Danny Fields’ lawyer’s got his work cut out for him…
Fields claims Out magazine tarnished his image by intimating he used his music connections to bed young boys. Here’s the excerpt from the issue in question:
The ’70s was sure a lot of fun, but I was sure a lot of young. Boy, if you didn’t get laid, then it was your own fault. I don’t remember ever being inhibited by saying ‘I’m the manager of the band. If you want to meet them, come to my hotel room and sleep with me, and I’ll introduce you to them in the morning.’
Now, compare that blurb to the quote from Legs McNeil’s Please Kill Me: Uncensored Oral History of Punk (pictured). Which do you find more incriminating and tarnishing?
This isn’t the first time Fields has found himself embroiled in a war of words. The famed music manager once alleged that he and The Who’s Pete Townshend were “boyfriends”. Townshend denied the claim and even suggested that Fields may have drugged him. Of course, Townshend later faced kiddie porn charges, so we’re not sure who to believe.
Jeff Bercovici thinks so, too.
How about we take this to the next level?
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Qjersey
Summers on Fire Island with Danny Fields shooting off his mouth poolside…vastly entertaining…total character.
abelincoln
Who is he? Seriously. Never heard of him.
Herr Cofey
Queerty 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 degredation here. Queers make the best gay bashers, they say. What a shame Queerty feels compelled to play the part.
julian halevy
Look, it’s obvious that straight reporters know little about the ordinary goings-on in the gay world. Anything goes where gay sex is concerned. If Fields hinted that young men could meet putative musicians, that would have been standard fare. I don’t know why he claims to have been Sedgewick’s roomie; he was actually far more of a draw in the ’60’s than she. Not particularly handsome, poor Dan, but in there trying and often succeeding. Though, when a female friend of mine said she thought he was attractive, too bad he was gay, he became huffily indignant and told me not to “bag” him. Ha! He’d never got within sniffing distance of a woman, that’s for sure. His downfall was Warhol, that fool!