JOBRIATH: Resurrection

Jobriath AD

Kieran Turner's wonderous documentary on Jobriath is finished, is being shown at Gay Film festivals & is receiving rave reviews. Finally his story is told!

Drop over to the JOBRIATH AD page & become fans.
Just click here.

Write to Kieran at 8tracktape@gmail.com

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." -- Edmund Burke
"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." -- Wendell Phillips,

ADVISORY

The psycho is back & again trying to reek havoc on all efforts to preserve Jobriath's memory. His Facebook page, if you read it, makes clear he's far-right. He's departed Oregon & is now in the Asheville, NC area. Please read below for a summary of what damages he did last time in his efforts against Jobriath.

A malcontent named Jonathan Poletti had a malicious site up at jobriath.org. Happily it has been now shut down.

Poletti has engaged in criminal acts from selling illegal CD sets of Jobriath's music, to illegally using Dagmar's copyrighted photos to conning Jobriath fans out of treasured memorabilia which he then sold at eBay.

Poletti has contacted individuals who knew Jobriath & asked for interviews as a fan & then, without permission, posted the interviews to the site. Upon discovery by the subject he had to remove them or face legal action. He presents information on Jobriath acting as a great authority. All of that information comes from others he's duped.

Poletti has engaged in a vicious smear campaign against myself & Jobriath's biographer Rob Cochrane trying to discredit us for personal gain. His site mixed facts, semi-facts, quasi-facts, distortions of facts, out right lies & bizarre rantings of having visions.

Poletti is a a con artist out to swindle Jobriath fans & friends.

Poletti never knew Jobriath, had no contact with him & was never at any of the events in Jobriath's life. Statements he made on his now defunct site were unsubstantiated & many times vicious personal attacks.

Sanctuary was conned into putting Poletti's name on the "Lonely Planet Boy" CD based on info he conned others out of.

If you are contacted by Poletti please do not answer questions as whatever you say will be used without your knowledge or permission. Please do not give Poletti access to any Jobriath memorabilia you have as it will be sold. He is not nor has he ever been writing Jobriath's biography.

NOTE:

If you have been conned by Jonathan Poletti please let us know. If you are planning legal action against him we can advise your lawyer where to serve the papers. He is in no way associated with Jobriath's estate & is acting entirely on his own.

LATEST:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bln32fA-br0
This is illegally posted. The music is owned by The Public Theater / Joseph Papp. All images are copyrighted by the photographers & are being used without permission. Jonathan Poletti has a long history of such criminal acts & actions are in process to have this removed & to take legal action against him.

Just discovered that psycho, criminal & Jobriath hater jonathan poletti has put up a MySpace page to launch his attacks on Jobriath & me while hiding who is behind it. It uses unauthorized photos & is designed to further his work of conning Jobriath fans. Please avoid this cyber attack page.

http://www.myspace.com/lonlyboyjobriath

History

Saturday November 6, 2004:

On Tuesday, November 9th all of the time & work Rob & I have done bore (you'll pardon the expression) fruit. It began on December 15, 2000 when I received this email from David Baker the then President of Rhino:

Greetings To You:
I am exploring the possibility of finally releasing the JOBRIATH Elektra
recordings.
I am contacting you to ask if you are interested in speaking with me about
this and, if need be, pointing me in the right direction so that nothing worthy
of consideration gets overlooked.
If so, I must insist that our conversation remain private and that you do
not post anything on your website or otherwise publicly disseminate anything we
talk about until I let you know that it is OK to do so. This is protect our
ability to successfully market whatever package which may result.
If you are interested in talking about this and if you agree to keep our
conversations just between us, please advise at your earliest convenience
and we can begin.
Thank You Very Kindly

We remained in private contact as Rhino worked out finding the master tapes. Through the ups & downs of a homophobic force at Warner Brothers who worked to kill the project. Then Warner Brothers bought Rhino & dismissed David. Finally a knight in shinning armor named Steven Patrick Morrissey rode to the rescue. He used his clout to bulldoze a compilation through. Finally he worked out transferring the project to his label Sanctuary & assigned it to the Attack label.

