FEATURE:
Culture, Class and Captivation
Boy George at Sixty
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BECAUSE the legendary Boy George (George O'Dowd)…
turns sixty on 14th June, I wanted to salute him. An L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ icon (as it is Pride Month) and hugely influential musician, he has compelled people through the decades because of his amazing voice, unique fashion and compelling personality. He is someone who continues to amaze and impact people around the world. His solo album, Cool Karaoke, Vol. 1, is due later this year. There is also hope that his band, Culture Club, will be able to tour soon enough – they were due to, but the pandemic halted that. Just before getting to some interviews with the amazing Boy George, here is some Wikipedia overview:
“George Alan O'Dowd (born 14 June 1961), known professionally as Boy George, is an English singer, songwriter, DJ, fashion designer, photographer and record producer. He is the lead singer of the pop band Culture Club. At the height of the band's fame, during the 1980s, they recorded global hit songs such as "Karma Chameleon", "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me" and "Time (Clock of the Heart)". George is known for his soulful voice and his androgynous appearance. He was part of the English New Romantic movement which emerged in the late 1970s to the early 1980s.
His music is often classified as blue-eyed soul, which is influenced by rhythm and blues and reggae. His look and style of fashion was greatly inspired by glam rock pioneers David Bowie and Marc Bolan. He was the lead singer of Jesus Loves You between 1989 and 1992. In 2015, Boy George received an Ivor Novello Award from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors for Outstanding Services to British Music. In 2002, he was voted forty sixth in a BBC poll of the 100 Greatest Britons”.
IN THIS PHOTO: Boy George with fellow Culture Club members (clockwise from top-right) Roy Hay, Mikey Craig and Jon Moss/PHOTO CREDIT: Michael Putland/Getty Images
I think this year is going to be a busy one for Boy George. There are rumours that we might get a biopic, Karma Chameleon, very soon. That will be fascinating to see. I grew up listening to groups like Culture Club, and I was always struck by the magnetism and individuality of Boy George. I love listening to interviews with him, as he is always so interesting and entertaining. I wanted to source a GQ interview that took place late last year:
“As one of the original gender-fluid pop stars, George has also become an androgynous icon for a new generation of fans raised on a diet of TikTok and Harry Styles. “I attract a certain type of person, even the younger ones; they are a bit gothy, a bit punky. They wear make-up. I still get photos of kids dressed up in really old looks of mine and I love that,” he says.
Then there is the Culture Club comeback. Since 2014, the Grammy-award-winning band who, since forming in 1981, have shifted more than 150 million records, have sold out stadiums across the world, ensuring the perennial popularity of songs like “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?” and “Karma Chameleon”. George has been working on his solo output, too, with “mad” collaborations with artists from Pete Murphy to Kim Wilde. Now, Culture Club are gearing up for a show at Wembley SSE Arena, Rainbow In The Dark, which will see 1,000 socially distanced audience members attend in person, with thousands more live-streaming from across the world (first responders get free tickets).
PHOTO CREDIT: Dean Stockings for GQ
“The first time you realised you wanted to be a musician...
I was obsessed with music as a little kid, that was where I escaped to. I shared a room with my four brothers and most of the time I didn’t have the room to myself, so whenever I could I would have the record player on. I’d listen to everything from Irish show tunes to early Bowie, T. Rex and disco. Discovering Bowie was the “Whoa, that’s what I want to be” moment. I was 11 and somehow my dad got me a ticket to see Ziggy Stardust. I had no bus fare to get there or back, I walked, but seeing Bowie for the first time, at that age, made me realise I wanted to be a singer and I wanted to be famous. I remember being very taken by that world of creativity. I wanted to be around what I perceived as a bohemian existence. I hated where I came from, I always felt repressed and out of sorts. I thought that their world was one where no one told you what to do.
The first record you ever bought…
“Yellow River” by Christie. It's an old folky, ’70s hippie track. I used to love Harry Nilsson and Andy Williams – I liked jazz a lot when I was a child. My dad was a builder and he'd clear out the houses of people who had done a moonlight flit leaving all their belongings, so he'd bring back piles of records which no one but me and my older brother really had any interest in. I still have records that I found by just sitting there and going through them. That’s how I discovered the likes of Pearl Bailey or Bessie Smith.
PHOTO CREDIT: Dean Stockings for GQ
The first time you put together a stage outfit…
My mum was a seamstress and my collaborator. I once got her to make me a bat-winged top from these horrible old rose-print synthetic chair covers, which I used to wear to Blitz Club. At all those clubs I’d go to before I was famous, it was all about the look you had and being the most outrageous. They basically were stage outfits, although I didn't think of it like that at the time. I was very influenced by Bowie, rock, punk and disco, and was into any and all clothing, even religious clothing – it didn’t need to be designer fashion.
The first thing you'd do if you became prime minister…
The thing I’d want to deal with immediately is homelessness. We should not have people sleeping on the streets in this country. I also love this idea of universal basic income, I believe that people should get paid even if they don’t work. If they’ve got money, they’ll put it back into the economy anyway, so it’s a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy that would get rid of poverty”.
