THE ANDROGYNY HALL OF FAME

Lou Reed: Almost singlehandedly created the deca-rock of the Seventies, both musically and thematically. The Velvet Underground was his brainchild. What do you think “Lady Godiva’s Operation” was about? Ironically victimised by his spawn on the eve of his belated stardom. Came out of the closet, then proceeded to get married. Sad sagging genius.

Rod Stewart: Rod’s appeal cuts both ways. This may have something to do with his clothing, which, though cut in the usual Anglo-pop fashion, runs heavily to colors we don’t usually associate with hard-rockers like Mr. Stewart — thrilling pinks and flaming reds rule the closet of this exquisitely costumed crooner. There is also the matter of the notorious Stewart haircut, which has less in common with “Little Red Rooster,” than is &t first apparent; not to mention Rod & the Faces’ propensity to throw parties which become legendary. Despite it all, the fable says, Rod’s a football player (soccer star to you) at heart.

Sylvester: Lots of people don’t like Sylvester’s music much, but even they can’t deny that Sylvester is an authentic, and an original in a field which has mostly produced charlatans and impostors. His fondness for appearing in dossal drag wouldn’t be so unusual were it not that Sylvester is six four, black and looks like Muhammad Ali without eyebrows. And unlike almost anyone but Wayne County, Sylvester’s been doing drag for years. Not to mention the fact that, also unlike almost, anyone else mentioned here, Sylvester actually makes it with boys, and never denies it. He may not do for gays what Helen Reddy’s done for women (write an anthem), but it’s nice to find an oasis of honesty in a field crowded with shuck and jive.

Allan Sues: With his limp-wristed sportscasting character on LaughIn, pioneered in bringing questionable sexuality to network prime time. Whether he is or not is irrelevant; his Peter Pan Peanut Butter commercials are the essence of innuendo-laden soft-core porn.

Wayne County: Drag-rock as theatre-rock as American catharsis. Ace song: “It Takds A Man Like Me To Find A Woman Like Me.” Ace props: dick-pistol, double dildo lariat. Big mistake: shits on stage.

The Sweet: British leather boys, with sweet-tooth jams for all ages. “Little Willie,” their first hit here, was awful, but the rest are lots better. Very pretty, in a sort of Hitler Youth sense, and you all know why Hitler was supposed to have kept those boys around.

Gorgeous George: Doubling as clinical psychiatrist and pro wrestler, he brought glam and a whole new kind of villain to wrestling back in the Fifties by creating a transvestite character that audiences could hate like they’d never hated before. Eventually run out of both careers and put in a straightjacket for his efforts.

Rodney’s English Disco: A Mattel Max’s west. Determinedly decadent. Star girls and Bowie boys. Average age of patrons: in the vacinity of 16. Has breathed some Seventies life into the Sunset Strip.

Sparks. and Roxy Music: Most advanced of the fey glamor bands. Sparks are American and do it by looking and sounding English. Roxy Music are English and do it by looking and sounding American.

Silverhead: Least advanced of the fey glamor bands. They do it by not knowing who or what they’re trying to imitate.

The Harlots of 42nd Street: A Dolls rip-off, already. If their lead singer wasn’t an acne forcefield, they’d be a great parody of a parody of a parody. One great line: “Fame is the name of the game/ When you mix pleasure with pain.”

The GTO’s: Could’ve been Girls Together ,Only, or maybe Girls Together Outrageously. Whatever, their gypsy garb and wacky groupoid exploits made them the perfect “sociological phenomena” for Zappa’s confusion mill. “All the teenage girls now look the way the GTO’s did five years ago.” — Danny Fields.

The Beatles: Opened the door. Groomed meticulously for unisexual appeal by Brian Epstein. Paul was always too pretty; now he looks like a suburban closet. “But maybe that’s only wishful thinking.” — Angelo d’ Arcangelo, The Homosexual’s Handbook (Olympia Press).

Bette Midler: Despite lingering questions about her ability to cope with stardom - and choose material — she is definitely the Queen of the Glitter Hop. Squares compare her to Garland and Streisand, and hip folk love her for her Shangri-Las, Crystals and Chiffons remakes. The gay crowd (hip and square) love her because she came out of the Baths, be-cause she shares their affection for camp and kitsch, and because, above all else, they found her first. She proved that everytime you thought they were singing about love, they were actually singing about sex.

Little Richard: The Queen Bitch'. Beauty above all else. If parents had understood /what he was screaming about, we’d never have heard him on the radio. But the kids understood. His bouffant hairdo and jewelry were - and still are - the essence of it all.

The Wackers: As the first mainstream American rock & roll band into makeup, a fairly accurate barometer of the acceptability of deca-rock’s accoutrements.

David Bowie: Space-age acrophobia (Ziggy Stardust can’t be dragged onto a plane) that is but one of many contradictions in his personna. In the right place at the right time, with all the right lines. Wore dresses on his American promo tour in ‘70. Seems to see himself as the Garbo of Rock. “There’s a taste in my mouth and it’s no taste at all.”

William Burroughs: Original faggot junkie. Was in many ways the father both of Lou Reed’s dark street life and Bowie’s electronic sexuality.

Gary Glitter: The first Anglo-anal cash-in. With his fascination for Bette Davis staircases, makeup and truly puerile noises and lyrics, he cuts a shallow swath across the abdomen of rock.