With the release of "Lonely Planet Boy" resurrection is achieved & my work is done. Jobriath's music will once more work it's magic & each time it's played he lives. Free finally of brandt and all of the hostility he created as he turned gold into lead people will see that he was not all hype. He was a great and talented artist who was cheated. He was kept away from the press by his ego manic "manager" who didn't manage. He was never given a press agent by his indifferent label. He wasn't given anything every artist is given. Cheap Trick had Lois Marino. The Clash had Susan Blond. Jobriath had no one & every artist needs that record label press agent who believes in them & steers them through the treacherous waters & a manager who protects them. Jobriath was set up for failure.

Now he's free to be judged on his talent.

I was always guided to be involved in his life when he needed me. I was there to take the only group shot of Jobriath & The Creatures. I was there at the Bottom Line when he needed friends to be with him after the show & brought the 2 people who's approval meant the most, HAIR's creators Gerry Ragni & James Rado. I was there when he was finally ready to talk about the fiasco & get it off his chest in an interview in his Pyramid. And I was there when Rob contacted the HAIR list asking who could help him in his quest.

Now it's up to you his fans to buy the CD and keep the momentum going to get all of his recordings out. Jobriath & Steven Grossman opened the doors for all openly Gay artists to come forth with pride and leave the closet. Now it's up to some talented writer or writers to do the research & do a book or books on the history of Gay artists. Many came before Jobriath & Steven & joyously many have followed in their footsteps. Now it's time to tell their story.

Thank you all for your devotion, love & respect of my friend & Hero Jobriath!

Tuesday, October 12, 2004:Morrissey's Sanctuary/Attack label's initial release of Jobriath's work is a limited edition single. You'll find the info on buying it here: http://www.youarethequarry.net/attack/sampler.htm I'm very deeply moved & honored that Morrissey & Sanctuary chose my portrait of Jobriath as the cover. This is the portrait I took in the garden area outside his Pyramid atop the Chelsea Hotel in the summer of 1979, right after Chuck Herschberg interviewed him. I'm very pleased that the first release will show him as he really was & not in make-up. With his charm & looks he could have easily won over the press, nullifying the negative effects of the massive promo, had his incompetent "manager" & indifferent label done their jobs instead of preventing him from doing so. Had Jobriath lived I have no doubt he would today be a highly respected composer of world renown & his glam fiasco would be looked on as brandt's folly.
Thursday, August 12, 2004: I have just received formal notification that the Jobriath project has been transferred from Rhino to Morrissey's SANCTUARY/ATTACK label. I think this is the best of all possible news. I have total confidence that Morrissey will continue to be Jobriath's knight in shining armor & get his music back out to the public, show the world his genius & secure him his place along with Steven Grossman as the Fathers of Gay music.

July, 2004: Rob is now completing work on the official bio of Jobriath. His 3 weeks here in June were very successful and we had a great time finally meeting in person after 7 years of working together toward this goal.
Publication date for the book is September 2005.

John Michael Cox, Jr. 10-12-2004

Anything & everything about Queer Music (is there any other) & Queer musicians. If you're here you NEED to go THERE.

TTo learn more about the gayrockmusiciansclub group, please visit
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gayrockmusiciansclub

Legends in Gay Rock

Please drop over and check out a dear friend of Jobriath's and mine. She started as Wayne County then got a major makeover but never stopped being a legend. Jayne was an OUT superstar predating Jobriath & taking no shit. You haven't been entertained until you've seen:

JAYNE COUNTY

It just keeps getting better & better. More very special friends of Jobriath's & mine have FINALLY got their album out! Every time ANOTHER PRETTY FACE did a concert at The legendary Joint in the Woods I drove over to photograph them. T. Roth's mastery of the stage and souring voice mesmerized the crowd every time. I've sorely missed those concerts over the years.

Click on the logo to go to their site. Click on the album cover to pop over & buy it!

