SHE DID SURVIVE
Overcoming hardship, Gaynor has lived her anthem
It’s been almost 40 years since Gloria Gaynor recorded one of the most enduring songs of the disco era. An anthem for jilted women everywhere, I Will Survive made the girl from New Jersey a household name.
To say that Gaynor is a survivor is an understatement. One of seven children, she grew up without a father, suffered abuse as a child and, once fame beckoned in the mid1970s, succumbed to a period of alcohol and drugs. She overcame those difficulties, thanks to her strong Christian faith — which helped, too, when her younger sister was brutally murdered in 1995.
She was born Gloria Fowles in New Jersey, where she still lives, and her dad left home before she was born.
“It can be debilitating growing up without a father,” Gaynor says. “I had no idea what a relationship between a man and a woman should be like, and also I suffered with abandonment issues throughout my life.”
In her 2013 autobiography, Gaynor recalled how she was molested by a neighbour when she was just five and then at 12 by her mother’s boyfriend. At 18, she was raped by the cousin of an exboyfriend.
“I just felt: ‘Well, this is what men are like and this is what life is going to be,’” she says. “I blamed myself and thought that if I hadn’t done this or that, then it wouldn’t have happened. I had nonsense in my head telling me I wasn’t worthy.
“I never told anybody because I felt people would look at me like I was weird, or think that I was weak. I didn’t tell my mother because I didn’t want to bother her. She was going through enough of her own craziness with a man who betrayed her with another woman, so I just kept quiet. But when I wrote about it, it was cathartic because it was almost like talking to a therapist.”
She started singing publicly in 1965, “when I was 22, so just old enough to go into bars.” She had her first big hit in 1975 with Never Can Say Goodbye.
With the release of I Will Survive three years later, Gaynor’s reputation as disco’s leading diva was cemented. In 1979, she married former policeman Linwood Simon, who became her manager. But with her growing fame and fortune came excess.
“I was partying too much and I wasn’t even enjoying it. I was doing it to not feel left out.
“Then one day, about 15 of us were having a party in our hotel suite and we were lying on the shag carpet, so you can tell how long ago this was,” she laughs. “We were doing drugs and drinking when suddenly I felt someone grab me by the collar and pull me up, saying: ‘That’s enough.’ Well, I looked around and no one was there. I was so shaken, I locked myself in the bathroom, saying ‘Oh my God’ over and over, until I realized that’s who it was: God. It took me a while to stop drinking because I liked champagne, but then I asked God to take away my taste for it and He did. I didn’t party like that again.”
Gaynor’s faith has sustained her through some difficult times, most notably in 1995 when her sister Irma was beaten to death on a street in New Jersey while trying to stop a man assaulting another woman.
“He was given 35 years and served 15,” Gaynor says, “When he came out of jail, he found my sister’s son and apologized to him, saying he hoped that one day he would forgive him. I forgave him immediately because I realized that when you don’t forgive, it’s like taking poison and hoping the other person dies.”
Gaynor has a new gospel album on the way. She has even launched a website, iwillsurvive.org.
“People can buy T-shirts and clothing and 10 per cent goes to the charity of the buyer’s choice,” she says. “They can also share their stories of survival to help inspire others.”
Few stories, though, could be more inspiring than Gaynor’s. But then, you didn’t think she’d just lay down and die, did you?