about
‘Glad to be Gay’ is a song that demands to be updated every so often to remain fresh and relevant to the community. Tom’s most recent version, which he played at 2019 Pride in London, includes a verse about non‐binary gender identities; in 1976, at the time of Version One, we wouldn’t even have known what that meant.
This version is almost the original. The Peter Wells case was a cause celebre about a ‘martyr’ who turned out to be rather a nasty piece of work. But you never can choose your martyrs.
There is a reference in Verse Two to Gay News, 'our lost magazine'. Gay News, having been the community’s pride and main channel of communication for ten years, was on its last legs at the time of the concert, with the staff locked in an unsuccessful battle to wrestle control from an owner bent on flogging it off. Then Tom says, “Whoops! Sorry Capital Gay”. Capital Gay was started the previous year as a weekly freesheet by two former Gay News journalists, Michael Mason and Graham McKerrow. Though constrained more than Gay News because of lack of space, it carried the torch for honest, sensitive and campaigning journalism, particularly around the AIDS crisis, for the next fifteen years.
The cheers towards the end of the third verse are for all the evening’s performers, who climbed onstage behind Tom to deliver the last choruses. You can tell how important the song was to the community because of the way the audience joins in the verses as well as the chorus.
On a personal note, one of the other performers, Rose Collis brought along a roadie, Sue Brearley. After meeting that night Tom and Sue fell for each other a couple of years later. The fall‐out for Tom within the gay community was disastrous, with vicious attacks on him for selling out. Peter Tatchell was one of the very few figures who defended him. Over the years our attitude to labels and identities has become a lot more nuanced and we can hail Tom as a pioneer of the more fluid sexuality which is now recognised. Tom and Sue are still partnered.
lyrics
The British Police are the best in the world
I don't believe one of these stories I've heard
'Bout them raiding our pubs for no reason at all
Lining the customers up by the wall
Picking out people, knocking them down
Resisting arrest as they're kicked on the ground
Searching their houses, calling them queer
I don't believe that sort of thing still happens here
Sing if you're glad to be gay
Sing if you're happy that way (hey)
Sing if you're glad to be gay
Sing if you're happy this way
Being a lesbian’s wonderful fun
You ain’t fit to mother a daughter or son
There's no nudes in Gay News, our lost magazine
But they still – whoops! Sorry, Capital Gay!
Read how disgusting we are in the press
The Evening News and the Sunday Express
Molesters of children, corruptors of youth
It's there in the paper, it must be the truth
Sing if you're glad to be gay
Sing if you're happy this way (hey)
Sing if you're glad to be gay
Sing if you're happy this way
Have you heard the story about Peter Wells?
One day was arrested and dragged to the cells
For being in love with a man of eighteen
The vicar found out they’d been having a scene
The ,magistrate sent him for trial by the crown
He appealed but they still sent him down
He was only mistreated a couple of years
‘Cos even in prison they look after the queers
Sing if you're glad to be gay etc.
And sit back and watch as they close down our clubs
Arrest us for meeting and raid all our pubs
Make sure your boyfriend's at least twenty-one
So only your friends and your brothers get done
Lie to your workmates, lie to your folks
Put down all the queens, and tell anti-queer jokes
Gay Lib's ridiculous, join their laughter
"The buggers are legal now, what more are they after?"
(Let’s go!)
Sing if you're glad to be gay etc.
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