Barry Manilow says coming out earlier ‘would have killed’ his career

Barry Manilow has said that coming out sooner than he did “would have killed” his career.

The singer, who was recently diagnosed with lung cancer, opened up about his coming out journey in a 27 May interview with the LA Times.

“I’ve never been one of the guys,” he told the publication when discussing why he has never been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. “I don’t think about awards and parties and stuff like that,” he continued.

“I’m very lucky – I live in the most gorgeous place I’ve ever seen and I have the most wonderful partner that you can imagine. I’m grateful he’s chosen to share his life with me. We’ve been together for over 46 years, and we still laugh and we still love each other. That’s the greatest award I’ll ever get.”

Manilow married his husband, music producer Garry Kief, in 2014, three years before the singer publicly came out as gay.

When asked if the world has looked at him differently since then, he said “it was a non-event”.

‘I never really hid it’

“Nobody gave a s***,” he continued. “They all knew. I never really hid it, but in the 70s and 80s, that would have killed the career, and I didn’t want to do that. So I just never talked about it.”

He concluded: “Garry and I are just two guys that live in a house on a hill with two dogs that we love.”

Manilow also touched on his recent cancer diagnosis, for which he has been undergoing treatment. The singer had to cancel a number of shows to recover, causing him to take his longest break since the pandemic.

“Since the surgery, I can’t go on the road,” he said. “Ninety minutes of screaming in tune, which is what I do for a living, I’m not up for that yet. I will be, but it’s taking a long time to get my voice back. They warned me that I’d have to learn to breathe again. So these days, I get up, I go to my piano and I try to be creative. Before I know it, the afternoon’s over.”

He went on to share his reaction to receiving the initial diagnosis when doctors found a cancerous tumour on his lungs following a stint of bronchitis.

“When they told me, I was on the road, and I just went back to sound check. What else could I do? I never thought cancer would get me, it wasn’t in the cards,” he said.

“They wanted to get rid of it as soon as possible, so we made a deal: I’d finish the couple of weeks of shows that I had, then I’d go to the hospital and they’d remove it. It was supposed to be a no-brainer — it hadn’t spread yet, thank goodness. But then my AFib kicked in and acid reflux kicked in and pneumonia kicked in. They rushed me to the ICU for seven days.”

Manilow also revealed that he had a very close call. “They said at one point – I didn’t hear them say this but I heard that they did say it – ‘We don’t want to lose him.’ It’s all a total blur now. When they finally brought me back to my lovely room at the Eisenhower [medical center], I weighed 128 pounds.”

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