NUMBER 1 – CULTURE CLUB’S RISE
A stroke of luck meant that Culture Club were offered a spot on Top of The Pops. We were going to be on TV. I had lived for that show every Thursday so it was a massive moment. There are two conflicting stories about why or how: Shakin’ Stevens, who was our British Elvis, was unwell or Elton John wanted his latest video shown and refused to perform in the studio. Thanks to one them you have all of me.
We got the news the night before filming and I was awake all night trying on clothes. I ended up choosing a Sue Clowes printed smock with a red cross and fighter planes and red roses all around it, and a matching red fedora hat.
I went barefoot as a tribute to Sandie Shaw because I saw her do it on Ready Steady Go. Years later, I met Sandie when I was exploring Nichiren Buddhism. Sandie and her psychologist husband, Tony Bedford have practiced and taught it for years. Sandie was every bit as fun as I hoped. Both Sandie and Tony are off the wall. Very human. Very real. Very Buddhist.
Culture Club on Top of The Pops felt like a dream but the nation gasped, ‘What is it?’ The next day the press was full of homophobic pearl-clutching, and I was dismantled as a bad influence on young kids. Sound familiar? We were cancelled from a bunch of kids TV shows, but I was mobbed in the street. The public loved me – or were at least curious – even if the music business was unsure.
These days the pearl-clutching is about drag queens reading stories to kids. I knew I was gay at six. No kid turns gay because a drag queen reads them a story. No kid turned gay because they saw me in concert or played ‘Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?’ backwards. You are gay because nature decides it, and if you believe in God you must believe it’s God’s work. If you don’t then what do you have to fear but your own twisted imagination? As Quentin Crisp said, ‘He, she, made me’.
Journalist Nina Myskow called me ‘Wally of The Week’ in The Sunday People and the bitching continued in the tabloids. I was the talk of every playground. I’ve been told by many straight blokes, ‘I thought you was a bird.’ I lapped up all the attention.
Before Culture Club hit the Number 1 spot with ‘Do You Really . . . ’ it all felt like a dream. We crept up to Number 2 and after a brief chat with Noel Edmonds on his show we got to Number 1. I swear it was me talking that made the difference. As soon I spoke, we went to Number 1. Was it the shock of ‘It’s speaking!’ or just my camp working class tone? Either way, I remember saying something quippy and funny.
We were touring when we heard the chart rundown. The night before I’d had to cancel the show in Glasgow because I lost my voice. I went on stage and started the show, but my throat seized up. I panicked and ran off and Jon followed, and an argument ensued. It was a shit-show.
We left the gig and went back to a miserable hotel room with an orange candlewick bedspread and no lampshade above the bed. Jon and I continued our discussion in that bright ugly room and things got uglier. I was upset that Jon hadn’t supported me and we got physical, which happened often. He stormed out of the room and went to the bar. I sat on the bed and cried. We all knew there was a chance that we would be Number 1 that next morning, but I remember just wanting to run. I had screamed at Jon that I was leaving, and he said, ‘Good. Fucking leave.’ I was the Boy George who called wolf all the time.
After sleeping off my tears, we had breakfast, loaded the coach and waited for the chart rundown. We were Number 1! But it felt weird after having to cancel a gig and the row with Jon. Everyone was smiling, even me, though I wondered if things between myself and Jon would ever be peaceful. But we drove to the next gig and the tour exploded and my lost voice was forgotten.
I always struggled vocally in the early days because I had no regime and didn’t warm up my voice. Everything was a problem: air conditioning dried out my throat or the room was too hot. Now I see how psychological it was because I rarely have any problems now. The anxiety day in, day out must have contributed to it. I had grown up around screaming and now it was me losing it constantly.
The tour we were on was small but, with being Number 1, places were packed and there were more fans dressed up. I had been running around with a ton of make-up and my plaited hair full of ribbons for a couple of years. It was the beginning of what became the classic Boy George image.
At our second ever gig at the Regency Suite, Chadwell Heath, near Romford, in January 1982, we saw the first wave of lookalikes, dozens of young girls at the front with ribboned hair and hats. Boys too. After that night we saw the army of lookalikes grow and grow until the crowds were full of them. What had I started?
Before being in the official chart our audience was cool girls and boys dressed in Westwood or New Romantic drag. There were a few groups of trendies that followed us to the handful of gigs we did before making it to the top. They soon disappeared, and we were thrust into the arms and hearts of teenyboppers. We had become The Bay City Rollers. Of course, we thought we were much cooler: we had a message.
