New Book Takes A Deeper Look Into “Trailblazing” Journalist Randy Shilts

You may have read his books in the past. Titles such as “And The Band Played On” and “Conduct Unbecoming” were mandatory reading for our community when they were published. He also beautifully told the story of one of the most important leaders in the struggle for LGBTQ+ rights: Harvey Milk.

Randy Shilts was a pioneer in journalism, being the first LGBTQ+ person to come out at a daily news publication, the San Francisco Chronicle. His byline was visible at the time when our community rose to prominence in transforming the “gay mecca” out of a fading neighborhood throughout the 1970s. Shilts covered the beat of the Castro, as well as Polk Street and SoMa, through the emergence of Milk in city politics, the double murder at City Hall in 1978, the White Night Riots protesting the verdict handed down to Milk’s assailant and the AIDS crisis that devastated the city’s gay and bisexual male populations.

The three books Shilts wrote were testaments to this time. Legacies that resonate beyond his primary beat, San Francisco’s 49 square miles and its LGBTQ+ community. Now, the story of our storyteller has been lovingly told by one of the figures from our own community: Michael G. Lee, Ph.D.

In a previous life, Lee was involved with the Minnesota AIDS Project. After his stint at MAP, Lee started his doctoral studies at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. Midway through his doctorate program, Lee took a “real interest in the history of AIDS organizations.” At the time, a lot was known historically about their origins in the gay activist tradition, but not a lot had been written about it, Lee further explains.

The result is Lee’s first book, “When The Band Played On: The Life of Randy Shilts, America’s Trailblazing Gay Journalist.” The book is due out on October 8, published by Chicago Review Press.

Lee’s initial research connected early writings on the LGBTQ+ community and the onset of HIV/AIDS into the community with Shilts’ own work as a journalist and an author.

“[Shilts] in 1976 was publishing these in-depth pieces about pandemic levels of alcoholism, drug abuse, sexually transmitted diseases, social isolation, loneliness, the troubles that youth were experiencing in isolation,” Lee explains. “I knew [Shilts] from his previous work, I’d read ‘And the Band Played On,’ I’d read the ‘Mayor of Castro Street,’ and I was astounded as I was looking through these articles to see that he had put together all the pieces surrounding AIDS, about a half decade before the CDC started noticing these exotic illnesses that were taking men’s lives.”

There had been some work written about Shilts. The Andrew Stoner biography was more academic and was aimed for that audience. Lee intentionally wrote “When The Band Played On” for a mass market audience. Specifically, for our community and beyond.

Lee’s book is “more intimate, more personal, and sort of probes in depth a little bit more for those developmental milestones that shaped Randy’s life,” he says.

In doing so, Lee put in the bulk of the decade-long research on the book by conducting 73 interviews with various people who were close to, worked alongside and, sometimes, were adversarial to Shilts. They ranged from family members to some of the more notable personalities in HIV/AIDS research and in the media. Many of these people you may not have heard of unless you were a part of the San Francisco Bay Area community and scene or have read Shilts’ books. Even from our local perspective, you may see some patterns within our culture.

“People were overwhelmingly very interested in talking with me,” says Lee. “More people, way more people said ‘yes’ than ‘no’, and gave very generously of their time. Many of them also gave me connections to other people, just through the strength of the relationships that we built.”

In this book, Lee guides you through Shilts’ life from the beginning to his memorial service in San Francisco. To see how Shilts was able to navigate the community he would report on even when he was challenged by his own self.

“I was very struck by the ways that he could be very publicly confident and brash and defending his work, while also being privately somewhat insecure and struggling with wanting to feel loved, wanting to feel accepted in his community,” explains Lee.

“Even as he could be fearless in some ways in reporting critically on his own community, I really experienced, I think, the level of hurt that he had privately that a lot of people didn’t know about, which contributed to many of the struggles that he experienced,” continues Lee. “Not to give too much away, but there’s a very powerful story about addiction and recovery in this book that I think has garnered much less attention in the mainstream press than Randy’s story deserves, and to understand how hard he worked at sobriety in the years when he was at his most famous. He had to work at it every single day. And that private Randy Shilts was a very deliberative and observant listener who came, I think, to better understand and empathize with people’s struggles.”

However, we are reminded by Lee that Shilts became a journalist as he saw a need to cover the LGBTQ+ community and the issues surrounding it, even from the onset of his career at the University of Oregon. His timing was indeed right as he was surrounded by the issues of the day, from ballot initiatives that threaten our community through the AIDS crisis and into military service by LGBTQ+ members of the armed forces.

Lee thought that the issues Shilts worked to cover “informed more of his journalism, the more experience he got because he was very much a journalist who was skeptical of the powerful. And I think his connection to sobriety in the recovery community made him a stronger ally of people who have struggled through various life circumstances, and wanting to give them a voice against the powerful who could otherwise overlook them or exploit them.”

“When The Band Played On” will be available at your favorite book retailer on October 8. You can also pre-order until the book’s actual arrival. Lee is one Twin Cities-based author who should be supported in this next chapter of his career. It all starts with picking up or ordering a copy of this fascinating journey into Shilts’ life and career.

Looking back at the process towards getting this book into publication, Lee reflects that “it’s been a life-changing journey, without a doubt. I can’t imagine in the decade that it’s taken, looking back, I can’t imagine having done anything differently.”

When you get your copy of this book, you will understand the work that went into it.

“When The Band Played On: The Life of Randy Shilts, America’s Trailblazing Gay Journalist“
Michael G. Lee, Ph.D
Chicago Review Press
$30