A.K.A: Jeffrey Crozier

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Style: Magician

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Magician/illusionist/actor/musician Jeffrey Crozier was one of the most enigmatic yet bewildering and totally underated performers this country has ever produced. Crozier's influence and reputation were felt more overseas than in Australia. After more than a decade of perfecting his stage craft Crozier died in May 1981in his hometown of Seymour, Victoria. He reputedly died while rehearsing the illusion of self hanging. 

 

Crozier got his start as a magician on Melbourne television during the late 1960's. In 1969 he formed The Magik Word, and then the Indian Medicine Magik Show, a radical and visiual combination of magic, pyrotechnics, lighting effects, on stage menagerie and loud rock music. He was accompanied by his assistant Lady Air (Andrea Ewing) and musicians  Jan Sardi (guitar), Phil Stone (Bass) and Tom Riley (Drums). The Indian Medicine and Magik show  was popular at 'Head' venues like the T.F Much  Ballroom in Fitzroy, where the troupe shared stages with Spectrum and performance artists The Tribe. After his appearance at Myponga in January 1971, Crozier became frustrated with his lack of success and acceptance in Australia, and in July 1971 travelled to the U.S.A.   

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Crozier was called “the high priest of exorcism-rock,” “the Mad Magician,” “High Priest of Magick” and billed as a “voodoo psychedelic magician.” To think of him as merely an Aussie Alice Cooper (or Arthur Brown for that matter) is to entirely miss the point of the truly impressive CHAOS this guy was able (and quite willing) to orchestrate as a performer. Alice is, and always was, just a stage act. This guy obviously meant it. Like a man possessed, Crozier was also clearly doing whatever it was he was doing for his own benefit and only secondarily for the audience’s entertainment. Jeff Crozier was born in Australia in 1948, started off as a stage magician/illusionist in the mid-60s at a young age. His act was becomes something darker and much wilder incorporating psychedelic rock music with the formation of what ultimately became known as Geoff Krozier’s Indian Medicine Magik Show, having previously been called The Magic Word, or when they performed in more conservative parts of Oz, the Magic Pudding!