A MUST READ

Two dear friends, Mary "Lorrie" Davis & Jonathon Johnson, took on the difficult task of preserving the history of The Tribe. Mary's book is now a collector's item. Jonathon's much more in depth and personal book is just out

"Good HAIR Days" is an amazing work of art that tells his story through 6 productions (Jonathon was the final Claude at the Biltmore) & the horrific fire that took the lives of his beloved wife and daughter. He takes us through the parties and events of his amazing journey. Jonathon's years of work, devotion & love to create this are awe inspiring.

He also includes interviews with Michael Butler, Allan Nicholls, Susan Moore, Danny Miller, Arnold McCuller, Annabel Leventon, Lyle K'ang, Beverly Bremers and other Tribe members who share their thoughts and memories. He lists the members of The Tribe from 1967 to 1975 and lists our beloved who have passed on.

If you were there and experienced it. If you were around and missed something. If you're too young to have been there. Pick up Jonathon's book for a very emotional, amazing journey through the phenomenon that 2 Shakespearian actors created in a 2nd floor apt. in Hoboken along with one of the world's greatest composers. Then, now & forever.. the Age of Aquarius!

www.goodhairdays.net

Another member of The Tribe and a friend of Jobriath's who's
music you might want to check out:

Tadg Galleran
Even White Boys Get The Blues!

Tadg Galleran plays one hell of a harmonica! When John Puerner, Publisher of the LOS ANGELES TIMES first heard this CD he wrote "Very cool, Very Very Cool."

Tadg's first Gig in the blues was with Albert Collins in 1966. He was in the Los Angeles company of "Hair," the musical, and yes, he performed in the buff. He was only seventeen at the time. Tadg also appeared in the Broadway cast of HAIR, working beside Ben Vereen, Meatloaf, Dolores Hall, Ta Ta Vega, and Ted Neeley. Post-"Hair," Tadg spent 14 years in the San Francisco Bay area, where he joined Blues jam sessions at clubs like "The Saloon" in San Francisco, "Eli's Mile High Club" in Oakland, and was influenced by such Bay area acts as Sonny Rhodes, Mitch Woods, Joe Louis Walker, and harmonica greats Huey Lewis and Charlie Musselwhite. He became harmonica player for The King Brothers in 1989. Tadg still performs with them, and his original tune "Even White Boys Get the Blues" is on The King Brothers' first CD, "Turnin' Up the Heat." Tadg also played keyboard for a number of dates with childhood pal Richard Mikuls in The Shuffletones. It was here that he met guitarist James Armstrong, who at the time was recording his own album for Hi-tone Records. One night at a gig, James mentioned needing a slow song to complete the album. Tadg replied, "Let's do it now," and wrote the lyrics to "Don't Kiss and Tell" on the back of a band flyer. He didn't think about it again for six months, when James showed up with a copy of the record. "Don't Kiss and Tell" was an immediate hit in Holland and continues to get airplay throughout Europe. In 1994, Tadg joined up with friend and former Monkee Peter Tork to perform at a benefit dance. They had so much fun they decided to form a band together and today Shoe Suede Blues tours the country performing their own unique brand of Blues to sold-out houses. Tadg's own debut album, "Even White Boys Get the Blues," is a compendium of songs he has written throughout his life.

Below is the original Jobriath site put up back in late 1997 at Geocites after Rob contacted me via the HAIR list about the biography he had been working on since 1991.
It's my history with my friend & hero Jobriath. And it's Rob's original plea for help on the project.
Thanks to this site & the Jobriath List which I created back in 1997 at One List (now owned & run by Yahoo Groups.) we were able to locate Jobriath's family, friends & his many fans.
There were so many who wrote to say they had been playing their precious copy of his albums for years thinking they were the only ones who knew about him. They numbered in the hundreds.
This was where what came to be "Lonely Planet Boy" began with a private email from David Baker the then President of Rhino Records.

