Wayne/Jayne County: Rebel Rebel

    Born in 1947, Wayne Rogers never thought of himself as a boy, and wore girls’ clothes whenever he could. By his late teens he had chosen the name Wayne County and under this name he performed in several rock and proto-punk bands. Aged 21, in 1968, he fled his hometown of Georgia, Alabama and moved to New York. Life for queer and transgender people in America in the mid-to-late 1960s was often a harrowing ordeal. As she once explained in an interview, “In Atlanta there was a law that if a male’s hair touched the tip of his ears, he could be arrested and thrown in jail!” Any man who wore clothing that could be deemed ‘feminine’ could be arrested. Horrors awaited any man who was dragged down to the police station for transgressing the dress code. Men with long hair faced having it forcibly shaved off. People were beaten, or even raped, while all the cops sat around enjoying the show. Jayne says, “Back in those days, no one used the term ‘trans’. I didn’t even know what a transsexual was!” The last straw came when she was shot at in the street by a “truck-full of rednecks”. It was time to get out.

New York in the late 1960s was an exciting city for the young man. He quickly made friends with the other outsiders on the vibrant art-and-underground scene and became a regular at the Stonewall Inn, the famous gay bar, then in Christopher Street. Stonewall is now enshrined in GLBTI lore. In 1969 the single most important event that ushered in the Gay Liberation movement occurred in and around the building. Police had regularly been raiding the bar, as a kind of sport, and arresting the gay patrons and doing strip-searches of the drag queens and trans-people.  After months of harassment, one evening the patrons had had enough. Led by a handful of drag queens the place erupted in fury; eight policemen were trapped inside as an angry crowd gathered outside in a series of riots which went on for three days and nights. They chanted, “Gay Power! Gay Power!” Police reinforcements were called and they began beating people in the street, which inflamed the crowd further. The event signaled a call to arms within the GLBTI community and within two years of the riots there were gay rights movements in every major city in the US. The young Wayne County took part in the Stonewall riots, firmly establishing his queer-pioneer credentials.

    In 1969, he was asked by Warhol Superstar, Jackie Curtis to appear in her play ‘Femme Fatale’, which also starred Patti Smith. Warhol was struck by Wayne’s performance and he cast her in his own play, ‘Pork’. A young David Bowie was taken along to a see a performance and was hugely influenced. He subsequently began to push his own cross-dressing styles to further extremes in his own stage performances. Glam Rock had been born. Wayne County later became the first artist signed to Bowie’s MainMan label. His stage show at the time featured his song, ‘Queenage Baby’, which he has always claimed influenced Bowie’s ‘Rebel Rebel’.

    By 1976 Punk Rock erupted as a major cultural force, in New York and London. Wayne, who had been taking female hormones for several years, now settled in London: she was delighted when her breast began to grow. She appeared in the important documentary about the burgeoning punk movement, ‘The Blank Generation’ (1974). She also appeared in Don Lett’s, ‘The Punk Rock Movie’ (1977), and then had a role in Derek Jarman’s dystopian, cult punk film, ‘Jubilee’ (1978), in which she sang ‘Paranoia Paradise’. With her band, The Electric Chairs, she regularly performed at London punk venue The Roxy, and she began to get a big following across Europe. In 1977 she released the EP ‘Electric Chairs’. A second EP followed, ‘Blatantly Offensive’, which featured the songs ‘Fuck Off’ and ‘Toilet Love’. In 1979 she changed her name from Wayne to Jayne.

    In 1995 she published, ‘Man Enough to be a Woman: The Autobiography of Jayne County’ (Serpent’s Tail). Through the 1990s a lot of her back catalogue was re-released.

    Jayne County recently said she believed Queer history should be taught in schools because it is part of all history: “Too bad that we had to kick and scream our heads off at The Stonewall Riots to even get noticed. But it had to happen! It was all a sign of the times!”