Donna Summer Dead

[East]

Donna Summer died today...I have mixed thoughts. She was once dubbed "Queen of Disco" and really popular with gays until the fateful day when she declared that AIDS was God's punishment for gay people...and that "God created Adam and Eve...not Adam and Steve"

She made these remarks after becoming a Born Again Christian. Many years later after the damage was done to her career she started to try to mend fences and claimed she never said that. I might have believed her except she waited so many years to make the claim. We burned her records at the time and in the clubs she was not allowed to have any airplay which kinda made me happy because I couldnt stand her music and was thrilled I would never have to hear another song from the Bad Girls album again. I burned my own copies as well so I have nothing from her in my collection.

I hope she didnt' say it...I think she did but I didn't hear her say it so it could have been a lie....I also hope that she rests in peace. I know it was a horrible slap in the face to all of the people who were dying or who had people they loved dying at the time when she said what she said....I guess now it is time to turn the other cheek....


RIP Ms. Summer

[Rainbowmum]

May she rest in peace.

I hope she remembers Matthew 25 : 40

[princealbertofb]

Let's hope God forgives her for her own sins, then... Donna came from a very religious background, and I can see how she could have been swayed to say something so horrible. Let's say that she was still a great lady of disco, whatever she may have or not have said about her fan base.

[East]

I found this article from the 1980s and the gay magazine The Advocate which reported t the time and from what I see...she doesn't ever claim she didnt' say it...she instead claimed she wasnt a homophobe...and even the guy at her label defending her had to ask her to stop with the Adam and Steve crap....so my guess is she said it...

"Donna Summer is not homophobic," a closeted gay executive at her record company insisted recently, sounding terminally exasperated. "She's just a dumb [anatomical expletive deleted]."

Charming, but that wasn't exactly the kind of official response to angry complaints over the lady's public remarks that fervent fans were looking for. They had crowned the pinch-nosed diva the queen of disco back in 1975, when the amyl set owned that music. The lady was gay royalty.

To be fair, Donna Summer never asked to be acclaimed as heroine of the homos, and I don't recall even fanatics looking to her for political leadership or wisdom. Her Moroder/Bellotte hits ("Love To Love You, Baby," "I Feel Love," "Bad Girls" and "Hot Stuff" were divine let's fuck anthems set to relentless disco rhythms. Of course, gay men were pioneers at treating mindless, marathon fucking as a courageous political activity.

In 1980, after five years as a reigning voice of the disco scene, Summer began to take control of her own career. She sued her manager, left her record company, remarried and became a "born-again" Christian. In 1983, touring behind her comeback smash "She Works Hard For The Money," Summer had graduated from the gay discos to suburban arenas. She was also making small talk between numbers. Gay fans followed her to the burbs, and if the shows struck them as careful and gutless, her remarks astonished and enraged many.

There were reports of Summer reminding the crowd, "It was Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve," a line I thought belonged to Anita Bryant. She reportedly told gays in her audience, "I'll pray for you tonight." And when questioned about gay rights, she is reported to have responded, "I've seen the evil homosexuality come out of you people... AIDS is your sin," finally closing, "Now don't get me wrong; God loves you. But not the way you are now."

Some fans were livid. An angry account appeared in the Village Voice. In England, DJ/producer Ian Levine banned her music from Heaven, the popular disco, and called for a total boycott in the British pop press. Summer and her management stonewalled the issue. The aforementioned gay exec proudly claims that he personally "got her to drop that idiotic 'Adam and Steve' crack."

When outspoken gay/socialist trio Bronski Beat covered Summer's "I Feel Love" on their debut LP, the issue resurfaced. My esteemed colleague John Bryant (Male Review) noted once that once Bronski Beat were told of her remarks, they responded in disgust, "Donna Summer is dead," but continued to perform the song. The notion of gay men making the song their own didn't cut much ice with Bryant, who thundered that Summer's royalties from Bronski's version "go to the right-wing Christian Hate Campaign through Summer's donations and promotion." Bryant was appalled to find that DJs ad L.A.'s popular gay discos Probe and Studio One refused to ban her discs. His requests for an interview with Summer went unanswered.

This spring, Lorne Michaels and the other organizers of an AIDS benefit in New York reportedly contacted David Geffen to see if his record company wanted to provide an act for the show. Summer reportedly volunteered but was rejected by organizers because of her by now infamous remarks. That rejection apparently shook Summer from her complacency.

Though Summer declined a request from THE ADVOCATE to be interviewed on the subject, Warner Brothers sent a statement from the singer to both the Village Voice and to our own pop music desk. This was not a retraction, but an apology.

