Barry Walters on being ‘Mighty Real’

Rochester-born music journalist Barry Walter’s career stretches over 40 years of writing for publications like the Village Voice, Rolling Stone, the San Francisco Examiner and many more.

Over that time, his pieces documented the intersection of mainstream music and LGBTQ culture in a deeply comprehensive and eloquent style. His new book, “Mighty Real: A History of LGBTQ Music, 1969-2000,” reflects those stories as well as Walter’s own experience as a gay man.

The musicians covered in the book span a wide spectrum of sexualities, genders, and genres. Walters writes about Elton John, Queen, and the Indigo Girls, but also the Kinks and Talking Heads.

“I wanted it to reflect the scope of LGBTQ,” Walters says. “So, that also includes the music that matters to the LGBTQ community which is not always by someone who is LGBTQ. Maybe it’s someone who is ostensibly heterosexual, but maybe they are queer to some degree. Maybe they are somewhat queer in their private life. Maybe they just speak to feeling different in the world.”

The Rochester Beacon participated in an event for the “Mighty Real” release at the Unreliable Narrator last month, and posed a few questions to Walters. The conversation, edited for clarity, is below.

ROCHESTER BEACON: I found the book to be an interesting mixture of musical history and analysis, but also a memoir of your life and experience with your own queerness. I was wondering about your process when it came to writing that. Did you set out to write this book as a combination of all those elements?

BARRY WALTERS: I have been a journalist since I was 23, so I liken it to being a sprinter who suddenly had to become a marathon runner.

I wrote it with a lot of trial and error over many years. In fact, it ended up being nine years between the book proposal and the final edit. I struggled for many of those years feeling as though, if I didn’t put myself into the narrative, somehow people wouldn’t understand that I’ve been writing about this music extensively since I was 23.

I thought (readers) needed to know that I wasn’t this guy who suddenly became woke and wanted to write about women and people of color. I’ve been doing that since the beginning.

Then I thought about how all of us (in the LGBTQ community) have that moment when (we) hear ourselves reflected in a song for the first time. We put two and two together and hear ourselves in the song. For me, it was hearing David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” when I was 11.

I was only 11, I wasn’t sexual then. I didn’t know I was homosexual. I just knew that I was different because I’d been told that since I was a little boy. David Bowie, he didn’t run away from his difference; he made art come out of his difference. And the world is so much a better place for it. That is true of so many LGBTQ musicians. 

I felt like, especially while writing a book, I have to do that. I have to leave something behind so kids today can be like, “Oh, there’s a history behind this. Chappell Roan didn’t come out of nowhere.” (In the past), it was far more challenging and required a lot of cleverness to get past the gatekeepers.

ROCHESTER BEACON: I also wanted to ask about the title. “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” is a classic song by the disco artist Sylvester, but I wanted to know about his importance to you and why you chose to name the book after that song in particular.

WALTERS: Well, it was for both personal and professional reasons. I was a fan of Sylvester for a very long time. That song, the 12-inch single of that extended mix, was the first record I bought in Times Square when I went to school in New York.

Then, when I was at the Village Voice in 1988, I heard that Sylvester was in the People with AIDS contingent of the San Francisco Pride March and he was pushing a wheelchair. It was the very first time that I know of early on where a major recording star or maybe even a major media person said, “Yeah I’m gay,” like in a way where they claimed it. Other people had it foisted upon them like Rock Hudson and later Freddie Mercury.

So I said, “We have to champion this guy while he’s still alive.” I went to San Francisco and did the last major interview with him (before his death). I ended up moving to San Francisco because of that, getting a job at the San Francisco Examiner, and living there for the past 30 years.

But I think he really cuts through racial, sexual, and all sorts of divides. All sorts of people love Sylvester. All sorts of people see themselves in Sylvester since Sylvester is such a unique find.

I mean he was gender-fluid or gender ambiguous before there were many words for that. He used masculine pronouns but many people mistook him for a woman. So, I think he’s a real pioneer and he’s really somewhat spiritually at the center of (the book). That’s why the title is a reference to his song.

I write extensively on what it means to be content, because many of us (in the LGBTQ community) sacrifice a lot to “be real.” We sacrifice our safety, we sometimes sacrifice our ability to move up the career ladder for “being real.”

We could get beat up for “being real.” I was beaten up for “being real” before I knew what my reality was. Others knew it or they saw something in me that they simply didn’t like and that was my realness.

I think all of us want to figure out how to make our queer realness something that is celebrated. It’s not just accepted, but honored.

