This gay rocker was trying to warn us about Donald Trump—way back in 1990

The music world got some sad news today when it was reported that singer Jean Knight had passed away at the age of 80.

The R&B and soul artist was active from the ’60s through the ’90s, but Knight is best remembered for her 1971 single, “Mr. Big Stuff,” which was a Grammy-nominated and chart-topping hit.

While reflecting on the life of Jean Knight and her most successful song, we stumbled down a rabbit hole involving—improbably—a queer-inclusive rock band from the ’80s, some shady business dealings, and none other than Donald Trump. Let’s get into it, shall we?

But first: We pay our respects to the late, great Jean Knight:

If you’re not already familiar with “Mr. Big Stuff,” Knight’s fun and funky single—with a distinctive bass line and backing vocals singing “ohOH yea-ah”—is about a snotty, egotistical rich guy who thinks he’s the sh*t, able to woo women with his money.

Does that sound like anyone you might know? Perhaps a disgraced former president?

Well, even in the early ’90s—long before The Celebrity Apprentice, the dumpster-fire presidency, the multiple indictments—Trump was the prototypical “Mr. Big Stuff.” So much so that, when an all-female band recorded a rocking cover of the song in 1990, he was the perfect choice to star in their music video.

That band was Precious Metal, which featured celebrated queer singer-songwriter Janet Robin on guitar, and had been making femme face-melting tunes since the mid-’80s. The ladies included their rendition of “Mr. Big Stuff” on their final, self-titled album in ’90 and actually went so far as to film their video with Trump—but it never aired.

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A few years back, Precious Metal front-woman Leslie Knauer spoke to Billboard about the band’s experience filming with the notorious businessman and revealed the real reason with video fell through.

As she tells it, Trump had agreed to do it for an “appearance fee” of $10,000, playing a record company executive who the band berates in the video. Though he was reportedly in good spirits on set, Trump later demanded he be paid a whopping $250,000 for his work—and the band refused to oblige.

“He knew all the words, and I thought, ‘he’s got a good sense of humor,’” Knauer said, reflecting on the shoot. “Yet he lied flat out, because he shook our hands and said, ‘Oh, I love the song, yes, it will be fun to do this.’”

On top of that, Knauer recalls Trump “was kinda hot for” guitarist Janet Robin, at one point even putting his hands on her and remarking “Oh my god Janet, you have a tight body.”

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Robin, who is gay, reportedly responded with a quick, “yuck, whatever, gross,” then brushed it off. Like Rosie O’Donnell herself, here was another queer woman who had sniffed out what a sleazy conman Trump was from the very beginning!

Needless to say, Knauer, Robin & co. were not about to pay 25 times the initial, agreed-upon offer to keep Trump, so they had to edit around him. The resulting video instead shows women attending to—and eventually yelling at—and anonymous businessman whose face is never seen (it’s unclear if those are shots of the back of Trump’s head in the final product).

Knauer goes on to tell Billboard that, years later, she learned that Precious Metal was effectively a pawn in some shady business dealings. As it turns out, the band’s record label, Chameleon, was owned by Danny Pritzker, the son of Trump’s business associate, Jay Pritzker.

“Jay Pritzker, knowing that Donald Trump wanted to sell his [LaGuardia-based airline] Trump Shuttle, told Trump, ‘if you’re in the video for my son’s all-girl band, then I might buy your Trump Shuttle,’” reveals Knauer. “This is what I understand to be the truth. I wasn’t supposed to tell anybody this, but what the f*ck. Trump then said, ‘Are you going to buy it?’ Pritzker went, ‘no, f*ck you,’ but no one told us.” 

Precious Metal disbanded not long after—Knauer says it wasn’t expressly because of the video debacle, though she admits Trump’s shenanigans certainly “hurt our career at that moment.”

In the end, the wicked irony is that a couple of real-life Mr. Big Stuffs are the whole reason Precious Metal’s original “Mr. Big Stuff” video fell through.

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