Then and now

by Chris Bertram on August 3, 2004

I bought a copy of “Transformer”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000001U3K/junius-20 the other day. I was fourteen when it first came out in December 1972, and I probably paid about the same amount of money back then (£5), or maybe the year after. 1972 is a long time ago — thirty-two years — but Transformer is clearly an album that lives on this side of a temporal watershed. If a song with the lyrical content of “Walk on the Wild Side” had been made ten years earlier, it probably wouldn’t have received much exposure, and certainly wouldn’t have been in the record collections of fourteen-year-olds (invisibly shaping their perception of sexual possibility and acceptability). But if it is an album from _now_, rather than _then_, it is still stiking how close it was to _then_. In Britain the Sexual Offences Act had been passed only five years before. _Five years_ . Not that the following years have been ones of seamless progress, what with “Section 28”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_28 and that.

To check on some of the dates, I looked at this “gay rights timeline”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_rights_timeline . Shocking — so shocking — to read entries like the following

bq. * 1945 – Upon the liberation of concentration camps by Allied forces, those interned for homosexuality are not freed, but required to serve out the full term of their sentences under Paragraph 175

Unimaginable. And yet closer in time to 1972 than we are. Remember that next time you hear a commentator deploring the influence of the 1960s.

{ 8 comments }

1

carolinkus 08.03.04 at 8:04 am

“did you see who did what to whom happens all the time”

“oh its such a perfect day, I’m glad I spent it with you, just a perfect day you just keep me hanging on . . .

I’m pea green!

2

James Russell 08.03.04 at 10:13 am

Remember that next time you hear a commentator deploring the influence of the 1960s.

They’d probably point to that bit about the gay concentration camp victims staying locked up as an example of the very thing the 1960s were wrong to destroy…

3

bad Jim 08.03.04 at 10:17 am

There is a reason that those few Californians who cling to a few furtive tendrils of memory continue to revere Willie Brown, most recently mayor of San Francisco, previously the speaker of the house in the state assembly of California, author of the bill decriminalizing consensual canoodling statewide.

4

bad Jim 08.03.04 at 10:55 am

The guitar intro was also pretty memorable, if I recall correctly.

5

john b 08.03.04 at 12:27 pm

There’s a second interesting ‘temporal watershed’ moment in Walk on the Wild Side, however – Lou Reed introduces the backing singers at the end of each verse with “and the coloured girls sing…”.

Unthinkable on a song recorded by a white artist after about 1985, I’d reckon.

6

praktike 08.03.04 at 1:45 pm

It’s worth noting that Transformer is one of the greatest albums of all time.

7

rea 08.03.04 at 2:37 pm

“Lou Reed introduces the backing singers at the end of each verse with ‘and the coloured girls sing…’.

“Unthinkable on a song recorded by a white artist after about 1985, I’d reckon.”

It’s the fictional character in the song who’s saying that, not Reed. Otherwise, you have to conclude that Reed is really a street hustler in NYC, inviting tourists to “take a walk on the wild side.” :)

Mick Jagger isn’t really Satan, either.

8

Jeremy Osner 08.03.04 at 5:23 pm

Funny Rea — I think of that as Lou Reed breaking character, an aside from the singer.

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