David Allen Coe

David Allen Coe
5" x 6"
ink and pencil on paper

The second in the mini series on sex and music is dedicated to the country singer David Allen Coe. I'd strongly recommend an interview by Al Goldstein for Midnight Blue that can be found on YouTube. It's the most memorable, uncanny interview I've heard in years. Al Goldstein is a fan and a match for Coe's rawness of speech, he comes out strong: "You're a fucking degenerate". Coe's response is to lol (I don't mean lots of love). Coe uses the 'f' word quite a bit (he also uses the 'n' word quite a bit too, but I leave that topic for some other time.) "Sometimes there's no other word to express what I mean" says Coe later in the interview. Coe didn't have an easy life, abandoned by his parents he's been in institutions for more than twenty years since he was nine, on dead row in Ohio for killing a fellow inmate who demanded oral sex. It left him scattered and full of hate, hate towards women, negros, but not towards homosexuals. While not being gay he continues to express warm feelings towards homosexuals, in fact the interview opens with Coe performing Fuck Anita Bryant (an anti-gay rights spokesperson). Being in prison for so long made him tough but it also meant for him that the only tenderness and intimacy he experienced was with men. In the interview he explains he was a virgin until the age of 27 when he had "his first piece of ass". Intimacy with another man is a normal thing in many societies where contact with girls outside marriage is taboo. When I visited India I really had to get used to the custom that men like to touch other men. Unlike David Allen Coe I found comfort and warmth with women when I grew up, and my object of adoration was breasts. David Allen Coe is not interested in big breasts, he prefers a nice ass. Without a blush he states that sexual attraction, when he grew up, was focused on a nice (man's) ass. Coe now lives with six women and, according to him, his attitude towards women has greatly improved. In the interview Coe is totally upfront and detailed about his sexual experiences. In his songs he doesn't shy away from sexual detail either, some of these songs are collected on the album 18 X-Rated Songs from which Cum Stains on My Pillow was featured in my Top 100 2008. Even though his songs are largely autobiographical, the experiences are much less of prowess than the songs suggest . The country star David Allen Coe is a character invented by, and based on the life of, David Allen Coe. You got to admire one's quest to become free after a life of hate and rejection.