You spent most of your early career playing second fiddle.
But now you’ve got the baton, and a story to tell that people aren’t going to want to hear, though it’s essential that they face the music. They must know what’s happening. As in the new book “When the Band Played On” by Michael G. Lee, this time, it’s personal.
Born in 1951 in small-town Iowa, Randy Shilts was his alcoholic, abusive mother’s third of six sons. Frustrated, drunk, she reportedly beat Shilts almost daily when he was young; she also called him a “sissy,” which “seemed to follow Randy everywhere.”
Perhaps because of the abuse, Shilts had to “teach himself social graces,” developing “adultlike impassiveness” and “biting sarcasm,” traits that featured strongly as he matured and became a writer. He was exploring his sexuality then, learning “the subtleties of sexual communication,” while sleeping with women before fully coming out as gay to friends.
Nearing his twenty-first birthday, Shilts moved to Oregon to attend college and to “allow myself love.” There, he became somewhat of an activist before leaving for San Francisco to fully pursue journalism, focusing on stories of gay life that were “mostly unknown to anyone outside of gay culture.”
He would bounce between Oregon and California several times, though he never lost sight of his writing career and, through it, his activism. In both states, Shilts reported on gay life, until he was well-known to national readers and gay influencers. After San Francisco supervisor Harvey Milk was assassinated, he was tapped to write Milk’s biography.
By 1982, Shilts was in love, had a book under his belt, a radio gig, and a regular byline in a national publication reporting “on the GRID beat,” an acronym later changed to AIDS. He was even under contract to write a second book.
But Shilts was careless. Just once, careless.
“In hindsight,” says Lee, “… it was likely the night when Randy crossed the line, becoming more a part of the pandemic than just another worried bystander.”
Perhaps not surprisingly, there are two distinct audiences for “When the Band Played On.” One type of reader will remember the AIDS crisis and the seminal book about it. The other is too young to remember it, but needs to know Randy Shilts’ place in its history.
The journey may be different, the result is the same: author Michael G. Lee tells a complicated, still-controversial story of Shilts and the book that made America pay attention, and it’s edgy for modern eyes. Lee clearly shows why Shilts had fans and haters, why Shilts was who he was, and Lee keeps some mystery in the tale: Shilts had the knowledge to keep himself safe but he apparently didn’t, and readers are left to wonder why. There’s uncomfortable tension in that, and a lot of hypothetical thinking to be had.
For scholars of gay history, this is an essential book to read. Also, for anyone too young to remember AIDS as it was, “When the Band Played On” hits the right note.
Additional info: ‘When the Band Played On: The Life of Randy Shilts, America’s Trailblazing Gay Journalist’ by Michael G. Lee, c.2025, Chicago Review Press $30. 282 pages
In 1970 after graduating U-Michigan, I rented an apartment in a Detroit. I soon found out that the building was the center of Detroit’s “Gay Liberation” movement. I considered most of the men personal friends and tagged along to their meetings and once or twice to a Detroit gay bar. If anyone showed an interest in me, my friends would intervene and say was off limits as I was straight.
I became a roommates with John, one of the men. John introduced me to a woman who became my girlfriend. When John moved to Los Angeles, I traveled there to see him. A years later, John lived in SanFran, the Mission or the Castro, I wouldn’t know which. Once again I traveled to see him. John took me to a couple of the local gay bars but I said I wasn’t comfortable so he agreed we could leave.
I’m pro-choice on gay (or lesbian) people. I’ve proved that. I don’t have any problem at all with stable gay relationships or gay marriage (including the designated treasury secretary in the incoming Trump 2.0 cabinet.). The SanFran gay scene (of which Randy Shilts was a guilty member) turned my stomach. These men brought AIDS on themselves.
When I was in inpatient in Detroit’s Henry Ford hospital in 1985, I received two units of blood. Blood testing for AIDS wasn’t yet perfected. I was nervous. If I had contracted AIDS from the transfusions, I’d have blamed creeps like Randy Shilts. Randy was a sexually promiscuous drug-infested, alcoholic who cheated on his boyfriend. No hero to me.