Nearly a century since his heyday, music hall legend Fred Barnes takes to the stage again at one of the capital’s best-known variety addresses, Wilton’s Music Hall, in Olivier Award winner Christopher Green’s new show Music Hall Monster. Who was the man himself? Why did his life and career end so sadly? Why is he largely forgotten? We’ve rounded up some background articles to fill you in before the show…
Fred Barnes (21 May 1885-23 October 1938) was a famous, openly gay music hall singer, whose most enduring hit, the 1907 self-penned ditty The Black Sheep of The Family, remarked upon the “a queer, queer world we live in”.
Barnes escaped from Birmingham and his butcher father to live more freely and find stage success in London. But the capital’s lifestyle also took its toll. He fell from grace, brought down by a familiar, modern range of addictions: sex, shopping, alcohol, and a need for celebrity. At the pinnacle of his fame in the 1920s, he was fabulously wealthy and sported the height of extravagant fashion with a marmoset monkey on his shoulder. By the mid-1930s, he was singing for pennies in Southend pubs with a pet chicken.
Penniless and ill with tuberculosis, Barnes ended up committing suicide, as his father had twenty-five years earlier. He was 53.
Find out more about Fred
Barnes was born in a bedroom above his father’s butcher’s shop in Saltley, Birmingham, England. He experienced extremes of success and failure, and as a young gay man escaped to London from his father and his father’s lifestyle.
Paul Bailey’s 2001 book, Three Queer Lives, tells the stories of a trio of largely forgotten performers: Naomi Jacob, Arthur Marshall and Fred Barnes.
The grandson of music hall songwriter Fred Godfrey pays tribute to Barnes here. ‘Barnes was unabashedly gay. Known to his friends as “Freda”, he was regarded as scandalous even by the relatively tolerant world of show business, and he was increasingly shunned in his later years.
This Guardian feature recalls the great music hall stars who had notable runs at Hackney Empire.
It was drinking which was to ruin Fred’s career. He missed performances, went on stage incapable of singing or dancing and generally put less and less care into his performances. This led to his being moved down the bills until he was finally back at first turn. Managers grew wary of him and soon his outstanding contracts were paid off and he was without work altogether.
