Speaker 1: Well, now I'm putting my trousers on. I found a
Speaker 1: red cap which I've put in the back pocket of
Speaker 1: my blue jeans, like the one in the USA album cover,
Speaker 1: and I lit it up and it is receiving visting
Speaker 1: is what I'm flagging. Oh, I need to put my
Speaker 1: willy in which is some socks stuff and down my
Speaker 1: pants and Jesse. I'm a thirty one year old audio
Speaker 1: producer and youth worker from London. Last year I started
Speaker 1: doing drag as Butch Springsteen you're doing in the dressing
Speaker 1: room of the RVC the Rowbox was having which is
Speaker 1: London's oldest queer venner. I think it's one of the
Speaker 1: oldest anyway. This is a recording of me backstage getting
Speaker 1: ready for one of my first ever performances at a
Speaker 1: night called Kings of Clubs run by drag king Frankie Sinatra.
Speaker 1: And then my tool belt goes on, Aspana goes on
Speaker 1: the tool belt and and I tucked the tool belt
Speaker 1: into the genes because my clothes off later is there's
Speaker 1: a fun reveal. Where I grew up in London. The
Speaker 1: only people who'd heard of Bruce Springsteen were my friend's dads.
Speaker 1: Bruce is usually described as a rock or Americani musician,
Speaker 1: but each album's different. You've got hints of brock and
Speaker 1: Roll or eighties synth pop, emotional man with a guitar.
Speaker 1: It's always reminded me of country. Not the tunes necessarily,
Speaker 1: but the way Bruce tells stories. His songs have these big,
Speaker 1: grand narratives, tales of characters that Bruce has made up
Speaker 1: or based on people in this life. I discovered Bruce
Speaker 1: Springsteen when I was twenty. I knew who he was
Speaker 1: before then, but that's the first time I properly heard
Speaker 1: his music. It went straight into my insides, pulling out
Speaker 1: feelings that I didn't even realize I had yet, giving
Speaker 1: them new words as they were held up to the life.
Speaker 1: I want to be more masking so I look like
Speaker 1: like Bruce. So I'm putting like a big white line
Speaker 1: down my nose to trying to make my nose look
Speaker 1: as wide as possible, and I'm going to try and
Speaker 1: make my like jaw look as square as possible. Opposite
Speaker 1: of what drag queens do is what drag kings do.
Speaker 2: Basically.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like sometimes people go through phases when
Speaker 1: they're like teenagers of being really good at putting makeup on,
Speaker 1: and I always felt like I was trying to do
Speaker 1: drag when I put on because I was just so
Speaker 1: bad at it. And sometimes I've come on to school
Speaker 1: with like, you know, like misscar rolled down your face.
Speaker 3: It's that.
Speaker 1: Bruce Binstein has had many looks over the years. The
Speaker 1: one I'm currently getting into is inspired by his eighties
Speaker 1: era blue denim but hugging tight jeans, white T shirt
Speaker 1: with a denim vest over the top. In the eighties,
Speaker 1: he had this mop of curly dark brown hair, often
Speaker 1: pushed back with a little bandanna. Later on, I'll strip
Speaker 1: down to a denhim harness. I made myself that's more
Speaker 1: Butcher Springsteen than Bruce Springsteen. But a boy can dream.
Speaker 1: I'm really sweaty as well, so it looks like a
Speaker 1: salk in brunt of my face. Each act I do
Speaker 1: is based on a different Bruce song. In the one
Speaker 1: I'm about to do, I go on stage with a
Speaker 1: huge cardboard red cut explain that she's my girlfriend and
Speaker 1: she's upset with me. It turns out she's annoyed with
Speaker 1: me because I don't go down on her properly. So
Speaker 1: I learned how to do it on stage while singing
Speaker 1: Bruce's I'm Going Down. It's fun and silly and campy.
Speaker 1: I've always loved watching drag, but I never thought I'd
Speaker 1: be able to get up on stage in front of
Speaker 1: a crowded room doing it myself.
Speaker 4: Please welcome to.
Speaker 1: The stage, Butch Springy.
