Maxine Feldman had written what we now think of as the earliest openly lesbian single, ‘Angry at This’ (styled ‘Angry Atthis’; Atthis was one of Sappho’s many lovers), and debuted the song live whilst performing at the lesbian bar The Corkroom shortly before the Stonewall Riots in 1969 (she recorded the song in 1972).10 Feldman, who described herself as a ‘big loud Jewish butch lesbian’ long before she began recording, had been performing since the early 1960s, occasionally finding her coffeehouse bookings refused as she was ‘bringing around the wrong crowd’.11 For a time she worked at Alice’s Restaurant (made famous by the Arlo Guthrie album and film of the same name) in Massachusetts before she moved to Los Angeles. ‘I went to California and wrote my first lesbian song, “Angry Atthis” in May 1969,’ she revealed. ‘I wrote it in about three minutes, in a bar in LA. Before Stonewall we had Mafia-run bars where you were a fourth-or fifth-class person. It was the only place for dykes to meet; we didn’t have festivals, or women’s bookstores.’12
In 1976, two years after she shared a stage in Manhattan with Yoko Ono and Isis,13 Feldman wrote the song ‘Amazon’, which was quickly adopted as a lesbian anthem and was used to open the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival every year; in 1986 Feldman gave the rights to the song to the festival. Considered too political by the larger Women’s Music labels, in 1979 she signed with the tiny Galaxia Women Enterprises and released her sole album, Closet Sale. She had opened her own successful Oasis Coffeehouse and performance space in Boston which she used to showcase new talent, but unfortunately her own health problems caused her to stop performing. By now living as a man (using the name Max, but confiding in friends that they were too old for surgery),14 Feldman passed away in Albuquerque on 17 August 2007, survived by their partner Helen Thornton. Ironically, in 2015, after it had run for 40 years, the international feminist music event the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival chose to close for good rather than be forced to admit trans performers and audience members: the festival had been facing criticism over its stance for a number of years, since trans attendee Nancy Burkholder was ejected from the site in 1991. In recent years, high-profile acts including the Indigo Girls had withdrawn their support for the festival and its ‘womyn born womyn’ policy. How would organisers have coped with Max Feldman, their benefactor, if they had still been performing?
In Britain, Women’s Music followed a different path: artists were more interested in performing and protesting than recording, and there were no women-run record companies anyway. If British acts did record anything, then more often than not the result was a cheaply put-together cassette with a photocopied insert sold at gigs to help fund the rental of the hall and the PA system. There were some exceptions, but even those that managed to get a record out had to fund the entire operation themselves and handle their own distribution (basically selling copies at concerts, through bookshops or by mail order) and advertising – which meant producing your own flyers or paying for a small ad in Gay News or lesbian monthly Sappho, just about the only publications which would take an advert anyway. Virginia Tree, a Birmingham-based lesbian musician had previously recorded with the psychedelic rock group Ghost (under her original name Shirley Kent), but in 1975 issued her own (and only) album, Fresh Out. Put out on her own Minstrel Records label, Ginny and her partner soon found the promotion and distribution of the record to be a headache; shortly after the album, a well-received collection of romantic love songs, was reviewed in Sappho she decided to sell her company and all of the remaining copies of the disc. The record was reissued, with two extra tracks, in 1987 as Forever A Willow, credited to Shirley Kent and again in 2000 under its original title.
Six-piece feminist rock band the Stepney Sisters played almost 50 benefits, conferences and festivals during their 18 months together. The band started out as friends from York University who had been sharing a squat in Stepney, London. Intent on forming an all-woman rock band, the members were predominantly straight, although two of them became involved in lesbian relationships during their time in the group and the band were often mocked for being ‘middle-class lesbians’. The group was championed by feminist magazine Spare Rib and concerts were easy to come by, however their final gig was marred when headline act Desmond Dekker failed to turn up and the women were faced with a barrage of abuse from the predominantly male audience. ‘It was ridiculous really because it wasn’t like most bands who have to struggle and bend over backwards to get work,’ member Marion Lees told Spare Rib. ‘We didn’t have the material or the experience, but before we knew what we were doing we had a lot of gigs’.15
Born in 1950 on the island of St Kitts, Joan Armatrading immigrated to England with her family in 1958. In 1970, while in the touring company of Hair, she met Guyana-born lyricist Pam Nestor and the two women began collaborating. Together they wrote around 100 songs, several of which would feature on Armatrading’s debut album, Whatever’s for Us (Cube, 1972). Yet that would be their only release. Originally intended as the work of a duo, Cube decided instead to promote Joan as a solo singer and, quite literally, airbrush Pam out of the picture. The album didn’t sell, and fights with their management and label over this new direction caused the two women to end their partnership soon afterwards. Joan signed to A&M records, releasing her next album, Back to the Night, in 1975, but it was her third album, 1976’s Joan Armatrading which catapulted the singer into the UK Top 20 and produced her first hit single, ‘Love and Affection’.
Despite a media campaign by her record company aimed at breaking her in the States – ‘we decided to do whatever we could to bring the name and talent of Joan Armatrading home,’ CEO Jerry Moss told Billboard, ‘so we went on a formidable campaign to achieve this’16 – massive sales did not follow: only one album (Me, Myself, I) went Top 30 and only one single (‘Drop the Pilot’) graced the Billboard Top 100. The problem, it seemed, was that she was difficult to categorise, although lazy comparisons were often made to other black women who played guitar. Praised by critics for ‘writing the kind of material that jumps out at you and twists your emotions,’17 the radio play she (and the label) needed did not follow. Armatrading spent the next few years building a loyal fan base in the UK and a cult following in the US, and the occasional hit single – ‘All the Way From America’ and ‘Me Myself I’ in 1980; ‘When I Get it Right’ in 1981 and ‘Drop the Pilot’ in 1983 – helped cement her reputation. Although she liked to keep her private life just that, in 2011 she married her long-time partner Maggie Butler.
Although the UK saw a smattering of folk-inspired singer/songwriters like Armatrading achieve success, Women’s Music didn’t really come alive until punk and new wave saw all-female bands like the Slits, the Bodysnatchers, the Raincoats and Girlschool achieve a level of notoriety. Successful all-female groups challenged the macho norm, and highly visible woman-led bands such as X-Ray Spex, The Pretenders, the Selecter and Siouxsie and the Banshees brought sexual equality into Britain’s homes – although few if any of these particular women were either lesbian or bisexual. The chief difference between Women’s Music in the US and the UK is that in Britain it did not exist in its own bubble. There was no Women’s Music circuit: women were simply part of what was happening and played the same venues as male bands. That many of the women becoming involved in music in the UK were untrained meant that their music was more raw, more urgent. In America, the early stars of the Women’s Music movement had come up from the folk scene: in Britain – thanks to punk – girls who picked up electric guitars were automatically musicians, and they brought ideas of social justice, of socialism and feminism with them. The music they made may not have always been pretty, but it was undeniably compelling.
‘We believe all women are natural musicians,’ Jana Runnalls and Rosemary Schofield of the London-based lesbian feminist band Ova told Gay Community News, ‘and that one of the purposes of being a performer now is to encourage women to make the connection between their personal/political lives and music’.18 Jana (formerly Jane) and Canadian-b
orn Rosemary met in London in 1975, fell in love and started a romantic and creative partnership playing contemporary folk songs and songs Runnalls wrote herself. Beaten up and forced out of their North London squat in a homophobic attack, they found a place to live with members of the Gay Liberation Front in Brixton. With encouragement from their new-found, politically active friends, the pair started to use their music as a vehicle to express women-and lesbian-positive ideas.
