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| Edition: | Stonewall Inn Editions (Paperback) |
| Author: | Randy Shilts |
| Published: | April 2000 |
| Pages: | 656 |
| ISBN 10: | 0312241356 |
| New: | $7.98 (12) |
| Used: | $0.17 (85) |
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And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic is a nonfiction book written by San Francisco Chronicle journalist Randy Shilts, published in 1987. It chronicles the discovery and spread of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) with a special emphasis on government indifference and political infighting—specifically in the United States—to what was initially perceived as a gay disease. Shilts' premise is that while AIDS is caused by a biological agent, incompetence and apathy toward those who were initially affected by AIDS allowed the spread of the disease to become much worse; AIDS was allowed to happen.
The book is an extensive work of investigative journalism, written in the form of an encompassing time line; the events that shaped the epidemic are presented as sequential matter-of-fact summaries. Shilts describes the impact and the politics involved in battling the disease on particular individuals in the gay, medical, and political communities. The book begins its discussion in the late 1970s with the then-first confirmed case of AIDS, that of Grethe Rask, a Danish doctor working in Africa. It ends with the announcement by actor Rock Hudson in 1985 that he was dying of AIDS, when international attention on the disease exploded.
And the Band Played On was critically acclaimed and became a best-seller. It made Shilts both a star and a pariah for his coverage of the disease and the bitter politics in the gay community. Judith Eannarino of the Library Journal called it "one of the most important books of the year", upon its release. Shilts described his motivation to undertake the writing of the book in an interview after its release, saying, "Any good reporter could have done this story, but I think the reason I did it, and no one else did, is because I am gay. It was happening to people I cared about and loved." The book was adapted into an HBO docudrama of the same name in 1993. Shilts was tested for HIV while he was writing the book; he died of complications from AIDS in 1994.
Background
Randy Shilts grew up in a conservative household near Chicago, Illinois and was active in Young Americans for Freedom in high school. He earned a journalism degree at the University of Oregon in 1975, where he also came out of the closet as gay. Shilts was determined to live openly about his sexuality, but was unable to find steady work as a reporter due to what he believed was homophobia in the media. He worked as a freelance reporter for the gay magazine The Advocate before becoming one of thousands of gay men moving to San Francisco's Castro District. In a 1989 interview, Shilts recalled his anger as he was trying to get established as a reporter: "At the beginning I was angry at this big, nebulous 'them'—all the places where I couldn't get work. My anger became more specific as time went on."
Shilts worked for two Bay Area television stations from 1977 to 1980, becoming somewhat of a star in the Castro neighborhood. With writer Armistead Maupin, Shilts was voted one of San Francisco's most eligible bachelors in the gay community. He published a highly acclaimed biography of San Francisco politician Harvey Milk in 1982 titled The Mayor of Castro Street, and began working full time with the San Francisco Chronicle reporting on gay issues in a city where 25% of the population was gay. Almost from the onset of the disease Shilts covered news involving the public agencies and individuals who were researching and fighting it.
Shilts decided to write And the Band Played On after attending an awards ceremony in 1983 where he was to receive a commendation for his coverage on AIDS. As described in the book, television announcer Bill Kurtis gave the keynote address and told a joke: "What's the hardest part about having AIDS? Trying to convince your wife that you're Haitian." Shilts responded to the joke by saying that it "says everything about how the media had dealt with AIDS. Bill Kurtis felt that he could go in front of a journalists' group in San Francisco and make AIDS jokes. First of all, he could assume that nobody there would be gay and, if they were gay, they wouldn't talk about it and that nobody would take offense at that. To me, that summed up the whole problem of dealing with AIDS in the media. Obviously, the reason I covered AIDS from the start was that, to me, it was never something that happened to those other people."
The title of the book is a reference to the story about the dance band in the first-class lounge of the RMS Titanic, which kept playing as the ship sank, thereby alluding to the multiple agencies and communities who neglected to prioritize a swift medical response to the crisis. After publication of the book, Shilts explained his use of the title: "And the Band Played On is simply a snappier way of saying 'business as usual'. Everyone responded with an ordinary pace to an extraordinary situation."
