Queensland Pride Magazine, February 2006
edition cover story
(as edited from John‘s interview
transcript by QP editor Iain Clacher)
Communard confessions:
The former singer of ‘out’ 80s bands Bronski Beat and Communards, JIMMY SOMERVILLE returns to
“I really am a whore!”
Have you ever felt that you had to be anything less
than all of who you are on stage?
Jimmy Somerville: If anything it’s so
difficult for me to present on stage who I am – because especially, from the
very beginning, of how I’ve looked and my size and, especially in the very
early days, my boyishness – my boyish face and boyish stature and stuff. It was very difficult for me to get over to
people that under my t-shirt there wasn’t a pair of wings as some kind of
little angel, you know? If anything I’m
just the opposite – I’m trying constantly to show people that I really am a
whore – look, I really am!
Would you
have been the sort of young man who would have been likely to have engaged in
anal intercourse, if that was on offer at age sixteen?
God! At age sixteen? By the time I
was fifteen I’d realised at the bus station that if I actually sucked men off I
could get five pounds - which meant I could go and buy two albums. So by that
time I was running a business really - I was building my record collection at
that point. So yeah, at sixteen there was no tricks I
didn’t know, that’s for sure.
Bronski Beat’s Smalltown Boy was a groundbreaking video. In
the documentary series Sex & Pop
you say in response to Jake Shears from Scissor Sisters how significant
that video was.
The early eighties was a time of just
being a bit kind of flash really – and in the end this song
couldn’t be anything else but tell a story.
There is a part in the swimming pool
where I’m looking at the guy, because I’m just so kind of like - I could be cruising him, but I could also just be idolising him - that
kind of thing.
So it could be taken whichever way,
but in some sense it was so obviously gay because we were OPENLY gay, but I
think the success of the song and of the video was that it was just so
universal.
I would imagine that you would have
a whole swag of songs that would be ideal if you were the guest vocalist at a gay civil union. Have you been asked to do this in the
No. It’s an historic moment and a
great thing, but for me it’s just a frustrating thing because I really don’t
want to be aping heterosexuality.
I
don’t want gays and lesbians to be saying “look, we should be allowed to get
married as well”, because I just don’t think, in the twenty first century, that
marriage really should be something that we’re trying to hold on to. I just
think we should be moving towards unions that are partnerships, but really
getting away from marriage and the whole connection to the church and the state
etc.
Civil
partnership rights are so important because it should be the same rights and it
should be the same recognition. If you enter into that partnership and it
becomes legal and binding, that’s really important – but just
drop this wedding nonsense.
The promoter of your
Australian shows, Colin Tate, says that “Jimmy gave his music to me as a lone
country boy, and it was a way of accepting my own sexuality”. It’s great he can
help now produce a spectacular show that gives you the recognition you deserve.
It’s great – just how it’s going to be run. Just to
be singing with the choir, and they’re going to organise an acoustic band for
me. There’s going to be about thirty-five minutes of short acoustic songs.
Some songs are from the albums -
like For A Friend and By Your Side and
also Selfish Days from the Home Again album.
And then also I’m gonna do a few kind of old favourites – things like This
Guy’s In Love With You and I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself -- old standards that are usually always sung
by women - so by me singing them it just turns the whole element of the lust
song around.
I’m really looking forward to it.
EVOLVE, the Jimmy Somerville show,
plays Sydney State Theatre on Friday February 24, For tickets contact Ticketek on
132 489. On March 2 he plays