Talking with Joey Arias: 'Not Real, But for Real'

"Eat your heart out, Madonna," wrote Ben Brantley when reviewing gender fluid performance artist Joey Arias in the off-Broadway show "Arias With a Twist." It's easy to understand why the Material Girl might be envious. With his retro-look (think Bette Page) and basso rasp with which he cracks jokes and sings an eclectic mix of songs, from pop to jazz to rock, Arias is a true original and legendary drag pioneer. As his friend and collaborator Anne Magnuson puts it, "Joey is a surrealistic clown - a cosmic, surrealistic, psychedelic glamour clown."

He's been a fierce presence on the New York downtown scene for decades, beginning in the 1970s when he hit the streets in pink hair and gold Fiorucci pants right up through playing the androgynous host, called the Mistress of Seduction, in Cirque do Soleil's "Zumanity" for six years in Las Vegas.

This week Arias comes to Oberon as part of the American Repertory Theater's and Afterglow Festival's Glowberon series for a retrospective show he calls "Looking Back at the Future." No doubt he will touch upon his friendship with the visionary performance artist Klaus Nomi and their legendary collaboration with David Bowie on Saturday Night Live in 1979. (Nomi died in 1983 from complications from AIDS.) As well as his acclaimed cabaret show in which he channeled Billie Holiday long before Audra McDonald did so.

When he returned to New York in 2008, he collaborated with puppeteer Basil Twist on the show "Arias With a Twist," a one-person show in which Arias flirted with the Devil, was kidnapped by space aliens, sang with a jazz band and danced with a chorus line out of a Busby Berkeley musical. The show became the basis of an acclaimed documentary, "Basil with a Twist" that is well-worth a look, especially if you don't know about Arias.

EDGE spoke to Arias recently about the show, his career and what he thinks of the new age of drag seen on RuPaul's Drag Race.

Never turned back

EDGE: What are you planning to do at Oberon?

Joey Arias: It's called 'Looking Back at the Future' and it is kind-of looking back at what I have been doing with my life and my career. And into the future using new stories to make it modern and different for the Millennials.

EDGE: Many of us first got to know you from your brilliant interpretations of Billie Holiday songs. Will they be included in this show?

Joey Arias: That's like asking does a baby have a bottle to drink milk to live? Of course I will. There is no way in any show that I wouldn't do any Billie Holiday. Even if it is a rock program, I have to do at least one Billie Holiday song. Always.

EDGE: Most people don't know that you were once part of rock band back in the 1960s, or what we would call a boy band, called Purlie. And you were on the cover of Tiger Beat magazine - something that few can claim. Were you out then or in the closet?

Joey Arias: I think I've been out my whole life. I didn't even pretend I was straight. They would ask me questions in interviews like, 'If you were going to date a girl, what would that be like?' And I would answer, 'I'd say how pretty she looked and ask her where she got her dress from.' Actually, we'd be fighting for her make-up.

EDGE: Was being a performer always what you wanted to do?

Joey Arias: I started performing when I was a kid in the back yard with friends. I have always been jumping around with the family or whatever. But I made it professional when I signed with Capitol Records and started getting paid. And when I joined the Groundlings Theater, where I incorporated music in the improv. But when I came to New York, I decided to let the city take me and let it do what it wanted with me, so I got involved with fashion worked at Fiorucci's. Then I met Klaus Nomi and got swept up into performing at Max's Kansas City with Klaus. And my music career began again without my even wanting it to.

Shortly after that I did SNL with Bowie and Klaus. There's been no turning back after that. But the real turning point came a friend of mine from Germany, who was one of Klaus 's best friends, said to me that I needed to make decision: 'You can't be working in fashion and do this and that and the other thing. You need to do one thing to make it work.' So I finally quit Fiorucci's and depended on performing. That was it. I never turned back.

Everything is real

EDGE: Cirque do Soleil reached out to you to be part of their first Las Vegas show 'Zumanity,' in which you were the star - the mistress of ceremony called the Mistress of Seduction. What was that experience like?

Joey Arias: I came back in 2009 after six years. I had never been involved in a long-running show, except perhaps Bar d'O in New York and that was this on-going cabaret show that took New York by storm in the 1990s. I became involved with Cirque du Soleil through my friend Andrew Watson, who was one of he original performers - a trapeze artist. He became a stage manager and director for Cirque. When they talked about doing a show in Vegas, he said he wanted to make it sexy - a sexy cabaret show. Cirque asked Thierry Mugler to be the creator of the show. So I asked if they were doing a cabaret show, who was going to be the host? And Andrew said me. I was shocked. He said he wasn't going to do the show unless I was involved. He had never seen anyone in the world like me and if I didn't sign up, he wouldn't do the show. Then after six months of me thinking about it, I finally agreed and went to Montreal for almost a year to create the show. Then we had a month off and went off to Vegas. I am not a big fan of the sun and heat like that, but so it made it kind of difficult for me, but we were in the theater all the time in the darkness, so it was great.

EDGE: What did audience think of you in Vegas?

Joey Arias: The first thing they saw was that I was very female, very strange with a very strong visual presence. That was intentional: anyone signing up for the show had to sign a contract to say that they could not reveal my sexuality. If they did, they would get sued; so nobody knew if I was a male or female. The response would be when I came out was things like, 'that woman is so beautiful. Doesn't she so great?' Or some would wonder, 'is that a woman?' or 'what is that?' There were bets because this is Vegas with these high rollers as to whether or not I was male or female.

EDGE: Did you have a 'Victor/Victoria' moment when you would whip of your wig and reveal that you were a man?

Joey Arias: No. I don't wear a wig. It was my hair. My hair is down to my waist. I never wore a wig, so I don't do that old kind of reveal. Everything is real.