Speaker 5: I'm I'm an internationally famous musician in New Jersey, but
Speaker 5: I can only do a Southern American accents.
Speaker 3: You've just got to do with it.
Speaker 1: This is because the bus belongs to us. It's a
Speaker 1: series that has truly been years in the making when
Speaker 1: my love for Bruce Springsteen takes me to places I
Speaker 1: never would have expected. Who were it best, Bruce Springsteen
Speaker 1: or Katie Lang.
Speaker 6: It's like you, Squinn and everyone can be a butch.
Speaker 1: Why does sad likes love Nebraska? On my dating profile,
Speaker 1: I had something about being a fan of Nebraska area.
Speaker 1: Bruce Springsteen is Bruce, in fact the ultimate Emo. It
Speaker 1: was with Bruce's music that when I first arrived, I
Speaker 1: thought I'd assimilate into straight culture, which is such a joke. Now, considering,
Speaker 1: let's start at the beginning.
Speaker 3: Okay, so I'm sitting in my bedroom.
Speaker 2: I'm about to start making another issue of Caution More,
Speaker 2: which is like my little diary sine.
Speaker 1: This is Holly Cassio. They make a zine series called
Speaker 1: Me and Bruce, all about how a northern working class
Speaker 1: DIY punk fell in love with Bruce Springsteen. They also
Speaker 1: made a graphic memoor called Looking for Bruce, charting their
Speaker 1: spiritual pilgrimage to New Jersey to somehow find the real
Speaker 1: Bruce Springsteen. Holly is the key to this whole thing.
Speaker 2: I thought this would be really nice time to message
Speaker 2: you and reflecting on my teenage queer love of Bruce Springsteen,
Speaker 2: because this is exactly how it started. Me sitting on
Speaker 2: the floor surrounded by Blood's papers and a long arm
Speaker 2: Stappler and I have no idea where on earth my
Speaker 2: pritt stick is, so that's where I'm taking a moment
Speaker 2: to message you instead of looking for a pritt stick.
Speaker 3: He I'm currently sitting in my room.
Speaker 1: I have a picture of my all of one of
Speaker 1: Bruce and Claracs's famous kisses.
Speaker 3: I'd like backed.
Speaker 1: Onto some pink tissue paper and then put it in
Speaker 1: a white frame, and it's six on my wall. Back
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty, I was introduced to Holly by a
Speaker 1: friend of mine. He was like, you're queer. You like
Speaker 1: Bruce Springsteen, you would like Colly Fassio. It was in
Speaker 1: the midst of a COVID nineteen lockdown, so our first
Speaker 1: communication was through emails and voice notes.
Speaker 2: My memory is being like thirteen fourteen and being queer
Speaker 2: but not out. It's the nineties, so the Internet exists,
Speaker 2: but it doesn't exist in like everyone's house does, and
Speaker 2: it definitely doesn't exist in our house. Section twenty eight exists,
Speaker 2: so no one talks about being queer or feeling different
Speaker 2: at school like Section twenty eight just means that no
Speaker 2: one talks about that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: For anyone who hasn't heard of Section twenty eight. It
Speaker 1: was a UK law passed under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty eight which prohibited the quote promotion of
Speaker 1: homosexuality by local authorities. This led to loads of teachers
Speaker 1: and students feeling unable to come out in school, let
Speaker 1: alone provide or access healthy LGBT sex education. The law
Speaker 1: only started being repealed in England in two thousand and three,
Speaker 1: so when I was eleven, but for Holly, all of
Speaker 1: their schooling was under Section twenty eight not a great
Speaker 1: time to be a queer teenager in the UK.
Speaker 3: I was really badly bullied.
Speaker 2: I didn't have any friends, and so for me, zines
Speaker 2: were a lifeline. They were like this physical, tangible dispatch
Speaker 2: from out there somewhere, from.
Speaker 3: A bunch of queers saying, there's more of us out here.
Speaker 3: You're not alone, like this stuff happening, you can be
Speaker 3: part of this.
