Tom Robinson

From: NewNowNext

Tom Robinson and one of his songs in particular gave me the fighting spirit necessary to come out and to get involved in gay activism. 

Tom (born in Cambridge/1950) to middle class parents, realised that he was gay at the age of 13, when he fell in love with another boy at school. Being gay would still be illegal for 4 more years. At 16 he attempted suicide and he was institutionalized for the next 6 years. He then went to London, where he became involved in the emerging gay scene and embraced the politics of gay liberation, which linked gay rights to the wider issues of social justice.

He formed the Tom Robinson Band, which was highly political. In 1977 they released the single “2-4-6-8 Motorway,” which alludes to a gay pick-up between a hitch-hiker and a truck driver (Little young Lady Stardust hitching a ride). It went Top 5.

In February 1978, the band released the live EP Rising Free. The main track was “Glad To Be Gay.” A song originally written for the London gay Pride Parade of 1976. This was the song that I mentioned in the beginning: a sarcastic anthem of protest and empowerment: the first verse begins with “The British Police are the best in the world” and then goes on to list cases of police brutality. The second verse deals with the double standard found in the press: “Pictures of naked young women are fun… There’s no nudes in Gay News our one magazine, but they still find excuses to call it obscene.”

The third verse deals with bullying: “You don’t have to mince or make bitchy remarks to get beaten unconscious and left in the dark.” Finally the fourth and final verse deals with our own apathy and our closeted self-hatred: “Lie to your workmates, lie to your folks, put down the queens and tell anti-queer jokes. Gay Lib’s ridiculous, join their laughter, ’The buggers are legal now, what more are they after?'”

The song, although banned by the BBC, made the Top 20 and has since become a seminal song of the genre. Over the course of his solo career, Tom Robinson has performed the song with its lyrics updated to reflect current events. There have been ten versions officially released.

This version was recorded in Manchester, 1977.

Another great version:

This EP also includes my favorite bromantic song, “Martin.” This version is from 1979:

Their first LP, Power In The Darkness (May 1978), was a kickass political dynamite. It included “Long Hot Summer,” a song about Stonewall:

The title track is a manifesto, which begins with the liberal pov and ends with the pov of the extreme right. A Brechtian writing style, that brings the message home much more effectively.

Finally for today, a song from TRB Two, the band’s second album from 1979. The album is as political as the first. “Black Angel” dealt with a white guy who falls in love with a black guy. The song appropriately came with a fake-gospel chorus. Here it is: