Call It Thunder: 40 Years of Fleetwood Mac

Fleetwood Mac was big when I was in high school, especially during my junior year, when I discovered what "gay" meant and started dating -- well, double-dating with Verne, the preacher's son.

 I wasn't a fan.  Their songs were all about girls:

"Rhiannon":
Rhiannon rings like a bell through the night
And wouldn't you love to love her?
Takes to the sky like a bird in flight
And who will be her lover?

"Dreams":
Thunder only happens when it's raining
Players only love you when they're playing
Say women they will come and they will go
When the rain washes you clean, you'll know, you'll know



Plus they were heterosexual.  Mick Fleetwood and Lindsey Buckingham were both dating Stevie Nicks.

I only liked guys who liked guys, like Shaun Cassidy.

 Then, in January 1977, "Go Your Own Way" started playing on KSTT Radio.

You can go your own way, go your own way.
You can call it thunder, all the way.

It seemed like they were talking to me personally, telling me that it was ok to break away, follow your own path, and "call it thunder."

I "called it thunder" when I decided to go to college instead of taking a job in the factory, like my parents expected.

When I figured "it" out the summer after my high school graduation: we stop the fight right now, we got to be who we are.

When I rejected the "wife and kids" destiny everyone had plotted out for me, and found the freedom to love.

When I abandoned the Midwest for California.

When I decided to go back to graduate school and get a Ph.D.

You can go your own way, go your own way.
You can call it thunder, all the way.

 Whenever I hear the song today, it sends me back to my junior year at Rocky High, when everything was fresh and new and full of promise, when you could "go your own way" and "call it thunder."

Last night I heard the song at the gym, on the Classic Rock station they play in the free weight room.  I decided to do a blog post on the song that meant so much to me long ago.  So I looked up the lyrics online:

You can go your own way, go your own way.
You can call it another lonely day.

Another lonely day?  WTF?

It's not an anthem to self-awareness at all!  It's about breaking up with a lover, who is now packing up and going away, so it's "another lonely day."






For 40 years, I've been hearing the lyrics wrong.

Well, back to Shaun Cassidy.

David Cassidy

The oldest of a show biz family (his brothers are Shaun, Patrick, and Ryan), David Cassidy got his start on The Partridge Family (1970-74), about a family of pop singers who tour the country in a psychedelic bus (Danny Bonaduce played his younger brother). It aired on Friday nights in a block of gay teen "Must See TV," including The Brady Bunch, Room 222, and The Odd Couple.

His character, Keith Partridge, was interested in girls, but never portrayed as a absurdly girl-crazy, like most teenagers on prime-time in the 1970s. And, although pop superstars were presumably dream dates for every girl on earth, Keith frequently encountered girls who disliked pop music, who had never heard of his group, or who simply did not find him attractive. This self-deferential parody, a teen idol who can’t get a date, destabilized the myth of universal heterosexual desire; if some girls are not attracted to Keith, perhaps some boys are.

In “Days of Acne and Roses” (November 1971), Keith teaches a shy delivery boy named Wendell (Jay Ripley) how to date girls. He demonstrates the “yawn, stretch, and arm around” maneuver on Wendell, and then pretends to be a girl so that Wendell can practice his pick-up lines. Keith is remarkably unself-conscious about the physical contact and the mock flirtation, and he is not the least worried about someone overhearing and thinking that he is gay. When most of his fellow television teens recoiled in heart-pounding terror at a buddy’s touch, Keith’s nonchalance seems aggressively gay-friendly.

The teen magazines went wild with shirtless, swimsuit, and towel-shots, revealing David's slim, androgynous body, but in this case they were justified in praising his talent: his music was good.

And gay-friendly.  Songs credited to The Partridge Family (studio musicians except for David and his mother, Shirley Jones) almost entirely eliminated the incessant “girl!” that deadened most bubblegum pop lyrics in the 1970s. In the emblematic “I Think I Love You,” David awakens to the disturbing realization that he is in love:

I just decided to myself, I'd hide it from myself
And never talk about it, and [so I] didn't go and shout it
When you walked in to the room.

Why does he “never talk about it”? Heterosexual teenagers in love do nothing but talk about it. In 1971 I concluded that there must be something more to “a love there is no cure for,” perhaps a love that dares not speak its name.

David’s solo numbers also eliminate almost all gender-specific pronoun or refrainsof “girl!”  For instance in“Where is the Morning,” he laments a failed hookup that could be with either a boy or a girl:

I can’t sleep tonight. I found someone.
You smiled at me and said you were free. And I was alone.

Would you meet me again? 

My friend Derek claimed to have dated him, but David doesn't mention any same-sex relationships in his memoirs, C’mon, Get Happy (1994).

He does graciously acknowledges his appeal to gay boys: “I had a pretty strong gay following. I kind of liked it. Gay publications ran pictures of me; I was named gay pinup of the year by one. I’d get fan letters from gay guys saying things like ‘I can tell by the look in your eyes that you’re one of us.’”

And in a sense, he was “one of us,” an ally, demonstrating that same-sex desire was not only possible, but valid and worthwhile.

David spent most of his later career in Las Vegas, where he wrote songs and performed for audiences of both men and women.  He died in 2017

See also: Derek and the Pop Star.

Parker Stevenson and the Big One

In the fall of 1977, the question most gay boys were asking was: "Shaun or Parker?"

