Klaus Nomi

Life and career

Early years

Klaus Nomi was born Klaus Sperber in Immenstadt, Bavaria, on January 24, 1944. He was raised by his single mother, Bettina Sperber, who had fled Essen, Rhine Province, for the Allgäu due to Allied bombing during World War II. His father was a soldier in the German Army with whom Bettina had a brief relationship during his furlough; he died from influenza before Nomi's birth. At age four, he and his mother moved back to the Ruhr, first to Fröndenberg before returning to Essen. Nomi grew up listening to classical music, gaining an interest in opera from listening to soprano Maria Callas over the radio, but also became fascinated with pop rock, buying Elvis Presley records with money he stole from his mother. Inspired by Callas, he developed a six octave vocal range and in the mid-1960s, he moved to West Berlin to study at Berlin University of the Arts, but as the school did not offer countertenor courses at the time, he trained to be a baritone. As he did not believe that earning a living on a musical career alone was feasible, Nomi took an apprenticeship as a pastry chef and worked as an usher at the Deutsche Oper, where he sang for the other ushers and maintenance crew on stage in front of the fire curtain after performances. He also sang opera arias at the Berlin gay discothèque , under the stage name "Renata Castrata".

Nomi emigrated to New York City in 1972. He appeared in some off-Broadway theater work and operated a pastry shop as a day job. In 1977, Nomi appeared in a satirical camp production of Richard Wagner's Das Rheingold at Charles Ludlam's Ridiculous Theater Company as the Rheinmaidens and the Wood Bird. In October 1978, he took the artistic name "NOMI", initially as a mononym before rendering it as "Nomi" and adopting it as a last name. It stood as an anagram for "omni" ("all" or "every"), after the then-newly released science fiction magazine Omni.

Music career

Nomi came to the attention of the East Village art scene on November 2, 1978 with his performance in "New Wave Vaudeville", a four-night event at Irving Plaza MC'd by artist David McDermott. Dressed in a skin-tight spacesuit with a clear plastic cape, Nomi sang the aria "Mon cœur s'ouvre à ta voix" ("My heart opens to your voice") from Camille Saint-Saëns' opera Samson et Dalila. The performance ended with a chaotic crash of strobe lights, smoke bombs, and loud electronic sound effects as Nomi backed away into the smoke. Joey Arias recalled: "I still get goose pimples when I think about it ... It was like he was from a different planet and his parents were calling him home. When the smoke cleared, he was gone." After that performance Nomi was invited to perform at clubs all over New York City.

At the New Wave Vaudeville show Nomi met Kristian Hoffman, a songwriter for the Mumps. Hoffman was a performer and MC in the second incarnation of New Wave Vaudeville and a close friend of Susan Hannaford and Tom Scully, who produced the show, and Ann Magnuson, who directed it. Anya Phillips, then manager of James Chance and the Contortions, suggested Nomi and Hoffman form a band. Hoffman became Nomi's de facto musical director, assembling a band that included Page Wood from another New Wave vaudeville act, Come On, and Joe Katz, who was concurrently in The Student Teachers, the Accidents, and The Mumps.

Hoffman helped Nomi choose his pop covers, including the Lou Christie song "Lightnin' Strikes". Hoffman wrote several pop songs with which Nomi is closely identified: "The Nomi Song", "Total Eclipse", "After The Fall", and "Simple Man", the title song of Nomi's second RCA French LP. This configuration of the Klaus Nomi band performed at Manhattan clubs, including several performances at Max's Kansas City, Danceteria, Hurrah and the Mudd Club. He also appeared on Manhattan Cable's TV Party.

Disagreements with the management Nomi engaged led to the dissolution of this band, and Nomi continued without them. In the late 1970s, while performing at Club 57, The Mudd Club, the Pyramid Club, and other venues, Nomi assembled various up-and-coming models, singers, artists, and musicians to perform live with him, including Joey Arias, Keith Haring, John Sex and Kenny Scharf. He was briefly involved with Jean-Michel Basquiat, then known for his graffiti art as SAMO.

Nomi and Arias were at the Mudd Club when they were introduced to David Bowie, who hired them as performers and backing singers for his appearance on Saturday Night Live on December 15, 1979. They performed "TVC 15", "The Man Who Sold the World", and "Boys Keep Swinging". During the performance of "TVC 15", Nomi and Arias dragged around a large prop pink poodle with a television screen in its mouth. Nomi was so impressed with the plastic quasi-tuxedo suit that Bowie wore during "The Man Who Sold the World" that he commissioned one for himself. He wore the suit on the cover of his self-titled album, as well as during a number of his music videos. Nomi wore his variant of the outfit, in monochromatic black-and-white with spandex and makeup to match, until the last few months of his life.

Nomi married a woman named Melissa Moon sometime in 1980 in order to get a green card and remain in the US.

Nomi played a supporting role as a Nazi official in Anders Grafstrom's 1980 underground film The Long Island Four.

