Darryl W Bullock: ‘1960s showbiz let gay people hide in plain sight’

It was while writing his 2017 book, David Bowie Made Me Gay: 100 Years of LGBT Music, that author Darryl W Bullock realised there was more to the 1960s UK pop music industry than Swinging London, Ready Steady Go! and the Liverpool Sound.

Every time he spoke to someone about the music and the industry from the mid-1950s onwards, he says, names of key people always popped up: impresario Larry Parnes, managers Brian Epstein and Robert Stigwood, record producer Joe Meek. Other interconnected names that filtered through the conversations included songwriter Lionel Bart, EMI chairman Sir Joseph Lockwood and "solicitor to the stars" David Jacobs.

Apart from their central involvement in one way or another with the UK music industry – then in its infancy but about to be revolutionised by the arrival of The Beatles – there was another factor that linked the men: all were gay. Say hello to the velvet mafia.

In this era, writes Bullock in his Bowie book, “gay people were spat upon in the street, beaten up and even imprisoned for their sexuality. Outside a foreign film in an arthouse cinema, you would never see LGBT people portrayed in a positive way in the media. And whenever you did read about them, they were always described in coded terms along the lines of ‘carefree bachelor’ or of they having a ‘particular’ friend’.”

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Gay stereotypes, he adds, such as “the effeminate man or violent butch dyke”, would become a continued source of skewed material for comedians and scriptwriters. The only way to survive such perspectives, even for the wealthy and privileged, was to meet up behind closed doors.

“Epstein was petrified about being discovered in homosexual acts,” states Bullock. “He had been arrested, beaten up, appeared in court, and so all of these men were scared stiff of being caught. It wouldn’t have necessarily meant the end of a career, but it would have been front-page news and very embarrassing.

“Obviously, this is all happening before  the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality in England and Wales in 1967. So the best way to find your people was to either hang around in underground bars and clubs, drag pubs, or to be successful and go around to first nights and dinner parties, and the like. This created a safe environment in which they could express themselves and work in.”

Finance vs art

The world of 1960s showbiz, and its offshoots such as theatre and television, provided the opportunity for “gay people to hide in plain sight. It was a type of camouflage, a form of acceptability. You could be of that world and be flamboyant, more ostentatious, and because there are so many LGBTQ people in that world it’s much more forgiving.”

Much of the driving force of the velvet mafia and its supporting network was, Bullock agrees, motivated more by financial than cultural or creative reasons. Epstein came from a wealthy retail background whose interest in music was piqued by how much money he could make from The Beatles; as a manager of numerous straight male pop stars, Parnes habitually exploited his acts financially; Stigwood was very quick to realise the monetary potential for music/movie crossover success.

“I don’t see Parnes, Stigwood, Epstein or any others as having been flag-wavers for the LGBTQ community. They absolutely were not. Rather, they were men driven by the need to be successful. If you look at most of them, they are not only driven by the fact they’re Jewish – brought up in a society that told them to succeed because they’ve faced a shedload of horrific anti-Semitism all of their lives, and the best thing to fight that is to be successful – but also because they’re gay, which means they have prejudice twofold.

“Their best way out of it all had already been indoctrinated: be extremely successful. At the time we’re looking at, the most obvious route is within the world of entertainment.”

Across the pages of The Velvet Mafia, Bullock excels at joining the dots between the well-known figures and the lesser players. Lost nuggets of detail from the era are presented: how the British entertainer Max Bygraves bought the full rights of Lionel Bart’s musical Oliver! for £350 due to the songwriter’s pitiful grasp of his financial affairs; how from the 1940s onwards, solicitor David Jacobs (“so central to this story that you can’t escape him”) represented the legal affairs of actors Trevor Howard, Diana Dors and Roger Moore, plus Liberace, Judy Garland, Epstein, Parnes and Jimi Hendrix.

Absent women

There is much more. The research consisted of old-fashioned digging for facts and “wherever possible, first-hand testimony”. Between contemporary interviews with the few people alive “who were in the room at the time”, internet discoveries (“I found Brian Epstein’s personal address book for sale on eBay, with photo after photo of names and phone numbers”) and archive resources (Kew National Archives, Hall-Carpenter Archives at London School of Economics, Bishopsgate Institute), encounters and career arcs are meticulously pieced together.

There are, however, missing pieces in the grand scheme. While it’s hardly the fault of as dogged an investigator as Bullock, he knows the absent ingredients are women, gay and straight. It was, he says with regret, very much the times that were in it. Apart from Vickie Wickham, the gay producer of Ready Steady Go! and manager of Dusty Springfield, “it was difficult for any woman to establish anything”.

The overall picture that nonetheless emerges is one burdened with paranoia yet fused with excitement from a clear changing of the guard in terms of culture, media, sexual and sociopolitics. The velvet mafia also laid the groundwork for younger gay managers such as Kenneth Pitt, Kit Lambert, Simon Napier-Bell, each of whom would to a greater or lesser extent oversee the early careers of, respectively, David Bowie, The Who and Marc Bolan (in the 1980s, Napier-Bell would also manage Wham!). The legacy of Epstein, Parnes, Meek et al cannot be dismissed, advises Bullock.

Civil rights

“Because they were an important part of such a massive change in popular culture you can’t really look at what came after without involving them in some way, without seeing their influence. It’s all happening at the same time as the sea-changes in sexual politics, the women’s liberation movement, the civil rights movement, and it all ties in with the establishment in Britain, in 1970, of the Gay Liberation Front.

“They’re all part and parcel of the same thing – the way the post-second World War kids grew up and realised they didn’t have to live their lives in the same way as their parents did. They’re listening to new, quite revolutionary music, taking contraceptive pills, drugs, questioning everything. As I said, these men weren’t flag-wavers for their sexuality, but to remove them from being so integral to the story of pop music would be doing a massive disservice to them.”

The Velvet Mafia: Men behind Beatles, Billy Fury and Bee Gees

Brian Epstein (1934-1967): In charge of the record section of his family's successful NEMS music store in Liverpool, Epstein first saw The Beatles perform at the Cavern Club in November 1961. Within three months he had signed the Fab Four to a five-year contract. Epstein also managed the careers of several Liverpool music acts, including Gerry and the Pacemakers and Cilla Black.

Larry Parnes (1929-1989): Regarded as the first significant British manager of pop singers between the mid-1950s and mid-1960s. Parnes' stable of talent included successful UK pop entertainers/singers such as Joe Brown, Tommy Steele, Marty Wilde, Billy Fury and Georgie Fame. As a promoter he organised UK concerts by pioneering US rock'n'roll acts Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran.

Joe Meek (1929-1967): One of pop music's most influential sound engineers/producers, Meek initiated (now conventional) recording practices such as sampling, overdubbing and reverb. In 2014, the NME named him the greatest-ever pop music producer: "A complete trailblazer . . . The legacy of his endless experimentation is writ large over most of your favourite music today."

Robert Stigwood (1934-2016): South Australia's loss was the UK music industry's gain in the 1960s, as Stigwood first managed music acts (including the Bee Gees and Eric Clapton) and then diversified into television, stage and film. Taking a leaf out of Brian Epstein's management rule book, Stigwood leveraged his management of pop acts into films, notably the Bee Gees' immensely successful contributions to Saturday Night Fever and Grease.

The Velvet Mafia: The Gay Men Who Ran the Swinging Sixties, by Darryl W Bullock (Omnibus Press, £20)