After MTV Gig, Camp Aims for Rock Stardom

Listen now to the tale of MTV’s Jesse Camp, the spindly man-child who was plucked from the streets of New York by the pop culture gods and ushered into that famous secret world of rock stars:

Once upon a time, a kid from suburban Connecticut saw a Motley Crue video and was promptly smitten by the power of guitar solos and wild hair. He argued often with his father and grew to be 6 feet, 5 inches tall. Tired of “churches and stupid cops,” he eventually ran away to live on the big city streets to rock ‘n’ roll all night and party every day.

Then, while he was crashing at a New York University dorm in April 1998, some girls invited him to tag along for an audition. MTV, they told him, was looking for amateur veejays. Within weeks, the lanky kid with the fashionably unwashed hair would be a celebrity, hanging out with Ozzy Osbourne, modeling on fashion runways and racking up the major room-service bills.

“Everything I ever dreamed of as a kid came true,” the 19-year-old said this week in a rare hushed tone. “What happened to me doesn’t happen in real life. It can only happen on TV.”

The wistful Camp shared that thought this week as he stood amid the controlled chaos of another mass MTV audition, this one at the Palace in Hollywood, to find his replacement. Camp’s tenure as co-host of the network’s flagship show, “Total Request,” is nearly complete and it’s time to pass the coveted baton.

The weight of this is not lost on Camp: “Whoa I can’t even . . . I mean, it’s like, wow, totally wild, you know?”

In all, 1,033 young people auditioned at the Palace, reading cue cards, mugging for the camera and filling out questionnaires. Two semifinalists were selected, including Laurel Stewart, a 20-year-old Texan who recently moved to Venice Beach.

“Nothing in life can ever prepare you for being in front of the camera,” she said after her victory. Stewart will now compete with 11 other semifinalists to take over for Camp, with the winner to be selected by viewers on April 17.

But that doesn’t mean Camp is fading back into anonymity. He proved so wildly popular as a veejay that he’ll continue to do cameo work for MTV, but his main focus will be carving out a new career: rock star.

There’s talk of an MTV-backed film, but Camp’s current focus is the recording deal (reportedly in the multimillion-dollar range) he signed with Hollywood Records in September. His first album hits stores in May, he’s completed a video for the first single, “See You Around,” and touring plans for his band, the 8th Street Kidz, are in the works.

The 14-song album includes tracks such as “Sloppy Kisses” and “Wasted Youth,” and features a duet with Stevie Nicks and work by Cheap Trick’s Rick Nielsen and guitarist Steve Hunter, who has worked with Lou Reed and Alice Cooper.

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Is the entire endeavor a quick way to cash in on Camp’s fame, or a misguided vanity project? Neither, according to Rob Cavallo, a Hollywood Records executive.

A colleague brought Cavallo a recording of Camp, but didn’t tell the Grammy-winning producer whose music he was hearing. Cavallo, who has worked with Alanis Morissette, Green Day and KISS, said he heard “an artist, someone with a point of view” and was less than thrilled to finally learn the identity of the yelping singer on the tape.

“It’s a double-edged sword,” Cavallo said of Camp’s time in the MTV spotlight. “It’s as hurtful as it is helpful. But the music speaks for itself. It’s straight-up rock ‘n’ roll.”

Whether the album is a success or not, Camp has secured his place in the history of MTV. That’s proven by the airing on Sunday of a 30-minute Camp retrospective titled “Young, Loud & Skinny: A Year in the Life of Jesse.” Marilyn Manson, Tori Amos and MTV journalist Kurt Loder are among those who sing the praises of the gawky veejay during the show, which airs at 12:30 p.m.

Camp shrugs at the praise and sums up his veejay talents as the undefinable ability to “make Backstreet Boys videos more stomachable.”

Camp’s manner suggests a guileless wild child. His hair juts from his head in tall tendrils, he speaks in loopy tangents and he delights in recounting his rock-party exploits (an MTV publicist at his side during a breakfast nearly chokes on a spoon when Camp launches into a detailed account of a drug party with a well-known rocker).

All of it is delivered in his distinctive sing-song voice (part Bobcat Goldthwait, part Pauly Shore, part Peter Pan) and frequent rhyming riffs that are either endearing or instantly grating, depending on who you ask.

“I get to rhyming and start making up some words, firing up some turds, being like a leopard with my herd . . . you know,” Camp says in a near shout, turning heads in a tony Hollywood hotel’s restaurant. “Sometimes, you know, it’s too much for people. I can get a little on people’s nerves, you know, when I get overly zealous.”

Some suspect Camp is more calculated than crazy. MTV executives were a little antsy when, shortly after Camp’s coronation, the youngster admitted that he had fabricated a life story to hide his family background.

Instead of being the product of a blue-collar broken home, Camp is in fact the son of a professor, was raised in relative privilege and can speak several languages.

“He exaggerated, a lot of kids exaggerate,” says Dave Sirulnick, the MTV executive who hatched the idea for the amateur veejay search. “It’s part of who he is . . . he’s on television, he’s performing.”

Sirulnick still marvels at “the way Jesse blew up, just became a pop-culture icon. We couldn’t have asked for better. We’re like proud parents.”

Camp says his biological parents are less pleased, especially his father. “We don’t really speak,” he says. The fabrications were a reflection of that icy relationship, Camp says, but the importance of history is overrated anyway.

“At the end of the day none of that matters, not where you come from, not who your father is . . . That’s all artificial stuff. I could have come from Mars and I’d still be me.”