Speaker 1: I was quite a repressed teenager, I would say, in
Speaker 1: terms of my sexual and gender. I remember I came
Speaker 1: up to my friends as bisexual when I was twelve
Speaker 1: at a sleepover. Everyone was saying, what percentage gay are you?
Speaker 1: And everyone was like, oh, maybe I'm like one cent gay,
Speaker 1: and I was like, I think I'm fifty percent gay and.
Speaker 3: Everyone was like, no, you're not disgusting.
Speaker 1: And I simply didn't talk about it or think about
Speaker 1: it again until I was.
Speaker 3: In my twenties.
Speaker 1: You know how sports fans meet each other and they
Speaker 1: have like three standard questions to like get the chat going,
Speaker 1: like what team you support? Oh, so, how do you
Speaker 1: feel about Black blavest performance this season? And then some
Speaker 1: kind of joke that shows that they know things about
Speaker 1: the sport. They're talking about Well, me and Holly did
Speaker 1: the queer Bruce fan version of that. We swap our
Speaker 1: queer Bruce origin stories.
Speaker 2: I had two Bruce records. I had Start with the
Speaker 2: Edge of Town email graphic, and I also had Bart
Speaker 2: of the USA, also an email graphic, but like wrapped
Speaker 2: up in the pretend to like a pop album. I
Speaker 2: was making a zene and I was making a mixtape
Speaker 2: for a friend, and I remember putting on Dancing in
Speaker 2: the Dark onto a mixtape as like a novelty song.
Speaker 2: I was like, Lol, won't this be funny putting on
Speaker 2: this old dad music onto a mixtape.
Speaker 3: So I've got Dancing in the Dark on the background.
Speaker 2: I'm sitting on the floor and I'm making this zine
Speaker 2: and it's like I'm hearing the song for the first time,
Speaker 2: Like some of those lyrics just somehow hit me in
Speaker 2: the gut in a way that hasn't happened before, and
Speaker 2: I'm recognizing.
Speaker 3: It as the queer anthem of loneliness than it is.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: There's like lines like I want to change my clothes,
Speaker 2: my hair, my face, Like tell me Bruce isn't queer
Speaker 2: when he writes that line, tell me Bruce isn't staring
Speaker 2: into reflection of himself, thinking about gender, thinking about how
Speaker 2: no one else he knows looks like him, and how
Speaker 2: he feels really alone and isolated. But the lyric that
Speaker 2: for me always stood out, the lyric that made me
Speaker 2: you just stop dead in my tracks, is there's a
Speaker 2: line in that song that says, there's something happening somewhere, baby,
Speaker 2: I just know that there is.
Speaker 3: There is no encapsulation.
Speaker 2: Of my lonely, lonely, small town queer teenage life than
Speaker 2: that line.
Speaker 3: It's really lonely.
Speaker 2: I think the queer teenage experience, particularly in the nineties,
Speaker 2: particularly during section twenty eight, particularly in a small town
Speaker 2: in West Yorkshire, sadly, it was a very lonely experience.
Speaker 2: And I remember hearing that line playing in the song
Speaker 2: when I was making a scene and just thinking.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's it. That's exactly how I feel.
Speaker 2: That there's stuff happening out there, I'm just not part
Speaker 2: of it yet is kind of enough to keep me going.
Speaker 2: And I think that's where my lifelong obsession with Bruce
Speaker 2: Springsteen kind of started.
Speaker 1: My lifelong obsession with Bruce Springsteen started a bit later
Speaker 1: than Holly's. I spent almost the entirety of my teenage years,
Speaker 1: not allowing myself to think about my queerness. When I
Speaker 1: was twenty, I moved to Canada for a year, and
Speaker 1: in very classic baby queer fashion, I shaved my head
Speaker 1: for the first time, unlocking lots of new feelings that
Speaker 1: I'd been hiding away under my curls. And then I
Speaker 1: went to visit my friend in Chicago, Jake, who's this
Speaker 1: huge Bruce Springsteen fan. I remember we were cooking spaghetti carbonara,
Speaker 1: and we were frying those like little weird lard ons
Speaker 1: that you can mind America, and like frying it to
Speaker 1: all the fat fed off and made them really crispy.