Ova became a fixture of Britain’s nascent Women’s Music scene, and the band continued until the pair split up in 1989. During their time together they released four albums, established their own recording studio (like Olivia, the duo helped to train women engineers and producers along the way) and toured extensively around the UK, in Europe and in the US. The duo often found that their own radical brand of feminism was at odds with what other people assumed audiences wanted. On tour in the States, for example, they were told ‘by one very well-intentioned and supportive label not to record angry songs because anger doesn’t sell over here’.19
There was also a strong following for Women’s Music in Germany, where the scene was supported by its own magazine, Troubadora, and record label Troubadisc. Although established women’s acts such as Alix Dobkin, Cris Williamson and Ova dominated, German women had their own acts in The Flying Lesbians, Witch is Witch, Imogen Schrank, Bitch Band #1, and Nichts Geht Mehr. As the Flying Lesbians themselves declared, on the sleeve notes of their debut album Battered Wife: ‘we are lesbian and feminist and make rock music for women, but we are not professionals. We women are beginning to make our own music and to say in our own lyrics what we are; this is an important part of women’s culture.’
Holly Near’s career in music and political activism began at just eight years old, when she appeared in a talent contest organised by the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Appearing in school plays and recitals kept her involved with music, and in high school she sang with folk group the Freedom Singers. After school she moved to Los Angeles, studying musical theatre and political science at UCLA. Whilst there, she attended a concert by singer and political activist Nina Simone, and it was Simone’s ability to fire up her audience that inspired Holly to think seriously about a career in music. ‘My parents loved music and ordered records from various catalogues. These precious packages arrived like gifts from the heavens. I listened to singers creating in many different styles – Lena Horne, Mary Martin, Mahalia Jackson, Patsy Cline – also folk artists like The Weavers.’20
Spotted by a talent agent when appearing in a university showcase, Near found herself with an agent before she had finished her studies and in 1968, aged just 19, she embarked on her professional career. As an actress she appeared in a number of US TV shows and, of course, in a stage production of Hair, before she became involved with the anti-Vietnam War movement and, through her political activism, in the world of feminist and Women’s Music. ‘I had already been expressing political beliefs in my work with the anti-war movement,’ she makes clear, ‘So that part wasn’t new. But the expansion of my understanding of what it means to be female added a new dimension and since there was a substantial amount of sexism in the anti-war movement, it became necessary to create some distance in order to think clearly about feminism and how my understanding of feminism was changing my music.’
Like Alix Dobkin, she found that major record companies wanted her to change her style: to be less political and more ‘pop’. Undaunted, in 1972 she founded Redwood Records, intent on issuing politically aware recordings from around the world and probably the first independent, artist-owned record company set up by a woman: pretty good going for a 23-year-old. Working from her parents’ dining table, Near’s experience would inspire Olivia, Ladyslipper (a feminist collective based in North Carolina that has produced the Catalog and Resource Guide of Music by Women since 1976), Sisters Unlimited (based in Atlanta, Georgia and created to press, market and distribute albums of songs by the feminist writer Carole Etzler, creator and producer of a series of radio dramas entitled Women of Faith) and every Women’s Music label that came after. ‘Most of the record company executives and/or managers with whom I met knew there was something worthy of attention, but it didn’t sit completely right with them,’ Near explains:
Some said the lyrics were too outspoken, some said there was not enough element of submission in my voice … and I’m sure I was also stubborn. I didn’t want to take anyone’s advice for fear they were messing with my “art” – although the fact is that sometimes it is good to take advice from people who have a different perspective. So somewhere in all of that, I decided to record my own album. In the process I discovered I needed a label, a tax ID, a way to mail out orders for the record – all those practical things. And before I knew it, I had the beginnings of a record company.
