"Will they know me, will they know me now?"
This is the question asked by the German singer, artist, performer and visionary Klaus Nomi in the track called Nomi Song, a gem from his first self-titled album released in 1981.
This album, like the rest of his modest but influential discography, was recently reissued as part of the 40th anniversary of his death.
When Nomi died on August 6, 1983, at the age of just 39, he became one of the first celebrities to be swept away by the AIDS epidemic.
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Over the next four decades, Nomi's reputation became cult, despite being celebrated by mainstream artists.
But thanks to TikTok, on which video clips with his performances were viewed 4,8 million times, a new generation is now discovering that this fascinating performer with a stunning operatic voice was much more than a mere collaborator of David Bowie, as he was sometimes described.
"Klaus Nomi is a high-profile reference for the queer community," says George Hayworth, part of the alternative cabaret duo Bourgeois i Moris, who sees Nomi as the biggest inspiration in their work.
Lady Gaga, who was born almost three years after Nomi's death, said that during her formative years she was "fascinated" by him and another unusual performer, an Australian By Ley Boveri.
"I grew up with them, so somehow I naturally became an artist," she told The Guardian 2011. years.
When Kylie Minogue performed at the 2019 Glastonbury Festival, she was joined on stage by a dancer who paid tribute to Nomi by performing covered in a thick layer of make-up and dressed in an imitation of his famous black and white, plastic tailcoat.
In the caption of the photo where she and Nomi's impersonator were, it's Mino's wrote: "In the spirit of Klaus".
Nomi has also had a major impact on the fashion industry - Marc Jacobs, Jean-Paul Gaultier and Bruno Peters have also paid tribute to his signature style - and inspired writers.
In his famous book from 2016 (The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone), the British writer Olivia Laing explores the way in which Nomi and a few other artists, such as Andy Warhol, brought that indescribable feeling of sadness into their own works.
"I really think he was completely lonely," Laing told BBC Culture.
She describes Nomi as an "alien who suffers for his own planet" because of his authentic appearance and vocal style.
"For me, that's where Klaus Nomi's magic lies: there was no one like him, before or since," adds Laing.
Unfathomable genius
That feeling of being from another world has always been a hallmark of Nomi, and it even grew stronger after his untimely death.
All this makes him more and more inscrutable as time goes on.
However, this otherworldly persona of his defined him even while he was alive, and definitely attracted David Bowie, who hired Nomi and his best friend and fellow performer Joey Arias to appear as avant-garde backing vocals during his famous performance on the Saturday Night Live TV show in 1979.
During the performance and performance of the song The Man Who Sold the World, Bowie wore a plastic tailcoat that was so unwieldy that Nomi and Arias literally had to carry it out and place it next to the microphone.
And during a performance of Bowie's hits TVC15 and Boys Keep Swinging, Nomi did a robot dance next to a lifeless pink poodle holding a miniature television in its mouth.
The overall impression was totally surreal, even by today's standards.
At the beginning interview for Belgian television from 1982, the journalist asked the heavily made-up Nomi, who at that moment was wearing a coat a few sizes bigger and a top hat: "Who are you?" Mutant or CIA agent?"
Nomi's answer was modest and ambiguous.
"I'm an ordinary man, I guess I'm also an artist," he said.
Arias, who managed Nomi's estate after his friend's death in 1983, says Nomi developed his alien style gradually and organically.
When the two first met in New York in 1976, Nomi was working as a pastry chef and was using his real name, Klaus Sperber.
"He was wearing a fedora hat, aviator glasses, a striped shirt, Brooks Brothers beige chinos and loafers," Arias recalled.
Arias also remembers that Sperber "made a good living" from his "delicious cakes, cookies and pies" that he delivered to well-to-do clients in New York.
Before moving to New York, Sperber, who was born in Bavaria, worked as a doorman and switchboard at Berlin's Deutsche Oper, and in the evenings he would perform operatic numbers at the gay club Kleist Casino.
But when he and Arias became friends, Sperber sang only "once a year in a church at Christmas."
The two shared a love of everything from old rock and roll to Billie Holiday, but during those annual church performances, Nomi always sang an aria from one of his favorite operas.