Speaker 1: And we were doing that and listening to Bruce in
Speaker 1: his kitchen, and he was telling me all the things
Speaker 1: they loved about Bruce Springsteen. And the song, like, the
Speaker 1: song that really got me was It's still one of
Speaker 1: my favorite songs.
Speaker 3: It's called Ain't Good Enough for You?
Speaker 1: Ain't Good Enough for You. It's quite an up, cheeky
Speaker 1: song from an album called The Promise, a compilation album
Speaker 1: from twenty ten of previously unreleased songs recorded in the
Speaker 1: late seventies. The character in the song is singing about
Speaker 1: his girlfriend who can never be pleased. The chorus goes,
Speaker 1: no matter what I do ain't good enough for you.
Speaker 1: There's a bit in it where he lists how he
Speaker 1: tried all the things people say you should do to
Speaker 1: please a partner. He gets a job in sales, he
Speaker 1: buys a fancy shirt, he gets the cholest record, buys
Speaker 1: a book about love, and goes to her door with
Speaker 1: a bunch of flowers, and still she says he's not
Speaker 1: good enough. The feeling I related to in the song
Speaker 1: was him doing all the quote right things that society
Speaker 1: tells you to do, but it's still not working, which
Speaker 1: is basically exactly how I was starting to feel about
Speaker 1: my gender. I tried on so many different ways. Society
Speaker 1: told me I could be a woman from very butch
Speaker 1: to very fem from the loosest, most shapeless, don't notice
Speaker 1: be closed to bripen hair and trainers, And listening to Bruce,
Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, I get how it feels to
Speaker 1: try all the different things and it's still somehow just
Speaker 1: not be right. But I guess I didn't realize at
Speaker 1: that point that you could just be trans And so
Speaker 1: now obviously that makes not more sense.
Speaker 3: So many of his songs are about.
Speaker 1: Having a lot of feelings, being misunderstood, being in a
Speaker 1: place where there aren't people like you, or people don't
Speaker 1: understand you, and then needing or wanting escape. And that
Speaker 1: was definitely the kind of angst I was feeling at
Speaker 1: that time, and I've never really looked back. The end
Speaker 1: of those voice notes sharing our Bruce Springsteen backstories was an.
Speaker 6: Invitation, yeah, for me to make a podcast with you
Speaker 6: about queerness and Bruce Springsteen.
Speaker 1: Hello, Holly, Hello Jesse. Yeah, so you said yes, and
Speaker 1: now you're my co host. Correct. So something that came
Speaker 1: out of those first chats was how many queer Bruce fans?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 1: I think you're maybe like the third queer Bruce fan
Speaker 1: I ever met, But it turns out there's loads of us.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I also spent so many years thinking I'm the only
Speaker 6: queer person to find meaning in the songs of this
Speaker 6: kind of centuriest dad. But once I started making my
Speaker 6: Bruce scenes, loads of people started reaching out, and you were,
Speaker 6: by no means the first person to contact me, being like,
Speaker 6: I love Bruce too. There's actually loads of us out there.
Speaker 1: The more I found out there were loads of queers
Speaker 1: who loved Bruce Bringsteen. The more questions I had, What
Speaker 1: is it about Bruce? Why are we so obsessed with him?
Speaker 1: And why don't people know that Bruce is loved by
Speaker 1: queer people?
Speaker 2: Me too, one hundred percent.
Speaker 6: These questions are a huge part of my life, and
Speaker 6: that's why we're putting our serious journalist hats on to
Speaker 6: get to the bottom of Bruce's queer appeal.
Speaker 1: That's next, Jesse Holly, because the bus belongs to us.
Speaker 6: We know from personal experience that other queer Bruce lovers
Speaker 6: do exist. But I also know that a lot of
Speaker 6: queer people react to my love of Bruce Springsteen with
Speaker 6: confusion and surprise.