ROCHESTER BEACON: When you’re talking about the harm and the damage that “being real” causes, it reminds me of what you write about Luther Vandross. It seemed so heartbreaking to me to read his story because it seemed like a man who could never fully accept his own identity.

WALTERS: Yeah, I remember meeting Luther Vandross and we really hit it off. I think part of it was, I did not push him any further than he was willing to go in terms of representing himself to me. He set the boundaries there.

Then years later, his management reached out to me and said, “We want you to write his official biography. The only stipulation is that you cannot talk about his orientation.” (Walters passed on the offer.)

Which made me think of what Luther alluded to me from the very start. With private life, he was out. His background singers talked to me like I knew he was out and they knew he was out. But he would not be out in his public life, which was true of so many people.

(Vandross) ended up dieting compulsively and then putting on weight compulsively. Then going back and forth and developing diabetes until finally his body gave up at age 54. I had interviewed him a few years before that.

But then, there are times like with Melissa Etheridge, which was different. When I interviewed her, I just got this feeling during it. So I decided I’d lead up to this question (of queerness), when Melissa stopped me and said, “I think I know what you want to ask me and I want to answer it but I’m not quite there. When I’m ready to, you’ll be the person I tell.”

Well then, (Etheridge) blurted out that she was a lesbian when she was with k.d. lang on stage at the Triangle Ball for Bill Clinton. She did end up talking to me afterward, though, and gave the interview where she came out in a story for Advocate.

But it was great. She came out in a really wonderful way and became more popular than ever and became a better artist than ever. So that, to me, showed what the power of truth, what the power of realness can do.

ROCHESTER BEACON: Perhaps it’s a controversial opinion, but one of my favorite James Bond movies has to be “View to a Kill.” So, I have to ask about Grace Jones, because you have a great chapter about her in the book too.

WALTERS: So, I had written this story about Grace Jones for Pitchfork and then learned she was coming to town for a show. And I thought, “Before I die, I’ve got to meet Grace Jones.”

I sent a link (of the story) to the manager and said, “I love her and I would love to meet her.” He read it to her and apparently she loved it and wanted it in her Hollywood Bowl program. But to do that, I had to cut it up extensively and I don’t do that work for free. So, I said to the manager, “Okay, if I do this, I want to meet Grace Jones.” He said, “Okay, I’ll make that happen.”

We go to see her and she’s fucking incredible, right? Because, of course, she’s Grace Jones. Then after that, we went to the backstage area. We’re waiting around there and we hear someone say, “That writer from Pitchfork’s here.”

Then Grace Jones says, “A writer? I don’t want to talk to anyone. I just did a show.” He says, “No, no, no. This is the guy who wrote that article.” She’s immediately enthusiastic, she says, “Oh, him! I love that article! Yes, bring him over.”

So, we walk towards her and she steps out of the dressing room. She’s basically naked and only holding a towel in front of her. And she says to my husband, “Can you find my stylist? I don’t know where my street clothes are.”

She grew up in Syracuse, right by (Rochester). I would go to see Elvis Costello in Syracuse.  So, we started talking about Syracuse and I asked her for a photo. She’s like, “Honey, I don’t have any makeup on. But you promise not to put this on social media, then I’ll do it.”  So, I have a photo of me and Grace Jones without makeup. And she’s like looking at me like she loves me.

Then, as we walk away and she’s like, ‘Don’t you ever stop writing. You have something special and you cannot stop. Ever. Promise me.” And I said, “Okay, Grace.”

You know, everyone has a preconception of what Grace Jones was. But this is a surreal thing for me. Because she was like a mom to me. 

You have to know that even though I’m up here, I struggle with a lot of insecurity that comes from being a gay man in my generation and growing up in Greece, where  everyone’s dad was at Kodak and Xerox. Everyone was supposed to be a company person. You were supposed to be a company kid and be like everyone else. But I was not that.

My sister had a dance studio and that was what I loved. I didn’t love sports, but I liked to dance and I loved music. I think (Jones) saw the little Grace Jones in me and I saw the little Barry in her. That was really powerful.

My therapist said to me once about my insecurity, “I want you to think of your spiritual parents with Grace Jones as your mom and David Bowie as your dad. So, when you go to a really insecure place, you just imagine yourself being comforted by your spiritual mom and dad.”

 Jacob Schermerhorn is a Rochester Beacon contributing writer and data journalist.

The Beacon welcomes comments and letters from readers who adhere to our comment policy including use of their full, real name. See “Leave a Reply” below to discuss on this post. Comments of a general nature may be submitted to the Letters page by emailing [email protected].