Smalltown Boy – Bronski Beat (1984)
Smalltown Boy is a haunting synth-pop classic that became part of the gay cultural avalanche sweeping through mainstream UK music in 1984.
After lots of boys with guitars and something to say in recent weeks, I thought a piece on boys with synthesisers and something to say might hit the spot this week. The boys in question were Jimmy Sommerville, Steve Bronski and Larry Steinbacheck who met when sharing a flat in Brixton in 1983 and formed Bronski Beat. All three of the band were openly gay and Sommerville and Bronski came from Ruchill and Castlemilk, areas of Glasgow characterised in those days by deprivation and social problems. Steinbachek was from Southend in Essex. None of these areas were particularly tolerant of gay people at that time, which wasn’t any different from most of the UK, and the move to London allowed them to immerse themselves in gay culture.
Gay culture has always been intertwined with music, as far back as early blues singers like Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith whose music was studded with subtle references to their sexuality. In the 1970s, David Bowie’s Ziggy character flirted with homosexuality and, although Freddie Mercury remained private about his sexuality, his stage persona spoke volumes – he sang with a band called Queen, ferchrissakes! Disco music became a vital expression of gay culture providing a space for marginalized individuals to celebrate their identities and find a sense of community. I vividly recall the impact of the brilliant You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real) single by the androgynous Sylvester being released in the late summer of 1978 just as I went to university where the world just seemed so much wider than before.
Although homosexuality was decriminalised in England in 1967, it took Scotland until 1980 and Northern Ireland until 1982 to follow suit. So by the point that Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s Relax entered the UK top 40 in January 1984, the subject they were singing about wasn’t a crime in any part of the country, subject to age limits, of course. It still got banned by the BBC though, but the times they were a-changing. Bronski Beat had begun writing and performing more outspoken, political songs and managed to get a deal with London Records in the spring of 1984 having played only nine live gigs. They went into the recording studio with Mike Hedges, who had produced Soft Cell’s hugely successful cover of Gloria Jones’ Tainted Love back in 1981.
Released as the band’s debut single this week 41 years ago, Steinbachek tells the story that Smalltown Boy emerged from the band’s attempt to cover the 1977 Sex Pistols single Pretty Vacant using an octave pattern sequenced on a Roland MC-202 synthesiser. I’ve listened very hard and I can just about hear the synth rhythm at the start having a vague likeness to Steve Jones’ opening guitar riff. Only just, though. And although the C Minor key of the melody gives Smalltown Boy a sombre feel, the 134BPM it was played at lends it a strangely exuberant air, especially during the repetitive chorus. It’s Someville’s falsetto lyric that haunts, setting out in plain but grim detail the sadness of having to leave your hometown unwanted and seeking your future elsewhere. Possibly auto-biographical, Sommerville was concerned his writing was seen as inferior to other songwriters. But, while the language may be considered simple, there is stark beauty in his opening couplet:
You leave in the morning with everything you own
In a little black case
Alone on a platform, the wind and the rain
On a sad and lonely face
With its unusual sense of joyous melancholy, it was a perfect pop song and its impact was heightened by the music video directed by Bernard Rose. Rose had recently directed the very different Relax video for FGTH. The Bronskis wanted the more serious message of the song to come through in their video and, given that some have likened it to the films of Mike Leigh and Ken Loach, Rose appears to have succeeded in this aim. I can still remember seeing the video for the first time and the impact of it on me, a straight guy with loving family and friends. God knows how it must have spoken to those in similar situations as Sommerville was singing about.
The song went to No3 in the UK singles chart and was also a huge hit across Europe reaching No1 in Holland and Belgium. It even made it into the top 50 in the US. It was followed by the single Why? and then by the debut LP The Age of Consent. At the time, the age of consent for sex between men in the UK was 21 compared with 16 for heterosexual relations. The third single released from the album was their version of It Ain’t Necessarily So, the George and Ira Gershwin classic from the opera Porgy and Bess. The 12″ single cover played on the ‘Friend of Dorothy’ code for gay men with an image from the Wizard of Oz with Judy Garland’s character altered to be the devil in keeping with the song’s biblical themes.
Sommerville left Bronski Beat in 1985 to form The Communards with the Reverend Richard Coles while Bronski and Steinbachek continued to release music until 1995. Sadly, Steinbachek died from cancer at 56 in 2017 while Bronski was killed in a house fire in 2021 aged 61. Last year, on the 40th anniversary of Smalltown Boy‘s release, author and journalist Paul Flynn wrote: “In the decades since its release, the song has become as indivisible from the story of British gay equality as the imprisonment of Oscar Wilde, the murder of Joe Orton, the work of Derek Jarman or the agit-prop politics of Peter Tatchell. Smalltown Boy can still make reasonable claims to being the British national anthem of gay.” That’s some legacy.
Last Word
And not a guitar in sight! We’ll see if we can manage that next week as well. Thanks to those who are taking the trouble to feedback that they are still enjoying the blog despite the format change – it’s much appreciated by your humble scribe.
AR
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