11/9/2022 0 Comments Stephen gately wiki![]() Otherwise it turns into some kind of sordid story.' My advice is: you're better just saying it, and it coming from you. It's out there now - they'll follow you until they get that picture of you and Eloy, or until someone else sells them the story. If you say nothing, they're just going to hound you. You either say, yes, I'm gay, or you say nothing at all. 'You can't deny it because you'll be lying, so that's not even an option. McAteer gave Gately the options as she saw them. 'That was something that was in the back of my mind,' admits Gately, 'Would I be harming the other guys' careers?' Was the outing of Gately about to overwhelm the promotional campaign, becoming the gay tail that wagged the mass-market dog? But Boyzone were about to release their Greatest Hits, a career and sales landmark. The band's label, Polydor, was supportive. ![]() This was uncharted territory for all concerned. Did Gately want to comment? Cue two weeks of nervy discussion between PR, management, record label and pop star. The Sun approached McAteer with the security guard's story. But anyone outside of the band was going to start looking at it, thinking, well who's that guy?' 'Eloy was obviously there, as other band members' wives and girlfriends were there. 'They always had to be conscious, particularly on the road, of people seeing them.' Ploys such as checking into hotels separately, five minutes apart, didn't bear much scrutiny. He was Eloy de Jong, a member of a Dutch boy band called - no sniggering at the back - Caught in the Act.Ĭaroline McAteer, Boyzone's publicist at the time, says that the relationship caused Gately even more stress. 'Not that I wanted to go out to gay clubs and bars.' But the singer had, eight months previously, met someone. I wasn't living my life fully,' the 30-year-old singer and actor now recalls. 'I felt very isolated and I blocked people out 'cause I was scared. He had had years of leading a lonely, 'compromised' existence. A security guard on Boyzone's tour had gone to the papers, selling a story that Gately was gay. ![]() 'Three weeks ago, Boyzone's Stephen Gately asked the Sun to help him come out,' the leader writer explained. 'Boyzone Stephen: "I'm gay and I'm in love"', screamed the front-page headline. If any of those rumours were true, the love that dare not speak its name would turn out to be a pop marketing crisis that could only spell d.i.s.a.s.t.e.r. Little wonder that none of the all-singin', all-dancin' show ponies from A1, Bad Boys Inc, Worlds Apart, 5ive, Another Level, Let Loose, 911, 'NSync, or Westlife had ever come out, despite rumours. The wet dream would die and record sales would tumble. In this prelapsarian era of all of seven years ago, if a boy band member were revealed to be homosexual, the very fabric of the pop myth would be rent asunder. Such, at least, was the prevailing view in an industry still little used to dealing with gay pop stars who weren't 'militantly' - or just flamboyantly - queer like Boy George, Jimmy Somerville, Pete Burns or Frankie Goes To Hollywood. We're not buying Boyzone records any more. ![]() Probably fancied the girlie-fans' brothers more. All those screaming girlies bedazzled by those smilin' Irish eyes, who saved up their pocket money to buy each new record by the Dublin five-piece? They were being peddled a lie. They'd been car racing or at the pub getting hammered - but Stephen had been reading his horoscopes and getting into crystals.' 'One time in an interview, we asked them what they'd been doing at the weekend. 'Everybody knew that Stephen was gay,' says Peter Loraine, former editor of Top of the Pops magazine. It was an open secret among the pop press, too. 'I don't see myself as really camp or flamboyant but I'm sure they all knew because I didn't have girlfriends, I was very secretive, kept to myself in terms of emotions. The singer thinks Walsh must have known from the outset, too. He had confided in his bandmates five months after the line-up had been assembled by svengali Louis Walsh in 1993 they told him 'we already knew'. ![]()
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