Gay and Bisexual Heroes and Villains in Crime of the Century

“Heroes and villains, just see what you’ve done” – Brian Wilson & Van Dyke Parks

Fittingly this blog post’s title is a Beach Boys song and The Beach Boys meeting Charles Manson is a big part of my book. Here’s something you might not know: did you know that Charles Manson was bisexual? And he’s not the only queer villain talked about in Crime of the Century! Originally this was supposed to be published during Pride Month, but because I got a day job, I was too busy to write, so you’re getting this post now. Why does LGBT history and pride have to be relegated to one month anyway, right?

In this blog post, I’ll be talking about the gay and bisexual heroes and villains featured in my book, in the spirit of the Bad Gays Podcast. While it’s not the main focus of my book, gay heroes and villains are a part of LGBT history and I believe in talking about history warts and all. There are good and evil people of all walks of life and at the end of the day we are all individuals and everyone should be treated like an individual. When someone commits a crime, the person who committed the crime is the only one responsible for it. Not any group that they happen to belong to. With that important message out of the way, let’s talk about all of the gay and bisexual people mentioned in my book. These are angles that I couldn’t explore in my book without going on a tangent and Crime of the Century is long enough as it is. So here’s some gay-centred bonus content and a reminder that LGBT people have always been here and they are a part of history.

Content warning: discussion of sex, this post is R-rated. If this is a topic makes you feel uncomfortable, please click the back button or click here to go to the home page.

Trigger warning: discussion of rape and sexual assault. Once again, if this is a topic that triggers you, please click the back button or click here to go to the home page. Here is a list of resources from Survivors’ Network.

Gay and Bisexual Heroes in Crime of the Century:

President John F. Kennedy (bi-curious???)

There has never been an openly gay or bisexual president of the United States, but there are speculations about a few of them: James Buchanan, Abraham Lincoln, and in more recent history John F. Kennedy. Of course since all of them are dead there’s no way we’ll know the truth. They all lived in a time where being gay was illegal. It’s hard enough coming out of the closet now, worrying that your parents will disown you, Imagine worrying about getting jail time on top of that! Even if you were just friends with a gay person or were okay with gay people, you were in danger too!

While he was obviously not a musician, I talk about the JFK assassination in depth in the book to give context to the story of The Band playing at Jack Ruby’s nightclub in 1963 just months before the JFK assassination and the killing of Lee Harvey Oswald. Researching this chapter made me go down many rabbit holes and I think one of the most interesting rabbit holes is anything to do with the Kennedys. Tragic as hell as Shona Laing once sang about in “Glad I’m Not a Kennedy”, but still fascinating to read about and there’s always something to learn. Americans don’t have a Royal Family (and that’s a good thing!), but the Kennedys and other political dynasties are the closest thing to it, I suppose. Honestly I hate political dynasties. No matter how charismatic the president is, we need new blood to prevent corruption and being a politician shouldn’t be a career or a path to wealth, but rather it’s a duty. That’s what the Founding Fathers believed! If you’re in Washington DC for decades, you’re going to become out of touch with the public – the people who can vote for you, no matter how independent or principled you are. As the great George Carlin once said, it’s a big club and you ain’t in it!

Anyway, one thing you may not already know about President Kennedy is that there are rumours that he may have had a gay experience while in school. That’s right! You might have seen photos of Jack holding hands with his friend Lem Billings while at boarding school, looking like boyfriends, or as historians might say “they were roommates”. Lem Billings had a crush on his classmate JFK and while he didn’t return those feelings, they were besties. They travelled to Europe together in 1937. He even had his own room at the White House. Lawrence Quirk claimed that Lem Billings told him that he’d slept with JFK. Billings was heartbroken when his best friend was assassinated and was described as the saddest Kennedy widow.

If you want another JFK rabbit hole to fall down, read this blog post where I talk about the theory of his back problems causing his death.

Ray and Dave Davies (bisexual)

Most Kinks fans know about Dave’s bisexuality because he came out in his first autobiography, Kink. In that book he talks about the gay affairs he had in the 60s prior to homosexuality being decriminalised in 1967, including his relationships with Michael Aldred and Long John Baldry. That was a big risk in those days because in the 60s the punishment if you were arrested for being gay was either jail time or chemical castration. Dave Davies has also talked about crossdressing on multiple occasions.

