A queer journey, soundtracked by Bronski Beat

Tom Rasmussen is a musician, author, journalist and drag performer. Released in October 1984, Bronski Beat’s seminal debut album The Age of Consent is an emotive exploration of queer culture, and a defiant statement in support of LGBTQ+ rights.

What follows is the remembered diary of an Age of Consent listener, recollecting moments when the music soundtracked the narrator’s life. Names have been changed, places and times likely reordered and reconfigured, but the heart of the matter – and the songs that were playing – remain true.

On a coach to Liverpool with Leo. It’s our second date. He’s the year above me at school and he has much better taste in British music than I do – on account of his artist parents, his German upbringing, and what feels like our significant age gap. He could tell me anything and I’d think it was the word of God. Lurching down the M6, my teenage stomach shredding between motion sickness and the butterflies of your first romance, he hands me half a pair of wired headphones. Put this in. A synth line I’ve heard before, but I don’t know where. The familiarity of something made for you, by someone like you. The ache of knowing there’s so many miles left to travel. Both on this coach journey, and in your understanding of why this synth line, paired with this voice which has now taken wing atop the whole production, speaks to you. These songs I will hear countless times again, both when he fucks me for the first time tonight, and over the course of a gay coming of age. With Leo, and long after him.

As we approach the queue to this queer bar on the Kingsland Road I’ve heard so much about it feels like we’ve arrived. Mo is holding my hand and he’s wearing Doc Martens, a leather jacket. His hair is red, shaved at the sides, mine is blue; longer and curly. We’re both wearing dresses. A group of men in their early twenties call us faggots on the street. We are. But we like it. We’re boys and girls at once. East London feels like a petri dish – confined and yet nutritious, so much queer growth occurring at a speed much more significant than that of light. We’re dressing up, drinking, people are taking drugs, people are leaving, losing, winning, staying. Rebelling against expectation; searching for difference. As we enter the heart of it all, Dalston Superstore, Jimmy’s voice rings out: you and me together, fighting for our love. The synth shimmers, the brass bursts, the go go dancers on the bar are the queerest thing I’ve ever seen. Mo grabs me. He pushes me against the wall. Everyone’s doing it, nobody’s batting an eyelid. We kiss furiously as Jimmy’s voice cracks so perfectly as the song concludes: Can you tell me why?

It’s one of those years that feels like the world is burning. Peter, a boy I like, has joined the London chapter of ACT UP which is back with fervour demanding access to PrEP on the NHS, dumping a literal tonne of horseshit outside Nigel Farage’s local pub, storming the doors – and getting naked inside – big Pharma headquarters. Peter asked if I wanted to join the chapter with him. I said yes, not knowing nearly as much as I should about ACT UP. Instead wanting to get closer to him.

But my attention quickly turned towards the political, past the romantic. Which is a good thing since he has started sleeping with someone else he met at meetings. Now I’m spending more time doing scary things like marching, and planning direct actions, and all of it, course it is, is soundtracked by The Age Of Consent. It’s a febrile time, one full of so much fight and possibility. It was the same when Bronski Beat wrote this record. So many of us are connected by that fighting spirit, so many of our fighting spirits validated and bolstered by this record. The band’s innate desire to push back against injustice spills into the sonic, into my ears, into the brain and the heart. I’ve never felt more connected to a history, for the first time in my life, than listening to these songs, clubbing, resisting. I read about Jimmy on Top of The Pops wearing a Silence = Death Tee-shirt. I cry on Wandsworth Common listening to Memories, because I really hear it for the first time. Peter has finished with the man he met at meetings. He kisses me on a bus heading into Soho at midnight where we’re going to flyer for a demo this weekend.

It’s Friday in Berlin at the gay sauna with my boyfriend. We were clubbing, now it’s close to morning. The entirety of The Age of Consent plays on a loop. We stay for nearly three whole cycles. Things quieten down. Need A Man Blues plays as we leave, confronted by people on their way to work. It turns out to be a beautiful day, we don’t go to bed, instead we listen to the rest of the album as we walk to the park, sharing a pair of headphones.

I’m in a music studio in London, writing my first album and there’s lots of men in the room. One turns to me and says Hey! Have you heard this? And hits play on Why? I laugh. Oh this is great, I say, keeping to myself all the things this song has done for me, for mine.

It’s fifteen years since I first heard The Age of Consent. It’s forty years since it was first heard by the world. I’m sat here, as I write, listening to the record and imagining the infinite number of people for whom this record soundtracked their awakenings: queer, sexual, political, musical. It’s the wonder of this record: to connect so many of us with the truth of parts of ourselves so often hidden. A truth which so few people have the bravery, nor the skill, to harness and set to throbbing beats, crying vibrato, electro-sexual synth lines. Thank God Bronski Beat did.

In celebration of the 40^th anniversary of The Age of Consent, London Records are releasing deluxe reissues of the album. You can pre-order them here.