In a revealing new book, the often overlooked input of queer men who helped advise, manage and steer artists in the swinging 60s is examined in a new book.
Likewise, in the US, you had key LGBTQ music power players like Clive Davis at Columbia Records, Seymour Stein at Sire, David Geffen at Asylum, and Danny Fields, who discovered the proto-punk stars Iggy Pop and MC5 for Elektra.
A new book titled The Velvet Mafia: the Gay Men who Ran the Swinging Sixties aims to tell the British side of this story by focusing on several key players in the scene, including a few of the aforementioned names along with the innovative producer Joe Meek and the head of the UK’s most powerful label at the time, Sir Joseph Lockwood.
There were, in fact, a few powerful gay women in the British rock scene at the time as well, including Vicki Wickham, who booked the acts on the seminal TV show Ready Steady Go and who later managed Dusty Springfield and LaBelle.
Many of the managers had a second “outsider” identity. They weren’t just gay but also Jewish. “It must have been hard to deal with the issues surrounding your religious beliefs as well as your sexual identity,” Bullock said. “Brian [Epstein] for one struggled with the whole lot.”
To make matters worse, Epstein had a self-destructive streak
