There was once a time, a very simple time, when you could start a new wave band with your art-school friends, record a few demos, play fewer than a dozen shows, and suddenly you’re on tour with Depeche Mode. Book of Love strutted into their brief moment of fame with the same laid-back attitude that colors their music. They were so naturally cool, so unabashedly themselves, that their brief moment as mid-1980s club superstars seemed like a happy accident. In an era when modern, up-and-coming bands had to dress louder, sound louder, and act louder than their peers to even have a chance at fame, Book of Love calmly asked, “Can’t it all be so simple?”
Their strategy of success via simplicity was impressive for many reasons, but mostly because the quartet had a ton to be loud about. Chief songwriters Ted and Susan Ottaviano are unrelated, despite growing up in the same Connecticut town, attending the same high school, and sharing the same last name (trust me, this sort of thing just happens to us Italian Americans). That they were also both queer art-school students might have been the least weird thing about them. Despite leaving their hometown to attend different institutes in Philadelphia and New York City, respectively, they managed to start the band long-distance, recruiting Susan’s classmate Jade Lee and Ted’s classmate Lauren Johnson (née Roselli), both multi-instrumentalists. That made them a three-quarters female and one-half queer new-wave band, an oddity even within their outwardly gender-fluid scene.
No score yet, be the first to add.
When they all finished school and moved to NYC, Book of Love managed to stand out from the “playground of misfits” and “eccentric characters,” in their words, that populated the city’s club scene. But they didn’t stress their queerness, nor their gender; neither aspect was worn as fashion or, really, marketed in any sort of way. It never had to be acknowledged; “it was just understood,” Ted told The Advocate in 2001. They let their nature be natural; it subtly blossomed on “Boy,” the demo that earned them a deal with Sire and the Depeche Mode tour before their debut was even imagined.
“Boy” was, in fact, just that good. A minimalist masterpiece released smack dab in the middle of the maximalist ’80s, a song about the struggles of gender nonconformity written by a queer man and performed by a queer woman, was a smash hit in clubs both gay and straight. It felt personally plucked out of a queer diary (“I wanna be where the boys are/But I’m not allowed”; “It’s not my fault/That I’m not a boy/It’s not my fault/I don’t have those toys”). There’s no specific narrative at play beyond the nonconforming angst. Gracefully open-ended, it’s just as readable by trans men, trans women, and any other denomination of nonconforming queerness. Scored only by drum machine, a single synth, chimes, and tubular bells, the song’s straightforward tale sounds dramatically magnificent in spite of its spareness. The bells, especially, mask its minimalism as something bigger: Soft chimes clink away during the verses, while tubular bells pair up with Susan’s gothy delivery as the hook’s dramatis personae.
