Today’s venue is located in Montreal’s Gay Village (The Village, French, Le Village gai or simply Le Village), which according to Wikipedia, is “the largest in North America in terms of scope of the complete area.” It is Gay Pride week. My friends in Montreal tease me. “You do realize Testament is playing in the heart of the gay district during gay pride week, right?” In the voice of a flamboyant gay theater director, I sing out “That’s just fabulous!!!”
All along the club’s entrance on St. Catherine St., black t-shirt clad metalheads with t-shirts brandishing names like ‘Slayer,”Motorhead’ and of course ‘Testament’ are lined up, while a parade of colorful men, some in wigs, many in tight shorts are parading by. One particularly creative group has matching red shorts that say “Keep back 200 feet.” I realize that having a photo of this, the second involving a male rear end runs the risk of the wrong idea about this blog! But I feel the picture helps capture the message.
In my early teens, I, like many other male boys, was a bit homophobic. The idea of a boy trying to come on to me was a threat to my masculinity. This was not helped by the fact that I was extremely insecure, a virgin and had fears that no girl would ever want me (not knowing that just a few years later, these things would change drastically). I couldn’t imagine that many years later, as a professional guitarist, I’d found myself working alongside singers, dancers and musicians who were gay.
The gay people I know, male and female, have been shunned, looked down upon and insulted in ways most of us can’t imagine. Yet most harbor little or no bitterness and are just thankful for our tolerance. Their struggles with identity and acceptance make the challenges of us straight people pale in comparison. As a result, many have developed a thick skin and wry sense of humor. They’re great to hang out with and wouldn’t try to hit on me, except jokingly. I’m so not their type.
If I could go back in time, I would tell let my younger self know that having gay friends is cool. They’ll never try to move in on the girls you are interested in. They have a superior fashion sense and can help you immensely, a fact which someone realized and turned into a hit TV show.
My current favorite author (and huge influence for my own writings here) is David Sedaris, someone who is very openly gay. However, his work is not ‘gay’ literature. His bestselling status can attest to that.
Our Montreal show is an island of metal in a sea of gay culture. And this makes me think of the band we’re about to tour with, Judas Priest, whose singer Rob Halford, one of the greatest in metal, is openly gay. He left the band in the 90’s and announced that he was gay. When he returned to the band a few years ago, he had a heros welcome. Seeing the warm reaction, total acceptance and enthusiasm of metal fans makes me proud of him and for the metal community welcoming him back. The complete unconditional outpouring of cheers and raised fists shows that metal has come a long way.
Halford is a hero. Not just to metal fans, not just to those who identify with his struggle to come out, but to all of us. It doesn’t matter that he’s attracted to other men, he is still very much a dude. And the biggest irony is that by incorporating the leather clad fashion of gay fetish stores in London, he single handedly influenced the fashion of metal forever.
Rob Halford’s return to Judas Priest helped inspire my own return to Testament and metal in general. I figured, if the metal world can deal with him being gay, they can deal with me playing jazz. Kudos to Rob and to others like him who rise to the challenge themselves in the face of great adversity.