Justin Smallbridge: Radio, Records, and England

In 1975, my radio listening was shifting from CHLO and the AM stations. I was being influenced by the pronouncements of my peers. It never occurred to me at the time that they didn’t know anything more than I did. They seemed so sure . . . like a grammar school friend who, in 9^th grade, dismissed David Bowie and everything he’d done because his older sisters had told him Bowie was gay. Because this friend of mine was to play the saxophone, and — as was a lot more common in southwestern Ontario and other places in 1975 — he was proudly homophobic, he was outraged that Bowie was depicted with a sax on the cover of Pin-Ups. I still liked Bowie. I just didn’t mention that to the guy who hated him.