Most chose Shaun Cassidy, the fey, impestuous Joe on The Hardy Boys Mysteries (1977-79), the legendary gay-subtext tv adaption of the Hardy Boys books.

But many chose 25-year old Parker Stevenson (right), who played his older, cautious boyfriend. . .um, I mean brother, Frank.  He was just as dreamy, with brown wavy hair and piercing eyes, and he looked just as good in a Speedo.  Maybe better.

Besides, Parker had already played gay-vague characters twice: Gene, who falls in love with Finney in the boys boarding school drama A Separate Peace (1972); and Chris Randall, who is mentored by the older Rick (Sam Elliott) in Lifeguard (1976).

After Hardy Boys, Parker did the soap opera-softcore porn-thriller of the week thing (Not of This Earth, Are You Lonesome Tonight, Terror Peak, Trapped).  I haven't seen any of them.  His only movie with significant gay interest was Shooting Stars (1983), where he played an actor-turned-detective who buddy-bonds with the gruff Billy Dee Williams.

During the 1990s, he returned to the semi-nude beach shots as an aging lifeguard on Baywatch (1989-99).

In 1991, he came into the spotlight again when his then-wife Kirstie Allie won an Emmy for her work on Cheers.  She thanked Parker for giving her "the big one" for the last eight years.  All of his former fans immediately began scanning old teen idol pin-ups, and going through Baywatch in slow motion, looking for signs of "the big one."

I hadn't noticed anything noteworthy before, but now that she mentioned it....

Parker has been the subject of frequent gay rumors, but he hasn't made any public statements.

Shaun Cassidy: Not Just David Cassidy's Little Brother

Growing up in the shadow of his brother David, Shaun Cassidy began singing at the age of fourteen, but no one took him seriously until, at eighteen, he landed a role as cleancut teen sleuth Joe Hardy in The Hardy Boys Mysteries (1977-79), alongside Parker Stevenson’s Frank. The plots were simple: sleuthing, a touch of danger, followed by jokes and dazzling smiles, with ample swimsuit and shirtless scenes and the camera lingering lovingly on the teenage bodies. Endless teen magazine pin-up spreads followed.

Joe was frequently thrust into peril, tied up in old barns, menaced by madmen, in need of rescuing and subsequent hugging by his older brother or some other hunk. In a two-parter, wealthy rescuer Jocco Halsey (Kevin Brophy), invites Joe to move in with him.

And Joe rarely expressed any interest in girls. In “Campus Terror” (May 1978), guest star Valerie Bertinelli says “I love you,” and Joe responds dryly: "You've had a long day.”   What gay boy could afford to miss such a revelation?

Unlike many Tiger Beat fave raves, Shaun actually had a brief singing career; between 1977 and 1979, his albums went platinum, and his singles topped the charts. A surprising number of his songs were gender-ambiguous, and "You're Using Me" even alluded to a relationship with a boy.

The cover of the album Room Service (1979) shows Shaun in a hotel room, smiling invitingly at the voyeur who peers through the Venetian blinds. The voyeur's gender is ambiguous (though, if you look very carefully, you can see sharp fingernails). Shaun seems to be openly acknowledging the romantic interest of both male and female teens.

 

Teen idol careers are brief. Shaun tried reinventing himself as a hard rocker, complete with leather pants bulge, but still, his star faded by 1980, and he moved into writing and production. He’s been married to women three times, but he (like his brothers David, Patrick, and Ryan) remains a gay ally.

See also: Trying to Escape Church

The Four Cassidy Brothers and the Gay-Friendly 1970s

Speaking of show business dynasties, character actor Jack Cassidy (who starred with Paul Anka in Look in Any Window) married musical theater star Shirley Jones in 1956 (they divorced in 1974).  They had three children of their own. After their divorce in 1974, Shirley Jones married comedian Marty Ingels, who helped her raise the youngest two.

1. David was born to Jack Cassidy and his first wife Evelyn Ward in 1950.  By 1970 he was starring with stepmom Shirley Jones in The Partridge Family (1970-74) and establishing himself as the top teen idol of his generation.  But he also did some tv and movie work, including his own series, David Cassidy: Man Undercover (1978-79).


2. Shaun, born in 1958, became a tv star of his own in the gay-subtext Hardy Boys Mysteries (1977-79).  He also had a teen idol career before becoming a writer, director, and producer.

3.Born in 1962, Patrick began his acting career in the anti-drug cautionary tale Angel Dusted (1981), and played gay characters twice: a West Point cadet in Dress Gray (1986), and an actor with AIDS in Longtime Companion (1989).  He is still involved in raising consciousness about AIDS.


 He's appeared in lots of other tv series and tv movies, including two versions of the Superman myth: he played the villainous Leslie Luckinbill in three episodes of Lois and Clark (1996) and Henry Small, the father of Superboy's girlfriend Lana Lang, on Smallville (2002-2003).

On stage, he got to display his physique in two renditions of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.  He's also been in The Music Man, Annie Get Your Gun, Camelot, and 42nd Street.

4, Ryan, born in 1966 (bottom, with his mother, Patrick, and Shaun), wasn't interested in an acting career.

But he guest starred on three episodes of The Facts of Life (1985) with Mackenzie Astin (left) which made the teen magazines go wild  -- and in the buddy-bonding Jesse Hawkes (1989) with several other celebrity kids, including Chad McQueen, Ethan Wayne, and Ramon Sheen.  Then he moved behind the scenes as a set designer.

See also: David Cassidy.