Marc Bolan would be a good choice for a musical, but he and T-Rex might be too well known to fit Adam's description of someone you probably haven't heard of.
Here are a few lesser known names. Who knows, maybe one of these people is the musical's subject.
JAYNE COUNTYAs rock’s first openly transgender singer, Jayne Rogers (born June 13, 1947), better known by her stage name Jayne County, is an American singer, songwriter, actress and record producer whose career spans five decades. While dressed in female attire from the beginning of her career, County transitioned to female in 1979, becoming Jayne (as the above poster illustrates).
She made her first performing appearances as Wayne County in Wayne County and The Electric Chairs. In 1969 she appeared in Jackie Curtis’ play Femme Fatale. County considered Curtis a major influence on her career and persona and County is widely considered an influence on David Bowie –– County’s Queenage Baby number was the prototype for Bowie’s Rebel Rebel. Even more notable was her play, World – Birth of A Nation, which was set in a hospital and dealt with male castration –– evoking both transgender surgery and her mixed feelings about men, both gay and straight.
After seeing the play, Andy Warhol cast her in his play Pork. She went on to appear in the film The Blank Generation (1976). Back and forth between New York and London, she settled in Atlanta Georgia. In 2018, County debuted a retrospective show of visual art in the New York City gallery, Participant, Inc.
County’s life and art is considered an inspirational influence on John Cameron Mitchell’s transgender rock musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch.
JACKIE CURTIS“Jackie Curtis is not a drag queen. Jackie is an artist. A pioneer without a frontier,” so said Andy Warhol. Andy was right. Jackie Cutis (1947-1987) was a true original. Long before he became one of the Pop master’s superstars. Curtis distinguished himself by appearing (alternately) as a James Dean-like male and a Jean Harlow-like female in Off-off Broadway plays of his own devise in which he and his friends appeared:
Glamour, Glory And Gold, co-starred Candy Darling, and Robert DeNiroin his first New York stage appearance;
Vain Victory, also starred Darling with Warhol and Jack Smith star Mario Montez;
Amerika Cleopatra featured a thin barely-known Harvey Fierstein;
Femme Fatale, starred Patti Smith, Jayne County and Penny Arcade; and
Heaven Grand In Amber Orbit toplined Holly Woodlawn. These were all makeshift, wildly tossed together affairs having little to do with plot and character but tons to do with exhibitionistic self-expression.
Outside of such Warhol films as Flesh (1968) and Women in Revolt (1972), Jackie’s most notable screen appearance was in Yugoslavia agant-gardist Dusan Makvejev’s W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism – a film about sex researcher Willhelm Reich, creator of the so-called Orgone Box. Makvejev felt Jackie presence in the film added a lot to his view of Reich’s sexual theories.
STEVEN GROSSMAN Steve Grossman (1951-1991) a gay singer-songwriter of the early 1970s whose album Caravan Tonight (1974) is distinguished as being the first album dealing with openly gay subject matter released by a major record label, Mercury Records.
He died from AIDS leaving his Joni Mitchell-inflected songs, recorded much in the style of singer-songwriter Cat Stevens, opposed to the then-current glam Bowiesque fashion of openly gay artists. Among them, “Out” is a deeply moving coming-out song directed to his Father mother and brother.
This information was taken from:
www.walterfilm.com/10-lgbtq-performers-in-the-1970s/peace&love
