If you will, in the past two decades the music business has seen changes soaring several previously unimaginable octaves -- vinyl and cassette to cd to digital downloads; the death of the record store -- while the industry's attitude about stars' private lives has remained the steady, eternal drumbeat of closet, closet, closet. It was April 1988 when Cleveland native, Tufts graduate, Tracy Chapman released Tracy Chapman, the surprise #1 album that would revitalize the folk rock genre and sweep three Grammy awards. She wasn't out then and after seven additional studio albums and one more Grammy in 1997, she is just marginally out now; she has mentioned her past relationship with Alice Walker but I don't think she has called herself a lesbian. In 2002 she told an interviewer, "I have a public life that’s my work life and I have my personal life. In some ways, the decision to keep the two things separate relates to the work I do." On the other hand, when it most mattered in 2008, Chapman did come around from her policy of not giving money to political causes and for the first time she wrote three checks to defeat Prop 8 and discussed her decision with the media. Her eighth album was released a week after Obama was elected and the anti-gay measure passed by a wide margin. It's called Our Bright Future.
Photographer Bruce Weber, 65, is married to a woman but for forty years his primary subject has been the eroticizing of men's bodies and male camaraderie. (One of his many books is a collaboration with Reynolds Price, Bear Pond
, capturing naked young men at play in the Adirondacks.) Weber's ubiquitous softcore campaigns for Abercrombie and Calvin Klein underwear have, for better or worse, reshaped gay culture, then youth culture, then American culture. This has been true at least since 1982 when he got Brazilian pole vaulter Tom Hintnaus to wear only white briefs and recline against a white rock. That iconic ad and billboard was named one of "ten photos that changed America," by the industry bible American Photographer.
Tracy Chapman used to live down the street from me in Cambridge years ago. People would regularly go through her garbage cans, looking for mementos. Imagine.
Posted by: Sandy | March 30, 2011 at 11:37 AM