Jobriath took the logical next step declaring that he was not

Jobriath took the logical next step, declaring that he was not bisexual but “a true fairy”.He had unwittingly called glam’s bluff. Glam had made bisexuality trendy: its leading figures, such as Lou Reed and David Bowie, declared that they were attracted to both sexes. This seemed to give them an added sheen of sexiness and an added truckload of sales. Michael Butler, a friend of Jobriath’s from the cast of Hair, remembers Brandt as “reptilian. Not a very warm man – I got such bad vibes from [him].” Brandt seemed to invite comparisons to a pimp, explaining, “I’m selling sex. I’m selling Jobriath”.But nobody can fault him for not lavishing enough hyperbole on his creation. After taking out a massive advertising campaign that put Jobriath’s face all over New York and London, he described his prot? as “a combination of Dietrich, Marceau, Nureyev, Tchaikovsky, Wagner, Nijinsky, Bernhardt, the best of Jagger, Bowie, Dylan, with the glamour of Garbo.” (What, no Gandhi?)But there was a polished elephant-trap waiting for Jobriath.

Brian Eno, one of the era’s stars, explains: “Glam was all about the idea of changing identity or thinking up your own identity – whether it’s your gender identity or whatever.” Some of this was pretty trite: they would express their alienation by literally dressing as aliens (most famously, with Bowie’s fictional persona, Ziggy Stardust). But Jobriath – with his fragile mental health – seemed to believe his own fiction, and often told bemused acquaintances that he was from another planet.Brandt – in the style of Svengalis throughout the ages – took a vulnerable young man and promised to make him a star. It represented a new and radically fluid model for sexual identity. The very opposite of punk, it thrust femininity into everybody’s faces: men wearing glitter and looking like women, screwing what nature had given them. Glam was, basically, a group of sexual misfits who became able to accept themselves by transforming popular culture.”Into this, like a Tennessee Williams heroine, stumbled Jobriath, a gay fantasist with a drug problem and a wild talent.

US producers were desperate to cultivate their own American glam-rock star, a home-grown variant of the strange new sounds blaring from London.Barney Hoskyns, in his definitive history of this odd pocket of rock history, Glam!, explains: “Glam rock was nothing short of a camp attack on rock’n'roll and the Sixties’ earnest search for ‘authenticity’ and ‘a return to nature’ It was all about being false and loving the artificial. Both his homosexuality and his endless reinventions seemed perfect for glam. By 1972, he was looking for a new project, and when he heard a demo tape of Jobriath’s music, he was convinced that he had found the American David Bowie. With no money, I hustled for booze and drugs.” His parents sent him to a sanatorium in Pennsylvania, but he fled – straight into the pudgy arms of Jerry Brandt.Brandt was the impresario who had discovered Carly Simon and unleashed the Rolling Stones on America. It turns out they were: the success led to the first of Jobriath’s implosions.