❝It was something spiritual with Brian. He was a left wing — a spiritual element. I dunno, but it was vital. You could’ve cut off Brian’s guitar arm and he’d still have had it. Even the problems surrounding him within the band were central to the electricity of the Stones.❞
— 𝘗𝘩𝘪𝘭 𝘔𝘢𝘺 𝘰𝘯 𝘉𝘳𝘪𝘢𝘯 𝘑𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘴
Phil May (1944–2020), British singer and frontman of the legendary rock band The Pretty Things.
Sharing a rather lengthy comment I wrote on Reddit about Phil May and The Pretty Things and bisexuality a year ago...
I fixed a few typos and modified the links to make them more Tumblr-friendly.
PS: English isn't my first language. Sorry if there are a few parts weirdly written... It might have been me literally translating my mind from French to English...
When people ask for less known LGBT people or celebrities, my mind usually immediately thinks of one person in particular, which is Phil May, of the Pretty Things fame. He was known for having long hair (shoulder length) at a time where long hair wasn't well-seen, dated people of both genders, had rumours about him and Rudolph Nureyev (I think there are also some rumours with Brian Jones around as well, although I'm not 100% sure about that), he was married to a lady with whom he had two children, and at the time of his passing, he had been with a man since the mid-90s.
A month or two ago, in the middle of an hyperfixation (I'm autistic), I've been reading French obituaries written when Phil May died back in May 2020, and I noticed it took me 8 articles until I found a mention of his bisexuality, and it took 4 more articles until his long-term partner at the time of death was acknowledged (I just went through Google suggestions, and hadn't done any Advanced Search). A particular obituary, uploaded on the website of a popular magazine here, even referred to his partner at the time of death as his "girlfriend"... A week or two ago, I found and bought the magazine version of the site at a thrift shop, and I was quite surprised to find the beautifully-written four-page obituary (two pages were just pictures of him) had both of these informations correctly written!
At first, I tried to give these obituaries the benefit of a doubt because I noticed I hadn't found an article or an interview where Phil actually says the word "bisexual." But bisexuality and queerness overall actually have a part in the band's discography, which can't be denied.
Especially in one of the more well-known songs, "Don't Bring Me Down," from their first album. Phil tended to switch pronouns around depending on the performance. Sometimes, it would be "and then to me, she will be true," and other times it would be "and then to him I will be true." It should be noted that the studio version of the song uses the masculine version. You can even hear someone (Phil himself?) barely suppress a giggle after the line is sung. The giggle didn't seem to be a mocking one, but it might just be me not being able to recognise emotions well.
There is also another Pretty Things song I'm thinking about that has queer themes, and it's "Defecting Gray." In an interview with Richie Unterberger, Phil confirmed the song was about a person he knew who was referred to as "Gray". The specific quote from the interview, which was used on the song's Genius page, goes:
"That’s about somebody who—in those days, we used to call it “Grey"—somebody, like, who does a job. Grey suit, really. And this was somebody… who suddenly realized that everything they’d lived for, and were brought up to believe in, possibly wasn’t right. And this guy was actually going from being very straight… he was becoming homosexual, or his homosexual side was coming out. But of course on the record, nobody picks that up. But it’s, "Sitting alone on a bench with you; The brush of your hand chasing shadows away"—that’s the story. But it didn’t matter what people knew about it. It was our idea that made us make the music. ‘Cause we knew what we were doing, what the storyline was."
A third song, the band's cover of Bo Diddley's "Mama, Keep Your Big Mouth Shut" is often bought up alongside "Don't Bring Me Down" whenever fans mention songs where Phil switched pronouns. While the studio version keeps the lyrics unchanged, a live version performed on Beat Room 24/12/1964 has the lyrics at one point changed to "and your little boy's in love with me".
Finally, I'd like to point out David Bowie was a fan of the band, and he especially admired Phil. It's rumoured that Bowie had his name written as "G" for God in his contacts! He also covered two songs from the band in his Pin-Ups album, "Rosalyn" and "Don't Bring Me Down."
I'm sorry if I ended up getting things wrong, wrote parts awkwardly, or if I got too carried away while I was writing this! I made sure to bring as many sources as I could remember, but for a lot of it, I relayed on my memory and all the information I acquired about the band since I started to get into them. The Pretty Things' music was "love at first sight" for me, and they're one of my favourite bands or the 60s, alongside the Kinks (not only today is the 21st, which is frontman Ray Davies' birthday, but also the band has songs with queer themes, such as "Lola" and "David Watts" for example)! Sadly, their records are quite hard to find in thrift shops or in garage sales for me, as I live in the countryside, and even in music shops, I already bought all the CDs available in the biggest cities around!
I'm unsure if I understood the post right, but I hope you got some enjoyable answers, OP! Well, now I'm going to sign off! (Spoiler: the OP was asking for people up until the 18th century... I did NOT understand the post 🫠)
(Although this isn't related at all to what I was writing, or the topic of this post, "Purple Haze" by the Jimi Hendrix Experience started to play as I was writing. There's a popular mishearing (I can't remember the exact English word, in French these are referred to as "illusions auditives") of the lyrics where instead of "s'cuse me while I kiss the sky," it's "s'cuse me while I kiss this guy," is heard instead. In fact, Jimi was aware of that fact and even playfully sang that version sometimes! I heard that in a few concerts, he even mimed kissing Noel Redding (JHE's bassist)! And after I fell upon an extract of Noel's book describing a certain event that happened while the band was in Sweden, I'm not really surprised Jimi acknowledged it.)