Hi,

Way back in the mid-70s I was a Rock photographer & the first openly Gay journalist in music, based in Manhattan. I had the honor of meeting & helping to promote STEVEN GROSSMAN (the first openly Gay artist to be signed by a major label but not heavily promoted. I hope to open a tribute to Steven here soon) & open the music companies eyes to the emerging Gay press. I was also in the right place at the right time to witness a phenomenon. Electra Records signed, to the biggest recording contract in history to date, the first openly Gay Rock Star: JOBRIATH. In the sometimes still rabidly homophobic & ultra-hetero Rock world this was a historic moment. It paved the way many years later for Pansy Division & other openly Gay Rock groups as well as giving pro-Gay groups like our beloved Kurt Cobain & Nirvana and Green Day the ability to be themselves on stage and publicly. Steven & Jobriath were pioneers & they paid a price to be open in a hostile world.

Jobriath had been a member of the original Aquarius Theatre production of HAIR (playing "Woof" the only Gay character in HAIR. Oddly an openly & proudly Gay man playing a gutless closety type) & I was good friends with HAIR's creators Gerry Ragni & James Rado. I rushed out to buy his album when it first came out then sounded out his manager, Jerry Brandt, in order to meet Jobriath. Jerry welcomed me into his office & we talked. Jobriath was going to appear that weekend (1974) at a popular club in New Jersey called "The Joint in The Woods" in order to get a reaction from the crowd & to warm up for his debut at Manhattan's "Bottomline". He said he wasn't informing the press about this & didn't want me to go.

Whoops! I was the only official member of the Rock Press the club accredited & I was always over there shooting. I didn't need his permission, a press pass or anything else. I of course went & had the great joy of seeing Jobriath & the Creatures' first public concert. After the show I went backstage to meet them. Jobriath, as I always found, was very quiet. The Creatures were seasoned musicians who were wonderful to me. It was a double historic meeting. Creature GREGG DIAMOND would in a few years become a major player in (gag me) disco. Gregg wrote Andrea True's huge hit "More, More, More". Backstage I took the only group shots (above) ever done, which says a great deal about both Elektra & Brandt. I also went to their debut at the "Bottom Line" & brought Ragni & Rado for a reunion that moved Jobriath greatly. At neither occasion did I see press agents, record execs or Jerry Brandt. We'll pause here while you digest that.

In 1979, a few years after Jerry "what do mean I'm not the star" Brandt engineered his failure, I found Jobriath again. He was doing cabaret as COLE BERLIN. I photographed him atop the Chelsea Hotel in his Pyramid home. No make-up on he looked like a young Robert Redford. Knowing that I had done nude photo sessions with actors he undressed & asked me do some pix showing his cute butt, BECAUSE the butt on that damn statue used for the first LP was lousy. He wanted people to know his butt was beautiful. I engineered a great deal of press for him with layouts in Gay publications around the world. This was after his recording career was over & these respected publications treated him as a Star, which he was.

We lost track of each other during the 80s with so much going on.

Early in 1997 a fan in England contacted me through the HAIR list on the Internet looking for information on Jobriath. I sent him my memories & was very upset over his use of past tense. Rob wrote back that my friend, the first openly Gay man in Rock 'n' Roll history, had died 14 years ago alone and forgotten in his pyramid atop the Chelsea. His body in fact had laid there for a few days before it was noticed that something was wrong.

Rob & I are working now to do something to preserve his memory & get him the recognition he deserves. Rob has been in touch with Morrissey, who is a very big fan, and is trying to contact Neil Tennant of the PETSHOP BOYS who is another fan. We're hoping that someone might help us in our campaign to get his LPs released as CDs and maybe even get some write ups. I'll let Rob talk now:

I'm trying to locate friends and associates of Jobriath Salisbury aka Jobriath
Boone aka Cole Berlin, who was born Bruce Wayne Campbell in 1946. He failed
spectacularly in his attempt to become the first and indeed only openly Gay
rock performer of the Glam rock era. Signed by Elektra in 1973, and hyped to
death by his manager Jerry Brandt, he released two albums, 'Jobriath' &
'Creatures of the Street' before being unceremoniously dropped.

He retired to the Chelsea Hotel, where he died of an A.I.D.S. related illness in 1983.

A bona fide talent whose abilities were over shadowed by hype and his blatant
attitude concerning his sexuality, he is totally forgotten and much in need
of reassessment. Prior to his sojourn in the rock business, he appeared in
the LA production of 'Hair' playing Woof, and was the frontman for a band
called Pidgeon, who were signed to Decca, making at least one album in the
late '60s. A fitting tribute would be the release on CD of both the albums
plus the unreleased material recorded for his unfinished third. Any
suggestions to realize this venture would be much appreciated.

