When the Band Played On

When the Band Played On
When the Band Played On

When the Band Played On

The Life of Randy Shilts, America's Trailblazing Gay Journalist
By Michael G. Lee

BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY

320 Pages, 6 x 9

Formats: Cloth, EPUB, PDF

Cloth, $30.00 (US $30.00) (CA $40.00)

ISBN 9780914090304

Rights: WOR

Chicago Review Press (Oct 2024)

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Overview

Randy Shilts was the preeminent LGBTQ+ reporter of his generation. 

He was the first openly gay reporter assigned to a gay beat at a mainstream paper and one of the nation’s most influential chroniclers of gay history, politics, and culture. Shilts wrote three seminal works on the community: The Mayor of Castro Street, on the life, assassination, and legacy of Harvey Milk; And the Band Played On, detailing the failure of politics as usual during the early AIDS epidemic; and Conduct Unbecoming, a history of the US military’s mistreatment of LGBTQ servicemembers.  

Yet the intimate life story of Randy Shilts has been left unwritten. When the Band Played On tells that story, recognizing his legacy as a trailblazing figure in gay activism, journalism, and public policy.   

Author Michael G. Lee conducted interviews with Shilts’s family, friends, college professors, colleagues, informants, lovers, and critics. The resulting narrative tells the tale of a singularly gifted voice, a talented yet insecure young man whose coming of age became intricately linked to the historic peaks and devastating perils of modern gay liberation. 

When the Band Played On is the authoritative account of Randy Shilts’s trailblazing life, as well as his legacy of shaping the history-making events he covered.   

Reviews

"Shilts’ work, well described and documented here, helped draw public attention to a disease that all too many—not least in the Reagan administration—plainly wished to ignore."—Kirkus Reviews

“Randy Shilts was one of the most significant and controversial journalists of the late twentieth century, especially for his coverage of the AIDS pandemic in America. Michael Lee has done a stupendous job of navigating Shilts’s triumphs, and his flaws and mistakes. This book is an essential supplement to the historical record on gay liberation, HIV/AIDS, and LGBTQ combatants in the US military.” —Laurie Garrett, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and author of The Coming Plague



“Michael Lee has skillfully captured the consuming ambition, loosey-goosey relationship with facts, humor, and tender humanity of Randy Shilts in this engaging, hard-to-put-down biography.” —John-Manuel Andriote, author of Stonewall Strong



“Randy Shilts was perhaps the most important chronicler of gay life, politics, and disaster at the end of the last century, and the story of his life is also the story of a man shaped by, and shaping, history. It’s hard to believe this book didn’t already exist, but here it is at last: an intimate but fittingly incisive and tough-minded portrait of a complex, heroic, flawed, and important human.” —Rebecca Makkai, author of The Great Believers

“As one of the first openly gay TV reporters in the country, I had few role models. Randy Shilts became one for me, and then he became my friend. Author Michael Lee does a candid job capturing the Randy we knew—and the Randy we didn’t know.” —Hank Plante, Emmy and Peabody Award–winning TV reporter

“Michael Lee has gifted us with the definitive biography of the courageous, controversial, and groundbreaking gay journalist—self-proclaimed as the Randy Shilts. A spellbinding read and monumental achievement.” —Evelyn C. White, author of Alice Walker: A Life

“Randy Shilts’s life story is so thoroughly enmeshed in the post-Stonewall decades. His indefatigable reporting was so important in breaking through to the outside world, with all the controversy that came with it—what we did (and reported) then made space for a very different role for the queer communities. When the Band Played On left me wishing he were still here to help us make sense of the history in motion we are living through right now.” —Carol Queen, PhD, cofounder and director, Center for Sex & Culture, San Francisco
 
“Randy Shilts was bigger than life as a journalist and author of some of the most important books about gay history. Michael Lee has captured Randy’s voice through his meticulous research and interviews with those who knew him. . . . I am so appreciative to Lee for writing When the Band Played On so we could learn more about this quite extraordinary and kind man.” —Colonel Margarethe Cammermeyer (Retired), author of Serving in Silence

Author Biography

For more than twenty years, Michael Lee has had a passion for storytelling that has fueled a dynamic career of LGBTQ+ and HIV/AIDS organizing, human services, research, writing, and teaching. He has taught graduate courses at Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota for more than a decade while working as a professional grant writer. Michael’s interest in Randy Shilts came about while he was researching the origins of 1970s-era gay and lesbian community services and their influence on AIDS organizations of the 1980s. He lives in Minneapolis, MN.