However, many fans believe that older brother Ray Davies is just a straight ally, when that’s actually not true and he’s the one who came out first, by a couple of decades! While Ray Davies never says the words “I’m bisexual”, he certainly says that he is also attracted to men. In an interview in Andy Warhol’s magazine Interview, Ray Davies tells Candy Darling that Charlton Heston is his celebrity crush and that he’s also attracted to men. He told journalist Maureen Cleave in an interview about the Kinks single “See My Friends” that he told his then-wife Rasa that if it weren’t for her, he’d be queer. In a 1994 interview to promote his autobiography X-Ray that he has both male and female traits in him and he prefers people who are not ashamed to exhibit both (note that he doesn’t specify just women). Some people may say he’s joking, but I’m tired of this idea that bisexuals can’t know what they are and they have to explicitly say and constantly confirm that they are.

John Lennon (bisexual)

British Invasion, initials BI – coincidence? I think not! You’ve got bisexual members in The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, and The Who? Amazing! Anyway, John Lennon seemed pretty straight. That we know of, he never had a boyfriend and he’d never slept with a man. Although there are rumours that John Lennon had an affair with Beatles manager Brian Epstein while the two were on holiday in Barcelona while his then-wife Cynthia was pregnant with Julian, but John Lennon himself publicly said that it was a love affair, but it was never consummated, but it was a really intense relationship. He apparently privately told his friend Pete Shotton that he pulled his pants down in front of Epstein in a hotel room and told him that if he wanted to have anal sex that he could do it, but Epstein turned him down and said he wasn’t into that and that he’d rather touch him and so John let Brian toss him off. If anything really did happen between the two of them, it’s understandable why John wouldn’t have said anything because being gay was illegal at that time and Brian Epstein had been arrested for being gay in the late 50s. Besides legal consequences, one would also have to worry about being blackmailed and the Kray twins wanted to blackmail Epstein and allegedly put a curse on him.

However, after he was murdered in 1980, Yoko Ono has said in interviews that John Lennon wanted to have sexual relationships with men. In that interview with The Daily Beast, she said that she and John would talk all the time about their sexual fantasies and desires and John believed that everyone is a bit bisexual and that homophobic society makes people hide that gay side and insist that they are straight. Yoko, however, has said that she does not feel attraction towards women, but she does laugh it off if people think that she’s gay. I think there could be some truth in that. I think a lot more people than are willing to admit are fluid about their sexuality. Social conditioning can really do a number on the brain. In the end, John Lennon never got to sleep with a man because he never found the right guy.

My favourite headline of all is when the New York Post had “Beat The Meatles” as their front page story, where Paul McCartney reveals that he and John Lennon masturbated together. Bros being bros?

In recent years, John’s son Sean tweeted a picture of his parents with Andy Warhol with the caption: Consenting adults do whatever you want. 🏳️‍🌈 . John Lennon and Andy Warhol are grabbing each other’s crotches in the photo. This has led Beatles stan Twitter to react like “Sean outed his dad?”

Consenting adults do whatever you want. 🏳️‍🌈 pic.twitter.com/m7nNkj6QDE

— Seán Ono Lennon (@seanonolennon) June 2, 2024

Mick Jagger (bicurious)

While Mick Jagger has never explicitly said he is bisexual, The Rolling Stones are a pretty gay band. Dave Davies revealed that founding member Brian Jones had a crush on him and that he also had a crush on Brian Jones. Pete Townshend had a crush on Mick Jagger and has commented on the size of his package. Mick Jagger’s girlfriend Marianne Faithfull is bisexual. Mick Jagger appears to be bisexual or at the very least, bicurious. The casting for the “We Love You” music video was pretty appropriate with actual bisexuals playing a gay man and a bisexual. Many Rolling Stones and David Bowie fans know all about him sleeping with David Bowie, a pairing some classic rock fans have dubbed Dick Bagger. The “Dancing In The Street” music video is pretty gay. In 1990, after the gag order from her divorce agreement had expired, David Bowie’s ex-wife Angie Bowie told Joan Rivers on her talk show than she caught Bowie and Jagger naked in bed together. However, contrary to popular belief, she had never specified when or where it had happened. When Mick Jagger and David Bowie denied the rumours, Angie Bowie backtracked and said while she didn’t catch them in the act, she definitely saw them in bed together. Keep in mind, this was during the AIDS crisis and the 90s were still a homophobic time, so it’s not surprising that they’d deny this.

