And the Band Played On is Randy Shilts’ epic (600+ pages) documentation of the early days of the AIDS crisis.

It is an extraordinary political and historical document; not just because of the breadth of its coverage but also because of its timing. Shilts’ book was published in 1987; six years after the first AIDS diagnosis in the USA and the same year that the first AIDS ‘treatments’ – Zidovudine (AZT) – were made available. It was also the year that he received his own AIDS diagnosis.

Shilts had the benefit – if that is the right word – of having been the San Francisco Chronicle’s AIDS correspondent, pretty much from the start of the crisis. That, undoubtedly, gave him a grandstand seat from which to witness the political, personal and medical machinations that accompanied the emergence of AIDS.

These were what he documented in And the Band Played On, backed up by extensive research, hundreds of interviews and, of course, his own personal experience. It all added up to a conclusion of ‘too little, too late’ – something that most of the gay community and some of the medical community knew only too well.

But for the wider population – particularly in the USA – there was generally ignorance, not helped by the jaw-dropping intransigence of politicians. To Shilts, awareness only began to change following the death of Rock Hudson.

“[AIDS] had seemed a comfortably distant threat to most of those who had heard of it before, the misfortune of people who fit into rather distinct classes of outcasts and social pariahs. But suddenly…when a movie star was diagnosed with the disease…the AIDS epidemic became palpable and the threat loomed everywhere.”

Of course, research notwithstanding, Shilts’ book is still influenced by his own personal opinions and not everyone agreed with him. For example, he was critical of those who had opposed the closure of San Francisco’s bathhouses.

And the Band Played On was written and published at a time of immense fear, anger, grief and uncertainty. We were all affected by that to a greater or lesser extent – including Shilts – and that’s one thing we must never forget.

But I also wonder if there might be some value in looking back and reviewing how we, as a ‘community’, responded to see if we can learn anything from that. On a broader level, have our politicians and the media learned anything or will political expediency and newspaper sales still take predence over a rational response to any emerging crisis?

Randy Shilts died from an AIDS-related condition on 17th February 1994.