Gateways: How The Rocky Horror Picture Show Became the Unlikely Soundtrack to My Life

Welcome to our Gateways column, where Paste writers and editors explore the taste-defining albums, artists, songs or shows that proved to be personal “gateways” into a broader genre, music scene or an artist’s catalog at-large—for better or worse. Explore them all here.

It’s a few minutes before midnight on a Saturday. I’m standing at a middle urinal, heartbroken. To my left towers a man in stilettos, fishnet stockings and a black corset—topped off by an afro a mile in circumference. He’s cooling himself with a Chinese folding fan. To my right stands a short, impish figure with an untamed, orange beard wearing rainbow hot pants and a sequined top hat. I’m dressed in faded bluejeans and a plain, dark polo—the “normie” of our little bathroom conga line by any measure. Part of me is thinking that the three of us taking a piss alongside each other would make for a pretty amusing photo. Another part is still dazed and devastated by the fact that I had been dumped just a few hours earlier by my romantic partner of 15 years. As both an evening’s worth of beer and my life as I know it flush away down that urinal, the bathroom door swings open and a miked voice from the main theater gratingly shouts: “Welcome to The Rocky Horror Picture Show!”

I would like… if I may (You may, you may!), to take you (Take me, take me!) on a strange journey. (How strange was it? So strange this asshole wrote an essay about it!) Anyone foolish enough to try making sense of The Rocky Horror Picture Show need look no further for a fitting point of departure than this cordial invitation from the film’s neckless narrator. Little did I know when I first stumbled upon Richard O’Brien’s 1975 midnight cult classic and its rock ‘n’ roll soundtrack as a 12-year-old, 98-pound weakling that Rocky Horror would rose-tint my world for the next 30 years. For the “virgins” reading, O’Brien’s musical recounts the babes-in-the-wood affair of all-American couple Brad Majors (Asshole!) and Janet Weiss (Slut!) fatefully calling upon the castle of alien transvestite and diabolical mad scientist Dr. Frank-N-Furter for an evening of debauchery, decadence and cannibalism. It’s not exactly the type of moral one traditionally follows like a guiding star; and yet, Rocky Horror has curiously managed to become a campy, kinky and fishnetted beacon through many of my darkest nights. Suffice it to say, it’s been a very strange journey, indeed.

Oh, and don’t worry about that poor, heartbroken bastard above. We’ll come back to him in a bit. But first, we need to go back to where it all began, before I was a regular Frankie fan.

You might say that I fell in love with Rocky Horror at first lips. Patricia Quinn’s bright-red, vampiric smackers floated onto a dark screen as O’Brien’s soft, nasally voice began pining for his boyhood days of King Kong, Flash Gordon and the threat of mutant tarantulas. I was instantly glued to the television as if Frank-N-Furter’s sonic transducer itself had seduced me. Now, I recognize it as one of those rare, serendipitous moments when we are put on a cosmic collision course with a piece of pop culture that will forever change our lives. At 12 years old, I had no knowledge of the Rocky Horror phenomenon, midnight movies or any of the “gorgeous gals,” “thrills and chills” and “lotsa larfs and sex” promised by the soundtrack’s album art. I also didn’t know anything about transvestism, sweet or unsweetened, and my own sexual exploration had been limited to whatever body parts I could decipher on the scrambled sex channels that beamed down to my bedroom television once in a blue Transylvanian moon. No, a pair of UFL (Unidentified Floating Lips) had abducted me and probed my virgin ears with glam-rock overtures of outer space, battling androids and creatures brought to life in castle laboratories, and my small universe would never be the same again. Simple as that.

As it turned out, it wasn’t quite that simple. What I had inadvertently tuned in to that night was the first-ever cable broadcast of The Rocky Horror Picture Show in celebration of the film’s 20th anniversary. And like Janet before me, I had tasted blood and wanted more, more, more. Each week, I would scour the television listings in our local paper to see if this Rocky Horror thing would be playing again. In hindsight, I might have realized that I wouldn’t get another chance to see it on TV until the following Halloween, as would become a VH1 tradition. And I had absolutely no idea how to seek out a local midnight screening. In defense of my tween self, it was 1995. My family was still a solid year away from acquiring prehistoric dial-up internet, and I sure as hell wasn’t about to ask my straight-laced parents about this accidental encounter with sex, drugs and the butler from Clue in drag. (Ironically, I’d learn many years later that my mother had actually stood in line for Rocky Horror back in the late ‘70s at the Kings Court Theater on the University of Pittsburgh’s campus.)