The songs were really all about me and Jon and his struggle to be his own man. He had the pressure of expectation from his parents who wanted him to settle down with a nice Jewish girl, but he was shagging a volatile drag queen thing. I was at him all the time not really knowing what I wanted, and he was now famous. All the girls and boys fancied him, which just added to my paranoia. Imagine if he ran off with a fan? The opportunity for him to cheat was constant and there were wider pickings. I was very clear about not abusing our position with fans and there were some gorgeous boys too. But I just wouldn’t do it.
By the time we appeared on TV, I was fully loved up with Jon. I feel now like fame was the reason everything went wrong. Before, I would hold Jon’s arm as we walked into clubs, and he didn’t flinch. We did a photo shoot for a pop magazine where we were openly affectionate and touchy and Jon would always kiss me in public. Suddenly any type of public affection was out of the question. He would say, ‘The press will ruin everything for us’. Turns out, we didn’t need their help.
The fans on the doorstep knew about us though and the press speculated. Only closeted interviewers ever asked about my sexuality.
It’s hilarious when people say I was closeted in 1982. I had been out since I was fifteen and was as gay as the gayest day in May. When we started to do press and radio interviews my presence clearly unnerved people. They could see I wasn’t some glam rock chancer dressed up for the stage.
However uptight Jon became in public, in private it was another story. The more I knew him the less I knew him. He would go out with his friends being ‘Jon Moss. the pop star’ and visit me late at night. He went from being my best friend and confidante to being someone that just wanted a late-night shag. So many nights I waited for him to arrive. Looking out the window. Waiting for the sound of his car. Listening to ‘Car on a Hill’ by Joni Mitchell.
I must hold up my hands because I was difficult too. I always had one foot ready to run. Jon could never have loved me in the way I wanted. I was impossible to make happy. Even now I don’t know why I do what I do. It’s not the glory, the sound of the crowd, the smell of the greasepaint. I fell into music in the same way I fell into Jon’s arms. But it seems like the universe played a part because he kept popping up.
* * *
Our first album, Kissing to Be Clever was full of songs damning our relationship but with echoes of my violent father. ‘I’m Afraid of Me’ was our second single and I was singing about betrayal, dishonesty, and sexual confusion. All the songs were about what was going on in my head, but also social attitudes and bullies. ‘White Boy’ was a diss on the straight boys who would heckle me from cars and objected to my presence on the planet; the boys at school that called me ‘Larry Grayson’ and tried to trip me up. We had ‘White Boys Can’t Control It’, which was about Jon who was really a white boy despite his olive skin. White boy. Uptight boy.
When you’re a white boy
Your life is lust
You kiss and run
And you mistrust
You hold out
With the nowhere men
You dance your dance
And try again
It wasn’t just white boys that objected to me, and I was talking more about the lack of colour in their souls. White was a metaphor for strait laced and boring.
Plenty of black-skinned boys wanted to punch me as I walked around with dreadlocks and make-up. A dreadlocked Rasta spat in my face in Notting Hill Gate on my way to an interview once. I was getting out of a black taxi and the window was open and ‘splat’, right in my painted face. Unsurprisingly, I arrived rattled for my interview.
Lots of Rastas gave me the thumbs up too though and enjoyed the fact that we were embracing reggae. It was white journalists who really objected. They didn’t call it cultural appropriation in those days but that was what they were implying. But living in London I had grown up around Jamaican culture. My friend at school had a Jamaican Dad and an Irish mum and there was nothing weird about it. Black culture and music provided the essential cool in the seventies even if the mainstream had yet to catch up.
I can’t tell you how important it was to me as an emotional being and a writer to hear every Stevie Wonder album. Innvervisions was released in 1973 when I was twelve. I would play it over and over. To hear Nina Simone for the first time or Millie Jackson, Gladys Knight, The Stylistics, Barry White, Chairmen of The Board, Tina Turner, Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye, Sly and The Family Stone. Then mixing it with glam rock, punk and electronic music. The seventies was the decade that kept fucking with your senses.
Culture Club didn’t really understand that we were one of the first racially diverse bands because we didn’t think about it. I had seen so many bands with black and white musicians, and it was normal. It was hip. It was cool. It was right. It was life in London. I had seen UB40 play a pub gig in Edgbaston in Birmingham and Sade sing on the back of a lorry in Greek Street. No one judged you for being a white or black-only band, but it was no longer a big deal.