Kenneth Anger (gay)

Some people call Kenneth Anger the inventor of music videos because of his 1963 short film Scorpio Rising essentially being a music video with homoerotic and biker themed shots with popular early 60s aka long 50s music playing in the background, very Marlon Brando and James Dean inspired. Famous directors like John Waters and Martin Scorsese call the film an influence on their work.

Now what did Kenneth Anger and John Waters have in common? Both were gay men who directed movies that pushed the envelope and both of them had crossed paths with members of the Manson Family. John Waters advocated for the parole of Leslie Van Houten and considers her a friend. If you’ve ever watched Pink Flamingos, you might have noticed pictures of the Manson Girls in the house in that movie and you’ll see that the film is dedicated to Sadie, Katie, and Les – Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Leslie Van Houten. He also befriended Manson associate Tex Watson.

You might be wondering why I’m talking about Kenneth Anger in a book about classic rock and that’s because he had connections to classic rockers like Jimmy Page, whom he befriended because of their common interest in Aleister Crowley and Thelema, and Mick Jagger, who composed the score for Invocation of My Demon Brother. Jimmy Page was his first choice to do the score for Lucifer Rising, but after the two had a falling out, which delayed the release of the film by a good few years, Anger hired Manson associate Bobby Beausoleil, who composed the score while serving a life sentence for murder. He and a group of prisoners he dubbed the Freedom Orchestra got approval to purchase recording equipment and they made musical instruments in the workshop.

When Kenneth Anger was in his teens, he realised he was gay and got into the underground gay scene in LA. One day, he was arrested for being gay (entrapment) and shortly after that he moved out of his parents’ house and got a flat of his own with the support of his grandmother. In 1947, he directed his first gay film Fireworks, which explores homosexuality and S&M. It is his earliest surviving film and is considered the first gay narrative film made in the US. Sexologist Alfred Kinsey, who developed the Kinsey scale, was one of the first people to buy a copy of Fireworks.

Debbie Harry (bisexual)

Debbie Harry is best known as the lead singer of Blondie. About a decade before Blondie made it big, she was in a band called The Wind in the Willows. In the early 70s, she claimed that she got into Ted Bundy’s car while she was on her way to a party in Manhattan. She felt like something was off and luckily got out of the car by sticking her arm out of the slightly open window and reaching for the handle from the outside and then the door opened and she was flung straight out of the car.

Debbie Harry has had relationships with both men and women and in the past has described women as more sensual and she has enjoyed her encounters with women. She is also childfree. However, she has said that her “bisexual days have gone by actually” and that her experimentation with women was due to hormones. But she still stands with the LGBT community, as she refused to play at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia because of Russia’s institutionalised homophobia. Not too different from what some of the other bi rock stars listed in this article have said.

Jodie Foster (lesbian?)

Why are we talking about Jodie Foster in this article? Well that’s because John Hinckley, the man who tried to assassinate President Reagan, was obsessed with her and tried to kill the president to get her attention. When Martin Scorsese heard the news, he considered quitting filmmaking altogether. Prior to the assassination attempt, he would stalk the young actress while she was a student at Yale. One poem that he wrote her her was adapted into a DEVO song, “I Desire”. This story is one of the ones that caught the most attention and even shocked some big DEVO fans.

Hinckley’s obsession with Foster started with the movie Taxi Driver and she played the 12 year old prostitute, Iris and this role got her an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Even if you don’t win, that’s still a big accomplishment!

Jodie Foster was in a relationship with Cydney Bernard from 1993-2008 and the couple had two sons together. In 2014, she married actress and photographer Alexandra Hedison.

Les McKeown (bisexual)

Les McKeown is listed at the end of the book because it was a car accident, so I wouldn’t say he’s in the same league as Joe Meek. As well, Les McKeown and other Bay City Rollers were victimised and were treated poorly by their management: physically, mentally/emotionally, and financially. They were also surrounded by a lot of creepy people and we’ll talk about that later in this blog post.

