally got Chaka Khan on the phone after our first two interviews were postponed. But whatever you do, do not call Chaka Khan a diva.
“It’s not what I am,” Chaka says. “I’m a nice girl. ‘Diva’ to me has a negative connotation. But if people want to call me a diva, call me what you want. Just call me.”
Chaka, born Yvette Stevens in 1953 (“My mom calls me Yvette, my sister calls me every name in the book”), got her saucy sense of humour growing up in Chicago’s tough South Side where she formed her first group, the Crystalettes, at the ripe old age of 11.
But it was during her stint as a volunteer for the Black Panthers’ Free Breakfast for Children program that she adopted the African name “Chaka.”
“I wanted to be a Black Panther because they had the ideology of not turning the other cheek,” Chaka explains. “I was a revolutionary. Until a gun came my way and I got an ulcer. I got hold of this gun and just having it tore me apart. So I threw it away in Botany Pond in Hyde Park [in Chicago] where I live. That’s when I decided the Black Panthers were not for me.”
So she teamed up with musicians Kevin Murphy and Andre Fisher to form the multiracial ’70s funk band Rufus. Stevie Wonder loved Chaka’s vocals so much he wrote their pop hit Tell Me Something Good. But Chaka would fly solo by decade’s end, charting with her anthem I’m Every Woman. But like Tina Turner during that era, she accepted whatever gig paid the bills.
“I [even] played some hotel back in Montreal for two weeks in the late ’70s. It was a landmark hotel, but I can’t remember the name or the dates. Hell, I can’t remember yesterday.”
Chaka does remember working and recording with a who’s who of the music business: Luther Vandross, Rick James, Prince (whose obscure track I Feel for You Chaka took to the top of the charts worldwide in 1984, and with whom she also toured in 2011), Steve Winwood, Joni Mitchell, Ray Charles, Herbie Hancock and Dizzy Gillespie (they recorded Night inTunisia with Chaka, and producer Arif Mardin says Chaka hit “notes that aren’t in the book”), as well as Motown’s original house band The Funk Brothers, with whom she won her eighth Grammy in 2002 for her monumental rendition of Marvin Gaye’s classic song What’s Going On (she’s been nominated 19 times and won 10).
“I felt it was such a timely song what with these [right-wing] nuts running our government [at the time],” Chaka says. "I felt that song and playing with all those original guys had an impact.”
Chaka has sung everything (check out the incredible video below of a young Chaka singing the blues with Etta James, Gladys Knight and B.B. King). When I ask what her favourite genre of music is, she replies, “[All] music. But my favourite musicians are Miles Davis and Charlie Parker.”
Jazz legend Betty Carter has praised Chaka’s improvisational skills. And you can hear the influence of Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan in Chaka’s approach.
“I love these women,” she says. “They’re all in my voice. I am a culmination and combination of them all. And they laid the groundwork for me as black women. I have the most amazing appreciation for them. I do get it.”
What Chaka gets most of all is her core gay fan base, whom she loves back unconditionally.
Over the years – even when it was considered career suicide to do so – Chaka performed at innumerable Gay Pride concerts, festivals and celebrations.
In return, the gay community lavished their love on Chaka. But what is it about Chaka Khan that gay men most adore – the big hair? the big voice? the big heart?
“Maybe it’s the butch in me! I dunno, I’ve been asked that question so many times. But I will say this: In a crunch, when I’ve been in need, when things weren’t going well, the gay community always bailed me out. They’re my most loyal friends and following and they have a special place in my heart.”
And heart is what Chaka’s all about.
The woman that embraced the Black Panthers almost 40 years ago to help feed starving children is still helping feed children today, with proceeds from her "Chakalates" gourmet line of chocolates benefiting the Chaka Khan Foundation, which assists battered women and children at risk.
It’s one of the reasons why Chaka’s home state of Illinois declared Oct. 19 Chaka Khan Day, and it’s why she was invited to be on Sesame Street.
That day Chaka remembers vividly.
“Kids have always loved me and I have a soft spot in my heart for them,” Chaka tells me. “I even got to sing with Elmo.”
Arsenal Pulp Press is publishing its third set of Queer Film Classics in 2012, including Will Aitken's Death in Venice: A Queer Film Classic. Past titles, such as Gods and Monsters and Fire, date back to 2009. Another 12 books, including Female Trouble and Paris Is Burning, will be published by 2015.
The QFC series is co-edited by Concordia professors and acclaimed film scholars Thomas Waugh and Matthew Hays and was inspired by the British Film Institute's BFI Film Classics series.
"Tom and I had talked a lot about the fact that many of our students didn't seem to know much about queer film history," Hays says. "Even very recent history seemed far off and mysterious to them. The hope was that a series like this would draw attention to films that were too often mired in obscurity."
The QFC series is getting rave reviews. "The influential magazine Cineaste called the series 'a brilliant innovation' in their review, and we were just interviewed by an arts reporter from The New York Times who is doing a story on the series. So we couldn't be happier."
Hays hopes the QFC series will draw attention to overlooked films. "We turned down a very good proposal on Brokeback Mountain -- not because we don't like the film, but rather because a lot is being written about that film already. We wanted to talk about films that weren't already getting the attention they deserved."
When asked if gay-themed films are still ghettoized, Hays replies, "Less so -- but too often people's reference points are Glee or The L Word. There were a lot of breakthroughs that led us to this point. It's important to keep the long history of queer representation in mind."
Check out the entire Queer Film Classics series on the Arsenal Pulp Press website by clicking here.
This interview originally ran in my weekly Abominable Showman column in the February 12, 2012, edition of The Charlebois Post - Canada ("All Canadian theatre... all the time"). All photos courtesy Nina Arsenault.