The reviews for ‘Do You Really . . . ’ were hateful. I can still recite one of them perfectly and it was written in 1982: ‘The only thing Culture Club have got going for them is the hideously unphotogenic Boy George, ignore the airbrushed sleeve.’ We cared, well, I cared and wanted to get revenge on every vile journalist who wrote an unkind word. Journalists were desperate to be stars and they tended to show off and be cruel to make their presence felt.
I was barely a year into my relationship with Jon, but I could see where it was going and I wrote about it in every song. I don’t think the other three ever commented on the lyrics if there was a strong chorus and, in Roy’s case, space for a guitar solo or strings. Because I couldn’t play an instrument, I was aggressive in controlling the lyrics and melodies. I felt it was my only musical role but, in the end, it didn’t matter because we shared everything. I can listen to melodic suggestions these days, but lyrics are still my domain. I push myself to not repeat old ideas and I listen more to things on the radio or what’s considered the latest sound.
I repeat that everything has been done. It’s why I write down every thought or anything I read or hear. I scroll through my notes and find hooks and abstract lines that paint a new landscape. Things don’t have to make sense and I can change subject mid song. Always looking for that melody, tone and lyric that stands out. It’s laughable, like when very recently my friend Laura was banging on about new techno. It’s just old techno from the nineties with better quality sound. It’s crisper, bangs better but the elements are the same. I’m tired of hearing, ‘Listen to this it’s amazing’, when it’s not.
‘Do You Really . . . ’ was the heartbreak song that was never meant to be. I wrote part of the lyrics and melody over a random reggae dub track at Jon’s friend’s flat. It was Mikey’s bassline that pulled it together, but I always thought it was too slow, too long and too personal to be a hit record. At the time it was like nothing else though and it stood out on the radio. The more I heard it the more it made sense but to start with I thought it was the end of us.
Sharing my pain in an abstract way was a winning formula but I laugh at some of the dramatic song titles. It was all very ‘woe is me’: ‘Church of the Poisoned Mind’, which was announced on the radio by Simon Bates with the words ‘Alistair Crowley eat your heart out.’ It was about Jon being Jewish and me being Catholic. I mean, it was never going to work:
Watch me clinging to that beat,
I had to fight to make it mine,
That religion you could sink it neat,
Just move your feet and you’ll feel fine.
The success of ‘Do You Really . . . ’ opened up Europe for us and we had hits everywhere and started travelling more. I feel like we talked more than we sang. Most music shows required you to mime to your hits and I was happy and great at miming. There was a ritual for Top of the Pops where you were supposed to sing live or re-record your vocal under the supervision of someone from the Musicians Union. It was always faked and we always used the original mix, but it was a song and pointless dance. Our producer, Steve Levine would prepare tapes and then swap them. Who cares if you mime, I had already spent ages getting the vocal right and Steve Levine had dedicated himself to the production. Why should we allow some TV show to ruin all our hard work?
There were some hilarious moments during those promotional trips around Europe. We arrived in Holland, and they had created a set that looked like a hospital. There were brains in jars that were pumping. It was cheesy and very uncool. I said no right away, and I always refused to have dancers swirling around us. I know that I was considered difficult, but I had to protect something about us. I think of those kick-offs as my Shirley Temple moments.
I had a habit of going mental and refusing to do something but then doing it anyway. I’ve never been one to cut off my nose to spite my career. I have done many things I didn’t want to do but only because in the end it was easier. I’m not ruthless and I don’t walk over people to get what I want. But if I get turned away from anywhere you won’t see me for dust. Chase me down the road if you want, but I won’t come back. Looking the way I did in the eighties I was always welcome but out of drag I experienced some proper rejection.
Of course, I got fussed over more than the boys and at times it caused friction. I was the mouthpiece for the band, and I didn’t always say the right things, but in the end I got sick of talking. I don’t really enjoy the sound of my speaking voice. I think I sound like Bernard Bresslaw from the Carry On movies. These trips were exhausting and always ended with a record company dinner and that’s when I started to put on weight. I am an emotional eater and tend to eat more when I’m feeling anxious. Those restaurants were getting more fancy as we got more famous. It’s one of the reasons I wore such loose designs to create powerful lines and hide my love handles. Everything was a distraction from who I was. The hats added height and distraction, the plaits framed my round face, and I pulled my bandana so tight it gave me a face lift and a constant headache. I really tried to avoid being seen out of my Boy George drag. Only Jon was privy to the real me and he seemed to like it, but even he preferred me when I was dressed up.