In the mid-70s The Bay City Rollers were at their peak and the band barely had any days off and didn’t get to see their families very much. On a rare day off Les McKeown returned to his hometown of Edinburgh and the next day he was in a hurry to get to the airport so he was driving really fast in his stylish Mustang and young people can be reckless drivers, as we all know. On the way there, he struck an elderly woman named Euphemia Clunie, a neighbour of his. One of multiple controversies he got into, hurting the band’s reputation. The next concert he was supposed to play was cancelled, but in those days mental health was not discussed very much and management said the show still had to go on and Les McKeown had to get back on stage with the rest of the band.

Much like Keith Moon after he had run over his friend, chauffeur, and bodyguard Neil Boland, Les McKeown was never the same again after his car accident. Similarly, he turned to drugs and alcohol to cope with the pain of the car accident and sexual assault. Around that same time, manager Tam Paton sexually assaulted him. Paton also enabled Les’ drug addiction, giving him quaaludes and amphetamines. By 1978, he’d had enough and left the band. Duncan Faure of South African rock band Rabbitt replaced him and the band were in their “serious rock band era” where they started writing more of their own songs with more of a new wave sound, but it wasn’t as successful as the “Saturday Night” and “Shang-a-Lang” teenybopper songs.

In 2009 he came out as bisexual to his wife Peko while on a TV show about celebrities battling addiction. He revealed that after he was assaulted, he realised he was bisexual. He called himself a secret bisexual and cheated on his wife multiple times with men and women. The most tragic thing is his son, Jubei, said that his father Les never found peace in his life. He was hurt, he was broken.

Gay and Bisexual Villains in Crime of the Century:

John Wayne Gacy (bisexual? possibly gay?)

John Wayne Gacy was one of the most notorious serial killers, and definitely one of the most notorious queer serial killers alongside Jeffrey Dahmer and Aileen Wuornos. All of his victims were men and back in those days it was illegal to be gay in many parts of the United States, so gay people weren’t really trusting of the police even though in Gacy’s home state of Illinois, homosexuality was legalised in 1962 – the first state to repeal sodomy laws. His lawyer Sam L. Amirante called him a “homophobic homosexual”, seemingly an oxymoron, but internalised homophobia is very much a thing. Some people believed that he killed all of those boys and men because he was ashamed of his sexuality and his father always hated him. When he came out as bisexual to his ex-wife Carol Hoff, she divorced him. The reasons that it took so long to lock him up were because of lack of technology and communication between states and because of homophobic attitudes among police officers and society in general. Victims would be afraid to testify because it would mean that they’d be outed to their families. Police didn’t care about gay victims. He would lure boys and men to his Chicagoland home, murder them, and then hide the bodies in the crawl space, under the house, or dump them in a river. Some victims’ names are still unknown.

Now what does John Wayne Gacy have to do with classic rock? Before he started his murder spree, he was the VP of the Jaycees chapter in Springfield, Illinois and as part of his duties he organised a concert and the headliners were The Kinks. Depending on who you ask, The Kinks met him and may have gone to his house. Given that the band members were between the ages of 18 and 21, they were in that age range of victims (his youngest victim was 14 and his oldest victims were 21), plus half of the band’s lineup were bisexual, as I said earlier in this post. In my opinion, the one who was most in danger was the baby of the group, Dave Davies, who had only turned 18 a few months before their 1965 US tour started. The tour was cursed from the very start thanks to Dave Davies being hit in the head with a cymbal or cymbal stand (thanks Mick Avory!), leaving him injured and needing to recover before the US tour, so earlier tour dates were cancelled. From there, there was poor attendance and the band were stiffed with promoters refusing to pay them then and there and people saying some xenophobic and homophobic things about them. The band got into some fights and next thing they knew, they were banned from touring the United States for four years. Things could have gone a lot worse for The Kinks, had they stayed the night at John Wayne Gacy’s house.

