Jobriath began his career performing with a progressive rock band called Pidgeon. Their one album did not sell well, and Jobriath then pursued a solo career under the management of Mike Jeffries, who had worked with Jimi Hendrix. However his solo demos met with such hostility that, ironically, they helped to get him signed. Rock empresario Clive Davis, then head of Columbia Records, described Jobriath's sound as "mad and unstructured and destructive to melody," a comment that so intrigued Jerry Brandt — who managed Carly Simon — that Brandt got Jobriath a deal with Elektra Records.
His subsequent career is said to be considered an object lesson in the dangers of excessive hype to this day. Elektra, thinking it had the next David Bowie on its hands, over-promoted the artist. They spent $80,000 promoting Jobriath's solo album, but the omnipresent advertising and Brandt's braggadocio (with remarks to the press like, "Jobriath is as different from Bowie as a Lamborghini is from a Model A Ford") backfired. The public was just turned off. Jobriath's self-titled 1973 debut album wasa commercial failure, though it did receive excellent reviews, particularly from Rolling Stone. One of the album's session guitarists was Peter Frampton.
Elektra allowed Jobriath to record a follow-up, 1975's Creatures of the Street, but this time they gave the record no publicity at all and indeed seemed to be trying hard to forget he existed. Then-head of Elektra Jac Holzman was later quoted as saying, "I made two errors of judgment in my days at Elektra and signing Jobriath was one of them."
Jobriath spent his last days singing in a New York cocktail lounge. He died in 1983 of AIDS.
In recent years, Jobriath has been hailed by musicians such as the Pet Shop Boys. Reportedly, a photograph of actor Ewan McGregor in the booklet to the CD soundtrack of the film Velvet Goldmine is an homage to the cover of Jobriath's first album.