The 1981 rock documentary film Urgh! A Music War features Nomi's live performance of "Total Eclipse". His performance of "Mon cœur s'ouvre à ta voix" was used for the closing credits. In the liner notes of Nomi's 1981 self-titled record, 666 Fifth Avenue was listed as the contact address.

He released his second album, Simple Man, in November 1982. He also collaborated with producer Man Parrish, appearing on Parrish's 1982 album Man Parrish as a backup vocalist on the track "Six Simple Synthesizers".

In the last several months of his life, Nomi changed his focus to operatic pieces and adopted a Baroque era operatic outfit complete with full collar as his typical onstage attire. The collar helped cover the outbreaks of Kaposi's sarcoma on his neck, one of the numerous AIDS-related diseases Nomi developed toward the end of his life.

Za Bakdaz, a suite of home-studio recordings circa 1979 restored by Page Wood and George Elliott, was released posthumously in 2007.

Illness and death

Nomi's body started to deteriorate rapidly in 1982. By the spring of 1983 his immune system was destroyed and he was diagnosed with AIDS. Nomi was admitted to the infectious disease ward of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. Most of Nomi's friends were afraid to visit him because no one knew how the virus spread at that point. Although photographer Michael Halsband did visit him, as well as Man Parrish. They were forced to wear masks and gloves, and told not to touch him. Halsband also did a small photoshoot with Nomi during their visit, although Nomi didn't even have enough strength to strike his signature pose. Nomi died on August 6, 1983, as a result of complications from AIDS. He was one of the earliest known figures from the arts community to die from the illness. Nomi's close friend Joey Arias was executor of his estate. Nomi's ashes were scattered in New York City.

Legacy

Filmmaker Andrew Horn and writer Jim Fouratt consider Nomi an important part of the 1980s East Village scene, which was a hotbed of development for punk rock music, the visual arts, and the avant-garde. Although Nomi's work had not yet met with national commercial success at the time of his death, he garnered a cult following, mainly in New York and in France. Andrew Horn's 2004 feature documentary about Nomi's life, The Nomi Song, which was released by Palm Pictures, helped spur renewed interest in the singer, including an art exhibit in San Francisco at the New Langton Arts gallery and one in Milan at the Res Pira Lab, which subsequently moved to Berlin's Strychnin Gallery, called "Do You Nomi?" New music pieces inspired by Nomi were commissioned by the gallery for a variety of European musicians, including Ernesto Tomasini.

In popular culture

In 2001, German pop duo Rosenstolz and English singer Marc Almond recorded a cover version of "Total Eclipse". Garbage used his "Valentine’s Day" song as the basis for their 2012 "Beloved Freak".

Nomi makes an appearance in Derf Backderf's graphic novel Punk Rock and Trailer Parks, released in 2008.

Rush Limbaugh would degrade LGBTQ+ people with his Gay Community Update. During that portion of the show, Nomi's "You Don't Own Me" would play in the background.

Timur and the Dime Museum covered Nomi on their America's Got Talent audition. In 2023, Timur Bekbosunov and Matthew Setzer premiered a musical "Klaus from Space" curated by composer of Nomi's hits, Kristian Hoffman at in Rotterdam, described by Theaterkrant critic as "This reincarnation of Klaus Nomi shows serious feelings beneath the glitz and kitsch."

In the film Suspiria (2018), Nomi singing "Total Eclipse" can be heard in the background on the radio in the room of another dancer.

Nomi makes an appearance in the Adult Swim cartoon The Venture Bros. in the 2006 season 2 closing episode "Showdown at Cremation Creek." He is portrayed as one of two bodyguard henchmen of the leader of the villainous organization the Guild of Calamitous Intent, The Sovereign (shown to be David Bowie in the episode, or at least taking his form). The henchmen (the other being Iggy Pop) seemingly assassinate The Sovereign (Nomi shown to have flight and a sonic scream as superpowers), only to be duped and later killed by him.

He made an appearance on *The Special Without Brett Davis''' *TV Party'' homage.

Japanese singer and composer Susumu Hirasawa recorded a cover of “The Cold Song” on his 2021 solo album, Beacon.

The Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin staged a mixture of drama, opera and performance about Klaus Nomi's life and death under the title “Don't You Nomi?” in the 2023/2024 season. Various songs by Klaus Nomi were interpreted by the German countertenor Nils Wanderer.

Discography

Albums

Compilations

Live

Singles

Promotional releases

Music videos

• 1981: "Falling in Love Again"
• 1982: "Nomi Song"
• 1982: "The Cold Song" (Available In A Censored And Uncensored Version)
• 1982: "Lightning Strikes"
• 1982: "Simple Man" (directed and edited by John Zieman)

All four music videos were released in Japan on a VHS titled Tribute To Klaus Nomi.