I realise now after so many years of heartache, longing and outright madness that Jon and I had zero chance from the start. It was never, ever going to work but it was happening, and we couldn’t stop it. I’m sure the reason we didn’t tour much was because Jon wanted to avoid being on the road with me. Short promo trips were one thing, but big tours meant more time together and more drama. If it wasn’t me and Jon fighting it was Roy and his wife, Alison. They would throw their wedding rings at each other, and the hotel walls would rattle. Mikey seemed to escape these dramas and while he had girlfriends, he was more private about it. He was so relaxed he even missed the video shoot for ‘Do You Really . . . ’ and his brother Greg played him in the video. It blew my mind at the time, but we hadn’t had a hit so maybe he needed to be convinced. It seems every big star or band in the eighties struggled to get their careers going. Maybe every artist throughout time. Even Bach or Beethoven.
For Culture Club, it wasn’t overnight but it kind of was. I was ready to leave the band every five minutes and I had no faith in the future. Jon, to his credit, was more of a believer and would tell me not to be negative.
Once it happened it happened quick and everything I did was news. On the cover of the Daily Mail, which was my second home, an article appeared describing my entire outfit in detail. It was suggesting that I was nothing more than a clothes horse but, and it may sound surprising, I really didn’t care about clothes. Clothes have always served a purpose, but you won’t find a wardrobe full of designer clobber in my house. I went through a shopping addiction once I had money, but it was just my ego shopping. I would buy five of the same shirts in different colours but never wear them. I threw some amazing things away which I regret now, but I do have a few treasures. I’m not talking because they were expensive, I’m talking about items like the cheap kimono I wore in 1979 – it’s full of moth holes but brings back memories – or my acid house waistcoat covered in smiley badges and safety pins. When I did wear Gaultier – which I, admittedly, loved – it was gifted to me. I’ve been given tons of free designer clothes, but you always run the risk of looking killed to dress. Designer looks have got to be broken up with thrift store chic or you look too done. If I’m wearing head to toe Gucci or Versace, I’d prefer to be paid. I consider myself outside the music and fashion industry in this way. I might be looking through the window, perhaps.
I knew underneath all the flowing smocks and ribbons that I was just George O’Dowd from Eltham. My upbringing, as rough as it was, set me up for insanity and redemption. I had madness and common sense running through my veins and it pulled me back from the edge so many times. I have this weird ability to forget the worst things that happen because you can’t live in your mistakes. I was probably heading towards addiction from the day I was born.
‘Do You Really . . . ’ was shoved on Kissing to Be Clever at the last hour. The album title was me wondering whether Jon’s tongue in my mouth was just a cynical act or if it was real. As the band got bigger and bigger, our friendship got smaller. I should have broken up with him, I should have walked away from every relationship I have ever been in, but I never leave. I’m a martyr, just like Mum.
We all had our own struggles with fame. We had the world at our feet but the emotional capacity of sea sponges. I had fun, lots of fun but there was so much more fun to be had. I think Jon, Roy and Mikey wanted to be eligible bachelors of rock and roll. I was supposed to be the radical one, fearless and, in many ways I was but with an underlying need for the white picket fence. Looking back, I could have had my cake and worn it. I had guys throwing themselves at me, but it always felt creepy. I wanted Jon and I wanted him all to myself. He always said, ‘I love you’ and wrote me amazing notes when we fell out. A couple of years back I took all those very personal letters from Jon and burnt them.
I had no idea what love was, and I had terrible examples in my mother and father. Now I know that you can’t own anyone. I guess you can’t help whose arms you fall into.
* * *
At this time I was still renting a flat from Philip, and at a reduced rate.
It was just two bedrooms and a living room with a galley kitchen to one side – Philip didn’t actually live there because he refused to leave home. ‘I love home comforts’, he’d say, and he couldn’t leave his mum. She screamed at him constantly but there was such a bond between them.
I shared the flat for a while with Gary Crowley’s girlfriend, Niamh Fahey whose sister Siobhan was in Fun Boy Three then Bananarama. I famously styled Bananarama in Sue Clowes stuff from The Foundry. They said I made them look like shot-putters! Siobhan, Sarah and Keren had a brilliant look anyway, so they didn’t need me. I watched them on an old Top of The Pops recently and they looked amazing.
