Bisexual Singer Jill Sobule Recalls How AIDS United the LGBT Community and Why She Keeps Giving Voice to the Cause

by Paul E. Pratt

For my generation coming of age with sex, there were no dangers,” recalls singer Jill Sobule. “Syphilis was the worst you could get, so you’d get a penicillin shot. Then all of a sudden this boom came down.” So was the introduction of the alt-rock singer—and the world—to HIV/AIDS twenty-five years ago. “It was like a big earthquake in our lives,” Sobule relates. “We had a before—and after.”

That was more than a decade-and-a-half before Sobule hit it big with her 1995 self-titled major label debut album. Later that same year, “Supermodel”—her contribution to the the soundtrack of Amy Heckerling’s teen-angst classic Clueless—made Sobule a staple on VH-1 and MTV. Sobule hit true paydirt with the single “I Kissed a Girl.” It not only launched the performer to international fame, it made her a veritable icon within the lesbian community.

Long before the ultra-catchy ode to a first-time sapphic experience rocketed Sobule onto pop music charts, she was involved with the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. “I wasn’t a kid when that song hit,” she notes. “I had this whole life behind me.”

During that life, Sobule was shaped by legends such as Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, whose music she was introduced to by her older brother. It was John Prine’s “The Ballad of Sam Stone,” though, which impacted her like few other songs. As a teen, Sobule admits to listening to—“over and over” in her room—the story of a Vietnam veteran who returns from the war a “junkie.” “I thought, ‘If I could write, I would write like that,’” Sobule says wistfully. “It was this happy melody, but the lyrics were so sad and he did it in such an ironic way. It really affected me. It was a story song—storytelling.”

Over the course of her six albums, Sobule’s own ability to spin a yarn has proven equally impactful. While coming-of-age stories seem to be her specialty, Sobule has tackled tough subjects like anorexia (“Lucy at the Gym”) and the religious right’s perception of the gay agenda (“Under the Disco Ball”) with aplomb—and humor. 

“I think [humor] is more effective than simply bludgeoning others over the head with self-righteousness,” she says. 

Even still, there is little to laugh about when recalling her own story of coming-of-age in the AIDS era as a struggling Colorado-based singer-songwriter exploring her own sexuality. Regardless, she weaves a tale as captivating as any found in her songs. 

“I have been involved for over twenty years with men and women,” Sobule confesses with the same warmth of tone and honesty found in her music. Though she hates using the word bisexual (“It always sounds like I’d fuck anyone,” she jokes), she resigns herself to the term. “When I’m involved with a woman, I feel gay,” she says. “When I’m involved with a man, though, I still feel connected to my gay community. It is somehow embedded in me because it’s been part of my life for so long.” During her late teen years in the pre-AIDS era, using a fake ID, the singer snuck into bars. “Gay men’s bars,” Sobule clarifies. “I didn’t know anything about the women’s bars.” At that time, Sobule says gay bars were filled with “oddball straight women” and “straight tourists.” Meanwhile, she relates, “The women’s bar was kind of weird and taboo, and no one went. That was a whole separate world.”

While she frequented bars filled with gay men, Sobule found herself fantasizing about other women. Though Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova were her generation’s postergirls for lesbianism, the pop-rocker dreamt of “French schoolgirls,” as she had once seen “in an art film.” “I went to this really cheesy French film where it was kind of beautiful, sinewy,” Sobule reflects. “Basically it was soft-focus, soft-core porn.

“I thought, ‘Wow, that’s cool! I could do that. Where are those girls?’” she remembers. Eventually Sobule mustered the courage to explore her first women’s bar, The Foxhole. She found a world completely different than what she’d envisioned. “I was like, ‘Yikes, golfers!’” Sobule recalls with a laugh. “Those are the girls from the softball team!

“Not that there’s anything wrong with that,” she says quickly, chuckling. “At that time in Denver, there was one look, and that’s what it was at The Foxhole. God bless it. I have wonderful memories, too, I must say.”

While Sobule accepted and integrated her look into the community, she still stood out in her relationships with others in the spectrum of the LGBT community. Most notably, the singer’s involvement in the arts provided much closer personal ties to gay men than those shared by the majority of her lesbian friends, she says. 

According to Sobule, gay men and lesbians at that time lived very separate lives, their worlds seldom intersecting. This was soon to change. As AIDS swept through the gay male population, Sobule says the LGBT communities united. “The outpouring of support really brought the communities together.”

In particular, her roommate at the time, a lesbian working at Denver’s Board of Health, had very little interaction with gay men. As Sobule tells it, that was altered forever by the spread of AIDS. “I remember her coming home and saying, ‘You heard about the gay cancer in San Francisco and New York?’” the singer shares, “‘Well, we’ve got a case in Denver.’”

Soon the number of infections “exploded exponentially,” Sobule explains, as the AIDS epidemic moved into full swing. She says of her roommate, “Being in the health field, you saw her world completely change. Gay men became a large part of it.”

Sobule draws a parallel between the epidemic’s impact on her friend and its impact on the lesbian community as a whole. Like her roommate, lesbians quickly embraced the needs of gay men. “Women, the lesbian community, started kicking ass!” she says proudly, “Those women really put themselves in [gay men’s] lives and helped.”

