25 Gayest Moments in Rock & Roll

25
Bad Ass
Jobriath Takes Times Square!
In 1973, Elektra Records subtly announced the eponymous debut album by America’s first openly gay rock star by unveiling a 42-foot Times Square billboard of the self-styled “true fairy” Jobriath as a naked statue. The album bombed and Elektra canceled a live show featuring Jobriath riding a giant hydraulic penis while dressed as Marlene Dietrich. Jobriath himself maintained until his 1983 AIDS-related death that “the butt on that statue was lousy.”

24
Girl on Girl on Girl…
t.A.T.u Leads Mass Makeout Session
In 2001, Russian ad exec Ivan Shapovalov noticed an untapped musical niche: underage girls who pretend they’re gay and the men who love them! So he created t.A.T.u., a hottie duo who completed every song by eating each other’s face off. For the 2003 MTV Movie Awards, Julia Volkova, 17, and Lena Katina, 18, performed “All the Things She Said” with an army of paired-off horny babes who, on cue, played tongue-hockey for the cameras. Cynical, yet titillating!

23
Gay Side of the Moon
The Scissor Sisters Make Gay Concept Album
Released in July 2004, the Scissor Sisters’ jubilant self-titled debut is a Sgt. Pepper’s Homo Arts Club Band set in the queerest New York. The songs concern gay sex, gay drugs and getting mom drunk so you can tell her you’re gay. Jake Shears rhymes “hit of acid” with “your moneymaker’s flaccid” and announces: “I left my heart in San Francisco/It’s in some motherfuckin’ disco.” For those slow on the gay uptake, the sleeve reprises the poster for the Judy Garland movie The Wizard of Oz.

22
Ziggy Blows Guitar!
David Bowie “Fellates” Mick Ronson
“Bisexual? Oh Lord, no,” David Bowie protested in the late ’70s, conveniently forgetting his show in Oxford, on June 17, 1972. Guitarist Mick Ronson was mid-solo when Bowie dropped to his knees, clasped his hands to Ronson’s buttocks and began applying lips and tongue to the guitar strings. In a resulting photo, the audience appears to be laughing helplessly. Perhaps they knew that Ronson, born in distinctly un-glam Yorkshire, was Britain’s Least Homosexual Man.

21
Hello, ’Frisco!
Sylvester Records Disco Anthem
L.A. resident Sylvester James moved to the boiling hotbed of gayness, San Francisco, in the late ’60s. Joining the cross-dressing cabaret act the Cockettes, he reinvented himself as a towering drag queen. Originally a ballad, 1979’s “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” was about the power dancing and/or lust have to put you in touch with your true identity, but in the hands of producer-remixer Patrick Cowley, it became the sweatiest, most affirming hit of the disco era. Sylvester was handed the keys to SF, but bore the brunt of the unrefined “Disco Sucks” backlash. “Decisions like going on Merv Griffin in a dress really affected how his music was going to get out there,” his publicist Terri Hinte said. AIDS claimed his life in 1988. March 11 is still celebrated as Sylvester Day in San Francisco.

20
Hey Ladies!
Indigo Girls play the first Lilith Fair
Call 1997 the Year of the Lesbian: Ellen DeGeneres revealed she wasn’t the man-eating sexpot we thought and the openly gay Indigo Girls played their biggest audiences ever. Established by Sarah McLachlan as a mosh-pit-free alternative to Ozzfest, Lilith Fair exposed scads of impressionable lasses to the duo’s homespun girl-on-girl action. But mass exposure came with a price: The Indigo Girls were banned from playing at high schools in South Carolina and Tennessee the following year.

19
Blondes have more fun
The RuPaul Show premieres on VH1
On October 12, 1996, Saturday-night TV took a definitive turn for the queer when everyone’s favorite singing drag queen, RuPaul Charles — nearly 7 feet tall in heels — debuted her, er, his weekly late-night talk show with fellow plus-size cross-dresser Dennis Rodman as guest. The ab-fab gabfest remained on the air for over 100 episodes, officially bringing trannies into the mainstream. “If the show makes money,” RuPaul said, “they don’t care what you’re wearing.”

18
Hooters!
The Backstreet Boys’ Wet T-shirt Contest
“Sexiness isn’t something that’s put on,” Backstreet Boy Kevin Richardson once said. “It just naturally comes out of you.” So do nipples! In the spring 1997 video for “Quit Playing Games (With My Heart),” a sudden downpour gets shirts flying and man-nips on high alert. With glistening torsos, Kevin, A.J. McLean and Howie D writhed like extras in a Queer As Folk disco. Tummy-shy Nick Carter and Brian Littrell kept shirts buttoned, but pulled ecstatic orgasm faces. The single was platinum by September.

17
Really Fruity
Little Richard writes two “Tutti Fruttis”
The song originally went, “Tutti Frutti, good booty/If it don’t fit, don’t force it/You can grease it, make it easy.” But with 15 minutes left in a 1955 recording session, songwriter Dorothy LaBostrie was brought in to sanitize and heterofy the lyrics. Though he outed himself as an “old homosexual” in 1979, Little Richard now insists his flamboyance was a ploy. “I had to be Alice or white folks wouldn’t let me play their clubs,” he said. “Girls fell in love with me anyway.”

16
One Hot Moment
The Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Video Snog
Looking like sketchy Santa Monica Blvd. hustlers with B.O., the Chili Peppers have always exuded a circle-jerk sexuality. But in 1995, they introduced telegenic eyebrow-plucking Dave Navarro with the video for “Warped.” After wielding his mic like a threatening penis, Anthony Kiedis makes out with the pouty newbie, who wears a dress, while Flea bounces around like an excited bisexual monkey. In just a few seconds, the band went further than any group of thrust rockers had gone before.

15
Do the Hustle!
The Pet Shop Boys Pay the Rent
From the Pet Shop Boys’ 1987 album Actually, “Rent” — a tale of a boy and his sugar daddy — snuck the notion of male prostitution onto the radio (“I love you, you pay my rent”). A Top 10 hit in Britain, the allusions in “Rent” were too purple for U.S. release. “People always thought it was about that rent-boy arrangement,” singer Neil Tennant said. “But in my head it’s about a politician’s mistress.” To compound the definitely-not-gayness, they later recorded it with Liza Minnelli.

Curious which moment made Blender's number one? Pick up the latest issue of Blender and find out! It's on newsstands now!