Day-glo pink hair

EDGE: You've been a presence in New York City since you moved there in the 1970s. Do you talk about those days in the show?

Joey Arias: For sure. We all got there in the 1970s when we were all kids - 19 -20 years old. I was working at Fiorucci's and met Klaus and I met Deborah Harry and the Ramones. It was crazy. It was a different New York. You could live and experience and do art and create and not worry so much about paying your rent because it was so cheap. And it was about creative growth and getting to know each other and hang out. There was Andy Warhol and Keith Haring and Basquiat, and Klaus and Anne Magnuson and John Sex. The list goes on and on and on.

EDGE: What were you like in the 1970s?

Joey Arias:At that point I was working at Fiorucci's and not performing, but I was very flamboyant and intense and friendly and very welcoming to people. It wasn't about being swishy -- I was open and accepting of people and friendly. But when I went to gay clubs, sometimes they wouldn't let me in because they thought I was an extraterrestrial. I was literally the first person in New York to dye my hair. It was this day-glo pink. People would wonder, 'who is that person with that pink hair?' It was not easy; some were throwing rocks at me, trying to run me over on the street, gangs would chase me. Today, of course, pink hair, green hair. It's like wearing a ring on your finger. But back then, I was controversial.

EDGE: What do you think of New York today?

Joey Arias: Like I always tell people, it's called New York. It's New. Unfortunately today it is all about corporations, and thanks to Rudy Giuliani, who completely fucked everything up, it is no longer amazing. Because of zoning he started closing all the clubs and making room for Target and the Gap. People were shocked. I live in Greenwich Village, which is still the was when I moved here; but the city itself - it's not great. The landlords are greedy. People come to New York as they always have and there is still that vibration that's very intense. But it is not the New York that they expect it to be or what it was like when I came here. And I feel bad for all the young artists that come here because they want to see that, but they can't get it, unless they're in Brooklyn. There is still creativity in New York, but it's too expensive with people living eight in a one-bedroom apartment.

EDGE: You were very close with Klaus Moni. Can you talk a bit about him?

Joey Arias: Well Klaus when I first met him in 1976, he was a baker and an opera singer. He was wearing chinos, a Brooks Brothers pin-stripe shirt, a fedora and penny loafers. He was not what you would call hip at all. He was very like unhip. And here I was in Fiorucci gold jeans and pink hair. It was such a contrast. He was German and my background is Mexican-German, so we had this kind-of relationship with that. The minute we met we became instant friends in a second and I never left each other's side from 1976 until he died.

Klaus was very influenced by me. When the punk thing was happening, he started to change his look and wear leather pants and black lipstick, and changed his name to Klaus Nomi due to a friend of ours who was a big fan of Omni Magazine, and his name came from that. Then he did the New Wave Vaudeville show. I remember the first time he came on stage he came out and did this aria ('Mon c�ur s'ouvre � ta voix,' which translates as 'My heart opens to your voice') from 'Samson and Delilah' like an alien. We just sat there and said, 'Oh, my God.' After the show he asked me what I thought, and I said I was blown away, but that name, Nomi, what the fuck is that? And he said I couldn't go on the stage as Klaus Sperber (his real name). Klaus Sperber? It doesn't work but, Nomi, as in 'do you know me?' And I said, 'you know what? I buy it.'

EDGE: I read that you are making a film bio of his life. How is that going?

Joey Arias: When I decided to do a film about my relationship with Klaus, I started to work on the screenplay. The project started with Alan Cumming, he called me when I was doing Cirque and he said that a German friend had suggested he play Klaus. I met up with him and said, 'you know what? You'd be great as Klaus because there is such a similarity. The bone structure, the face, the color of the eyes, the shape of the eyes, the nose.' So my choice is Alan. And now he's saying, 'please get this done soon because I am getting older. I don't want to be this old man playing Klaus. It's kind of stopped right now, but we are trying to get the film done.

Talking Drag Race

EDGE: Like many aspects of LGBT culture, drag has gone through a seismic change in the past decade, largely due to the success of RuPaul's Drag Race. What do you think of the changes to drag culture?

Joey Arias: I have to say that is thank God for RuPaul for making drag so mainstream, even though it was going there already. And some of them from the show are talented, but some of them are not performers at all or are very funny. And they all look the same. It's kind of sad in a way because before it was about being original, like Lady Bunny. Different people had a look that was exciting and different. Now today, you see the RuPaul drag queens and they all have the same look. It borders on a kind of clown that's beyond glamour.

The reason why these girls from RuPaul are taking all the jobs is because they're from reality television. These girls get paid $35,000 to appear and do nothing. I feel bad for the originals - Lypsinka and Varla and Lady Bunny and Sherry Vine, the list goes on - that are being challenged by RuPaul's drag queens. I was just in LA last week and about ten RuPaul drag queens came and said, 'I can't believe I'm meeting you live in person. You're beyond beautiful. You're such an original and inspired me,' And I thanked them. I don't want to get negative at all about that, but I wish there was more talent there.

EDGE: You have been doing this for a long time, yet always appear to be doing something new and interesting and exciting. How do you keep things fresh?

Joey Arias: I dream every night. I meet people every day. I am on the street and meet everyone, even the RuPaul drag queens. I go to shows. Read. Watch movies. Just be inspired. I don't really feel real, like a citizen down on Earth. I feel like a citizen in the world of art and moving like a tri-dimensional being, somebody who is not real but for real. And I look at things differently. It's amazing. I keep pushing. I am not satisfied. I tell people, I am not done yet. I am still looking and searching. I am like an extra-terrestrial looking for a new life form or inspiration, and I keep going.

Joey Arias appears in "Looking Back at the Future" on Thursday, November 3 at Oberon, 2 Arrow Street, Cambridge, MA. For more information, visit