The night that changed everything
Sperber's transformation into Klaus Nomi began the moment he found a flyer for a New Wave vaudeville show, a cabaret-audition scheduled to take place at Irving Plaza in New York in 1978.
He then wanted to be a part of that play, but he knew that he would have to work on his own image in order not to stand out.
"He told me - I can't go there like Klaus Sperber - that's not a name for a star!" recalls Arias.
So Klaus and his friend Adrian Richards reversed the letters in the name of the sci-fi magazine Omni in order not to give it the ambiguous stage name Klaus Nomi.
"It looked like he was saying, 'Do you recognize me?'" says Arias.
That evening, Nomi's debut seemed like a revelation.
Black and white footage from that performance appeared in a documentary film The Nomi Song from 2004 and you can see Nomi singing on them Mon coeur s'ouvre a ta voix, an aria from Saint-Saëns' 1877 opera Samson and Delilah.
Nomi's crystal clear countertenor takes listeners back to the previous century, but his latex space suit and robotic movements, at once elegant and enigmatic, seem to come from the future.
"Everybody gasped when they saw him," Arias recalls.
"Everything looked totally pop, but at the same time surreal, twisted, wonderful and New York".
Thanks to the fact that the song was also included in the repertoire Nomi Song, this formative performance still borders on magic today.
"The whole show seemed to float above what we would traditionally expect from cabaret and that was a huge inspiration for all of us," says Hayworth.
His band mate Bourgeois i Moris, Liv Morris, adds: "The fact that Klaus had a performance of that caliber during the queer night definitely showed us that anything is possible when we started performing on the London cabaret scene ourselves."
After that performance in the New Wave Vaudeville show program, says Arias, all "the dice fell into place" for his friend.
Nomi was invited to perform in certain clubs in Manhattan, among them Max's Kansas City and Club Mad and for this occasion Nomi hired a backing band that included Christian Thomas who would later write some of Nomi's most popular songs such as are Total Eclipse i Simple Man.
Nomi also designed a hairstyle that "looked like a Cherokee" style, in order to highlight the increasingly prominent sideburns.
Combined with eerie white makeup, his alien image was beginning to take on its imagined form.
More and more people started talking about Nomi, so David Bowie, always looking for similar talents, became his and Arias's friend and the consequence of that friendship was the famous Saturday Night Live performance.
According to Arias, the global rock icon told them before the performance: "People will freak out when they see you, your careers will explode after this."
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A short studio career
Bowie was not wrong.
Shortly after that performance, Nomi signed a contract with the European branch of Bowie's record company RCA, which led to the release of his self-titled debut album in 1981.
Although Nomi was mostly associated with the then new wave scene that inherited punk, his music was still different and relied too much on a theatrical approach to fit into that new wave template.
On that debut album, he combines operatic arias with electronic beats in covers of pop hits.
Among the most famous such examples is the cover of a proto-feminist song You Don't Owe Me Leslija Gora, in which Nomi changed the chorus in the part where instead of the verse,you don't know me - another play with his artistic name - he sings,,Don't say I can't go with other boys" - with the obligatory queer wink.
"His music is amazing. It's not cabaret, it's not camp - his music just doesn't fit anywhere," Hayworth says.
Laing points out that "what makes Nomi so unique vocally is actually the combination of his beautiful countertenor (voice) and the bizarre and enchanting things he uses".
She also says that no one else has "introduced such a sound into pop music".
Considering that Nomi's records are so characteristic, the fact that his second album, Simple Man from 1982, was also his last. (Third album titled Still, is in fact a combination of his old and new music and was published posthumously in 1983).
The song stands out on the album After the Fall, a poignant doomsday ballad written by Hoffman.
Bourgeois i Moris covered that song on their latest album Pleasure Seekers, because, as Morris says, it was particularly relevant during the covid epidemic.
Nomia was swept away by the previous HIV/AIDS epidemic, just nine months after the album was released Simple Man.
Arias believes that his friend would have become "one of the biggest performing attractions in the world" if he hadn't gotten sick, but he is comforted by the fact that Nomi is still a role model for everyone who has a unique view of the world and art.
"Klaus is proof that if you want to, you can become something incredible regardless of prejudice," says Arias.
"His life was very exciting and he always made risky decisions and that's something that will forever inspire people."
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