Film appearances

• Long Island Four (1979)
• Mr. Mike's Mondo Video (1979)
• Urgh! A Music War (1982)
• The Nomi Song (2004)

References

References

1. "Klaus Nomi | Biography & History".
2. Felder, Rachel. (July 4, 2022). "Overlooked No More: Klaus Nomi, Singer With an Otherworldly Persona". New York Times.
3. Rosen, Steven. (2005-02-03). "The man who fell to Earth".
4. Felder, Rachel. (2022-06-30). "Overlooked No More: Klaus Nomi, Singer With an Otherworldly Persona". The New York Times.
5. Schreiber, Sylvia. (2024-01-24). "Klaus Nomi – Countertenor und Popstar: Ein Allgäuer erobert New York".
6. Halle, Ruth. (2008-03-07). "Uraufführung von Neuwirths Nomi-Hommage in Berlin".
7. (2016). "Breaking Down the Walls of Heartache: How Music Came Out". Unknown Publisher.
8. Gdula, Steven. (September 14, 1999). "Eclipsed: The Best of Klaus Nomi (Review)".
9. Smith, Rupert. (July 1994). "Klaus Nomi".
10. Landoli, Kathy. (2015-12-10). "The Curious Career of Klaus Nomi".
11. Eßer, Torsten. (2023-07-25). "Vom Konditor zum Kultstar - Klaus Nomi".
12. Connelly, Charlie. (2020-08-06). "GREAT EUROPEAN LIVES: The life of Klaus Nomi".
13. Hager, Steven. (1986). "Art After Midnight: The East Village Scene". St. Martin's Press.
14. Boch, Richard. (2017). "The Mudd Club". [[Feral House]].
15. Hoban, Phoebe. (1998). "Basquiat: A Quick Killing In Art". Viking.
16. Arias, Joey. (2016-01-11). "My Saturday Night (Live) With Bowie".
17. Whatley, Jack. (2020-07-04). "When David Bowie performed on Saturday Night Live, 1979".
18. (2022-06-30). "Overlooked No More: Klaus Nomi, Singer With an Otherworldly Persona (Published 2022)". The New York Times.
19. Internet Movie Database: [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0995044/ The Long Island Four] {{Webarchive. link. (February 9, 2017)
20. "Interview: Man Parrish on "Hip Hop Be Bop," Klaus Nomi and (Not) Sleeping With Madonna".
21. Behgtol, LD. (January 8, 2008). "Resident Alien Klaus Nomi is Back From Outer Space—25 Years After His Death—With a Wondrous New Disc". The Village Voice.
22. Connelly, Charlie. (2020-08-06). "GREAT EUROPEAN LIVES: The life of Klaus Nomi".
23. (2004). "The Nomi Song: A Klaus Nomi Documentary (2004)".
24. "Alien Opera {{!}} Dusty Wright's Culture Catch".
25. "MAN PARRISH CONFESSES".
26. manparrish. (2022-03-03). "S3 E3 - My Deeper Klaus Nomi Story".
27. "The Nomi Song (2004) Deleted Scene Michael Halsband".
28. Smith, Rupert. (July 1994). "Klaus Nomi". Attitude.
29. (30 November 2018). "Cause of Death: Uncovering the hidden history of AIDS on The New York Times obituary page". Slate.com.
30. King, John Paul. (2019-12-10). "Queer icon Joey Arias donates archives to Harvard".
31. (2009). "Do You Nomi?: Klaus Nomi and the Politics of (Non)identification". Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture.
32. (February 15, 2005). "The Advocate". Here Publishing.
33. Clare, Lenora. (2008). "Naked City: Informer (article)".
34. (December 11, 2014). "Man Parrish on the Angie Bowie Show, 2014". blogtalkradio.com.
35. Diana, Barbara. (2008). "Ladies and Gentlemen Ernesto Tomasini (article)".
36. M, G. (2011). "OTHON: Digital Angel (article)".
37. Köhnlein, Stephan (October 8, 2001), [http://archiv.rhein-zeitung.de/on/01/10/08/magazin/news/rose.html {{"'Wir hassen Schlager{{'"] {{Webarchive. link. (August 10, 2014 (in German), ''Rhein-Zeitung'')
38. link. (January 19, 2014 , Hung Medien)
39. (April 16, 2014). "Derf Backderf a écrit une BD géniale sur la scène punk d'Akron, Ohio".
40. (February 19, 2021). "Opinion | Rush Limbaugh delighted in dividing Americans and prodding us to be our worst selves".
41. (June 2, 2010). "Melisurgo, Len (June 02, 2010)".
42. (May 18, 2023). "Music Theater Review – Klaus from Space, Theaterkrant".
43. "Klaus Nomi – List of Songs heard in Movies & TV Shows".
44. (November 23, 2009). "The Sovereign Returns to the Venture Brothers".
45. "Don't you Nomi? {{!}} Staatsoper Berlin".
46. (1984). "Tribute To Klaus Nomi". Victor.
47. (June 2005). "Out". Here Publishing.