Geoff Boothby | Young Love / 2013

 when love is getting dangerous

by Douglas Messerli

 

Geoff Boothby (director), Eli Lieb (performer and composer) Young Love / 2013

 

For those of us over 70, who lived through some of the most exciting times of pop music transformations, it still seemed like an eternity before the gays among us might find a figure to express our frustrated sensibilities.

    There was Johhny Mathis, of course, whose longing ballads hinted at his gay sexuality, long after revealed. And there was the far more obvious cross-over, outrightly campy foreteller of all that would come to be, Little Richard. And I suppose for the good little mamma’s boys still hanging about the house into their late twenties there might have been, if they crossed they eyes and prayed a lot, Liberace. Elton John, Freddie Mercury, and a few others we discovered as gay icons far too late. And, at about the same time, we realized we could light a candle each night for David Bowie or even Mick Jagger to cross-over and pay a visit in our darker imaginations; they often did. And also, Michael Jackson, but being a pedophile doesn’t necessarily make him popular with the LGBTQ community. No, the most popular of musical performers, Elvis, The Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel (despite the rumors), the Everly Brothers, and so very many others were all stubbornly heterosexual. We didn’t even know that most of the lyrics of lovely songs performed the straight performers of The Four Seasons, were written by gay boy Bob Crewe.

     Fortunately, in the 21st century there were and are now numerous performers such as John Duff, Jesse Peppe, K. D. Lang, George Michael, Lucas Thameren (when he feels like it), Troye Sivan, Adam Lambert, Shawn Adeli, Lil Nas X, Ricky Martin, Demi Lovato, Janelle Monáe, and even the cute and clean-cut boy singer Eli Lieb, along with many others. And I’m not talking about the gay-friendly ones, including everyone from Cher, Madonna, Lady Gaga, Harry Styles, and so many others who care, hint, hem, and haw—despite my love for them.

     A Fairfield, Iowa native, Lieb hit New York first, before his father’s death sent him reeling back to Fairfield. But since then, with YouTube and numerous other collaborations with Miley Cyrus, Adam Lambert, and others, the boy-next door looks of Lieb have prevailed.

     His July 10, 2013 release, the musical video of “Young Love,” directed by Geoff Boothby, is one of his best.

     Who of gay men and boys wouldn’t love a ballad sung to an early gay lover; I met my life-time companion, Howard at age 23, so I sympathize.

 

when I was twenty two the day that I met you

when you took my hand through the night

it was getting late and you asked me to stay

and hold you until we see light

shut the door and turn the lights off

and put up your dukes tonight

 

cause this love is getting dangerous and I need some more tonight

your touch is contagious you know what I need tonight

I can't run and I can't hide

I'll be wasted by the light

I'm undone but I'm alive

don't ever wanna see the morning light

     Despite the vague referent of “you,” and the 2013 video consisting of a lot of young boys running with cute female babes, it’s quite clear that the “you” of this song is another guy, who Eli can’t even wait to get his hands on. And by the end of “Young Love,” even the members of their slightly tawdry gang know what’s up between the two boys.

    And despite Fairfield’s fame for being the center “transcendental meditation,” (the home also of the Maharishi International University campus), and his own family’s long practice of meditation, Lieb is quite centered in the gay community, 2 nights after the Orlando nightclub shooting, writing (with Brandon Skeie) the song “Pulse.”

 

Los Angeles, January 27, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (January 2025).