Ahead of his time.

Glam performer Jobriath was being groomed for success as the American David Bowie. Then he said he was gay

If glam's sexual ambiguity pushed the envelope for rock, then the genre's all-but-forgotten star child, Jobriath, tore right through the envelope of glam. Introduced in 1973, Jobriath became rock's first openly gay performer. His flat-out declaration of homosexuality was brazen considering the era: The world was ready for the likes of David Bowie and Marc Bolan, who coyly dangled their possible proclivities. Even Lou Reed's assessment of himself as "a male chauvinist bisexual" was open to interpretation. But the finality of Jobriath's announcement--"I'm a true fairy"--left nothing to the imagination.

A relatively unknown singer and songwriter who had been performing in the musical Hair, Jobriath was discovered in 1972 by rock impresario Jerry Brandt, a promoter and club owner who had booked the Rolling Stones' first American tour and who managed Carly Simon. Brandt saw in Jobriath the American answer to Bowie's Ziggy Stardust success.

"Bowie was more commercial at the time, but innovatively speaking, I think Jobriath was ahead of Bowie," Brandt tells The Advocate. "It was a race of who was going to get [to the top] first." With winning in mind, Brandt signed Jobriath to Elektra Records, reportedly for a then-stupendous $300,000, and the grooming process began. A backup band was formed. Former Jimi Hendrix studio whiz Eddie Kramer was hired as producer. In October of 1973 Jobriath was released, and a blitzkrieg of publicity began.

The concept, recalls Brandt, was "marketing Jobriath as America's first true fairy" with interviews in Newsweek and Rolling Stone. Brandt and Elektra spread a photo of the singer, nude and crawling, across a billboard in Times Square. Emblazoned with the headline JERRY BRANDT PRESENTS AN ALBUM CONTAINING THE SONGS OF JOBRIATH, the provocative ad was hoisted over the streets of New York just in time for Christmas. Smaller versions appeared on the city's buses, and full-page ads ran in Rolling Stone, Penthouse, and Vogue. All this, and Jobriath had yet to perform live.

Reviews of the album started to roll in. Rolling Stone said Jobriath had "talent to burn." Record World called the music "brilliantly incisive" and its creator a "true Renaissance man" destined to amass a "tremendous following." Esquire, however, was not seduced, dismissing Jobriath as "the hype of the year."

The hype so far was small potatoes compared to Brandt's and Elektra's plan for Jobriath's live debut. Booking the Paris Opera House for three nights in December, they designed a spectacle that would shock even by today's standards. Dressed as King Kong, Jobriath would climb the Empire State Building; the edifice would turn into a giant penis; Jobriath would straddle it and ride to a piano platform elevated above the stage. There he would reemerge--as Marlene Dietrich.

This extravaganza seemed designed to put Ziggy Stardust in the shade. But Elektra judged the cost prohibitive and decided on an eight-week postponement.

In January 1974, Jobriath was booked on the late-night television program The Midnight Special. Watching his rehearsal of his song "Take Me I'm Yours"--which included lines like "I'm a slave to your perversity"--the show's producers panicked. Jobriath was forced to perform a tamer number. It was his first appearance before the American TV audience, and their reception was polite at best. Afterward, Elektra pushed back the Paris opening indefinitely.

Without a tour and with limited radio exposure, the air slowly began to hiss out of the inflated marketing balloon that was Jobriath. The singer blamed Brandt for overselling him right from the start. Meanwhile, Jobriath, who had admitted to battling drugs and alcohol in the past, started to behave erratically. "He was a total wreck," Brandt declares. "He was living the complete mythical rock lifestyle."

A second album, Creatures of the Street, was released in spring 1974, a surprising move considering the deteriorating relationship between Brandt and Jobriath. A tour was scheduled, and the singer finally debuted live at New York's Bottom Line. The show was a critical disappointment. Interview magazine, in particular, was underwhelmed, declaring: "being a `true fairy' these days just isn't enough."

By now Jobriath was no longer permitted to give interviews without Brandt at his side. In Jobriath's eyes, Brandt was out to promote himself rather than the band. Brandt counters that the singer "never worked a date in his life. I was Jobriath, in terms of keeping [the image] alive." Their rickety relationship finally fell apart when Jobriath accused Brandt of pocketing the band's advance money.

At that point Brandt walked out, leaving the singer to flounder through his remaining tour dates. By tour's end, the band had pulled itself together and seemed on the verge of living up to its potential, but Jobriath had become an industry joke. Elektra dropped him, and material that had been recorded for a third album was never released.

Throughout the late '70s the singer, born Bruce Wayne Campbell, eked out an existence hustling on the streets of New York and singing in the city's piano bars under the name Cole Berlin. But in the years that followed, he acquired a cult following. Hoping to secure Jobriath as an opening act, British rock star Morrissey went in search of him, only to learn that Jobriath had died in New York's Chelsea Hotel in 1983 from an AIDS-related illness. He was 37 years old.

It's difficult to say if Jobriath's career would have taken a different direction had a more welcome climate greeted him. Of course, speculation can only do so much, but possibly the best assessment of Jobriath's legacy can be attributed to Jerry Brandt. Looking back, Brandt muses about his one-time protege, "There wasn't anybody else like him. No one exists like that, not that I've ever seen or met or heard of since."

Gdula is a freelance writer living in Washington, D.C.