I also had no older siblings or cousins who might shed light on what I had discovered, nor did any of my friends from school seem to know anything about The Rocky Horror Picture Show. As far as I knew, that song sung by the floating lips (“Science Fiction/Double Feature”) existed only in my fading memory. So, when the newspaper finally announced another airing the following Halloween, I was primed with the family VCR and a blank tape. To this day, that tape nests in a box of VHS cassettes deceptively labeled “Rocky and Bullwinkle: DO NOT TAPE OVER!!!”

Having my own copy of The Rocky Horror Picture Show changed everything. Suddenly, I had the power to time-warp back and forth through Brad and Janet’s night out (It was a Days Inn!), learning all the other songs not sung by disembodied lips, thrusting my adolescent pelvis to the “Time Warp” and, for the life of me, trying to figure out what the hell was going on in this bizarre clusterfuck of a movie. Oh, and why was a strutting Tim Curry in stockings belting out rock-and-roll songs even more arousing than a young, girl-next-door Susan Sarandon running around half-naked in a bra and slip? In some respects, this was my own “virgin sacrifice” into the Rocky Horror community long before I even realized there was a cult following out there that predated me altogether. For years, the Rocky faithful had sought out any and all bootlegs and copies of the movie because 20th Century-Fox (Fuck the mouse!) had needlessly feared that putting out an official release for home audiences would emit a laser beam of pure antimatter right through box-office receipts from midnight screenings. So, to have my own copy, VCR squiggles and all, at such a young age put me at an advantage over Rocky Horror fans from a more primitive time. I devoured every second of that heavily edited VH1 broadcast and smuggled this favorite piece of contraband to friends’ houses for hangouts and sleepovers the way most young men pinch from their Dads’ hidden stacks of Playboy.

I also still possess the other essential artifact from my earliest, hazy days of Rocky Horror fanaticism: the film’s original soundtrack on CD, courtesy of Columbia House CD Club—a scam that offered an initial baker’s dozen of popular CDs for couch change in exchange for a lifetime of indentured servitude. I’m not sure how much that soundtrack ended up costing me after future obligations and interplanetary shipping fees, but I still spin it three decades later on my way to midnight screenings. It skips during the final peel out of “Hot Patootie, Bless My Soul,” but it’s got a permanent, warped place in my heart. As does the entire soundtrack. So many inaugurals are represented here: one of the first albums I bought for myself; one of the first albums that made me think about how music, images and stories could magically fuse together; and, most endearingly, the first album I fell madly, head-over-six-inch-high-heels in love with. I still remember poring over and absorbing every inch of that pin-up caked-white-meets-double-decker-bus-red album art. That record lived in the CD changer of my parents’ car for years, soundtracked road trips across state lines for college visitations and acted as a litmus test for prospective friends, Homecoming dates and even the girl who’d one day leave me heartbroken at that urinal. Yes, the Rocky Horror Picture Show soundtrack, for better or worse, would even become my wingman.

Rocky Horror—the stage show, the film or the midnight screenings—is not everyone’s cup of fishnets. That’s probably a good thing; as the character Dr. Scott observes, “society must be protected.” (Kiss-ass!) That said, I’ve yet to find a pair of ears that can’t appreciate something in the music. In the early ‘70s, Richard O’Brien cobbled together the simple songs and stock narrative that would become The Rocky Horror Picture Show between gigs as a struggling London actor. He pulled most of the subject matter right from his own boyhood fascinations: rock ‘n’ roll, B-horror movies, comic books, weightlifting magazines and lingerie ads. As a result, Rocky’s songs offer something for almost everyone.

