Did Barry Manilow ever come out of the closet?
I used to work in the music industry and one friend of mine was his PR person for a while and another friend works at his label. Coincidentally, his former Musical Director and band member for more than 10 years worked with me on a performance I did in LA last year. Each of these people confirmed for me that he has a long-term (male) partner. Both the PR person and Record person agreed that it is his opinion that it is in his best interest to continue with the front that he is straight, or at the very least, leave it ambiguous. The thinking is that his fan base is mostly women, and they are not sure how they would react to the news that he is gay. It is particularly amusing to visit the Manilow forum that used to be on Usenet (maybe it is still there) because there are two groups of people–one that insists that he in no way is gay and the second group that has woken up and smelled the coffee. In his biography, he throws out a few little details to try to defuse the situation (i.e., he