Speaker 1: Yeah, meeting he is simply a rich, white, straight cist
Speaker 1: man who was heavily associated with the American flag, one
Speaker 1: of the least queer symbols known to man.
Speaker 2: Either that or the Saint George Flagg or English flag,
Speaker 2: which I basically honestly at fascist rallies or painted onto
Speaker 2: the faces of drunk, scary men at the football.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that kind of nationalist pride is just not giving queer.
Speaker 1: Bruce Brasteen is not someone you'd think of if someone
Speaker 1: asks you to list celebrities loved by the queer community.
Speaker 4: Madonna Sinjan, when Marikerry, I really really, when I was young,
Speaker 4: particularly looked to largely CIS female straight women to sort
Speaker 4: of narrate the big emotions I was feeling, which was
Speaker 4: like deep last heartbreak, loneliness.
Speaker 6: Even if Bruce feels niche or unconventional as an object
Speaker 6: of queer fandom, queer people have a long history of
Speaker 6: standing celebrities.
Speaker 4: Hello, my name is Tom russ.
Speaker 1: Mussen, and my friend Tom is one of them. They're
Speaker 1: a pop star, composer, writer, sex columnist, former drag queen, and.
Speaker 4: Proud dog mom to Celendon, who you can hear snoring
Speaker 4: on my lap right now.
Speaker 1: Selene lay sleeping on Tom's lap for the entire interview.
Speaker 4: She's such a joy.
Speaker 2: Honestly, having a dog called Selene feels to me like
Speaker 2: it gives Tom the right credentials to talk about the
Speaker 2: queer community's relationship to.
Speaker 1: Celebrity, and they are actually in the industry. So I
Speaker 1: wanted to talk to them to see where what if
Speaker 1: Bruce could fit into this list of celebrities loved by
Speaker 1: the queer community.
Speaker 4: The good ones, you know, Shirley Bassy, Tina Derek Onik,
Speaker 4: a bit of Brittany Christina, basically anyone who could actually sing.
Speaker 4: When I got thinking about why I was so drawn
Speaker 4: to them is because they were people who looked like women,
Speaker 4: but who were given permission or demanded permission, to step
Speaker 4: outside of their gender category, right, and so like you
Speaker 4: know what I mean, shit like that is just so
Speaker 4: inspiring to be like, oh, there's another way of life.
Speaker 1: Tom became obsessed with these celebrities.
Speaker 4: I think I initially I misinterpreted that as wanting to
Speaker 4: be famous, but I think I'm just trans basically. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: the classic it's like stepping outside of the expected and
Speaker 4: being celebrated for that, I think is a really key thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So these female pops were acting in ways that weren't
Speaker 2: available to the women in Tom's life. I really resonate
Speaker 2: with that feeling of finding hope basically that you can
Speaker 2: also step outside of the expectations placed on you based
Speaker 2: on your gender.
Speaker 4: I think it's also having big emotions that aren't pleased.
Speaker 4: They like get to talk about what's happening inside them.
Speaker 4: I think all of that stuff I wasn't really allowed
Speaker 4: to do, and young queer people are not allowed to
Speaker 4: do because if you do, there's there's fear you'll betray
Speaker 4: your quickness and then then what happens. Oh that's sassly burping.
Speaker 4: Celeon burps on radio.
Speaker 1: When Tom's talking about these celebrities that they love, they
Speaker 1: refer to them as gay icons or queer icons. It
Speaker 1: feels like.
Speaker 6: There's a difference between just like musicians that queer people
Speaker 6: like and those big personalities that rise to icon hood.
Speaker 6: What is it that draws queer people to certain celebrities.
Speaker 6: What do we see in them that makes us feel sye?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Me and Tom asked ourselves that as well. We were
Speaker 1: talking about the kind of celebrated, over the topness that
Speaker 1: seems to link these icons together, which to us feels
Speaker 1: quite camp.
Speaker 4: The camp is always a step ahead of you. And
Speaker 4: I think a real icon is a real icon knows
Speaker 4: what is in control. Real icon, and it's self aware.
