Thanks for this - I only discovered Jobriath this year. What a very interesting bit of history.

I don't think it's really accurate to describe him as flaming out. For one, in the context of "first out gay pop star", "flaming out" isn't a very nice pun, though I'm quite sure you didn't intend it that way.

More, puns aside, he didn't really flame out. He was simply not successful at selling records, and slowly slipped off the bottom of society. That he turned to sex work when he couldn't support himself on music was not some symptom of a desire to burn out but an economic decision, one that many desperate musicians of all sexual orientations have been forced into in the past.

And - this isn't very nice to say - his material simply wasn't that great. I'm struggling to remember any of it, and I have a near phonographic memory for music.

As a performer, he was charming and endearing - the videos are adorable and a little heartbreaking from today's viewpoint - but again, he wasn't very good.

He's been compared to Bowie, but Bowie had the gift of stillness - to stop time, even just for a fraction of a second, to give us, the audience, a very precise image.

Jobriath was a fidgety performer. He was never either entirely still, nor high-energy in that sort of James Brown way. So he just didn't make a huge impression on people. Bowie seems effortless, and this really reads.

Compare and contrast Klaus Nomi. I saw Nomi on Saturday night live, where assistants carried him and Bowie onto the stage like showroom dummies, and as a teenager I was "What sort of a creature is that?" I didn't even know if I liked it or not, but I never forgot it.

Also, Nomi had the astonishing vocal range, and that unique material that still stands up. Immediately the song Total Eclipse jumped into my head, complete with Klaus' unique vocals, but there are so many others - "ICUROK2C. ICUROK2. UR AQT I1U2" - still funny 40 years later. And his second-to-last piece - Purcell's "Dido's Lament", with the chilling line, "Remember me, but forget my fate."

Nomi does not seem effortless, but like a strange machine from another planet.

Poor Jobriath didn't really have that. Ah, I didn't really come here to knock on him, but just to say that Jobriath didn't really flame out but more sputtered out like a candle slowly running out of wax...

Thanks for a great article, and I look forward to the sequel.