Given that 'Velvet Goldmine' the Todd Haines film starring Ewen McGregor
based on the premise that the Glam era was much gayer than the general
public actually perceived it to be, will be released next year, it would be
timely that the only 'out' artist of the period and the most forgotten,
should merit some reappraisal.

Photographs, clippings, and recollections would be most appreciated,
plus any information from those who knew him at any point in his life.
Footage exists of his appearance on the 'Midnight Special'
and a twenty minute promotional film of the making of the
first album, plus his contribution to the BBC Arena programme about the
Chelsea Hotel. These could form the basis for a documentary, which could
include talking head contributions from characters diverse as David Geffen,
Tom O'Horgan, Morrissey, Neil Tennant and various luminaries of the Chelsea
and the early days of 'Hair'. If anyone knows what became of the contents of
his Chelsea apartment, this would also be useful, as he recorded a musical
called 'Pop Star' whilst living there, but no copy has yet surfaced, and he
was recording on his home studio pretty much up until his death.

- Rob Cochrane (London 1997)

If any of you reading this can help us in any way we would greatly appreciate it. We need to locate any members of Jobriath's family, friends or anyone who knew him. Please e-mail us at either of the e-mail addresses below.

Endless thanks to everyone who has been in touch!
We've now heard from Creature - Hayden Wayne who has gone on to great fame, Creature- Steven Knee, members of The Tribe & friends of Jobriath.

Endless thanks, love & hugs to his fans
who have kept his memory alive in their hearts these many years.

Very special thanks to Jobriath's brother Bill for his time, friendship & help.
We know the emotional toll this has been reliving the loss of your beloved brother. Joy will come!
Bill has been deeply moved by this out pouring of love & appreciation for his brother.

Writers, Editors, etc. reading this, if you are doing articles or books
related to Jobriath & need pictures you can contact me for the exclusive images I took JohnMichaelCoxJr@Live.com .
Dagmar's images are available & you can write her directly at akstudio@flash.net .

FANS:
"Computer Prints" of John Michael Cox's original photographs
of Jobriath may be purchased HERE.

My FACEBOOK Page is:
http://facebook.com/mnemonictsunami

Creature HAYDEN WAYNE has his own website
& will knock you over with his incredible music!
Click here to go there!!

If you'd like to visit Jobriath & pay your respects:
VALLEY FORGE
MEMORIAL GARDENS
352 South Gulph Road,
King of Prussia, PA 19406
BRUCE WAYNE CAMPBELL

9/4/98: Rob's first article has been published on Jobriath. I am being hit left & right for info from others with articles in the works needing info (I love you all for for what you're doing!) I have scanned both Rob's piece plus the extremely rare copy of Omega One which contains Jobriath's only interview and he did it for me. It was conducted by my writer Charles Herschberg (Rob got it wrong in his article calling him David) in his pyramid atop the Chelsea Hotel & published in 1979.

9/15/98: Totally impossible to upload large files to this site soooo. I've been able to upload them to another site & am setting up this link. These are Zip files. To un-Zip you'll need a program. You can go to: http://www.pkware.com - or - http://www.winzip.com and download for free the program needed to un-Zip the files.
***NOTE: Right click on these next links & tell your browser to download/save/whatever to your hard drive.
The Attitude file is large. Attitude Magazine Omega One Magazine
When un-Zipped you'll find each page is a high res .jpg file. You can print these out to read.

Spring 1999: Todd "I Never Heard of Jobriath" Haynes' whacked out fantasy VELVET GOLDMINE is released on video. From the blatant rip off of Jobriath's first lp on you can "see" Jobriath everywhere as well as Miss Haynes agony that the British Glam idols he worshiped in his youth were all fakes & the only real Gay man was Jobriath - an American. See if you agree that "the only true fairy" = "Jack Fairy" who floats around the edges of film.

- John Michael Cox, Jr.