Tales of The City -- The Musical!

JAKE SHEARS, the blue-eyed frontman of the disco-loving band Scissor Sisters, says he still vividly remembers first encountering “Tales of the City,” Armistead Maupin’s freewheeling novel about a group of searchers, swingers and eccentrics at play in 1976 San Francisco.

He was 13. “I hadn’t necessarily figured out I was gay yet, and these two guys in my hometown who were lovers befriended me,” said Mr. Shears, now 32. “And I remember one of them one day passed me the book and said, ‘I think you’ll really like this.’”

Sure enough, he did. And so it was that when Jeff Whitty, the Tony-winning writer of the book for “Avenue Q,” approached Mr. Shears in 2006 about a possible musical version of that first novel and one of its many sequels, Mr. Shears signed up immediately, pulling in John Garden, a Scissor Sisters’ collaborator and touring keyboardist, as well. They wrote their first song — “Plus One,” an ode to an unexpected pregnancy — that day in a Chicago arena where the band was playing. (It’s still in the show.)

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