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Biography
After Take
That’s last official engagement, a TV show in Amsterdam April 1996, Gary flew
straight back to London to continue work on his debut solo album. Forever Love,
Gary’s debut solo single was released in UK in July 1996 and went straight to
Number 1 in UK Top40. The album Open
Road was due to be released in September 1996. However after resigning to his
American Record Company – Arista – Gary performed a showcase at BMG’s
world conference in San Diego and impressed the head of Arista – Clive Davis-
so much that he was given the opportunity of working with producers and
songwriters he had only dreamed of. As a result the album was put on hold and
Gary virtually re-recorded the whole album, only 4 tracks remained on the
finished version. It was around this time that Gary split from his long-term
manager Nigel Martin-Smith. Gary felt that nobody was keeping up with his version
for the album and his dreams for breaking America. Gary then signed with Simon
Fuller, whose acts include Anne Lennox, Cathy Denis and of course the Spice
Girls. Incidentally all of which have had huge success in the USA. April 1997 and
after having been out of the public eye for most of the year, Gary released the
first of his new material. Love Won't Wait which was written by Shep Pettibone
and Madonna was released in the UK and hit the top slot straight away. Gary was
back and better than ever! During the
following months, Gary split with Simon Fuller and set up an own management
company "GloBe Artists" of which he is the Executive Director and
which is run with the help of his manager Kristina Kyriacou who had worked with
Take That for the last few months of the band. Open Road was
released in the UK in May 1997. Again it shot straight to the top of the UK
album and making Gary the only former Take That member to have a Number 1 album. So Help Me Girl,
a cover of a country and western song by Joe Diffie, was the next UK single and
was also chosen as the first single release for the US where it reached No.44 in
the charts. The next UK release
was "Open Road" - the album title track. It jumped into the charts
at No.7 and stayed around for a while. In the meantime Gary released "Open
Road" and "Are You Ready Now" as singles on the European continent.
Gary started a
European tour in February 1998 which featured him and music pure. And at the
end of the European tour, he popped over to South America for a couple of shows
which was a mega success. Straight after
the tour, Gary went back into the studio recording his second solo album. He
is currently working on it with producers Jon Mitchell (George Michael) and
Grant Mitchell and the first single release 'Stronger' is on 5th July 1999 with
the album 'Stronger Now' to be followed on 4th October 1999. Gary will be touring the UK in December and is planning to tour Europe and South America from beginning of 2000 onwards. |
The
US "Open Road" album finally hit the stores in the second week of
January 1998. The US version features a slightly different tracking list and
has a brand new tune "Superhero" on the album.