Queerguru’s Robert Malcolm reviews THE BIG JOHNSON a charismatic queer/drag music icon like we’ve never seen before (or will again)

Dean Johnson was a charismatic celebrity and gay activist in the New York club scene of the eighties and nineties. Six foot six tall and with a shaved head, Dean appeared in drag as front man with two queer rock bands, The Weenies and The Velvet Mafia. His drag was unconventional. With his little black dresses, chandelier earrings, big sunglasses and combat boots, he didn’t make much of an effort to look like a woman; his voice only had the slightest camp inflection. Playing with gender in an era of binary identities, he was way ahead of his time.The Big Johnson introduces us to this underground legend, who deserved to be more famous. This well-crafted documentary is structured around his New York diaries from 1979-2004, interspersed with reminiscences from his nearest and dearest. There is no shortage of footage from home movies, performances, and interviews to make this a compelling record of a life lived large.Dean’s career coincided with the AIDS epidemic in New York. As a resident of the East Village, he saw his neighbourhood decimated by the disease. Along with organisations like Act Up, his performances challenged society and the government to wake up and respond to what was being called “the gay holocaust.”Although he believed that he couldn’t sing, Dean penned and belted out a number of memorable songs including the infamous “Fuck You”, which, with its anti establishment anger, became a college anthem and led to the band performing at university venues across the United States.In 1988, on the back of “Fuck You”, Dean and the Weenies signed a contract with Island Records but tragically, a day later, Dean was diagnosed as HIV positive. Not prepared to accept his condition quietly, during the following year, Dean’s anger was so vocal about AIDS, that Island Records were no longer prepared to promote the band, and terminated their contract.Meanwhile, proud of his larger than average size penis, Dean’s Big Johnson had already featured in a gay porn movie called Daddy Dearest, when he was still at NYU. His sex positive attitude would also reveal itself in other ways. In 1987 he started a weekly alternative club called The Rock and Roll Fag Bar in a run down venue called The World. One evening, almost as a joke, he advertised a back room on the premises, and provided tissues, lube and condoms. That night the dimly lit backroom was crammed with men having sex and Johnson was not shy in joining in.And thus single handedly he was responsible for restoring sex to New York’s night life after a grim few years, when the spectre of AIDS had made everyone too afraid to fuck. But this time the sex was safer, and although not policed, Dean always advocated the use of condoms in his club.Dean’s arrest for drug possession in 1989 marked the break up of The Weenies, and Johnson’s life took a downward turn with his addiction to heroin. It also took a toll on his relationship with long term boyfriend Chris Hood. Finally, after 5 years of yo-yoing from re-hab to re-addiction he kicked the habit for good.During this period, when he was short of money, he discovered that he could make a good living as a sex worker. He was pleased to be remunerated for something he enjoyed so much.In 1994 he helped form a new band called The Velvet Mafia. It incorporated glam rock and performance art and he christened it queercore. While glam rock was superficial, queer rock was political.In 1999 it didn’t take much persuasion for the owner of CBGBs to hand over one night a month to The Velvet Mafia, for a club called Homocore. CBGBs, by now a mainstream venue, was happy to regain its edge by embracing the queer underground, and with the endorsement of Dean’s celebrity friends, the night became a huge success.In 2000 he started to hold bigger and better sex parties, like Magnum, where the performers were “paid by the inch”, but in 2004 one of his events was raided by the police and the city closed down his operations for good.By this time Dean had become a high class escort, so he fell back on sex work as his main means of support. “I used to throw the party, but now I am the party” he said.His rates were high, his personal services were in demand and he found himself flying across the country for special dates. However, he had an unfortunate tendency of becoming emotionally involved and too trusting of his clients.In 2007 he went to the apartment of a regular client in Washington DC and never returned. The client called a friend of Dean’s to say that he had passed out. She raised the alarm but it wasn’t until his non appearance at band practice, that Dean’s sister heard from the police that he had been found dead. Naked, and wearing only a pentangle pendant, the cause of death was registered as an accidental drugs overdose, but suspiciously, another man had been found dead in the same apartment only four days before. Shockingly, the DC police never opened a murder investigation. It seems that incidents involving homosexual prostitutes are easy to dismiss.He was 45 when he died. His sister wanted to write “Fuck You” on his tombstone but she settled for: “He gave voice to the voiceless”The Big Johnson was written and directed by Lola Rocknrolla and premiered at the Slamdance film festival.

 

 

Robert Malcolm is an Interior Designer who relocated from London to his home town of Edinburgh in 2019. Under the pen name of Bobby Burns he had his first novel, a gay erotic thriller called Bone Island published by Homofactus Press in 2011.