A lot of you younger readers who think that Boy George didn’t invent rock ’n’ roll androgyny believe that Prince did, or Michael Jackson, or even Dee Snider. The fact of the matter, though, is that we’ve had effeminate male rock ’n’ roll stars as long as we’ve had rock ’n’ roll.

Little Richard was wearing more eyeliner than Prince wears now before Prince was so much as a tingling in his papa’s loins. Before Black ’n’ Blue’s lead singer or Dee Snider was a tingling in their pops’ genitals, Jerry Lee Lewis was outraging his audiences by lovingly combing his own blond curls on stage. And in May, 1972, my first professional group opened up for a Hollywood trio of male barbiturate abusers in garter belts, seamed nylons, false eyelashes, and feather boas called—who’d believe it?—Queen.

In Little Richard’s case, we’re talking about a confessed sodomist, but in Lewis’s, we’re talking about nothing less than The Killer, an entertainer of infinite masculinity. Which is to say that before you younger male readers decide to scorn someone on the basis of his “obviously” being a “faggot,” you ought to keep in mind that affecting homosexuality is one of rock ’n’ roll’s most time-honored techniques of horrifying adults and other outsiders. (You’re wrong to scorn people who don’t just affect it, but practice it, too, but that’s another story.)

Younger readers might not even realize that only a baker’s dozen years ago, David Bowie was doing precisely that which catapulted Boy George onto the covers of a million checkout-stand tabloids—and doing it considerably better, in the sense that he was a lot prettier. But don’t believe me— believe the accompanying photographs, which I took of Dave during his first visit to these United States, in February, 1971.

I’ll never forget the evening we met him at San Francisco International Airport. There’d been no photo of him on his thenmost-recent album, The Man Who Sold The World, so I expected the Dylanishly curly-haired blond waif who’d smirked enigmatically on the cover of the slightly earlier Man Of Words, Man Of Music. But what traipsed into the San Franscisco International terminal in a gray maxi dress, make-up, a lady’s shoulder bag, and nearlynipple-length blond tresses was no frail folk singer with a perm, but the spitting image of Lauren Bacall, the glamourous female film star of the ’40s and ’50s.

He didn’t only look like a glamourous female film star, but acted like one as well. He wasn’t traveling light, but with a trunk that must have weighed as much as a Honda Prelude with three community college defensive linemen in it. When it came time to move it from the baggage claim area to my rented car, Dave only batted his eyelashes and sighed something along the lines of, “Oh, dear.” If The Kiddo and I hadn’t finally shouldered the son-of-a-bitch, we might be there still. (Many times over the years, as I’ve listened to Dave’s own records and to the records of the trillions of groups who imitate him—your ABCs, say, or Duran Duran—I’ve wondered if that would be such a bad thing.)

I accompanied him to several radio interviews. Most of the DJs with whom he chatted expressed amazement at the fact that he was wearing a dress. “Don’t worry, love,” Dave would reassure them, batting those much-batted eyelashes of his again, “it’s a man’s dress.” Apparently some painfully avant-garde London designer had convinced him that frocks for fellows was the wave of the future. If I’m not mistaken, a couple of members of Black Sabbath—the ugly dark ones who used to flank Ozzy—wore them for a while too. But, again, that’s another story.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been posed for by an especially attractive member of the opposite sex, but I do know that I have, and how!—by such scintillating rock ’n’ roll and other sirens as Black Oak Arkansas and Texacala Jones of Tex & The Horseheads, Suzy Quatro and Cassandra Peterson (without her Elvira make-up and wigs, unfortunately), Lobsterhead Kenhart, Patricia Morrison of Gun Club, Betsy Weiss of Bitch, and even L.A.’s blondest sex bomb, Angelyne. It can be as flustering as it is exciting—when your subject strikes a particularly provocative or alluring pose, you tend to fog up your viewfinder.

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Well, join the hundreds of heavy metal imbeciles who write each year to call me a faggot, but when David Bowie gave my Nikon his most seductive come hither look, I’ll be damned if I didn’t get a little damp under the armpits, if you get my drift.

Just for the record, Dave demonstrated himself avidly heterosexual mere hours later, make-up, dress, and purse or no make-up, dress and purse. Rodney Bingenheimer—you know, the Rodney Bingenheimer, shortly thereafter of Rodney Bingenheimer’s English Disco fame—dispatched an anglophilic young woman of his acquaintance to my and Dave’s hotel to see if she could relieve any tingling in the imminent superstar’s loins. The problem was—yes, now this can be told!—that she seemed more interested in becoming very, very close friends with your humble columnist (who then, according to Bowie himself, looked a bit like Cat Stevens). Sussing which, Dave nearly popped an artery in his head persuading her that he was the one she ought to wake up beside the following morning. I, sensing myself in the presence of latent genius, let him.

Remembering which, I always got a good chuckle out of his being so widely misperceived as rock ’n’ roll’s First Faggot Superstar.

I can’t imagine Twisted Sister’s Dee Snider making male photographers damp under the armpits, if you get my drift. But I do want to assure you that this column doesn’t dismiss anyone out of hand, so I’ll confess that I sort of liked “We’re Not Gonna Take It!” It had a real melody, one that reminded me of Cheap Trick, and actually used a four-syllable word— "condescending"—which I thought absolutely momentous for a heavy metal protest anthem. And then I read that Snider’s a devoted husband and father. Finally, he posed for People with his parents (say that three times very quickly!). Eleganza admires any rock ’n’ roller who honors his or her parents.

After all that, I was almost able to forget his having told the concert audience I saw Sister play to on MTV, “You can’t stop rock ’n’ roll, and you can’t stop Twisted Sister either!" (But I could—and did—change the channel in disgust at his presumption and make-up.)

What I suspect I’m getting at is that, given a choice between nearly unlistenable vulgarians who bill themselves as rock ’n’ roll bad boys and refer to their female fans as sluts—Motley Crue, say—and nearly unlistenable vulgarians who love their kids and women and parents, Eleganza’II take the nearly unlistenable vulgarians who love their kids and women and parents every time.

Much as Eleganza may poke fun at those who cling to the 1971 shag haircut look that’s so popular among heavy metal acts and others of impaired mental function, one has to give credit where it’s due and acknowledge that, along with punk, it’s proved to be one of the only two rock ’n’ roll looks that’s stood the test of time. The rockabilly look of the Stray Cats and others doesn’t count, since it was so deathly out for about a dozen years. Watching (that is, enduring) Quiet Riot video clips in the autumn of 1984, I’m struck by the fact that Rudy Sarzo looks exactly as he did in the summer of 1977, when he took to hanging around in my own last group’s dressing rooms in hopes of persuading our guitarist to run off with him.

He did, and good riddance, said I!