Sadly Steve Bronski of Bronski Beat has died aged 61 (on the right in the above photo). I can’t stress how important his band was – not only launching the career of Jimmy Somerville but also soundtracking my early queer experiences and being one of the few out queer bands – the only one that was unapologetically queer, highly political and out from the start. I think newer generations take that for granted – but bands like Bronski Beat fought for that openness.
Bands like Frankie Goes to Hollywood weren’t totally out when they began – Holly and Brian were a bit coy about that despite heavily coded gay content in their music (at the time we didn’t realise Freddie Mercury was gay…it sounds silly now but that’s how it was, Freddie seemed hyper-masculine unless you understood the gay code/clone look!). I guess they didn’t want to alienate the teen Smash Hits crowd.
To a queer youth without all the gaydar and code-reading skills, only really Bronski and Marc Almond from Soft Cell were publically out pop stars in the early 80’s. Not like now.
Bronksi Beat were important for that – naming their first album ‘Age of Consent’ calling for the lowering of the age of consent which at that time was 21 for gay men, and fighing homophobia in songs like ‘Smalltown Boy’ and ‘Why’ – obvious choices for this post but I don’t care, they are important – and working to support the Miner’s Strike and socialist causes.
There wasn’t much around for queer teens that was explicitly out at the time – Elton John and George Michael were closeted, as amazingly was Boy George. It was basically Soft Cell and Bronski. I mean there was little that was so unashamedly queer as Jimmy and Marc’s cover of I Feel Love?
Around the time Jimmy left Bronski Beat the next album Hundreds and Thousands was released, with new and remixed tracks. Junk is about consumerism, and Hard Rain is about nuclear destruction and fascism, not your usual pop fodder. And still current and these tracks have been played on the podcast.
Sadly Jimmy left Bronski Beat in 1985 at the cusp of their success, and Steve Bronski drafted in Jon Jon for Hit That Perfect Beat and a few other minor hits, but the success faded after a while and Jon Foster left in 1987. Then Jonathan Hellyer was vocalist with which they had the uber-camp club underground hit with Cha Cha Heels – a favourite here at the Radio Clash bunker.
He resurrected Bronksi Beat a few years ago as basically a solo thing with a member of 90’s Bronski. with Stephen Granville on vocals. There’s a great cover of Stars – more famously done with Sylvester from that period as part of the ‘Age of Reason’ album which is a rework of their first album with extra tracks. Sadly their original keyboardist Larry Steinbachek died in 2016 and now Steve has gone, leaving only Jimmy from the original line-up. So sad.
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