When he was 15 years old, after a suicide attempt because he was gay, he was voluntarily hospitalized at the Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic in Manhattan, which is the subject of his memoir, One of These Things First.
Gaines was working in a small auction gallery in 1971 when he met former child evangelist Marjoe Gortner at Max's Kansas City, a New York restaurant and club.
[3][4] In 1973, the same year Marjoe was published, Gaines became editor of Circus, a national teeny-bopper rock and roll magazine, and he also began a four-year run as the "Top of the Pop" columnist for the New York Sunday News, on alternate Sundays, dual positions that gave him a catbird seat in the fast lane of the rock and roll business during the golden era of the seventies.
He coined the phrase "velvet mafia" in his "Top of the Pop" column — in reference to the Robert Stigwood Organization, a British record company and management group — but the term soon began to be used to describe the influential gay crowd who ran Hollywood and the fashion industry.
[5] In 1978 he wrote the lyrics for two major disco hits, "New York By Night" and "Like An Eagle," performed by actor and singer Dennis Parker and composed by Village People creator Jacques Morali.
Gaines is best known for his 1998 social and cultural history of the East End of Long Island called Philistines at the Hedgerow: Passion and Property in the Hamptons.