I want to take things back to May 2020, when Boy George spoke with The Times. I am not going to drop in all of the interview, though there were some sections that really interested me – and taught me more about Boy George:
“Last month, despite all, he released an album, This Is What I Dub, Vol 1. Mostly, it is bass and beat-heavy remixes of songs from his last solo album, but Isolation — which isn’t on the album, but was released at the same time — is a gorgeous new ballad. It is not about our current condition. Rather, he met a man who owns a satellite, which “got him thinking” about isolation. Still, he has a microphone in his flat and will release more music from lockdown soon. He writes five songs a week.
“Yes, I had hits in the Eighties, whatever,” he says. “But I’m a better writer now. Fame gets in the way and becomes a job in itself and takes over from artistry, so you’re locked in a cycle of success and failure. I’m not distracted by mindless celebrity now and don’t have to worry about that to the extent I used to. I mean, I probably didn’t have to worry about it at the time, but I wasn’t evolved enough to understand what was important. My motivations are different now — I don’t really have any!”
“People aren’t honest,” he says, in reply to a question about pop stars today. “Because we’re in sensitive times, when people get upset about anything. I grew up in the 1970s, where every day you were called faggot, poof — at home, at school, on the street. Policemen could hit you. You went to school knowing you could get whipped.
“Kids just don’t understand. I don’t want to sound like an old codger, but they don’t get what people went through for them to be so precious, and I don’t want to dull myself to the point that I don’t have an opinion.”
“When I was growing up nobody used the term transgender, because it was almost like a medical term. So this transgender thing is new, and, for our generation, it’s just getting our heads round it. But people want to be offended, because they think that whatever’s going on for them is much more important than anything else. But I’ll call you whatever you want. I’ve spent years calling people fake names. Boy George. Siouxsie Sioux. Johnny Rotten. Of course, it’s not the same as your sexuality.”
In the early 1980s George stood out — the most androgynous in the room, and something of a social pioneer. Is it harder, I ask, for people at the forefront of an old movement to adjust to a new one?
“No, it’s more that we think they’re homing in on things that aren’t important to us,” he says. “Also, let’s not forget that everyone’s trying to create a moment now. Everyone’s a producer, so there’s pressure to be more interesting — and if you’re not interesting enough, what have you got wrong with you? What have you got to tell us?”
He cites an example of someone who says they have mental health issues or are transgender. “For me, growing up …” He looks off-camera. “Let me just turn my cooking off.”
I am left looking at an empty seat, accompanied by a clatter of pans and the near-distant cry of “I’ve burnt it!” Some more clatter. “Well, I won’t be eating that,” he says when he comes back. No monk’s beard for George today.
I ask if all this is why he wrote “Boomer” by his Twitter handle. Was it mischievous? “Of course. People think if you’re of a certain age you have nothing to say, but just because you’re young it doesn’t make you interesting. You’ve got no experience!”
In a year or so George’s life will be on the big screen. Understandably, given Gervasi’s pending call, the singer is preoccupied with the film. “Fascinating,” he says of the imminent read-through. “Because I don’t think people do really know me.”
For the first time in our interview he sounds sombre. Will the film help that? “No! It will enhance whatever myths there are,” he says, buoyant again. “It’s like when I met Prince and he was quite odd. I didn’t walk off disappointed. Come on, I’m not interested in dull people and don’t want to be one. And I don’t think I am”.
I am going to finish off with an NME interview from May. There is a lot to look forward to in the Boy George camp. The man never seems to stand still or stop working! In the interview (among other things), Boy George spoke about modern Pop artists:
“In the last 10 years I’ve really learned to get out of my way creatively, because I used to go to those terrible songwriting sessions and sit bumcheeks clenched as I tried to write a song,” he continued. “Now I just write what I feel. Once you’ve worked out what you want to say then you’ll find a way of saying it.
“I can always tell when something is just clever pop writing, and I have a lot of appreciation for that as well, but sometimes it’s just very lazy. You wouldn’t go into a football ground, take someone from the stands and let them take a penalty, would you?”
However, he did have a barbed word saved for a lot of pop in the charts today – while admitting that he saw through a lot of the shortcuts on offer to many artists, finding himself in “a great place to be [when] you start realising that you’ve been conned for 30 years”.
“I think there’s been this loss of respect for the artistry of songwriting,” he said. “People think that all it takes is a laptop and some leads. It really doesn’t. This year, I’ve been reacquainting myself with the art of songwriting – copying lots of things, allowing myself to be influenced.
Watch our full interview above where he also discusses looking to “trouble makers” at the BRIT Awards, working with Paul Weller, and his upcoming biopic Karma Chameleon”.
Rather than look back at his early Culture Club days ahead of his sixtieth birthday, I wanted to take things up-to-date regarding Boy George. He is such an endlessly compelling character who, I hope, has many more years of music-making in him. Just before he marks a big birthday, I wanted to pay my respects to…
A true icon.