Very quickly my doorstep was littered with teenage girls and gay boys.
We were on rise and flew to New York in November 1982. Steve Dagger, Spandau Ballet’s manager, had told me that we were getting played in America, but I couldn’t believe it. Every British artist dreamed of breaking America, but I was quite nonchalant. ‘Why wouldn’t Americans love me?’, I thought.
I was excited to be in America because I loved American music and John Waters. I thought I might meet Divine swishing down the street, but instead we saw artist David Hockney at breakfast at the Waldof-Astoria. We did a small but packed show at The Ritz Theatre and I met my first superfan, Bonnie Lippel. Bonnie had taken photos at the gig and waited outside with a bunch of lavender roses so I invited her to breakfast the following morning and she brought contact sheets and photos that she’d had printed overnight.
But despite that, there was no fuss in New York like there was in the UK. No fans outside the hotel, or people following us. We just weren’t important enough, yet. But when I met Bonnie, I liked her instantly. She was heavy-set with bedraggled hippie hair and big open eyes. Her voice was hardcore New York and she was loud. I probably wouldn’t have invited her if she’d been more conventional, but she felt like a fellow outsider. Some friendships are instant and that’s what it was.
Bonnie’s schtick was to take photos at live shows and she said she was friends with a bunch of singers like Linda Ronstadt and Dolly Parton. I didn’t check and I didn’t really care. When we toured the East Coast she followed us in her VW Beetle and took photos. Half-way through the tour she broke down and I invited her on to the tour bus, much to the horror of the other guys.
It was cold in New York, and we did photos in Central Park and a bunch of press. I was treated very much like a visiting alien, but I charmed the media. I talked about Liberace and said surely I was nothing outrageous compared to him.
‘What about the Pope?’ I said, ‘He wears dresses.’
I found myself talking about lots of things I had no interest in and I was asked ridiculous questions. I found an old magazine recently where I’m talking about Gary Glitter and the Pope and predicted that Iron Maiden were going to be massive. Luckily, I was right but I don’t know on which authority I was pontificating. It was obvious that journalists wanted to trip me up but I gave good quotes.
I was poked continually about my sexuality. And while it was no big deal to me it was clearly a big deal to everyone else. I’m not sure if anyone said, ‘Don’t say gay’, but I’d lived in the world long enough to know it wasn’t the best calling card. Ambiguous sexuality is more exciting than actually admitting you dance backwards and live with your mother. Every time I spoke, I felt like saying, ‘I’m shagging the drummer.’ But I had to remember who I was entertaining.
Of course we all have our sell by date, but as soon as I started being more political about my sexuality I was accused of going on about it.
Could I have been as successful in America had I been bold enough to say, ‘Yeah, I’m queer’? I enjoyed the ambiguity and mystery, and I was protecting my relationship with Jon. I was doing quite enough with what I was wearing. And when Jimmy Somerville appeared on Top of the Pops his father wouldn’t watch in case he was dressed like me. For some I was the benchmark poof and for others I wasn’t doing enough. It’s one thing to tell your parents you’re queer, and quite another to tell the universe. I believe Bowie’s career was marginalised in America because of his bold statements.
Why did I become so huge in America? Why did they love me? Well, it all turned a bit sour when we got our Grammy from Cyndi Lauper and Rodney Dangerfield. I said ‘Thank you, America. You’ve got style and taste and you know a good drag queen when you see one.’ Turns out that statement was as bold as Bowie’s ‘I’m gay’. Country singers fell off their seats and my then-publicist, Susan Blond was apoplectic. Little queer kids all over America felt the lights get brighter but the dimmer switch was turned down on me. There were morality protesters outside the gigs with signs like, ‘If sex is a sin what is Boy George?’ A musician, actually.
But in the eighties, America was ours for the taking. There were certain parts we weren’t invited to like Texas and down South, but we were received with love everywhere we went. Just like at home, kids were turning up in full Boy George regalia and competitions for the best lookalike popped up in bars and clubs all over the country.
Duran Duran had cracked America just ahead of us but we were hot on their padded shoulders. They were portraying a much more rock and roll dream and they were straight boys. I think Roy thought he was in the wrong band and wanted to swan around like John Taylor. He wore the jackets with the rolled-up sleeves and would have preferred limos to the functional vans we drove around in. I must admit I was a bit of a killjoy when it came to the rock and roll dream. Duran did videos on yachts in Antigua and we filmed by the Thames on a rainy day. But I was really conscious of not wanting to be like Duran. They were our competition and fans were divided. Of course, I like their records but I never would have admitted it then. But yes, I’m officially a Durannie.
