http://www.timesonline.co...869799.ece




Boyzone singer Stephen Gately has been found dead at the age of 33, it was reported today.

Gately was believed to have been holidaying in Majorca when he died yesterday, according to a newspaper.

Boyzone manager Louis Walsh told the News of the World: "We're all absolutely devastated. I'm in complete shock. I was only with him on Monday at an awards ceremony. We don't know much about what's happened yet. .....

It's going to be one of those years , very sad, not into the boy band groups music thing but the guy was a nice man, and 33 is to young for anyone to die.

R.I.P.



Like this track , but don't tell anyone

Man, I used to be a big Boyzone fan This is so unexpected! I wonder what they will say caused his death... Wow.
So many stars that have passed away this year, it's crazy.

That's terrible, such a young guy. R.I.P.

R.I.P.

this is really shocking news

this is tragic. wonder if he had a pre existing condition.

I swear to god, I was randomly thinking about this guy yesterday. Very sad.

http://www.guardian.co.uk...y-pop-star

You would have a hard time positioning the late Stephen Gately as a musical pioneer, at least based on the records he made: with the best will in the world, it seems unlikely that the treacly oeuvre of Boyzone or indeed his version of the Watership Down theme Bright Eyes will ring down the ages as an example of thrilling, boundary-breaking pop music. But in one sense Gately, who died on Saturday aged 33 (not from drugs, or suicide his family insist), was a pioneer in the pop world, albeit an unwitting and unwilling one: the first member of a boyband to come out as gay, in the Sun in June 1999.

In one sense, it came as no surprise. The symbiotic relationship between gay men and teen pop dates back half a century: the charts had barely begun when the homosexual impresario Larry Parnes began flooding them with pseudonymous teen idols called things like Marty Wilde, Billy Fury and Tommy Steele.

In the 1980s, there were plenty of openly gay pop stars, from Jimmy Somerville to Frankie Goes To Hollywood's Holly Johnson, but while boybands such as Take That were marketed as aggressively to gay men as they were to teenage girls, something of the closet still clung to their world.

Unlike the edgy Frankie Goes To Hollywood or the politically-minded Somerville, boybands existed solely to provide unthreatening light entertainment. Rumours regularly circulated on the sexuality of various boyband members, but were never confirmed, presumably for fear of alienating part of that audience.

Boyzone's manager Louis Walsh later claimed in an interview with The Irish Times that had he known of Gately's sexuality, he would have thought twice about including him in the band: "It wasn't cool, then, to have a gay guy in the band," he said, adding that Gately was "absolutely paranoid" about his sexuality being revealed.

Accordingly, Gately didn't come out of his own free will. In 1999, the Sun approached him with a story sold to them by a former Boyzone security guard, alleging the singer was gay. After two weeks of talks between the tabloid, Boyzone's management, their record label and PR, the Sun ran with a different exclusive: "Boyzone Stephen: I'm gay and in love". "Three weeks ago, Boyzone's Stephen Gately asked the Sun to help him come out," claimed the paper's editorial, imaginatively.

But if Gately's hand was forced, the reaction was not. The teenage girls resolutely failed to desert him – at the end of 1999, he was voted Smash Hits readers' Hero of the Year. Gately's career continued undefined by his sexuality – he was a pop star who happened to be gay, rather than a gay pop star – a fact that presumably made the decision to come out easier for Will Young, or Westlife's Mark Feehily, or N'Sync's Lance Bass.

On the night Gately died, X Factor judge Dannii Minogue tried a clumsy joke about contestant Danyl Johnson's sexuality. The studio audience received it in stony silence: not shocked so much as "so what?" It would be ridiculous to call that reaction the legacy of Gately coming out, but it is not entirely unlinked. He was the first person to prove mainstream pop audiences were less bigoted than some had feared.

RIP


2009 has just been too crazy so far.

so sad and so young

Not many responses to this here, but I can understand...

But it's both scary and interesting to read comments about this (on other sites). The disgusting things people say show how controversial homosexuality still is. So sad

I remember them , R.I.P

they say he died from suffocating on his own throw up after a night out drinking. total fluke accident.

sosgemini said:

Yeah, what a tragic way to end your life. Tomorrow they'll start examining the case and get to the bottom with what happened.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/...23e80.html

sosgemini said:

Aww. So tragic. RIP!

Thats so sad

That must have been one hell of a binge. Didn't he have a drug issue at one point?

scriptgirl said:

Nope, just a fluke accident during his sleep.

sosgemini said:

That's not what the post-mortem is saying - they say it was a condition called "pulmonary oedema", which isn't anything to do with choking on one's own vomit, Bonham/ Bon Scott-stylee.

rocknrolldave said:

it can lead to foaming of the mouth which would explain why people initially thought he choked.

http://www.timesonline.co...872860.ece

Glad to hear neither alcohol nor drugs were involved. But terribly sad that such a young guy gets that kind of physical problem.

Wikipedia (and life experience)

Cardiogenic
Congestive heart failure
Severe heart attack with left ventricular failure
Severe arrhythmias (tachycardia/fast heartbeat or bradycardia/slow heartbeat)
Hypertensive crisis
Pericardial effusion with tamponade
Fluid overload, e.g., from kidney failure or intravenous therapy

Non-cardiogenic
May occur after upper airway obstruction, intravenous fluid overload, neurogenic causes (seizures, head trauma, strangulation, electrocution). Can also be seen with ARDS (acute respiratory distress syndrome):

Alveolar
Inhalation of toxic gases
Pulmonary contusion, i.e., high-energy trauma
Aspiration, e.g., gastric fluid or in case of drowning
Reexpansion, i.e. post pneumonectomy or large volume thoracentesis
Reperfusion injury, i.e. postpulmonary thromboendartectomy or lung transplantation
Immersion pulmonary edema[5][6]
Multiple blood transfusions
Severe infection

Other/unknown
Multitrauma, e.g., severe car accident
Neurogenic, e.g., subarachnoid hemorrhage
Certain types of medication, illicit drug use
Upper airway obstruction, i.e. negative pressure pulmonary edema[7][8]
Arteriovenous malformation
Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome
Ascent to high altitude occasionally causes high altitude pulmonary edema (HAPE)[9][10]

They are politely trying to tell you that dude did in fact choke on his own vomit and died of fluid inside of his lungs. Nothing was wrong with his heart and his lungs, and there were no signs of trauma. This is an acute situation....because if he had pulmonary edema chronically I doubt he would have gone out drinking and soliciting with his husband. He would have been in a hopsital. Very sad way for anyone to depart the earth. Same thing happened to my sister, she had intestinal obstruction and was vomiting and it aspirated into her lungs.