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Gloria Gaynor’s eyes light up as she tells me about headlining Brazil’s Rock In Rio music festival last September. “It was wonderful,” she enthuses. “That huge audience, more than 150,000 people, singing along with me…” Just months before she’d topped the bill at Bal de la Rose, in Monte Carlo for Prince Albert’s charity foundation; and Gloria performs in England in August as part of a seven-date world tour. “I haven’t just survived, I’ve thrived,” she says.
There are no mirror balls in her beautiful New Jersey home, and no sign of the detritus of extravagant parties, but at 81, Gloria continues to embody the enduring essence of New York disco culture just as surely as her 1978 anthem I Will Survive, supplied its theme tune. Life as a rollercoaster is an overused metaphor, but nothing else does justice to Gaynor’s backstory. The highs have been abundant and exhilarating; the lows soul-sapping and shocking. As well as career-threatening injuries, the double-Grammy winning star has endured sexual assault, her sister’s murder, divorce, and a legal battle over royalties. But perhaps the most startling moment came in 1985 when, surrounded by drink and drugs, Gloria says “the Holy Spirit grabbed me by the collar”.
Physically grabbed? I ask. “Absolutely, physically. A real thing, an awesome thing.” She raced to the bathroom, shaking, “And then I realised I was having an epiphany. God was telling me, ‘Gloria, that’s enough’.”
It has been fifty years since Gaynor was crowned “Queen of the Discotheques” in Manhattan, following the success of her first hit Never Can Say Goodbye – a No.2 hit here. Grammy-winning chart-topper, I Will Survive came three years later and lives on in film and TV soundtracks and karaoke bars everywhere. Penned by former Motown songwriters Perren and Fekaris, it combined a message of self-discovery and empowerment with a driving beat and Gaynor’s glorious heartfelt vocals. In her words, “It celebrates the tenacity of the human spirit and makes you feel ‘I can do this’.” Her third biggest hit was 1983’s I Am What I Am – a global gay anthem. But if Gaynor has laurels, she’s not resting on them. In February she released her latest single Fida Known, a funky mid-tempo groove co-written by Gloria, which manages to evoke her past glories while feeling thoroughly contemporary. The hook catches instantly: ‘Fida known that you never woulda loved me forever/I’da found someone better who could hold me tight,’ she sings. Her best songs share a simple universal theme – don’t accept second best, stand up for yourself. Fida Known is a taster for her five-song EP, Happy Tears, released next month, and Gloria performs in England in August as part of a seven-date world tour.
Gloria’s father, nightclub singer Daniel Fowles, deserted her family before she was born. She was raised by her mother, Queenie May, and molested by one of her boyfriends, when she was twelve. “There was always music at home – gospel, R&B, a little bit of jazz and a little bit of country. One of my brothers loved country, we told him we had found him on the doorstop,” she jokes.
She received her first standing ovation at a school Christmas show but didn’t realise Queenie knew about her voice until they were cooking together. “She’d had surgery and couldn’t sing and asked if I could sing Lullaby Of The Leaves” – a jazz standard popularized by Ella Fitzgerald – “I was nearly crying. I hadn’t realised she knew I could sing. It was like performing for the Queen of England.” Years later, babysitting for friends, she recalls following the footsteps of the person living upstairs as she sang. “I went into a club one night and was called up to sing. The man upstairs was the owner of the club – I was 21. I sang Save Your Love For Me by Nancy Wilson.” Gloria took part in a local singing contest soon after. “Dionne Warwick, who’d already released records, was in the contest as well. I thought if I’m going to beat her, I can’t just sing, I have to make myself memorable. So I sang Etta James’s Something’s Got A Hold On Me” – a bluesy gospel number with a two-octave vocal range – “the whole audience sang along and I won…” Two men working for Johnny Nash’s Jocida record label saw her triumph and took her to Nash who released her first single, She’ll Be Sorry, in 1968.
Gaynor has strong memories on working on the Afro-American chitlin circuit with early bands. She recalls, “We complained to one club owner because he never gave us drinks. So he gave us a bottle of Southern Comfort on condition we drank it all that night. I never smoked or drank before I went onstage, but the band were so plastered it was hilarious. Thank goodness it was our last set of the night.”
Sadly, Queenie died in 1970, three years before Gloria was signed to Columbia Records. Her second single with them was Never Can Say Goodbye, a breakout smash in 1975 – the year New York DJs crowned her their disco queen. Three years later, her career nearly ended prematurely when a mock tug-of-war on stage with her two male backing singers misfired. “I’d slung my microphone to them and they’d grabbed the chord but they didn’t hold on to it, so when I pulled, I fell backwards over a stage monitor. I finished the show and went home but when I woke up the next morning, I couldn’t move. I was paralysed from the waist down. I was in hospital in New York for three months.” Six months later she recorded I Will Survive in LA, still wearing a back brace. “As soon as I read the lyrics I knew it would be a hit. I knew people would relate to it as I did.”
Columbia dumbly relegated the song to the B-side of her ’78 single Substitute, but DJs swiftly flipped it, propelling it to No 1. The following year, Gaynor married Linwood Simon, a former New York City Police Transit officer, who became her manager. She has said he refused to have children and liked spending the money she earned. Champagne, drugs and partying became part of her life before her spiritual encounter. Simon worked her hard, booking her to perform constantly during the ’80s and ’90s, especially in the UK and Europe, where she sang to backing tracks. She’s had a ten-piece backing band since the turn of the century, including a horn section and a trio of background singers. “Gloria Gaynor is a luxury item,” she has said. “Either you can afford her or you can’t.”
The couple divorced in 2005 and Gaynor rebuilt her life and career, publishing her “cathartic” autobiography in 2013. Her turbulent life has been turned into documentary film, Gloria Gaynor: I Will Survive, and a new biopic, I Will Survive: The Gloria Gaynor Story. Her back problem returned in 2019, requiring 18 hours of surgery. Gloria now does CrossFit two to three times a week with her personal trainer to keep in shape, and hosts dinner parties up to twelve times a year, creating her own dishes like Chicken a la Gaynor. “I feel like a butterfly coming out of a cocoon,” she says. “I still have lots of things I want to do – a whole bucket list. I want to do a gospel concert in Carnegie Hall” – to perform her Grammy-winning 2019 gospel album, Testimony. Headlining New York’s Radio City Music Hall and visiting Machu Picchu in Peru appeal too, but first comes Deva Fest in August.
“I love UK audiences. You were a little reserved when I first started. I had to do a little speech saying there would be no reserve at the show, and that the person next to you is discrete and won’t tell anyone if you let your hair down. But UK audiences are very enthusiastic now and I know you’ll sing along with me.” I Will Survive is still in the set of course but she says, “When I sing it now, I’m singing it for other people, hoping it helps them get to where I am and beyond.”
*Gloria Gaynor performs at Deva Fest (Cholmondeley Castle, Cheshire, England) on August 9. Tickets from https://www.devafest.co.uk/book-saturday-tickets
Gloria’s biopic I Will Survive: The Gloria Gaynor Story and the documentary film, Gloria Gaynor: I Will Survive are available to watch on Prime Video. Her new single When I See You is out now and her five Song EP entitled, “Happy Tears,” will be released digitally worldwide on June 6th. You can pre-save the digital EP using this link: https://orcd.co/happytearsgg