Speaker 4: It's self aware, it's in control, but not as well like,
Speaker 4: but it knows more than it lets on, So much
Speaker 4: more than it lets on. Camp is like surprising, and
Speaker 4: an icon remains surprising. I think keeps you on your toes,
Speaker 4: keeps you interesteder us. They just fall off, you know.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, this makes so much sense. There is something
Speaker 2: so camp about a lot of these straight women who
Speaker 2: are chosen by queers. Just look at Jennifer Coolidge.
Speaker 1: Seeing celebrities being outrageous and being celebrated for it is
Speaker 1: very compelling to me. It is interesting that so far
Speaker 1: as far as we know that all sis straight women.
Speaker 6: I know are straight men so oppressed that they don't
Speaker 6: even get a look in at being considered a queer icon.
Speaker 1: Well interesting that you'd say that, because another thing that
Speaker 1: we talked about was it's even more compelling if their
Speaker 1: journey to fame included some hardship.
Speaker 4: Madonna is like the girl whose mother died and she's
Speaker 4: from a family of so is it seven siblings and
Speaker 4: she came to New York with thirty two dollars in
Speaker 4: her pocket. That is true, but also like the struggle
Speaker 4: sort of stopped there. She sort of had a few
Speaker 4: club hits and then you know, was just made into
Speaker 4: a massive star, and she made herself into Master's star.
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 4: Also that's Key Slindon, who I would say is one
Speaker 4: of the last living entertainers. She was like from this
Speaker 4: big family in Montreal. Plot from Obscurity, there's a sense
Speaker 4: of struggle.
Speaker 1: Tom isn't saying that fame fixed every one of these
Speaker 1: women's problems and they never felt struggle again. But this
Speaker 1: narrative of coming from nothing and then being discovered or
Speaker 1: rising to fame in some way, it makes sense why
Speaker 1: queer people would be into that. Oh yeah, the.
Speaker 6: Amount of time I spent thinking about how my heroes
Speaker 6: have also come from hardship and survived, made it out
Speaker 6: of their reinvented themselves. It's like proof that one day
Speaker 6: you could do that too.
Speaker 1: And I also think there's something vindicating about like, even
Speaker 1: if the people around you don't recognize it yet, there's
Speaker 1: something special about you that the world was some day
Speaker 1: celebrate you for, which I think is something you have
Speaker 1: to try and cling onto if you're a queer person
Speaker 1: who's shamed and bullied for your queerness.
Speaker 4: And also really continues, probably throughout their career, to pedal
Speaker 4: that narrative of like I had it hard, I came
Speaker 4: from nothing. Share is an amazed I mean, and it's
Speaker 4: all true Share Tea, all those people, it's true of
Speaker 4: them all, but it's also and it's a narrative pedled.
Speaker 4: That's why the most iconic of all my icons, the
Speaker 4: most iconic moment of any of them ever was when
Speaker 4: a Donnaly's Ray of Light, because it was the most
Speaker 4: aware of where she was now and it was like, honest,
Speaker 4: it was like, I'm famous, and I've been doing this
Speaker 4: to look for a mother, and I became a mother
Speaker 4: and that's what I needed all along, and I haven't
Speaker 4: been misunderstanding this whole journey, and that was like whoa Now.
Speaker 4: That was like rubbed from under because it was just
Speaker 4: really aware of what games she'd been playing. Kind of thing.
Speaker 6: This is so relevant to Bruce Sprinkstein. So many of
Speaker 6: his songs are about working class struggles. His dad worked
Speaker 6: in a factory, but he started being a musician at sixteen,
Speaker 6: and his joke these days is I've never worked today
Speaker 6: in my life.
Speaker 1: His class experience is kind of genuine and the narrative
Speaker 1: peddled at the same time.
Speaker 4: People think they can just put on a great outfit,
Speaker 4: dye their hair every album cycle a different color, and
Speaker 4: get some pop bangs written and they'll become an icon.
