How big would a rock star would have to be to come out in the 1970s?

so during the 1960s and 70s a number of musical stars who were gay or bisexual became very famous, however almost came out, or if they did only partly, Elton John came out as "bisexual" in the 1970s however married a woman in the early 1980s and never had a public relationship with a man during the hight of his career, Freddie Mercury was never open during his life, David Bowie was out as bi, however latter took it back, Mick Jagger fessed up to messing around with men (including Bowie) any ways my question is what effect would it have if one (or all) of these men had come out as fully gay and lived as gay men (in the case of Bowie and Jagger, have them be gay) in the 1970s?
 
I think the first openly Gay British pop star was Boy George who never hid his sexuality. He got a lot of abuse but I dont think it ever hurt his career and he probably got sales because of the ambiguity of his looks.

As a straight man I cant possibly understand the fear of being outed but I really think it would not have hurt certain pop stars like David Bowie, Mark Bolan or Mick Jagger. It would probably have destroyed lesser acts who relied on TV appearances to sell there records.
 
There'd be controversy at any level of success. Imagine John Lennon coming out? There will be a backlash from the same people who decried Heavy Metal as 'Satanic'.
 
Imagine John Lennon coming out?

John Lennon's recent public acknowledgement about his homosexuality has caused surprisingly little discontent, even from the people who you would expect to protest such tendencies:

"Yeah, normally I guess I would be against homosexuality and all that. It is a sin, after all. But to be honest, I'd rather have Lennon together with men than with Yoko. I mean for God's sake, that Satanic woman broke up a British national treasure!"
 
There'd be controversy at any level of success. Imagine John Lennon coming out? There will be a backlash from the same people who decried Heavy Metal as 'Satanic'.

Yes but nobody listened to loonies like Mary Whitehouse, every time she opened her mouth to decry something it immediately became mainstream much to her fury.
:p
 
I think the first openly Gay British pop star was Boy George who never hid his sexuality. He got a lot of abuse but I dont think it ever hurt his career and he probably got sales because of the ambiguity of his looks.

As a straight man I cant possibly understand the fear of being outed but I really think it would not have hurt certain pop stars like David Bowie, Mark Bolan or Mick Jagger. It would probably have destroyed lesser acts who relied on TV appearances to sell there records.

He wasn't openly gay, he remained pretty elusive about his sexuality until I think the Crying Game. Even Boy George felt he had to remain in the closet in the 1980s.
 
He wasn't openly gay, he remained pretty elusive about his sexuality until I think the Crying Game. Even Boy George felt he had to remain in the closet in the 1980s.

Thats not how I remember it. Perhaps for the US market he didnt feel he could be so open but in the UK he was out. Without the internet you could be one thing in one country (or even city) and be another person elsewhere, now every fart, burp and wrinkle is world property within milliseconds we forget even just 10 years ago things were utterly different.
 
I think it would be more likely for a woman to do it than a man (and not have it affect their career), certainly in the 70's. Someone like Joan Jett could probably do it in the late 70's with little or no impact.
 
Any rock start couldn't come out as fully gay and live like a gay man as there wasn't a gay scene (in the public eye) to come out into.

Trying to transplant the morals of 2013 into 1973 won't work as the gay scene was tiny compared to today. So if rock legend had declared his gayness it would be a footnote rather than a statement of intent in his lifestyle.
 

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Coming out hampered Elton John's career for a few years, and he came out when he was at the top of his game, so I suppose the answer is, "Bigger than the biggest pop star in the world."
 

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Wasn't Jobriath the first openly gay rock star? Maybe he doesn't count, since he never quite lived up to his hype.
 
I'm a little surprised Janis Joplin didn't get the jump on all these glass-closet bis and just openly admit to her personal preferences circa 1970.

She's the one mainstream rock star at that point with almost nothing to lose from doing that. Much moreso than Bowie, whose career rise relied a lot on teen girl fandom £££ (because he was big in the UK, not really America.)

But a counterculture muso like Joplin is really the earliest who could do this--Dusty Springfield would have been utterly destroyed if she came out as a lesbian in the sixties. (Sort of like Brian Epstein? Or am I repeating urban myth there?)
 
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