Bronski (L), Steinbachek (C), Somerville (R)
By 1984, most European countries had reduced the age of consent for homosexual acts to 16-years-old, but in the UK it was still 21. Homosexuality had only been decriminalized in 1967; the wording of that legislation also included wording that placed certain restrictions like making illegal the use of a hotel room for gay sex. Public homophobia was rampant and the AIDS epidemic hit its crisis moment.
During this dark Margret Thatcher era, Steve Bronski, Larry Steinbachek, and Jimmy Somerville met in Brixton and formed Bronski Beat. All three members were openly gay. They signed a recording contract with London Records after doing only nine live gigs. The three guys were unhappy with the tameness of contemporary gay performers and they wanted their music to be more outspoken and political.
Their album, The Age Of Consent, was a political manifesto. It was an entire album about being gay. The sleeve included the ages of consent for gay sex around the world as if to say this is the real politics of dance music. Their cover of Donna Summer’s Disco hit I Feel Love, filtered through the New Wave sound, showed that Disco wasn’t dead, it had just morphed into a new from.
Smalltown Boy is the gay She’s Leaving Home, yet it is filled with just enough resonance to engage straight music fans. Smalltown Boy resonates as a landmark of teenage sexual grappling. The song is about a bullied young gay man who leaves his family and hometown to find acceptance elsewhere. The song mirrored the experiences of Somerville, who left Scotland in the early 1980s to come to London. But, the song’s accessibility gave it worldwide appeal. The single reached number one in Europe and the Top 10 in Australia and Canada.
The beat and keyboards made Smalltown Boy a dance song, but its ability to get kids out on the dancefloor couldn’t desguise the poignancy of the lyrics:
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
Mother will never understand
Why you had to leave
For the answers you seek will never be found at home
The love that you need will never be found at home
Run away, turn away, run away, turn away, run away
Run away, turn away, run away, turn away, run away
Pushed around and kicked around, always a lonely boy
You were the one that they’d talk about around town
As they put you down
And as hard as they would try, they’d hurt to make you cry
But you’d never cry to them, just to your soul
No, you’d never cry to them, just to your soul
Somerville said:
“I was motivated by a passion and a real heartfelt anger and frustration about discrimination… And the fact that, because of who I was, especially at that time, I could suffer at the hands of legislation, as people all over the world were.”
Just like what David Bowie had done with Rebel Rebel, Bronski Beat was able to have a mainstream hit that brought light the lives of LGBTQ people who had been pushed to the fringe. By making this danceable pop music, Bronski Beat put LGBTQ bullying on display at a time when there was no social media, no It Gets Better Campaign, no safe spaces.
Somerville’s voice, his distinctly gifted falsetto, balancing melancholia and backbone, gives the song its soul, both in the sense of passion and the genre.
The song was accompanied by one of the most literal videos ever. It features Somerville as a boy on a train who is contemplating his childhood through flashbacks and the events that have caused him to leave his parents’ home.
He remembers being at a swimming pool. His friends, played by Steinbachek and Bronski, dare him to approach a young guy that he is attracted to, but later, he is attacked in an alley by a homophobic gang led by the man he had approached at the swimming pool. A police officer brings him back to his home. It is implied that the boy’s parents learn of his gayness for the first time through this incident and are shocked and outraged, with his father yelling at him. The boy then catches a train to London, on which he is reunited with his two friends.
Somerville continues to record as a solo artist, his voice as amazing as ever at 55-years-old. He now does Small Town Boy as a piano ballad in his concerts. Steve Bronski continues with Bronski Beat with a new lineup. They tour and are currently reworking the old songs for an album to be released later this year. Larry Steinbachek was taken by cancer three months ago. He was 56-years-old when he left this world.