It’s true that the thrill of seeing Canada’s most celebrated transsexual Nina Arsenault step onstage for the first time in her graphic autobiographical one-transwoman show The Silicone Diaries in Montreal back in 2010 was pure voyeurism.
This thrill cannot be duplicated with mere videos or photographs. Observing Nina’s body and what she has done to it is a voyeuristic sensation completely rooted in the real. And by god, with her eye-popping 36D-26-40 figure, Nina Arsenault could pose in Penthouse.
The hardest part of my transformation was when I was living as a woman but still looked masculine and people would make fun of me on the street," Nina told me before her Montreal Silicone Diaries run.
"They'd yell things out of their car. I realized there is a double standard for transsexuals, because it you're a beautiful transsexual, people will accept you more easily. If you 'pass' you will be more accepted. You may not even be noticed. But if you don't pass... That's what really hurt me - people don't see you as human."
I once asked famed NYC tranny (and photographer Dave LaChappelle's muse) Amanda Lepore what she thinks she looks like, and Lepore replied, “There is something alien about my face – there is something spacey about me. If I dressed like Lady Gaga, [my face] would get lost. But because I dress retro, vamp and classic, the [alien] qualities come out more.”
Nina Arsenault is equally frank. “I look like a cyborg,” she says.
But it wasn’t always so.
The first scene in The Silicone Diaries is set in the Golden Horseshoe Trailer Park of Beamsville, Ontario, where Arsenault lived with her parents and brother until the age of six. In this scene, young Nina (then Rodney) and the local trailer park boys gather to look at a stack of Penthouse magazines. Arsenault’s tour-de-force retelling of her life documents her path from the Golden Horseshoe Trailer Park to becoming a sex worker to pay for all of her surgeries (which so far have cost her $200,000). Today, 30 years later, it is Nina who looks like she could pose for Penthouse.
“My parents are generally supportive, though my mom thinks I’m too sexy,” Nina admits. “She thinks I didn’t need to get my breasts done so large and my lips so big. And she thinks I wear too much make-up. She’s worried about my life being difficult but now that they've come to see my plays, they get a kick out of how audacious I am.”
The Silcone Diaries climaxes at the 90-minute mark with a drawn-out and narcissistic recreation of Nina’s infamous “Crying Game-style collision” with Pamela Anderson’s ex-hubby, rocker Tommy Lee, in Toronto’s hipster Ultra club back in 2006.
“He was in the sectioned off VIP area and the place was packed with star fuckers, silicone-enhanced women with bad extensions,” Nina recalls. “These wanna-be Pamela Andersons were intentionally trying to capture his eye. I just happened to be there and he picked me out of the pack to come over and sit on his lap.”
Needless to say, the meeting ended quickly.
“Was he polite?” Nina asks rhetorically. “I think he’s a laidback guy who’s seen it all. I had the sense that he's an adventurous guy with a wild sense of humour and a really big heart.”
“Among other things,” I crack.
Nina laughs. “Yeah, he's really cocksure!”
The way Nina has reshaped her body reminds me of Pete Burns of the 1980s Brit-pop band Dead or Alive, who says his body is an ever-changing piece of art.
“I feel the same way,” says Nina, whose transition and (ahem) body of work is well-documented on her website for all to see. “And from my body, I spin off other arts, like photographs of my body, or this play about my body. The next phase of my work will document the signs of aging. I don’t really see myself ever stopping. I’ve always taken pictures of every stage of my life and videotaped all of my surgical procedures."
When I asked Nina if she still goes for touch-ups every now and then, she laughed heartily.
“Well, I didn’t go for five years! I got really sick of it, [especially after] putting all those strange dicks in my mouth [to pay for it all]!” Nina laughs again. “So I took a break. People were beginning to think I was addicted to plastic surgery and I thought I looked as good as I could possibly look. But I don’t think I could let my face age naturally at this point. Because I don’t have a natural face. Once it starts dropping I won’t look like an old woman. I’ll look quite strange, I think. We always say, ‘Once you’ve had this much work done, you’re always in the game.’”
Just like Cher and Joan Rivers. “Yeah, they’re in the game,” Nina agrees. “Imagine if Joan Rivers let that face fall and those cheeks started sliding down? It wouldn’t look right.”
The Silicone Diaries is not so much about a boy becoming a girl as it is about beauty.
Nina’s self-perceived transition from ugly duckling to plastic Barbie doll is at the heart of The Silicone Diaries – dramaturgy by Judith Rudakoff and directed by Brendan Healy (also artistic director of Toronto’s Buddies in Bad Times Theatre where Silicone Diaries debuted in 2009) – though it is evident her sensibilities are clearly informed by gay and drag culture, much like the sashaying work of Mae West.
When I saw Silicone Diaries at Montreal’s Théâtre La Chapelle, I felt the final 30 minutes (following her pivotal scene about meeting rocker Tommy Lee) were something of an anticlimax and could have been condensed. Still, the rapt audience sat on Nina’s every word and couldn’t take their eyes off that body, proving that deep down inside we are all voyeurs. For challenging audiences in this way Arsenault was honoured by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association in 2011 for Excellence in the Arts.
Arsenault is now set to capture hearts and minds in Vancouver too.
“At some point looking beautiful became more important than looking like a woman," Nina says. “It became more important than looking natural. And I don’t think my transition will ever end because my body is always changing, always aging. Losing beauty, faded beauty – I don’t think my transition will ever be over. Maybe one day I’ll even decide to get my pussy.”
The Silicone Diaries starring Nina Arseneault, at the The Culch / Vancouver East Cultural Centre (1895 Venables Street), February 14 – 25. Box Office: 604-251-1363. Click here for more info.