Excerpts from Adam Lambert’s OUT interview

After posting breathlessly about the controversy surrounding Adam Lambert’s participation in the OUT 100 cover shoot, thought I’d finally get around to reading the interview inside the mag with the breakout star of the year.

For all the hubbub about the cover shoot etc., in the interview with Shana Naomi Krochmal, Adam is quite candid and provocative. I’m going to share some parts that stood out for me but I’ve not included any portions of Adam talking about his boyfriend because, well, they have broken up since the interview went to press.

Young love.

But he does have this to say about relationships in general: “Sometimes it’s hard to, like, be a boyfriend for somebody, because you don’t know what that means. What does that mean? Especially if you haven’t been in many relationships. And being in the gay community, we don’t grow up with any role models for that. We don’t know what we’re supposed to be. And I think that’s funny because there’s so much — again, it’s something that’s being evolved out of, but in the gay community there’s so much promiscuity. It’s socially accepted in the gay community to be promiscuous. It’s like, oh, we’re both men, we’re supposed to want to fuck all the time and cheat on each other. And it’s OK, open relationships are fine because we’re all men. And I’m not judging that, but I don’t think that’s for me. I don’t think it’s emotionally healthy.”

Before Adam “officially” stated that he is gay in a Rolling Stone article, he was competing in American Idol and was considered the favorite early on. Then photos of him making out with a guy surfaced on the Internet.

Says Adam: “When those pictures came out online, I got freaked out. I was like, “Great, that’s gonna fuck things up.” ’Cause I just figured, you know, this is a national television program and people are conservative in our country, aside from L.A. and New York and a couple of other places. … it was a really weird moment, because I’ve been living in L.A. for eight years like, yeah, I’m gay. I go out to gay clubs and bars and I go out to straight clubs and bars too. I don’t think twice about it. And it was the first time since I’d come out of the closet at 18 that I had to think about it.

Some people in the gay community might look at it like, “You really should’ve owned that. You didn’t hide it, but you didn’t admit it and that’s weak.” My whole point is, I’m not trying to lead the fucking way for the civil rights movement that we’re in right now. I just happen to be a gay man — and I’m not ashamed of that at all. Regardless of how I handled it, it became a huge issue. And I knew it would. So I figured, you know what, I’m just not going to label myself, I’m going to own the pictures, I’m going to get past it and just keep being myself on the show. And then I waited until after because I was finally given the opportunity. I mean, on the show, we’re not really [allowed to talk to press].”

Adam on fame: “The hardest thing to do in this situation — but the best thing to do — is to not take it too seriously. By doing that you don’t let it run your life and freak you out. It’s all kind of ridiculous, if you put yourself outside of it and try to look at it as objectively as possible. It’s all ridiculous. The whole thing. It’s crazy. It’s hilarious. It’s funny. It’s great. It’s really positive. And when you start letting the pressure get to you — our job as entertainers is to not let the pressure get to us. Our job as entertainers is to be like, OK, I’m just going to keep doing what I do. And obviously I’m being an idealist right now — but I kind of have to be, or how else am I going to last?”

On being himself: “To some people, me being sexual is really offensive because I’m gay. They’re like, he’s being really gay. And I’m like, actually, no, because there’s no other guys up here. I’m just being sexual. And male sexuality is frightening to America. Female sexuality — it might not be the best example of it, but it’s all over the place. Overt female sexuality might be degrading. It might not be the most feminist type of sexuality, unless you look at it like the woman’s in control, so she’s got the power. Sexuality is just — people are so freaked out by it. The double standard is that a woman can get away with it but a man hasn’t been able to yet.”

Here is a portion of the interview where Shana addresses how Adam’s handlers wanted her to not make the article too gay, to not ask Adam about politics etc.

Q. There’s a way in which both you and Neil Patrick Harris are being talked about as exceptions to the rule, to the idea that there could never be an out, gay leading man or male musical star. You both seem very confident and comfortable with who you are. But that’s not always true of your handlers. We’ve gotten plenty of push back from your management — and many other people’s — who say, “Well, let’s not be too gay…”
Adam: Well, you know, I think that there’s something to that, though. I think the whole magic of this moment is that I’m not alienating anybody. I’m not trying to anyway. I want as many people to feel like they can like the music. I don’t want to edit myself to the point where I feel like I don’t have integrity. But at the same time, I feel like I don’t want to alienate people, so it’s really hard. It’s almost like being a political figure. It’s like a balancing act. I feel really good about how open I’ve been, ’cause I really don’t feel like I’ve hidden anything. It’s like the picking and choosing. When is it appropriate and when is it not? One of the things that I don’t like about the gay community is that people define themselves by their sexuality — and that’s bullshit. It shouldn’t be about that. It should be that it just so happens that you’re this or that, and that’s your sexuality. It doesn’t mean that that should dictate what your social group is or where you go out or who you talk to or what your interests are. That’s bullshit. That’s outdated.

I think one of the things about the gay community that’s really interesting is that while people own their homosexuality, there is a strange aversion to letting the masculine and the feminine exist within you in a balanced way. And for me, personally, I feel I have a very strong masculine side, and I also have a very strong feminine side. And a lot of people are scared to live in that gray area. There’s boys out in Boystown that are either really fem or really butch. It’s at the extremes. I love when I meet people that are just kind of comfortable being both. And they don’t have to identify being really butch or really fem. Why? Why would you have to?

To read the Q&A in its entirety, here are links to Part One and Part Two.

Out editor Aaron Hicklin published a scathing letter in the magazine taking Adam’s handlers to task then Adam responded yesterday via Twitter. Then Shana addressed the editor’s letter in a letter of her own posted Tuesday on Out.com.

“…A pop star at this level out from the get-go — is basically unprecedented,” she writes in part. “I’ve seen such striking change in even the last two or three years of how comfortable industry gatekeepers and their clients are in handling such new territory. We’re witnessing a changing of the guard, and it’s bound to overlap a bit in the middle, creating these strange moments where we work with both proudly out stars and their reluctant handlers, sometimes at odd with each other even when they have the same ultimate goals.”