Jobriath
| Jobriath | |
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Jobriath, 1973
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| Background information | |
| Birth name | Bruce Wayne Campbell |
| Also known as | Jobriath Salisbury, Jobriath Boone |
| Born |
December 14, 1946 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States |
| Died | August 4, 1983 (aged 36) Manhattan, New York, New York, United States |
| Genres | |
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| Years active | 1965–1975 |
| Labels | |
| Associated acts | Pidgeon |
Bruce Wayne Campbell (December 14, 1946, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – August 4, 1983), known by his stage name Jobriath, was an American rock musician and actor. He was the first openly gay rock musician to be signed to a major record label, and one of the first internationally famous musicians to die of AIDS.
A native of King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, and raised in Houston, Texas, he showed talent for playing the piano and was once introduced to Eugene Ormandy as a child prodigy. Conscripted to the military in the mid-1960s, he went AWOL within months. Renaming himself Jobriath Salisbury, he relocated to Los Angeles. When he arrived to play piano for a friend's audition for the musical Hair, he also secured the role of Woof, an implicitly gay teenager. He appeared in the West Coast production at the Aquarius Theater on Sunset Boulevard. He left the production in 1969 to form the folk-rock band Pidgeon, which was signed to Decca Records. They released the single "Rubber Bricks" and a self-titled album before disbanding. Both were produced by Stan Farber. At this time he was traced by the military police and arrested, spending nearly six months in a military psychiatric hospital after suffering a breakdown. During this period he began writing the songs that would lead to his next musical incarnation.
In mid-December 1972 Jerry Brandt, Carly Simon's former manager, overheard a demo tape being played by Clive Davis at Columbia Records. Davis rejected the tape as "mad, unstructured and destructive to melody", but Brandt was quick to step in. Jobriath later remarked "that coming from a man who discovered both Patti Smith and Barry Manilow...so much for sanity and structure!" Brandt located Jobriath in California, where he was living in an unfurnished apartment and working as a prostitute. Brandt: "In walked this beautiful creature dressed in white. I said, Why don't you come out to Malibu and hang out?" This became a feature of the mythology used to promote Jobriath, and helps to explain the acrimony that followed the dissolution of their professional and personal relationship.
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