Tuesday 16 May 2017

Women ROCK!

Cher: "I recorded Strong Enough for my gay fans."

Expanded version of Bugs' column that ran in the May 2017 issue of Fugues magazine, featuring Greatest Hits quotes from Bugs' many interviews with Cher, Patti LaBelle, Chaka Khan, Luba, kd lang, Donna Summer, Sarah McLachlan, Indigo Girls, Cyndi Lauper, Martha Wash, Idina Menzel, Carole Pope, Thelma Houston, Joan Jett, Melissa Etheridge, Bonnie Raitt, Anne Wilson of Heart and others.


My favourite rock stars are women – Tina Turner, Chaka Khan, Janis Joplin, Joan Jett, Heart and Stevie Nicks – because their narratives speak to me, while few lyrics and life experiences of straight male rockers do.

Besides, I love my divas.

And their names usually end with a vowel: Divas like Judy! Bette! Liza! Etta, Eartha and Beyoncé! Dolly and Madonna! And guess what? I’ve interviewed, met or seen almost all of them perform live, from Celine Dion in Vegas to Lady Gaga in Atlantic City. Once, at the annual Night of a Thousand Stevies drag tribute to Stevie Nicks in New York City, I saw Debbie Harry — dressed à la Stevie — sing a scorching rendition of The Chain with punk-rock outfit Goon Squad.
Carole Pope

I also remember the time a disgruntled Roberta Flack stopped her band in the middle of a song to complain about the poor acoustics in Salle Wilfred-Pelletier and demanded the tech guys fix it immediately. And once, at the old Montreal Forum in 1982, Bette Midler was so raunchy, the older Jewish retirees literally fled for the exits as the gays whooped it up!

Some 25 years later when I saw her at Caesar's Palace in Vegas, Bette walked stage left and told the screaming audience, "Where are my gays? They're always to the left of me! Thank God for the gays!"

I have witnessed Mariah Carey’s “wardrobe malfunction” at the Bell Centre in 2010 — when one of her breasts nearly flopped out — to Tina Turner at Le Spectrum de Montréal in 1984 where she learnt backstage (and it was a tiny dressing room) that What's Love Got to Do With It was going to be Number One on Billboard's Hot 100 chart.

Turner — whom I have since seen perform live some 30 times — then stormed the stage, launching her first of two scheduled concerts that night, with a torrid version of ZZ Top’s Legs