The B-movie roll call of “Science Fiction/Double Feature” drips with almost lustful nostalgia for a bygone era of celluloid schlock and movie palaces while “I’m Going Home” pits Frank as our fave fallen alien this side of Bowie. Meat Loaf’s “Hot Patootie” leaves tire tracks down the backs of Elvis and Buddy Holly before skidding into a teen cautionary tale (“Eddie”) befitting a lowdown, cheap, little punk. There’s cornball romance (“Dammit Janet”), sexual awakenings (“Touch-a, Touch-a, Touch-a, Touch Me”) and all the glam decadence your steamy loins can stand as Tim Curry makes the entire galaxy wet on “Sweet Transvestite.” There’s even a faux dance craze that turned out to be, get this, an actual global sensation. (We’re looking at you, Time Warp.) It’s a compilation, nay a simmering cauldron, of familiar sounds, classic themes and juvenilia spiked with some elusive ingredient that empowers even the meekest among us to slip on a wobbly pair of pumps and declare ourselves the baddest bitch in space—or at least the biggest hotdog in the castle.

For years, I was that hotdog from a safe distance, opting to indulge my little obsession as a congregation of one. I’d read about midnight screenings of Rocky Horror, but I, like Brad and Janet, wasn’t the type to go knocking on strange doors in the middle of the night. Finally, in my late 20s, a group of my co-workers and I plotted our virgin voyage to have our cherries popped at Chicago’s Music Box Theatre—still my spiritual mecca for all things Rocky to this day. We rolled deep in costume, too: a green-smocked Frank, a churchgoing Janet, a Rocky in golden sneakers, a tuxedoed Transylvanian and me, our Eddie. As the meatiest member of our ensemble, I faithfully rocked a black leather vest from a vintage thrift shop and a white motorcycle scarf with jeans and boots. I rounded out the look with an Elvis wig (that looked like it had been coiffed by a weedwacker), blackened eyes and fake blood, a silver motorcycle helmet I had fashioned by wrapping a green army helmet with duct tape and a small, plastic saxophone with a strap borrowed from my laptop bag. As we stood on line outside the theater that cold Halloween night, literally shivering with antici… (Say it!) …pation, I had no way of knowing it would be my first of more than 200 screenings spent in the bosom company of strangers just as twisted as me.

If you’ve yet to surrender your V-Card at a midnight Rocky Horror screening, there’s no real way to prepare you for the salacious silliness that transpires. Oaths are taken, virgins are “sacrificed” and rules are given the middle finger. A shadowcast of actors in full costume usually act out the movie during the screening with varying sophistication of set pieces and props. As the cast move through the theater performing, audience members (many dressed like characters themselves or at least in scant, sexy attire) participate in an à la carte set of traditions that includes dancing the Time Warp; talking back to and interrupting the movie via an elaborate, evolving script of dirty dialogue and groan-inducing zingers; and hurling all matter of items like toilet paper, playing cards and paper plates across the theater in response to onscreen cues. (Great Scott!) In other words, Rocky was rocking “meta,” “multimedia”’ and “full immersion” decades before these terms became buzzwords or staples in college media courses. Bitch, please.

Going to Rocky Horror is never quite the same experience twice, and that was a large part of what kept luring me back long after I could recite the movie by heart. It was always the best party in town on a given Friday or Saturday night, and if I didn’t have a group to go with or virgins to drag along and corrupt, I could always make like-minded friends there. I loved that a soft-spoken type like me who grew up shy could get a laugh from a couple hundred people by nailing a callback. I appreciated that Rocky Horror, a proud, longtime friend of the LGBTQ+ community, embraced people as they came and never passed judgment on those who wandered in as long as they reciprocated that kindness. And, of course, I never got tired of singing my favorite songs with a theater full of fans who knew every single word and even alternative lyrics we’d make up. In that way, regulars were more like groupies or some rocking band’s devoted fan base than moviegoers. We were a DIY operation with handmade merch and rock ‘n’ roll fashion who never got pissed off when our favorite soundtrack played the same songs week after week after week. I started collecting a pin to put on my Eddie jacket for each screening I attended. I also got into the habit—one I practice to this day—of buying virgins a Rocky pin when I learn that it’s their first time. When I retired that vest several years back, you could barely see the black leather anymore. Just hundreds of pins.