Speaker 4: But that is not the same as being someone who
Speaker 4: speaks truth. And if you think about what actually connects
Speaker 4: all the icons that I can think of and probably
Speaker 4: definitely actually there's truth and then of course you dress
Speaker 4: that up, you trojan horse it maybe by wild outfits
Speaker 4: and pulling publicity stunts. But really that's why the campus moment,
Speaker 4: let's say, in Britney Spears career, was when she released
Speaker 4: Blackout after she had her two thousand and seven like
Speaker 4: public really really like the horrific nervous.
Speaker 1: Breakdown which she was pushed to you by the paparazzi
Speaker 1: and the toxic celebrity culture of the early two thousands.
Speaker 4: Blackout, which she still cites as one of her best albums,
Speaker 4: Her best album, I think, was her telling the truth
Speaker 4: of that situation. It's just amazing. It's just it's amazing.
Speaker 4: It's amazing.
Speaker 1: So you gain this, yeah, truth, right, Harley Jesse. This
Speaker 1: leads me to your proposal. Okay, so we know that
Speaker 1: Bruce is loved by lots of queer people, but for
Speaker 1: some reason, he kind of flies under the raidar in
Speaker 1: the queer community.
Speaker 6: He's not the first person who comes to mind when
Speaker 6: you said queer icon.
Speaker 1: He's not. But I just think that Bruce Springsteen is
Speaker 1: an unsugn queer icon. I think there's enough of us
Speaker 1: who love him and relate to him in the ways
Speaker 1: that Tom was talking about. And so that's my proposal,
Speaker 1: me and you on a mission to get Bruce Springsteen
Speaker 1: the queer icons seal of approval.
Speaker 6: Oh my god, Yes, okay, and how would you make
Speaker 6: this happen? Like, who gets to say who a queer
Speaker 6: icon is?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 1: I thought maybe us talking to Tom, we kind of
Speaker 1: realized halfway through that we were sort of accidentally making
Speaker 1: a checklist for what people need to qualify as a
Speaker 1: queer icon.
Speaker 6: Okay, so like there need to be camp and they
Speaker 6: need to have some kind of narrative of struggle for
Speaker 6: us to root for them as an underdog.
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly. I feel like that's two solid checklist points.
Speaker 1: I was also thinking about the fact that Bruce is
Speaker 1: a musician. How do you tell the difference between a
Speaker 1: musician queer's like and a queer icon that happens to
Speaker 1: be a musician. What does their music have to do
Speaker 1: to qualify for I can state this.
Speaker 4: I don't necessarily think that the music has to be
Speaker 4: played in a club necessarily, or like narrate where euphoria necessarily,
Speaker 4: But I think maybe it has to narrate a certain
Speaker 4: part of a queer person's emotional life, right, So Lana
Speaker 4: del Rey, Lanna del Ray's music right allows you into
Speaker 4: like a very complicated relationship with men, to be the
Speaker 4: complicated person in a relationship with a man, so you know,
Speaker 4: gay men or straight trans girls basically or bisexuals. Of course,
Speaker 4: all of this goes without saying that there are like
Speaker 4: everyone of every gender and of every race and of
Speaker 4: every sexuality stands these people in their own different ways.
Speaker 4: I think it has to narrate or facilitate an emotion,
Speaker 4: a feeling that's quite deep, and so that is euphoria
Speaker 4: for sure, or like real sadness or loneliness or obsession
Speaker 4: deep sadness. Yeah, a lot of my friends, because of
Speaker 4: certain and people I know, because of certain things they've
Speaker 4: been through, are quite talented at association. And this is
Speaker 4: across the sort of spectrum of sexualities and genders sort
Speaker 4: of ignoring what's happening with them inside, because I guess
Speaker 4: a big thing we all had to do when we
Speaker 4: were young in a really homophobic society and transfer over
Speaker 4: society is sort of is to sort of hide the
Speaker 4: true emotions going on because that would betray our queerness,
Speaker 4: and that isn't always the safest option, and so we
Speaker 4: get quite good at association. And I think a queer
Speaker 4: icons music allows us into our emotions feelings that might
Speaker 4: be hard to access or complicate to access. You know,
Speaker 4: can you dance to it? Can you cry to it?