Reggie and Ronnie Kray (bisexual)

The Kray twins would blackmail gay men even though they were bisexual themselves, interesting! Just goes to show you, just because someone is attracted to the same sex, doesn’t mean they’re a comrade. Many people believe that only Ronnie Kray was bisexual (some sources say he was gay), but Reggie was also bisexual. Violet Kray’s hairdresser Maureen Flanagan said that Reggie was also bisexual and that his marriage to Frances Shea was a sham. Some people believe that Frances didn’t really take her life, but that Ronnie Kray killed her and made it look like a suicide. Some claim that Violet Kray wanted her dead because she was pregnant. As for Ronnie Kray, he said in his autobiography, My Story, that he was bisexual. His lawyer said that he would speak openly of his attraction to men. He even flirted with male members of his gang. He wanted to marry a woman named Monica in the 60s, but he was arrested before he could marry her. He was married twice, to Elaine Mildener in the 80s and later to Kate Howard. Author John Pearson claimed that the Kray twins had a gay incestuous relationship.

Charles Manson (bisexual)

In the intro, I mentioned that Charles Manson identified as bisexual. It’s well known that he slept with a lot of the Manson girls and he had groupies even while he was in jail. Of his bisexuality he said, “Sex to me is like going to the toilet. Whether it’s a girl or not. It doesn’t matter. I don’t play that girl-guy shit. I’m not hung up in that game.” In an interview with Rolling Stone he confessed that he raped another man when he was 17 and locked up at a reform school. While he was locked up at a reform school in Indiana, he was sexually assaulted on multiple occasions.

Joe Meek (gay)

Innovative producer and Britain’s Phil Spector, for better and for worse. His peak years were pre-Beatles where he would make records that sounded ahead of their time with overdubs, samples, and reverberation. His biggest success was the single “Telstar” by the Tornados, which has the honour of being the first American #1 by a British rock band – yes before The Beatles! He had other successes in the UK with singles like John Leyton’s “Johnny Remember Me” and The Honeycombs’ “Have I The Right?”.

The most tragic part is that Joe Meek never made much money from it in his lifetime because of a lawsuit filed by French composter Jean Ledrut, who said that he plagiarised “La Marche D’Austerlitz” from the 1960 film Austerlitz, a movie that he’d never seen or had knowledge of. This was one of a few things that drove Joe Meek crazy and made him difficult to work with with his erratic, paranoid behaviour. Three weeks after his death, the lawsuit was resolved in his favour. Another thing that contributed to his unstable mental health was him being arrested for being gay in 1963. From that point onwards, he feared the Kray twins blackmailing him and trying to take over management of The Tornados. Institutionalised homophobia in the Metropolitan Police was also a factor with him worrying about the police questioning him about the 1967 murder of gay Muswell Hill teenager Bernard Oliver (interesting fact/coincidence: he lived on Steeds Road, the same road as the childhood home of Kinks bassist Pete Quaife). The case is still unsolved to this day, almost 60 years later. On 3 February 1967, exactly eight years after The Day the Music Died, Joe Meek killed his landlady Violet Shenton with a shotgun owned by musician Heinz Burt before turning the gun on himself.

Tam Paton, Jonathan King, and Chris Denning (gay)

Like I said before, the Bay City Rollers were surrounded by a lot of creeps. One of them was their manager, another was their producer in the early days, and another was a former BBC Radio 1 DJ who moved onto being a record producer at the band’s label Bell Records. All three of them were convicted of paedophilia.

Tam Paton came from a family of potato merchants and later became a big band leader and club manager. Bay City Rollers founding member Alan Longmuir convinced him to listen to his band and he liked what he had heard and decided to manage them and book them gigs at his clubs. He was very controlling and abusive. The band were always portrayed publicly as squeaky clean guys, but behind the scenes Paton would give them amphetamines when they were tired and overworked. In 1979, he was fired, but the damage had already been done. Multiple Bay City Rollers members have reported feeling traumatised by their time in the band. Eric Faulkner overdosed and nearly killed himself in the 70s. Ian Mitchell left the band after six months because it was too much for him and he felt like he was going to stick his head in an oven at any moment. And then you had Les, who was addicted to drugs and sex because he was trying to cope with trauma. And Les wasn’t the only rape victim in the band. Tam Paton also raped Pat McGlynn. Tam Paton would also bring boys to his house, groom them, and assault them. Alan Longmuir said that Paton got away with so much because he had friends in high places (much like Jimmy Savile did) like police and government officials, but he also had friends in low places (drug dealing thugs). Longmuir claims that Paton told him that the police would bring these underprivileged boys to his house and that everything was above board. In 2023, a man named Gert Magnus said that Tam Paton blackmailed him into taking young boys to his house so he could sexually abuse them. It’s clear as day that Paton was a human trafficker.

