Jobriath
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Jobriath was a rock singer from the early 1970s.
He was born Bruce Wayne Campbell on December 14, 1946 in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania to Jim and Marion Campbell. As a child, he became highly gifted on the piano. At one point, he was introduced to the respected conductor Eugene Ormondy backstage as something of a prodigy.
As he grew up, he went to a Presbyterian church summer camp, cared for a pair of ducks and attended Upper Merion High School. He was a big fan of Prokofiev and could play the very difficult second piano concerto. He owned many Prokofiev recordss, including a version of Peter and the Wolf narrated by Boris Karloff. He considered becoming a concert pianist, composer or painter. He then won the Tri-State Piano Competition by playing a kind of perpetual motion piece with the name "Diabolo." At this time, he had a girlfriend.
In 1962, he started performing. Along the way, he assumed the stage identity of Job. When not being Job Campbell, he preferred to be called J.C. -- a reference to Jesus Christ, his only other favorite biblical character besides his new namesake.
In 1964, he started a trio with his ex-girlfriends Marty and Grace called "Moriah, Tess and Job," a reference to some lyrics from the musical Paint Your Wagon. They began playing churches and coffee houses around Philadelphia. In the fall, he entered the music program, taught by Professor Woodin, at Temple University. To make a little extra cash, he took a part-time job at McDonald's and then as a salesman at Wanamaker's, spurred by his interest in the huge organ at the Philadelphia branch.
In winter 1965, Bruce dropped out of the music program at Temple after one semester. He had decided to devote his time to working in sales at Wanamaker's and gigs with his group. They were offered a regular gig at the Main Point in Bryn Mawr, but Marty and Grace were serious about college and declined. Just before breaking up, they did a big concert at the Valley Forge Army Hospital.
In 1967, Bruce was repeatedly using different names. Though still known as Bruce Campbell, he began to drop his father's last name and call himself Bruce Wayne, much like the character in the Batman comics. Even then, he changed his name again, this time to Bruce Salisbury (his mother's maiden name). After a while, his old stage personage returned and he gave his name as Job Salisbury and then Jobriath Salisbury.
By 1968, times were changing, so Jobriath kept up with the times and became a hippie in Los Angeles, taking care of a cat named Chaplin. Then his career took a huge upward spiral. He showed up to play piano for a friend's audition for the L.A. production of a play called HAIR, produced by Michael Butler and directed by Tom O'Horgan. The piano player for the regular auditions didn't show up, so Jobriath played for everybody, impressing auditioners and crew alike with his wide knowledge of music and his piano skills. Impressed, O'Horgan signed him for the part of Woof, although he wasn't too theatrical.
In December, HAIR premiered in L.A. at the Aquarius Theatre, renamed for the show's opening. He did his part pretty straight, pretty normal, never over-the-top. He never talked about his past, but frequently hung out with other cast members, amongst them Teda Bracci and Zenobia Conkerite.
Within the year, in 1969, the production shut down, so Jobriath shuttled up to New York City to appear as Woof in the Broadway cast. At first, he continued in his joyous performance, but then he became bored with the part. He started turning it into a duck caricature and started upstaging everybody else like there wasn't enough room for him. He considered himself as keeping up with the times and no longer called himself a hippie. He was then fired from the cast and returned to Los Angeles.
Jobriath began his career performing with a progressive rock band called Pidgeon, which consisted of him, ex-L.A. HAIR cast member Cheri Kohler Gage, Richard T. Marshall writing lyrics, Bill Strong Smith playing drums and Stan Farber producing. Their one album and several singles on Decca Records did not sell well. Late in the year, Jobriath joined the Army like his father, figuring that, since he was no longer a hippie, he might as well go straight. However, he decided that it was wrong and ran off after making it to the rank of sergeant. In 1970, his girlfriend's father tipped off the FBI that he was AWOL and Jobriath got arrested and locked up in the psychiatric ward of the Valley Forge Army Hospital. After a month, he was released with an honorable discharge.
Jobriath then pursued a solo career under the management of Mike Jeffries, who had worked with Jimi Hendrix. They recorded demos for an album he was going to do at that time. It was not glam music, like his later work. A cover was known to exist, which had Jobriath wearing duck sneakers and white shorts, taking a step with his mouth open. However his solo demos met with such hostility that, ironically, they helped to get him signed. Rock empresario Clive Davis, then head of Columbia Records, described Jobriath's sound as "mad and unstructured and destructive to melody," a comment that so intrigued Jerry Brandt — who managed Carly Simon — that Brandt cut Jeffries out, got Jobriath off of alcohol, then signed him a deal with Elektra Records.
His subsequent career is said to be considered an object lesson in the dangers of excessive hype to this day. Elektra, thinking it had the next David Bowie on its hands, over-promoted the artist. They spent $80,000 promoting Jobriath's solo album, but the omnipresent advertising and Brandt's braggadocio (with remarks to the press like, "Jobriath is as different from Bowie as a Lamborghini is from a Model A Ford") backfired. The public was just turned off. Jobriath's self-titled 1973 debut album wasa commercial failure, though it did receive excellent reviews, particularly from Rolling Stone. One of the album's session guitarists was Peter Frampton.
Elektra allowed Jobriath to record a follow-up, 1975's Creatures of the Street, but this time they gave the record no publicity at all and indeed seemed to be trying hard to forget he existed. Then-head of Elektra Jac Holzman was later quoted as saying, "I made two errors of judgment in my days at Elektra and signing Jobriath was one of them." Jobriath spent his last days singing in a New York cocktail lounge under the names Bryce Campbell, Cole Berlin and Royal Sloan. He died in 1983 of AIDS in a pyramid atop the Hotel Chelsea.
In recent years, Jobriath has been hailed by musicians such as the Pet Shop Boys. Reportedly, a photograph of actor Ewan McGregor in the booklet to the CD soundtrack of the film Velvet Goldmine is an homage to the cover of Jobriath's first album.