Speaker 4: Can you fuck to it?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 4: Can you do something that is a bit more extreme
Speaker 4: and expressive as a can I just like bop along
Speaker 4: to it? But also can you bop a onto it?
Speaker 4: It's actually you could do it's forever.
Speaker 6: Can you dance to it? Can you cry to it?
Speaker 6: Can you fuck to it? Well, that's the next item
Speaker 6: on our checklist.
Speaker 1: Then I think this is such an essential raiming for
Speaker 1: a queer icon checklist. Can their music help drag you
Speaker 1: back from years of dissociation? What's career than that?
Speaker 2: Okay, this is like proper science that we're doing. We
Speaker 2: have a hypothesis. Bruce Springsteen is an unsung queer icon.
Speaker 1: You and Tom have spoken.
Speaker 2: About like the control category if you will and they will.
Speaker 1: We know that.
Speaker 2: People who are already agreed upon as queer icons are
Speaker 2: camp They have underdog status and have music that facilitates
Speaker 2: queer emotion. That's three great checklist points.
Speaker 1: I think we're ready to go. There's one more thing
Speaker 1: I spoke to Tom about which I think is important
Speaker 1: for us to think about. By the end of our chat,
Speaker 1: I'd realize this is the direction we needed to take
Speaker 1: the podcast. In admission to make Bruce Bringsteen a widely
Speaker 1: recognized queer icon, I told them, and they left me
Speaker 1: with this.
Speaker 4: I think there is a sort of unanimous, lee agreed
Speaker 4: upon code of people who are. And also, I think
Speaker 4: one thing we've missed off this checklist is there's just something.
Speaker 4: It's really hard to name it, but there is just
Speaker 4: something and you just know it as a queer person.
Speaker 4: You just know it in your soul places. And yet
Speaker 4: you know you just know who's not and you know
Speaker 4: who is. Yeah, it's a feeling. So do they have it?
Speaker 4: Whatever it is? Maybe you'll find it over the next
Speaker 4: however many episodes. But I think that, yeah, you've got
Speaker 4: your workout. I think because there has been all these things,
Speaker 4: and I think Bruce is many, but who knows if
Speaker 4: he's all of them?
Speaker 2: Them challenge except it I, Holly Cassio, and and you
Speaker 2: Jesse Lawson have anointed ourselves with queer scientist status on
Speaker 2: a mission to get Bruce Brinsteen recognized as a queer icon.
Speaker 1: Over the next six episodes, we will check if Bruce
Speaker 1: Springsteen is camp.
Speaker 6: If Bruce Brinstein can be rooted for as an underdog.
Speaker 1: If you can dance, cry, and fuck to Bruce Springsteen's music.
Speaker 6: And if other queer people would be willing to recognize
Speaker 6: Bruce as a queer icon too.
Speaker 1: We know that Bruce has queer fans, can we make
Speaker 1: him into a queer icon?
Speaker 6: That's next episode.
Speaker 2: Because the Boss Belongs to Us is a production of
Speaker 2: malten Heart and iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 1: We're hosted by Jesse Lawson and Holly Cassio.
Speaker 2: The series is executive produced by Jesse and Holly and
Speaker 2: created by Jesse Lawson.
Speaker 1: This episode was produced and sound designed by Jesse Lawson,
Speaker 1: with production assistants by Ali Addington and Tess Hazel. Michelle
Speaker 1: Maclam is our engineer.
Speaker 2: Our original music and theme is by Talk Bizarre at
Speaker 2: Talk b A z A R Underscore.
Speaker 1: Our show art is designed and illustrated by Holly Cassio
Speaker 1: at Holly c A s I O.
Speaker 2: And for more Butch Springsteen content, they're at Butch Springsteen Underscore.
Speaker 1: Drag fact Checking is by Selina Soln. Legal services provided
Speaker 1: by Rowan Morn and File.
Speaker 2: Our executive producer from Malton Hart is Jasmin J. T.
Speaker 6: Green. Our executive producer from iHeart Podcast is Linday Hoffman.
Speaker 1: Bye