Did Out “gay bash” former Factory boy Danny Fields? Fields says “yes,” and he’s out for the mag’s money.
The drama started back in October of 2006, when EIC Aaron Hicklin interviewed the music manager for their ’70s issue. In the piece, Fields chats about decade’s free loving.
The quote seems to intimate Fields used his famous connections, which include Iggy Pop and The Ramones, to bed younger lads. Fields, however, says Hicklin and his magazine misrepresented him:
My reputation is ruined because Out has called me virtually a sexual predator. It is atrocious… I never said that. The implication is while my bands were playing, I was trawling the audience for kids… like I used the performances as an excuse to cruise and pick up underage teens. The quotes are also so ungrammatical. I would never even talk like that. I have advanced degrees in English literature…They gay-bashed me.
In an effort to clear his queer name, Fields asked the magazine – for which our own editor has written – to produce the tape. Unfortunately, staffers couldn’t, because they can’t find it.
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Fields now wants $365,000 in damages plus $100 million in punitive damages. The magazine allegedly tried to strike a deal, says Fields’ lawyer, offering Fields a “few thousand dollars” and 75-words to respond. Fields refused, of course, and now hopes to see Hicklin and friends in court. Hicklin couldn’t comment on the charges.
Maybe Out needs to split its stocks again? And find that tape!
Reader
He deserves the damages. OUT has over-stepped it editorial place in the gay media world. I can only hope that Danny wins!
daniel11211
I love danny fields! funny as hell, whip smart- but does trolling for kids ruin ones reputation?
its a good thing!
Herr Cofey
ueerty fails to acknowledge that the “please kill me” quote as apposed to the “OUT” blurb, loosely compared above, is within the context of an oral history of 70s underground music and culture in which Danny Fields is comprehensively portrayed in the context of his work. The book includes some insight into the sex and drug infused scene, textually relevant therefore is who was taking what drug and the who fucked who parts. The implication in the OUT quote and the comparison above is that Fields, perhaps the most influential character in the protopunk years, armed with the fuck lure of star access, subsidized an MO of seducing bus boys and groupies with signing the occasional band. That’s maybe OUT’s idea of cool, but, for starters, its inaccurate. I see no evil on Field’s part and suspect fun is being frankensteined into degradation here. Queers make the best gay bashers, they say. What a shame Queerty feels compelled to follow suit.