Photos: Natalie Ackerman
by Steve Desroches
It’s become custom and tradition that at the end of every tea dance at the Boatslip DJ Maryalice plays Donna Summer’s quintessential disco classic “Last Dance.” Over the years she’s tried to play different songs, but the crowd rebelled and refused to leave until she met their demands. The single was released in 1978 as part of the soundtrack to the disco comedy Thank God It’s Friday, eventually winning an Academy Award for Best Original Song, and quickly became a gay anthem of the era. Maryalice recalls that back then it was a song of sexual freedom and gay liberation to many gay men. But come the AIDS epidemic it changed in its meaning and importance. As people began to die, gay men would dance to this song thinking that perhaps this was the last time they might see their friends. That this would indeed be their last dance together. And as the funerals and memorials became numerous, the Boatslip hosted many, and “Last Dance” was the single most requested song for the services.
That story was relayed to musician, singer, and performer Todd Alsup as he was conducting research while writing his new show Donna, Disco, & Us, a musical storytelling event at the Crown & Anchor that explores the incredible songbook of Donna Summer and the importance of disco music to LGBTQ culture and the gay liberation movement. Over the course of last winter, Alsup interviewed multiple LGBTQ people, all born before 1965, to share their memories of disco and Donna, including folks like Mews owner Ron Robin, who formerly was a Boston radio DJ, author Frank DeCaro, whose new book Disco: Music, Movies, and Mania Under the Mirror Ball comes out in October, ACT UP activist Jay Blotcher, and of course, DJ Maryalice. On his deep dive into all things Donna Summer Alsup found one universal sentiment: that she is the undisputed Queen of Disco.
“Hearing Donna Summer for the first time made me fall in love with pop music,” says Alsup. “It was the magic of what pop music can do for you. I would dance around my living room in suburban Michigan to ‘She Works Hard For the Money’ when I was five years old. I would dance and dance and dance. It just sounded like magic to me.”
After working on song/storytelling shows like Freedom: The George Michael Experience and Elton Undressed (also playing this summer at the Crown & Anchor), Alsup decided to explore the work of Summer not just because of its brilliance and durability, but also because some 50 years later disco is getting a reexamination, and its role in gay culture is more fully explored and understood. Alsup says he was born too late and if given one ride in a time machine he’d go back to New York City in the 1970s for a visit to Studio 54. That period in time, sandwiched between Stonewall and the AIDS crisis and the Reagan era, was an all too brief period of freedom, and disco was the perfect soundtrack for the times. Alsup reflects that disco, and in particular the music of Donna Summer, “pointed me in the direction of my own queerness” and that the show is really a letter he’s written to her, recognizing her as a master of the genre, rising above the frivolous copycats and corporate exploitation of music from the underground.
Alsup also doesn’t shy away from the controversy that has hung in the LGBTQ community about Summer. It’s an asterisk shrouded in a bit of a foggy truth and mythology. There is still a persistent rumor that come the 1980s Summer said that AIDS was God’s punishment for homosexuality. There is absolutely no record of her saying that, and she eventually denied it years later with a tearful explanation and a 1989 letter to ACT UP saying it was a “terrible misunderstanding.” What is true is that at a 1983 concert she made a joke that it was “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.” This so angered her gay fans it may have spawned the more damning rumors. In addition, Summer, a lifelong Christian, became “born again” at a point when evangelical Christianity was largely hostile and hateful to the LGBTQ community in a time of crisis. Mistrust ran deep, says Alsup, as well as those who he interviewed.
“She looms large in who we are,” says Alsup. “It all felt like a betrayal. She was dealing with her own issues and traumas. She was exhausted after the 1970s. It appeared she was abandoning the very people who made her so successful, never mind what she did or didn’t say, but that she was accused of not showing up to fight AIDS and homophobia. Frank De Caro said, in the 1970s gay life was glorified, but come AIDS we were pariahs. And it felt like she abandoned us.”
Alsup however sees this as a time for forgiveness and exploring the full story. In Donna, Disco, & Us Alsup performs 12 Summer classics, including “ I Feel Love,” “Bad Girls,” and of course, “Last Dance,” and plays excerpts from some of the interviews he conducted preparing for the show. But the show is also a mindful jubilee of the LGBTQ community, where it’s been and where it is going, and the music that gave it a sense of power and belonging. And much of that musical infusion of strength came from Donna Summer.
“She gave us so many gifts,” says Alsup. “The music is gorgeous! It’s beautiful! It’s always going to have its place in the gay community. Let’s celebrate that and yes, let’s celebrate her.”
Todd Alsup presents Donna, Disco & Us Thursdays at 7 p.m. at the Crown & Anchor, 247 Commercial St., now through September 12. Tickets ($35/$55) are available at the box office and online at onlyatthecrown.com. For more information call 508.487.1430.
