08-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Toronto Star
How David Bowie, the Smiths, Fleetwood Mac and others soundtracked this Toronto memoirist's queer awakening
Adam and the Ants' 'Dog Eat Dog.' The Smiths' 'Hand in Glove.' Kate Bush's 'Hounds of Love.' Fleetwood Mac's 'Sara.' This was the soundtrack to writer Pete Crighton's queer awakening and in his memoir, 'The Vinyl Diaries' (Random House Canada), he describes the transformative potential of music and its ability to stimulate the mind's incredible powers of recollection.
Crighton was put up for adoption by his birth mother in 1969 and grew up in Toronto's east end with his adoptive family, and the music of the '70s and '80s resonated deeply with Crighton's adolescence. At a young age, he realized that he was gay, but it was not something that he was ready to fully embrace. Something — the cultural mores of the time, the safety of heteronormativity or the stigma of being 'out' — held him back.