Sobule goes so far as to suggest gay men realize they “owe something to those women.” To support this, she says: “You still see more of a cohesiveness, certainly in my community.”

According to Sobule, the disease’s dramatic entrance into her life and public consciousness very clearly defined the way she thinks of HIV/AIDS. Younger generations who missed out on some of the more traumatic aspects of the illness—such as wave after wave of AIDS-related deaths—view it differently. “Not that there’s a callousness, but I think people feel this is not something life-threatening any more,” Sobule says. Gone are the radical protests of ACT UP, in which she says she was involved early on. “Time has lessened consciousness around, ‘Oh, I can die,’” she theorizes. “Society is now a little more apt to have an apolitical, laissez-faire attitude toward HIV.”

Affected by the early loss of lives, Sobule says she still considers HIV/AIDS “a horrible, deadly disease.” This reinforces her desire to help raise money and awareness whenever possible. Sobule recently found herself with such a chance: a benefit supporting the AIDS service organization, Hollywood HEART. 

Started in 1995 as Camp Pacific Heartland, Hollywood HEART was the brainchild of MTV executive vice president David Gale. The Los Angeles-based nonprofit “provides hope, education, art, recreation and teamwork opportunities to at-risk youth in Southern California” through two unique programs.

First is Camp Pacific Heartland, a summer camp program for children and adolescents infected and affected by HIV/AIDS. The second is The Movie Team, a one-of-a-kind filmmaking workshop which utilizes its founders’ film industry backgrounds to give children the opportunity to write, direct, produce and star in their own short films.

According to Hollywood HEART executive director Lisa Cavanaugh, the support of celebrities such as Sobule is integral to the program’s success. One way celebrity backers impact the organization is through the obvious financial benefit. 

“When artists like Jill donate their time and talent to our organization,” Cavanaugh explains, “It makes it possible for us to raise even more funds for our programs that reach out to at-risk kids.”

Cavanaugh points out a second, less tangible, impact of celebrity support. This one directly affects the children involved.

“[The kids] are overwhelmed and inspired by the idea that famous entertainers would take time from their busy and glamorous lives to visit with them or perform for our supporters,” says Cavanaugh, who called Sobule’s Santa Monica, California, fundraising performance “marvelous, funny, and engaging.”

All are appropriate descriptions of Sobule, just as it seems completely appropriate that the singer would choose Hollywood HEART. After all, the organization caters to marginalized youth. Starting with 1990’s independently-released Things Are Different Here and up to last year’s Underdog Victorious, the singer has lyrically introduced fans to a string of society’s cast-offs, unlikely little heroes, traumatized and confused young adults.  

Sobule’s recent collaboration with playwright Elise Thoron, Prozak & The Platypus, contains similar themes. The off-Broadway musical, which debuted at New York’s First Annual Summer Play Festival last year, focuses on a troubled American teen traveling through Australia with her father, who is studying the platypus.

“It’s definitely something different,” Sobule admits with a laugh. Primarily she put lyrics written by Thoron to music and arranged additional songs; the score is set to be recorded later this fall. Whether for her albums or for the stage, Sobule takes joy in writing stories to which others—and she herself—can relate. “I love writing about other people,” she says, “But in some ways, we see their lives reflected in our own. We are them.”

She relates it to the response of the lesbian community to the AIDS crisis. Though instances of HIV transmission in the lesbian community are extremely low, and female-to-female sexual transmission is almost unheard of, the women were still drawn into action. “They really felt like, ‘These are my brothers,’” Sobule recalls. “Certainly much more so than the gay community at that time felt ‘These are my sisters.’” 

So too it started with Sobule’s commitment to HIV/AIDS awareness and related causes. Over time, obviously, the battle has become more personal. “HIV and AIDS is something that affected me, especially in the eighties,” she explains. “It’s something you feel a little close to at heart. It’s something that is not only for a good cause, it’s something which has affected you in one way or another.”

Noting a schedule filled with so many such events her manager jokingly refers to her career as a “nonprofit organization,”

she says having such opportunities to “give back” are “part of why you get into the [entertainment] business.

“I’d rather be playing a benefit than playing some gross bar with loud, obnoxious, drunk boys,” Sobule says, noting she did just such a gig a few nights before the telephone interview from her southern California home. “It’s about balance.

“Sometimes you feel like ‘This is a paycheck,’” she says matter-of-factly. “Other times you do a show where you actually feel like you’re part of something. It’s one of those good karmic things, and I’ve got to have that!”

For more information, visit www.JillSobule.com. Hollywood HEART’s on-line presence can be found at www.camppacificheartland.org.

Hair by Jason Schneidman, a Los Angeles-based stylist who may be contacted at Chris McMillan Salon: (310) 285-0088. Make-up and styling by Kari Levassar. Check out more of Jordan Ancel’s photography at www.jordanancel.com.

Paul E. Pratt is a San Francisco-based entertainment and features writer. He interviewed singer RuPaul for the June issue. Log on to Paul’s Web site at www.paulepratt.com.

September 2005