1981 BBC documentary, feat. Jobriath
Short bio:
"As a teenager he'd been middle-class, conservative, and given to periods of intense Christian worship. He entered the Army during the Vietnam War, went AWOL, and lived as a hippie under his new name in Los Angeles, performing in the musical HAIR. But in 1973, when he met manager Jerry Brandt & the two began planning a Pop career, Jobriath's nature seemed to change dramatically & unexpectedly. His sexuality, to put it lightly, spun out of control. He seemed completely divorced from his maleness. 'I'm on a holiday from my physical presence,' he told Interview magazine. He wore heavy makeup, underwent electrolysis, transforming into a hermaphrodidic creature fashioned after the image of classic Hollywood stars. He did drag in a grotesque style, often on drugs. There is a sense of a struggle to obliderate one's own personality, and linger in a nebula of gender indifferentiation. His voice is not his natural one, but odd, androgynous, shifting from song to song. He appears on his LP as an alien floating in space. Criticism of the writer Jean Genet often seems to me true of Jobriath:
'He works against nature, invents his sex and self, in order to sever all ties with creation. No memory of a mother or of woman's flesh connects him to the earth.' (Ihab Hassan)
In a haze of drugs, alcohol & bad publicity, it was soon over. Jobriath went back to L.A., to begin to rest of his life as an actual person. There is a feeling here of a defeated man. He lives quietly for a time in L.A., with no interest in music. He begins working on two musicals, and in 1976 moves back to New York trying to have one produced. But every effort he tries seems to end quickly, and he falls back to a relatively quiet life, playing piano locally under a series of names other than his own.
He did not die alone - a detail entirely made up in the 1990s by an English journalist - but there is a feeling all along of Jobriath having been a corpse. He revolted against life, seeking to remake the body into an art object - but it doesn't work. And it's difficult, in retrospect, not to see AIDS as a consequence."
Short bio above was "taken" from www.jobriath.org though this fan page is in no way affiliated with this website. This is a fan myspace page hoping to preserve the memory of an amazing glam rockstar.