Andy Wathol: Half the glitter crowd at any given concert today are really pretending they're in a Warhol flick. Almost singlehandedly took the assumptions out of sex and gender in the Sixties. In many ways the eminence blanc of the whole scene.

Dennis Wilson: Prototype for the sun-tanned, surfside Southern California mystique which dominated the early-mid Sixties image of masculinity. The Seventies equivalent may be Andy Paley of the Sidewinders, who exudes a distinctively East Coast prep school arrogance and sexual charm.

Bob Dylan: Well, yea, people talked, and endlessly interpreted. Appeared on the cover of Highway 61 Revisited wearing rouge, which outraged his colorless folkie following. “You see somebody naked, and you say who is that man.” In pix taken at his peak (1966), he looked on the verge of death, with the androgynous fascination of a strungout Puerto Rican hooker.

P. J. Proby: A surreal, androgynous parody of Elvis. England ate it up, all of it: the swagger, the lies, the queued hair, even the ultra-sweat vocalising. The authorities didn’t like his pants splitting every time he walked on stage, though, and that iced it.

Max’s Kansas City: For a long time the New York decadive. Andy Warhol. The Velvet Underground. The Back koom. When Andy left, so did much of the excitement. Like many of its regulars, is a has-been now, but may someday be a national shrine.

The New York Dolls: Sleazy, slurred an<J consummately sexy. A pack of ex-actors, ex-clothes designers, ex-dope dealers and itinerant musicians whose stomping ground is the same as the Dead End Kids, they might be the best American group in a long while. Certainly the freshest, hardest troupe to appear from the Anglo-anal scene. Great songs — “Personality Crisis,” “Babylon” (about a Long Island drag queen), “Trash” — which sum it up, and music with the power to back it up.

Ray Davies: Poked fun at the fops vith “Dedicated Follower Of fashion,” but now finds himself as the busdriver for their magical uncertainty tour. Better at oldHollywood glamor than Bowie, because he plays it as a cartoon. Substance with style. “I know what I am/ I’m glad I’m a man/ And so’s Lola.” Brought the question to American airwaves when nobody was thinking too much about such things.

Frank Zappa: The original rock neuter (unless you count Pat Boone). Contributed Alice Cooper, Captain Beefheart and the GTO’s to the cause. But only gave at the office. Sex wasn’t freaky enough.

Iggy Pop: Only true madman in rock today. Driven past the edge. Perhaps post-sexual. Self-demolition apotheosis. Genius aflame. Menacing to man, woman and child alike. Catch him while you can.

Alice Cooper: Crypto, shocker. A tease. Exploitation: Sure! First to blatantly feature drag in the context of a rock & roll show. Made sexual confusion a household pastime. Still more threatening to parents than Bowie. Nice guy. “I’ve hever made it with a guy, but that doesn’t mean I won’t.” -Alice to Newsweek reporter. The pimp for rock’s new generation of degenerates, but with a P. T. Barnumesque concern for entertainment and self-gratification.

The Rolling Stones: Beatles fans called ‘em queers in 1964. Appeared on the “Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby” single sleeve in good-natured drag. Can be both grittier than Reed and more outrageous than Bowie. Better at being gross while retaining class than anybody. “Mick has a certain bisexual charm.” — Kenneth Anger. “Take your pick.” — The Homosexual’s Handbook.

Elvis: Despite Ed Sullivan’s camera chicanery, his fabled pelvis centralized sex in the white rock & roll consciousness. Like Brando, a girlish tinge to his butch strut in the early days. Now, in his Sun King outfit, the David Bowie to Tom Jones’ Jim Bailey.

Ntco: Blonde, beautiful and distant. So distant, in fact, that any notion of her sexuality involved fantasy. But the power was there: ask Dylan, Morrison, Iggy or Jackson Browne. With Brian Jones (the Antonioni mutation of Dennis Wilson) at Monterey Pop, the androgyny couple of the late Sixties.

Donovan: Limp-wrist pioneer. Made it perfectly "all right to be flakey. May have been the one our parents thought of when they associated flower-power with sexual deviation. Marriage ended speculation. Still in space.

Jerry Lee Lewis: Busted for robbing the cradle. Never apologized. It was his cousin and a girl, but in the Fifties if you commited one perversion, you commited ‘em all. His long golden curls didn’t help much, either.

Jim Morrison: Erotic politics. Lizard King.vThings that go bump in the night. Tragic talked-out macho darling, like Brando and Elvis all over again but wasted too soon. Along with Jagger, everybody ’s favorite sexual fantasy.

Joan Baez: Finally owned up to one bisexual affair. What took you so long, Joannie?

Johnny Ray: Cried a lot. Busted a lot. Walking apology.

Marc Bolan: Has been the No. 1 financial benefactor of the English glitter movement.. Talks in vague terms about “Greek concepts of homosexuality.” Love-hate feud with Bowie. His feline, almost dainty brand of sexual raunch seemed perfectly programmed for the European teenage consciousness, but his status in the States is uncertain at best.

Kim Fowley: What’s he doing here? Well, you’ll always find Kim where the action is.

The Cockettes: San Francisco’s contribution to the glitter apocalypse'. Proudly homosexual, but talent was always suspect. Their music, films and theatrical shenanigans were loved on the Coast, but New York gave them the cold shoulder. Still, they did give us Sylvester.

Captain Beefheart: Dressed the Magic Band up in Goodwill frocks and lipstick back in ‘68. Now calls glam-rockets “those little guys with the swelling pencils.”