Tom Robinson is a British singer/songwriter, best known as a founding member of the Tom Robinson Band, a rather politically active rock/punk band in the 70s and early 80s. He is most likely best known for the song (Sing If You're) Glad To Be Gay, the 1978 hit single. For a long time, it was thought that Robinson was gay sheerly because of his open support of the community, but later he maintained he was bisexual, falling in love and marrying a woman. This upset some gay rights activists, and became a bit of a joke to the press. Too bad, because as far as I knew, there is a 'B' in LGBT. To this day Robinson is still active in promoting tolerance and acceptance for the LGBT community.
Robinson also had a career as a songwriter, including a period of collaboration with Elton John. The Tom Robinson Band had another hit in the UK, called 2-4-6-8 Motorway. During the time they were together, the TRB worked with producers such as Ray Davies [of the Kinks fame] and Steve Lilywhite.
Eventually Robinson went on to be a host/presenter on BBC radio, as well as work on some other projects. One was a radio documentary, You've Got To Hide Your Love Away, examining the LGBT music scene. He also had a series on men and masculinity, entitled The Locker Room. You can find out more about Tom Robinson on his website here.
Loved the article Howard. It is quite unusual to find someone singing a song with the title "gay" in it and even more so from 1978. This guy had guts!
ReplyDeleteYou are the only other person that I have run into that is into Tom Robinson! I discovered him on a complitaion CD- FRUIT COCKTAIL from the 90s.
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