"It is very difficult for me to believe this terrible misunderstanding continues. Since the very beginning of my career, I have had tremendous support and friendship from many in the gay community. It is a source of great concern to me that anything I may have said has cast me as homophobic. My medium of expression is music, all I can ask for is understanding as I feel my true feelings have been misrepresented. As a Christian, I have nothing but love for everyone and I recognize it is not my place to judge others. I believe with all my heart and soul that AIDS is a tragedy for all humankind. A cure must be found and all of us have to do whatever we can to help."

Summer isn't ready to celebrate homosexuality or even condone it. The irony is that so many gays, celebrating their sexuality to her performances, assumed that she, too, rejoiced in it. Her music is very much the property of the people who scored their life to it. They own it as profoundly as she does. But the don't own her, not her religion, her politics nor her royalty checks.

When fans identify with music they adore, and with the artists who make it, that doesn't insure that the artist sees herself through their eyes, or – if she does – that she likes the image. Somehow I don't think Donna Summer's dream was ever to be a musical standard bearer for butt-fucking, urban nightclubbers. What hurt gay fans was that she didn't seem to have developed any real compassion for them (at least until this belated statement was issued).

Reborn, Summer seemed to have blithely accepted the Christian bigotry of the Christian right towards gays as gospel. If that made Summer's understanding of gays painfully shallow, it also showed how facile gay fans have been in celebrating glamour and the very idea of stardom. The equation is as simple as pop gets: Summer had a glossy package to sell. We were buying.

So what's love got to do with it? Isn't it a bit much to get all huffy about the contents when you were only shelling out for the package? After all, Summer's still singing about love, and you can still dance to it.

Right, and love does have lots to do with it, because that's where the bitterness erupted: from the breach between the sensual sexuality she once celebrated and the Christian exaltation she has replaced it with. In the worst of worlds, the first devolves to simple greedy lust, the second to righteous bigotry; and though curiously similar, they are inevitably at loggerheads. In the best of worlds, the two aren't at odds; both are illuminated by compassion and gratitude. Donna, and her fans, seem to have lost sight of that.

Summer got caught in the middle of a public dialog between gay lib and the new Christian right, between gay fans expectations of the queen of disco and those of her fellow Christians. And she handled it badly. But Donna Summer is no more a homophobe than many other more tactful artists, and no more of a dumb [anatomical expletive deleted] than many of her gay fans. Those are the unpleasant truths that the glare of the disco-ecstasy Summer swept in on conveniently obscured.

Now isn't it about time she put out an album we could care enough about to consider raising the roof – or boycotting?

[East]

Let's hope God forgives her for her own sins, then... Donna came from a very religious background, and I can see how she could have been swayed to say something so horrible. Let's say that she was still a great lady of disco, whatever she may have or not have said about her fan base.

Yeah....she did get us to dance! :biggrin: I remember when I first walked into a huge disco in SF called The City which became a favorite hangout and the first songs I heard there were all from Summer...I thought she was great at the time. I remember well.

[mrk2010]

She had some banging tunes back in the day lol

[princealbertofb]

Thanks for the article, East. I agree that she probably had no control over who liked her or didn't like her. It is also true that like many boys and girls bands, or even groups like Boney M, she was only the working cog in the studio wheels of disco music. She was the beacon for all the musicians working in the wings, doggedly producing music for people to dance to and to party along with. She had a good voice, good training, and a great backup from such producers as Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte, and later David Geffen... Without them, would she have made it to the disco firmament, or would she have stayed in a Gospel Choir of the Deep South?
Because of what she sang or what she was made to sing, we all thought she was a naughty girl, but in reality, she wasn't. Thus trapped into an image that wasn't her, it would not be fair to ask her to be the equivalent of, say, Eartha Kitt. Donna was kitschly glamorous but never a really naughty girl. She worked hard for the money, indeed.

[zeon]

Personally whether she said it or not if the fella upstairs is real he will deal with her and question her why she said it... What she should have realised is saying aids is the sin on you people for being gay is like saying Starvation is the sin on africa for being black... Its a big load of old bollocks.. I am pleased to see how communities burn all her stuff in a massive protest however if you burn it im sure some went and re bought her tunes lol...

Well whether she did or didnt no one will know and theres no point taking an opinon of view to the grave at the end of the day she would of remembered the day her career nose dived and she had to take control

Kindest regards

Aunty Zeon x

[princealbertofb]

Agree with you there, Zee... We tend to think that singers have great wisdom and a message to bring to the world... but generally these singers are those who write their own songs. That she placed love high in the scale of things would not be surprising, even if she was misguided about what punishments a super entity was alleged to bring to earth.

[dfiant]

Good people say and do stupid things. I hope that she will be remembered for the positive roles she played in life and her achievements in the entertainment industry.

RIP