Okay, let’s time-warp back about seven years ago to that thirtysomething me in the bathroom. I had driven down to the Music Box that night on autopilot from Milwaukee after having been told that the woman I loved no longer loved me. At that point, I hadn’t gone to Rocky Horror in several months. If I’m honest, I’m not sure why I went that night either. There’s something about a crisis that can steer you toward old habits (good or bad ones), and I think I just wanted to be anywhere but alone with my thoughts on that Saturday night. As I listened to virgins comically fake orgasms and stood for the Transylvanian Anthem, I remember thinking that it had been a mistake to come. Rocky Horror, my favorite place to be in the world, suddenly felt like the last place I’d ever want to be. The movie rolled. I paid no notice as that night’s Trixie did a burlesque striptease to “Science Fiction/Double Feature,” and by the time Brad had proposed to Janet during “Dammit Janet,” I had gotten up and walked out of the theater altogether. Still buzzed from a few quick beers and a couple shots of whatever they had poured me at a bar down the street, I slumped deeply into a lumpy chair in the lobby.

Now, several people know I went to Rocky Horror that night. But here’s the part of the story that I’ve never told anyone before. After a few seconds of sitting in that chair and staring at the peeling paint on the ceiling, the theater doors swung open, and the giant Frank-N-Furter from the urinal to my left walked over to me. I’m not sure what I must have looked like as I left the theater, but he had followed me out to check on me. I’ll never forget what happened next. He placed a large hand on each of my shoulders and hoisted me up on my feet. He asked how I was, but I couldn’t find any words. So, he pulled me into his chest and hugged me. And, as if on cue, I began crying right into the very large corset of the largest Frank-N-Furter anyone’s ever seen. After I had a few seconds to compose myself, he led me back into the theater and sat me down with his friends. We all Time Warped, called Brad an asshole and Janet a slut and took turns cracking each other up with dumb one-liners and crude callbacks. And, like everyone around us, we sang every last word to every last song until the credits rolled. Then we all wandered out into the night and back to a world where lips don’t float, castles don’t fly and fishnets and high heels might seem tacky to some. A world where, as it turns out, Brads and Janets don’t always make it and love doesn’t always last. And somehow, as the night air engulfed me, I knew that I was going to be alright.

Ever since that night, I’ve treated midnight screenings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show like therapy: Even when I think I don’t need to go, that’s probably when I really should be there. It’s my monthly (sometimes weekly) maintenance. I now keep a weathered eye out for others who might be going through something. I’ve come across a few over the years. No giant bear hugs; I can’t pull off a move that bold. But I have extended a kindness or two when the time seemed right. Mostly, I go to yell out tasteless jokes, cue the virgins to throw things and help curate the experience. It always gives me a smile to see young people half my age singing the songs I love, fumbling through the Time Warp like I once did or mustering up the courage to shout something outrageous into a dark, crowded theater. Basically, I hope this silly, stupid, beautiful thing of ours goes on and continues to be a friend to the lonely, the marginalized and the misunderstood. Or to anyone else who needs it. Like me.

In the past, when curious outsiders have asked me why the Rocky Horror experience continues to seduce imaginations nearly a half-century later, I have usually referred them to the community’s company line: “Don’t dream it, be it.” You could do far worse for messaging. Frank’s words of empowerment—even if from the lips of a crazed, murderous villain—have inspired countless lives, and they look damn good bedazzled on a piece of merch. As I age out of my fishnets, though, I suspect that this slogan actually shortchanges what Richard O’Brien’s creation manages to gift to those who fully embrace it. Rocky acts as a vessel that we pour ourselves into—all our passions, pain, frustrations and confusion—and, in return, it possesses this uncanny knack for availing us of the very thing needed at that time: a community, a stage, a safe space, an escape or a mad scientist’s laboratory to figure out both who we are and who we want to be when the house lights go on, the music fades out and the toilet paper clings for dear life to our six-inch pumps. I tell people now that The Rocky Horror Picture Show survives precisely because it helps us endure—and hopefully, one day, thrive.

That’s the reason that I continue to venture out to meet my fellow creatures of the night and suspect that I’ll continue to do so for some time to come. This strange fraternity, this peculiar group therapy, this unconventional convention, this silly and naughty rite of passage, this rock ‘n’ roll fever dream that began with a pair of floating lips on a boy’s bedroom television set and ended up becoming the unlikely soundtrack to a life full of love, confusion, heartbreak and celebration. If it still has the power to do that all these years later, then what more can I say but what we chant at the beginning of each screening: “Let there be lips!”