Sylvester Live Album Fleshes Out His Legend

Sylvester live at the Opera House, by Phil Bray

“Live at the Opera House” presents a clearer picture of the ‘70s disco icon from San Francisco.

To the extent that we know Sylvester in 2024, it’s as a electronic dance music pioneer for “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” and “Dance (Disco Heat),” and as a gay, disco drag icon from San Francisco in the 1970s. Both of those shorthands leave a lot out. His Step II from 1978 provides a fuller presentation of Sylvester’s music, as it features the electronics of Patrick Cowley on songs were contemporary with Giorgio Moroder’s work with Donna Summer. It also features more conventional disco, florid ballads and churchy soul, much of which lives inside camp quotation marks.

The new Live at the Opera House makes it easier to fully understand someone who has always felt like a ‘70s phenomenon. That’s in part because he and Cowley both died from AIDS-related illnesses in the 1980s and didn’t get a chance to have second acts, but the new three-album/two-CD set Live at the Opera House captures a show from 1979 at San Francisco’s War Memorial Opera House that genuinely fleshes out the Sylvester story.

In his liner notes, Joshua Gamson writes that the show served as a celebration of San Francisco’s queer community. “A Rolls-Royce dropped off one crew, and another group of queens piled out of a garbage truck,” he wrote. “For gay San Franciscans and the people who loved them, who had known Sylvester from his raucous local shows, or from the dance floor, or just from seeing him around the Castro with his broad, shy smile and his dogs, it was like your cousin had just become a movie star.” It was such an event that Sylvester was given the keys to the city during the show.

More than 3,200 people attended, and Sylvester gave them cinematic-scaled cabaret. The show has an obvious dramatic structure, musically fleshed out by a 26-piece orchestra. That orchestra doesn’t always present the songs at their best, and some grooves sound a little pedestrian when retrofitted to a band of that size. When the horns kick in, the opening “Body Strong” sounds like it could be a musical segment on Cher’s variety show, though I doubt Sylvester would count that as a criticism.

The orchestra serves the range of material well though, and it handles the dynamics as professionally as you’d expect. Allen Toussaint’s “Happiness” feels genuinely epic at almost nine minutes as the energy builds and ebbs then builds again. The size of the group made a statement though, as did the venue because the trappings of high art and grandeur weren’t always there for an openly queer artist, and when they were for Sylvester, it’s clear from the responses that the audience felt like the red carpet had been rolled out for them as well.

Everything is over the top, and that’s a fact not a complaint. “Happiness” is one of the shorter tracks on the album, while “Dance (Disco Heat)” and “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” both stretch out into the 15-minute range. Future Weather Girls Martha Wash and Izora Rhodes sing backing vocals about dancing with religious fervor topped only by Sylvester, who soared over them with a gospel-trained falsetto that remained as full and dynamic as it was at the start of the show.

That said, Live at the Opera House is best heard as a document because Sylvester made choices that likely worked better in the room than on record. He brings fabulousness to every song, and while you really can hear it, it’s not enough save his version of Barry Manilow’s “Could it be Magic” from its inner cheese. He goes for big notes and big gestures so quickly in Quincy Jones’ “Everything Must Change” that the song wore out its welcome for me. Throughout, Sylvester starts songs at peak drama and tries to take them up from there, and his ebullience and star power makes that work more than it you’d expect, but it doesn’t always.

The album documents an aesthetic as he ranges from Billie Holliday to The Beatles to quiet storm soul to Manilow that feels unified by a sense of purpose. Almost every song feels like a statement, one designed to speak somehow to being queer and Black in that moment. Like the best rock stars, Sylvester unifies it through the strength and clarity of his persona. He makes the Live at the Opera House show sound logical, almost obvious, and he serves as the focal point that makes it celebratory for him as well as the crowd.