In 1975, the year that she played the second National Women’s Music Festival in Illinois, Near joined Meg Christian, Cris Williamson, Margie Adam, comedian Lily Tomlin and others at a fundraiser in LA; a year later, Christian, Williamson, Adam and Near embarked on Women On Wheels, a seven-city tour of California and the first major tour undertaken by feminist and lesbian artists in the US. That year she came out as lesbian and for several years was involved in a relationship with Christian. She says,
I didn’t know at the beginning that I was moving towards what became known as “Women’s Music”, I didn’t know at first that many people saw me as pioneering that work along with other feminist artists. But once we were able to articulate it, once we gave it a name – the name was first coined by Meg Christian, actually – then that gave us all a calling card. Sections of the women’s movement and the lesbian feminist movement began to flock to the songs, to the concerts. It was one way that women got out of the house, out of the bars, out of their smaller worlds was to come to concerts and meet other like-minded women who were all singing together. It was a very exciting time. In the same way young people gathered to challenge the constricting lifestyles of the 1950s by listening to Janis Joplin or Tina Turner or Bob Dylan, women were finding us and the collective energy gave women the courage to discover themselves more fully. In order to keep up to the emotional demand that was pouring out of this discovery, I had to work hard to keep ahead of the tsunami. I understood early on that feminism for me was not just about white women with guitars. My work in the left had educated me in the arenas of class, race, and international policy so I brought all of that to the table. Everything I knew up to that moment was poured into the songs.
With her media presence and large following, Near became the most visible lesbian singer in the US and, with her deep understanding of the way the system works, she engaged a Hollywood-based PR company to promote her and her work, the company that handled actors Jane Fonda and Alan Alda. One of the first things they did was secure her a guest spot on Sesame Street. ‘When I go on these TV shows I won’t walk right out and say, “Hi; I’m a lesbian feminist”,’ she told Gay Community News. ‘I walk out and smile and talk about growing up on a farm, sing a country love song and say “see you next year”. Hopefully they’ll think that the music is pretty and the next time they go in to a record store they’ll buy it. Then they’ll get an earful!’21 ‘Holly is the most political of all of the women in the movement, of all the old crew anyway,’ says Alix Dobkin. ‘She brought her listeners with her when she discovered the Women’s Music movement. She was inclined to be a bit more showbiz because that was her experience, she has always done great work and has made a huge contribution. Holly was the most political, and I was the most lesbian!’
‘I would not have become the artist I am today had I not crossed paths with feminist and lesbian feminist artists,’ Near reveals. ‘I am so grateful I turned towards them. We were trying to understand how we would think if we became more “woman identified” and how would that inform our music. I could not have done this kind of critical thinking alone or in isolation.’
Regular headliners of many a Women’s Music festival, the Grammy Award-winni
ng Indigo Girls (Amy Ray and Emily Saliers) began performing together while still in high school in Decatur, Georgia. Both out lesbians, although they have never been involved with each other romantically, they released their first self-produced album, Strange Fire, in 1987 before signing with Epic Records the following year. After releasing nine LPs with major record labels, including two US Top 10 albums, in 2009 they resumed self-producing albums, issuing them through their own IG Recordings label via Vanguard Records.
With a career that stretches back more than 40 years, Ferron is a long-established part of the Canadian and North American folk scenes. Born Deborah Foisy on 1 June 1952, Ferron made her professional debut in 1975, playing at a benefit for a Vancouver-based feminist publishing house, the Women’s Press Gang. Issuing her first album two years later (on her own Lucy Records label), it would take almost two decades of well-received folk club gigs and privately-released records before a major company – in the guise of Warner Bros. – finally noticed the woman that Suzanne Vega, the Indigo Girls and countless others were citing as a major influence and ‘an important artist within folk and feminist circles’.22 Coming off the back of the success of new folk singers like Vega and Tracy Chapman, Warner thought they had a hit on their hands when they signed her. ‘This could be the album that breaks Ferron into the mainstream,’ said Warner’s Brent Gordon, talking about her major label debut, 1996’s Still Riot.23 Yet despite being praised by her bosses at Warner Bros. for her creativity and musicianship,24 it would be her only record for the label. Initially contracted to produce three albums over seven years, Ferron’s deal was terminated early and by 1997 she was once again putting out work on her own Cherrywood Station label. ‘Warner Bros. didn’t know what to do with my voice,’ she told interviewer Douglas Heselgrave,25 Although she had been out all of her adult life, she could not understand why the media constantly referred to her as a ‘lesbian singer-songwriter’ rather than simply ‘singer-songwriter’:
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