Barry Manilow opened up about keeping his sexuality a secret due to his fears coming out would jeopardize his career.
Barry Manilow opened up about keeping his sexuality a secret due to his fears coming out would jeopardize his career.
During a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the 80-year-old singer, who revealed he was gay in 2017, shared that he struggled with hiding his sexual orientation for years.
“I didn’t want my career to go away. I love it. I’m grateful for it. But it was a burden to keep it quiet,” Manilow said. “I was always worried.
“Every interview, ‘They’re going to ask me whether I’m gay or not.’ Nobody ever did, by the way. They never asked me the $64 question.”
The Grammy Award winner recalled an exchange that he said he had with Clive Davis in the 1980s during which the record producer noted that music legend Elton John’s career was damaged after he revealed his sexual orientation.
“He said, ‘You know, Elton John came out as bisexual. No artist should ever do that. It’ll hurt your career,’” Manilow told the outlet.
John, 76, came out as bisexual at the age of 29 in a 1976 interview with Rolling Stone. The “Bennie and the Jets” singer was a global rock star at the time. When he was 45 in 1992, John said he was “quite comfortable being gay” during another interview with Rolling Stone.
Davis, 91, revealed that he was bisexual in his 2013 memoir, “The Soundtrack of My Life.
