Hints
of her sexuality … Beccy Cole says there are lyrics in some of her songs that
people might go back and listen to and say ''Aaah …''. Photo: Nick Moir
Sacha Molitorisz, The Sydney Morning Herald, reports
The archetypal country song laments a broken heart. Boy loses
girl. Or, sometimes, girl loses boy. But rarely, if ever, is it girl loses
girl.
That might be about to change, thanks to country star Beccy Cole.
The seven-time Golden Guitar winner, who has a 13-year-old son, discovered she
was gay in 1999, after the breakdown of her marriage. Ever since, she's kept
her sexuality secret. She tells all on ABC TV's Australian Story, and
isn't sure how her fans will respond.
"I'm pretty nervous," says Cole, who lives on the central
coast. "That's something I have been worried about for quite some time.
''But outweighing that is the need to be myself and to provide
that example for my son.
"Your sexuality is a huge part of your persona, of who you
are, and I don't want him to feel he has to hide anything about himself."
Cole, 39, got her big break as a teenager. Invited to join Kasey
Chambers and family on a tour with the Dead Ringer Band, Cole dropped out of
high school. She dreamed of emulating her mum, '60s folk singer Carole
Sturtzel.
In the '90s, she built a solo career and married Mick Albeck, a
fiddler in her backing band. The marriage broke down shortly after the birth of
their son, Ricky. Not long afterwards, while watching a TV show about a women's
football team, she realised she was gay.
"My son has known this about me all his life," Cole
says. "And I was sparked to do this [program] one day when he told me he
had a mate coming over and he said, 'Don't worry, he doesn't know'. And I
thought, gosh, he shouldn't feel like he has to hide anything.
"But it remains to be seen how people who like my music in
regional Australia are going to accept it. But then I'm pretty proud of
Australian society. I've watched the gay marriage debate very carefully and
there's a lot of support."
Cole, who is single, is a strong supporter of gay marriage, much
like the actor Magda Szubanski, who came out as gay in February.
Cole says astute fans may long have picked up hints from her
lyrics: "There's always some cheeky, ambiguous stuff going on.
"I don't consider myself tightly closeted. People who have
outwardly asked me, I've told. I've just never gone on stage and said it into a
microphone, or referred to it in a love song. But there have been lyrics where
people might go back and say 'Aaah …'.
"At the end of the day, I just want to be who I am and hope
people still want to listen to my music. And if they don't, well, maybe they
didn't like it that much in the first place."
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