He was persona non grata in the music business after releasing his 1973 album “Lavender Country,” but he found new fame in the 2010s.
From obscurity to stardom
Haggerty wrote “Lavender Country” as a statement to the music industry — he’d refuse to bend to the heteronormative standards of the times, and he certainly wouldn’t attempt to mask his queerness. “Lavender Country” was a protest record. He assumed it would be his last. In the decades between his first and second albums, Haggerty devoted his life to activism. A staunch socialist — he oftenhimself a “screaming Marxist b*tch” — he advocated for HIV/AIDS awareness, LGBTQ causes and the civil rights of Black Americans. He had two children with his husband and retired to a town across the Puget Sound, his musical dreams long dashed.
But in 2013, a record collector purchased Haggerty’s record on eBay and shared it with Greaves, who “cold-called” Haggerty and discussed re-releasing the album on his label, Paradise of Bachelors. Haggerty was suspicious, Greaves remembered — Haggerty, as he told CNN earlier this year, was mostly performing for nursing home crowds for free at that time.
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