Sadly for the Bay City Rollers, they didn’t get justice and Tam Paton only got a slap on the wrist. There were other men and boys who were victims of Tam Paton. Tam Paton was convicted of child sexual abuse in the early 80s and was sentenced to only three years in prison and got out after serving just one year in prison. In 2003, he was arrested again for child sexual abuse, but the police had dropped the charges. Tam Paton died in 2009 of a heart attack. Please keep in mind that most rapists never get convicted or serve time in jail. Believe survivors.

Jonathan King was a musician back in the 60s known for one hit, a milquetoast song called “Everyone’s Gone To The Moon”. In reality, he is a failed pop star who tried to live vicariously through more talented people. He is also known for working with Genesis in the early days. The members of Genesis were students at the boarding school he attended in the 50s, Charterhouse School. He liked what he had heard and produced their first album From Genesis to Revelation, which was a total flop and nothing like the prog rock they’re known for. The album only sold 649 copies and the band members knew each person who had bought a copy. In other words, family and friends. They weren’t happy with how the album had turned out, so they kicked King to the kerb and signed onto Tony Stratton-Smith‘s Charisma Records and then the lineup changed with Phil Collins and Steve Hackett joining the band.

Jonathan King produced some early Bay City Rollers singles, like their 1971 hit “Keep On Dancing” with Nobby Clark on lead vocals. Nobby Clark saw Tam Paton’s controlling nature and was not afraid to stand up to him and he decided to walk away from the band (in the end, that was a smart move).

Tam Paton, Jonathan King, and BBC Radio 1 DJ Chris Denning (who helped develop the Bay City Rollers’ career) would all frequent a teen disco just outside of London called the Walton Hop. While they were at the Walton Hop, they would creep on and groom teenage boys. Nobby Clark once said that Tam Paton told the band that if one of them had sex with Denning, he would promote them more on the radio – a casting couch. Chris Denning had a long rap sheet with charges of CSA and CP from 1974-2016 and he was imprisoned in the UK, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. From the 80s onwards, he was constantly in and out of jail. With predators, they never stop at one victim, it’s a pattern of behaviour and that’s what makes them dangerous and why it’s necessary to lock them up for life and keep them away from society. Denning died in Bedford Hospital while in custody.

Jonathan King was arrested in 2000 and convicted of indecent assault and buggery in September 2001 and was released from prison in 2005. These offences were committed sometime between 1983 and 1987 and the victims were boys aged 14 and 15. In an interview with The Independent, King said, “My attitude was that if boys were over 16 – the age of consent for girls – and they wanted to do something with me, I’d do it.” Creepy! Because King was born in December 1944, he would have been 22 in 1967 and in his 30s in the 70s – what the hell would a famous man in his 20s/30s be doing with a teenager? What could the two possibly have in common? There’s no way they’d be in the same place in life! The whole article he makes himself out to be a victim and weaponises identity politics and makes excuses for his creepy behaviour and acts like a narcissist. Anyway, he was arrested once again in September 2015 and was later charged with sexual offences against 14-16 year old boys between the years 1970 and 1986. He was later acquitted, but keep in mind that conviction rates are low and not guilty doesn’t mean innocent.

If you found these stories interesting, pick up a copy of Crime of the Century either on my website or at your favourite bookshop. All links are listed on the Buy Crime of the Century page.

Liked this blog post and want to support and see more? Donate to The Diversity of Classic Rock on Patreon or Paypal or follow me on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, buy my book Crime of the Century, click the follow button on my website, leave a nice comment, send your music or classic rock related books for review, or donate your art and writing talents to the blog. Thank you for your support! I’m currently running a special deal where if you donate any amount of money to my Patreon or PayPal, you’ll get a Crime of the Century ebook, so it’s basically pay what you can! The best deal you’ll get on the book and you won’t find this deal anywhere else! I just want to give back to my readers and say thank you for your support.