It’s never been easy being gay in the ultra-aggressive, hyper-masculine world of heavy metal music.
For instance, leather and studs-loving Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford kept it in the closet until 1997.
“The worst thing you could ever say about a metal band is ‘They’re fags!'” said Aaron Johns, a 32-year-old accountant and metal fan from Long Island, NY.
Despite Halford’s S&M-inspired gear and the legions of fans and bands that followed him sartorially and musically out of the seventies, being “metal” and gay is a road even less traveled.
“I kept everything very separate,” says Tampa Bay-area 34-year-old rock photographer Todd Fixler. “It wasn’t a closeted thing; it’s just that music people don’t bring it up.”
It was the late 1990s, a time of rapid hybridization across music scenes and a quickening acceptance of personal sexuality especially among the young.
It was never a question posed to Fixler amongst his punk-rock friends. “But I would have answered it.”
While the metal of the 1970s splintered into scores of subgenres during the 80s and especially the 90s”goth, emo, speedcore, every-kind-of-core”Fixler doesn’t split hairs.
“I like to listen to ‘heavy’ music,” he says.
Beyond the blitzkrieg of bass, drums and guitar, heavy metal”or whatever you want to call it”has something else on the agenda.
“In general, it’s emotionally based,” Johns says. “It’s a means of catharsis and venting,” he said. “But it also has the ability to alienate people.”
“Metal is associated with aggression,” says Jason Brighton, a 22-year-old “super conservative” accountant from Irvine, Calif.
“It just has a way to get out aggression playing the music, going to shows or even working out to it,” he shares.
Los Angeles trainer and physical therapist Carlo Baker agrees.
“It’s an intensity I like when I’m doing something physical,” he adds.
That was then, this is now”¦
Unlike many of the tragic and tumultuous out-of-the-closet epics of previous decades, Fixler’s coming out during the late 1990s in Southern Florida was relatively uneventful. “It just didn’t have this crazy stigma like people got from the ’70s and ’80s,” he remembers. In the punk scene, there was no backlash. “Everybody was like ‘that’s awesome!’ ‘that’s cool!'”
At the time, he didn’t have any gay friends, a seemingly common trait amongst metal fans who happen to be gay.
“Most of my friends still are straight people in the music scene,” he says. “The love of music and passion for music tends to transcend those issues, and that’s been the case for most of the people I know.”
The more aggressive stance of gay politics during the years could also dovetail with the rise of heavy metal and its gay fans.
“People get pent up, frustrated about being a minority,” says Johns. “Especially in this day and age people are more outspoken. They aren’t in the closet and crying as much. There’s more freedom now. The frustration of not being what you want to be might just cause you to pick up that guitar and start screaming.”
Before the wave of sexual tolerance began splashing over the various scenes during the end of the millennium “it was more like nobody would talk about it or bring it up,” says Baker, who’s more of a traditionalist”Judas Priest, Scorpions, Iron Maiden, Van Halen”when it comes to metal.
“The kids were more educated about the whole ‘gay’ thing,” Baker says, “spreading upward to older generations starting to think maybe it’s not such a big deal anymore.”
Gay culture not “heavy'
It’s no secret that music played at gay bars and clubs sounds and feels a certain way with its 80s kicks, 90s-style trance chords and autotuned vocals exhorting you to “baby, put your hand up, baby!”
But there’s more.
“They just don’t like the aggression behind the music,” says Brighton.
It doesn’t end there, though.
“The overall metal scene is hyper-masculine so it doesn’t lend itself to gay culture or anything gay for that matter,” Johns said.
Oh, and one more thing.
“In the gay community, they like more of the fake keyboard sound instead of actually getting out the guitar and real drums,” adds Baker, a 42-year-old athletic trainer. “Club music makes me think of the guys at the circuit parties taking drugs. That makes the music better … in their heads.”
But not everyone immersed in metal disdains electronic music or club tracks.
“I appreciate any music in any style if it’s a good song,” Fixler said. “I saw Lady Gaga at the Ritz Ybor and she was phenomenal,” he says”even though dance music isn’t part of his musical DNA.
Despite the general aversion to dance music in heavy scenes, some artists choose to do both. Openly gay sludge metal guitarist Steve Brooks of indie band Torche also has a side dance project called Blowoff.
But is the indifference and sometimes hostility of metal fans towards dance music as simple as they don’t dance?
None of the interviewed metal fans here said they do.
“They want dance music more or less so they can be with other guys with their shirts off dancing,” says Baker, who said metal shows”or at least the old-school ones he goes to”are more about a kick-back-and-listen environment. “A lot of guys are turned off by that cop-a-feel atmosphere.”
Still, a very small number of gay bars in bigger cities have ‘heavy’ music nights like the Eagle in the Los Angeles area.
And there’s an often-present message of thinking outside the flock, said Orlando graphic designer Jake Stevens.
“Part of the genre is not being one of the sheep, part of the herd which lends itself to being gay,” he says.
Looking for out metal gods
There are hardly any official census numbers, but the group interviewed put the number of gay men who dig heavy music between 15 and 1 out of 100.
The number of out gay metal stars is even lower. Of course, there’s Halford.
“Even growing up, I kind of thought he was gay,” Baker remembers. “With his black leathers I always felt he was a little gay and wasn’t too surprised when he came out.”
Other than that, of course, there’s Queen, whose earlier output is considered metal. Although it was widely known Freddie Mercury was gay, that is not true for the rest of the band.
Other than that, there are few others in the pantheon of rock greats”other than Elton John and Melissa Etheridge”who have come out.
“There needs to be a litmus test,” says out gay musician and performer Kendall Kelly. “A Neil Patrick Harris for the music industry.”
Among the biggest out musicians in the rock realm are Doug Pinnick of King’s X, Otep Shamaya of Otep, Roddy Bottum of Faith No More, Bob Mould of Husker Du as well as Gaahl, the former frontman for Gorgoroth.
But many said they don’t see the ranks of out gay musicians swelling in the short term”especially ones with the stature of Mercury or Halford.
“There’s no market for it,” says Johns, who is also a drummer and guitarist of various rock genres. “They would be shunned by the public. There’s still a stigma.”
S+H
WHO: Judas Priest
WHEN: Wednesday, Nov. 30
WHERE: Ask Gary Amphitheatre, Tampa
TICKETS: 1800askgary.amphitheatrer.com
