New book tells the tale of British rock‘n’roll – and how it wouldn’t have happened without LGBTQ+ people

The author of David Bowie Made Me Gay: 100 Years of LGBT Music, The World’s Worst Records and Florence Foster Jenkins: The Life of the World’s Worst Opera Singer, will release a new book in 2021.

The Velvet Mafia: The Gay Men Who Ran The Swinging Sixties from Henbury writer Darryl Bullock tell the story of a group of gay men behind the scenes of rock’n’roll in the 1950s and 60s.

Changing pop, politics and society for good, Darryl shines a light on the lives of these creators and disruptors, exploring how LGBTQ+ professionals at the heart of the music industry were supporting each other and working together at a time when being gay could mean the end of a career or worse.

While writing David Bowie Made Me Gay, Darryl, who has been described as “a veritable Bard of the bent, broken and Baroque”, began learning more about LGBTQ+ people in the music industry’s early years.

“I’ve always been a Beatles fan, and was always fascinated with the rather tragic story of their manager, Brian Epstein,” Darryl says. “I became intrigued by how LGBT+ people involved in the industry in the early years formed their own support network, at a time when being openly homosexual could have you thrown in jail.”

Darryl Bullock has lived in Bristol for almost 20 years. Photo: John Deane

The Velvet Mafia is a tale of pop music as we know it: the country’s first celebrity pop star manager, Larry Parnes, was a gay man and he set the template for what followed.

British rock‘n’roll would not have happened without gay men, with Darryl saying: “British beat music of the 60s – think of The Beatles, the Who, the Kinks and so many others – would not have happened in the way that it did without LGBT+ people. No Brian Epstein, no Beatles. That’s an undeniable fact.

“These people helped shape the sound of the sixties and helped to change attitudes towards LGBT+ people at a time when the Government was refusing to legislate in our favour.”

The author, who has lived in Bristol since 2004, notes that many major advances in culture, from music and art to fashion and film, have been a result of LGBTQ+ people.

Darryl hopes The Velvet Mafia will be an insight into a world that existed before the Stonewall Riots of 1969 and the implementation of the Sexual Offences Act of 1967.

The Velvet Mafia comes out on February 4, 2021. Image: Omnibus Press

“There were some fascinating people blazing the trail long before then,” he says. “It’s important to remember the struggles that people had to go through before the LGBT+ community started to get some form of legal recognition and protection, because those great advances that we have made could so easily be lost.

“The fight for equality is not over, and if we allow ourselves to become complacent we will soon find our hard-won rights rolled back.”

The book, which is released on February 4, 2021, to coincide with LGBT History Month, also serves as an important record of LGBTQ+ history.

“Many of these people are now getting on or have already left us, and if someone doesn’t record these stories there is a danger that they will be lost forever,” says Darryl.

“But it’s not just the people who have gone, it’s the pubs, clubs and other venues that were so important in nurturing British pop music and providing reasonably safe spaces for the UK’s LGBT+ community that have been wiped from history.”

Darryl also wrote David Bowie Made Me Gay. Image: The Overlook Press

Darryl adds: “Fascinating little basement drinking dens, LGBT+-owned and run bars and clubs all gone forever and barely recorded because they are not deemed important to heteronormative society.

“Yet these places are incredibly important in LGBT+ history, to how our community found its voice and how LGBT+ people found each other.”

Darryl is already planning a follow-up to The Velvet Mafia, which will look at the political struggle the LGBTQ+ community has faced since the 1970s. It will be published in 2022, to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the UK’s first Pride march.

Main photo: Darryl Bullock

Read more: Interview: Darryl Bullock