PERFORMER
I met Man Parish courtesy of Cherry Vanilla, whom we have featured here. He is a hoot, and he talks a million miles per hour, convinced everything he is saying is pulled directly from his “photographic memory.”
Man Parrish was born on May 6, 1958, in Brooklyn, New York. He is an American songwriter, vocalist, and producer renowned for his pioneering contributions to the electro genre in the early 1980s. Leaving home at 13, Man immersed himself in Manhattan's vibrant nightlife, becoming a regular at the iconic Studio 54. It was during this period that artist Andy Warhol bestowed upon him the nickname "Man," which first appeared in Warhol's Interview magazine. Man’s early performances in Bronx hip-hop clubs were notable for their extravagant displays, blending elements of the Warhol mystique with the burgeoning hip-hop culture.
In 1982, Man released "Hip Hop, Be Bop (Don't Stop)," a track that, despite initial resistance due to his identity as a white gay artist, became influential in both music and popular culture, featuring in the film Shaun of the Dead and the video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. He achieved significant chart success in the UK with "Male Stripper," a collaboration with Man 2 Man, reaching No. 4 on the UK Singles Chart. Throughout his career, Man has collaborated with various artists and continues to influence the music industry with his innovative sound.
— August Bernadicou, Executive Director of The LGBTQ History Project
"I was born in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. It was an Italian and Jewish neighborhood: mostly white, middle class, low to middle class. My mother couldn’t have kids, so I was adopted. When I was around seven or eight, my mother started becoming mentally off, and it started progressing. It went from mania to bipolar to schizophrenia to Alzheimer’s. Growing up was turbulent. I was the firstborn, so I had to be perfect. I had to carry the family name. With her mental illness, she focused a lot of her bad stuff on me. I was tied to the radiator, and she would turn up the steam. I was thrown in the snow in my underwear and punched unconscious.
At 13, I ran away from home. I was attending a high school for performing arts, and one of the kids there said they were in the children's choir at the Metropolitan Opera. They said I should join instead of going home. They used to pay me $10 a scene. There would be an army scene, and I would stand with a spear in my hand with grease paint all over me. I found queers.
I would go to the Rambles in Central Park, the cruising area. I was sitting on a park bench like Shirley Temple, and a 31-year-old pedophile picked me up. This guy zoomed in, sat beside me, and asked me how I was doing. I remember the conversation. My problem is I have a photographic memory. I told him I had to leave home, and he said I should go to his place. I told him I lived on 71st Street with a man named Steve, who worked at the Continental Baths. Steve had a yellow dress, yellow stockings, and yellow shoes in the closet. He said it was for when his sister came to town.
I fooled around with the man from the park, and he asked me to move in. I thought it was normal for a 31-year-old man to be talking to a 13-year-old. I told him I was 18. In those days when you got porn, it came in a brown paper envelope, and he kept them stacked in his nightstand drawer. He would go to work, and I'd see all his eight-millimeter films, and I'd see all these older guys with younger boys. I went, ‘Oh, this is cool, right? He’s taking care of these boys.’ I didn't know it was what a pedophile was.
He said I had some friends we should visit. I remember going to Philadelphia; Boston; Amherst, Massachusetts; and Fire Island in the summertime. Every weekend, we went to Washington, D.C. We drove around and picked up other boys who were waiting on street corners.
He had two king-sized beds pushed together—let's get naked, and it's ‘playtime.’ Some boys he would have over didn't even have pubic hair. I thought, oh, that, that's a little weird, but maybe they ran away from home too, and this is, this is the culture. I didn't understand it.
I was on Fire Island, and this woman asked how old I was. I said, I'm 18. She goes, ‘No, you're not. I have a 14-year-old son.’ She asked me to return to her tomorrow because she wanted to talk. She asked me what was going on, and I told her I was living with this man named Bob who believes space people are going to come. We have a bag packed that we keep under the bed for when the space people land in Central Park.
She asked me what I meant. I told her he went to the other room, and I stayed in the bedroom. Bob would turn the radio on static and talk to them in Alpha Centauri.
She said, 'I think you're in a very dangerous situation. I suspect certain things are going on. I want to call your mother.’ I said, ‘No, I'm not going home.’
I listened to her and went back home for a few days. I ran away again and I met a guy more my age in his 20s. He told me there was an art gallery downtown on the corner of Hudson and Franklin. The landlord let me sweep the floors in exchange for a room with no heat and no hot water. I would ask people if I could borrow $5 for Progresso soup, white bread, and chunky peanut butter. I was 6’4” with a 28-inch waist.
I was a kid in a pedophile ring. When you're being sexually abused, and you're young, forget about the getting laid part. You don't have the neurons in your brain to understand what's going on, and it creates trauma. You get a fucked up vision of the world, so things like trust and close relationships go out the window.
I wound up meeting a photographer named Chris Makos. Since I lived downtown, I was cool. He got me an interview at Interview magazine. I went to Andy Warhol’s Factory at Union Square. Andy Warhol walks in and says, ‘What are you doing?’ Chris said, ‘This is Manny Parish. We are trying to figure out what photo to use for the feature.’ Andy said my name was too simple and that instead of Manny, I should go by ‘Man.’ I thought, ‘I don’t care, just put my name in the newspaper.’ So that is how my name stuck.
I was going to be an actor. I was never into music, but later, I smoked some weed and built my first synthesizer. I played the music I heard in my head. That’s how I got into music. At this time, New York was a small town. There were two rock clubs and four discos. There were few places to go if you weren’t into jazz or classical music.
While living at Hudson and Franklin, I had a tape recorder, microphones, and a loft where you could make noise. I would produce demo tapes for $20 through $50. I don’t know how I paid rent. There were six of us living there. I lived next to a photographer named Gary. We were sort of boyfriends, and he wrote for Uncut magazine, a flesh rag. He was interviewing this guy named Joe Gage, who does porn. During the interview, he mentioned he wanted someone to do music. Gary called me and told me that Joe was looking for music. They told me they could pay me $1,000. I hadn’t seen $1,000 before. I could eat for four or five months. I could buy new shoes. I had been wearing the same Timberlands with holes in the bottom for months. It was perfect for a teenage boy.
The movie was called Heat Stroke. My stuff then turned into an acetate and was played at this bar called the Anvil. I went to the DJ and told him that was my music and asked him where he got it. He said he took it from a videotape. He continued that he had a record label and asked if I could meet him tomorrow. So I got in the cab, went up, and signed a one-page contract. I didn't know what I was doing—we get your grandmother's furniture, your firstborn, and all that kind of stuff. So that's how I got into the music business.
I walked away from the record company. I never got paid. The contract was dead. Then, when he died of AIDS, there were two queens at his label, and they just sold my stuff off to other record companies for $1,000. One of them was Unidisc in Canada. They went up to Canada, and my friend Mark—who was one of the two guys—it’s just the six degrees of separation of weird shit that keeps happening in my life. When I had my spring party at the Cock, he worked for me and said, 'I gotta tell you the story.'
He said, 'We were coke heads, and we sold your rights, we forged your signature, and we went on a wild $1,000 party in Toronto for the weekend. And then we came home, and that was it.'
So, my music was in Grand Theft Auto. It was in the Shaun of the Dead movie. And it was licensed all around the world. And, you know, they're collecting money on this shit—between the video games, movies. They say 60 to 80 million records were sold. Copies of it were sold, either digitally, on vinyl, or through licenses. That would have been a nice chunk of money for me at a dollar a record."
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