Our debut album, Kissing to Be Clever reached Number 14 in America and ‘Do You Really Want to Hurt Me’ got to Number 2. The record label has to really believe in you to invest the kind of money it takes to get a hit in America. Obviously lots of people bought it because they loved it, but it takes more than love in America. We could have nudged those records to Number 1 had we toured more. That’s where Duran Duran were smart. We no longer sell records in America but our live tours are hugely successful. I feel like America is getting to know me all over again now. And why not? I’m an entirely different person.
I think my popularity really soared in America when I appeared on the Johnny Carson Tonight show. Joan Rivers was sitting in for Johnny Carson and I was terrified of meeting her. Joan Collins was also a guest and I had a fabulous photo taken between them both. I love Joan Collins. Meeting her was so Hollywood. At that point I remember thinking, ‘my life is completely glamorous.’ I was a little bit spikey during my interview with Joan Rivers which I didn’t need to be because she was so warm and seemed to genuinely like me – I did it for the attention. Someone like Joan Rivers can see through bullshit a mile away. She took the piss out of everyone but God help you if you had no sense of humour. Like the time she interviewed Bridget Nielsen. Watch that if you want to be uncomfortable.
It was Culture Club’s first trip to LA and it was like being in the movies. Everything seemed iconic. We were riding in a stretch limousine up Sunset Boulevard and when we pulled up at the lights Kojak was in the next car. I shouted, ‘Look, it’s Kojak,’ and he gave me a smile. I have no idea if he knew who we were but I certainly knew who he was. I wrote the song, ‘It’s a Miracle’ about that trip to LA. It was originally called ‘It’s America’ but we thought that was too cheesy. Lots of British artists were making their videos to be more American, adding school buses and yellow taxis. I didn’t want to do anything that made us look like we were trying to ingratiate ourselves.
‘We’re British,’ I would say. ‘That’s the point. God save the Queen.’
It wasn’t all easy. I found LA difficult because you couldn’t walk anywhere. We stayed in a hotel called the Beverly Comstock Hotel on Wilshire Boulevard. I went walking one night and got pulled over by the police, which was really intimidating. Our manager Tony loved a frilly hotel, with lots of cushions and a chandelier. He loved his cup of English tea and would sit by the pool in his salmon shorts taking phone calls. Tony was like a manager out of the showbiz era and he enjoyed our success so much. He actually reminded me of my dad, albeit a very posh version, who sounded ridiculous when he swore. ‘Fuck orf,’ he would say. When I was upset with Jon he would say, ‘Jon’s a potz.’ He probably said the same about me. He probably didn’t realise it was Yiddish for penis.
I returned to London and after Christmas with the family I started to look for my own home. I didn’t have to look far. I could see my new house from the window of Philip’s flat, a two-storey mews house around the corner in Abercorn Mews. I loved that house and it was exciting to have my own home that I could decorate any way I wanted. It was the first time I’d really owned anything. I painted the walls regency green and avoided leather sofas. I was happy there even though I became more accessible. The neighbours shooed fans away but they’d gather at the end of the road. There were fans from all over the world. They travelled from Italy, France and Japan. There were even fans that moved here and got jobs as chamber-maids just so they could see me. They were wild times.
In early 1983, we flew out to Hong Kong and did a gig before touring Japan. I was excited about being in Asia, especially Japan because I’d seen pictures of Bowie on an escalator in Tokyo. I’d seen him wearing Kansai Yamamoto clothes when he was Ziggy Stardust and I was desperate to see a kabuki performance. In Hong Kong we played to a largely expat crowd but we had many Chinese fans. Japan was another level with young girls following us everywhere. They would throw gifts at us everywhere we went: ornate fans, dolls, kimonos, you name it, I got everything. As crazy as the kids were, they were super polite and they kept shouting, ‘Boy-ee’. In the hotels there were some older Japanese girls who had their eye on the three boys. I kept my eye on them when Jon was around.
The concert reviews were factual and unemotional. They simply listed what songs you sang and gave a description but no opinion. We were used to getting slaughtered in the sneering British press so I much preferred the Japanese approach. I also loved the food. I loved the energy. I learnt that Japanese people never say no even when they say yes, and they are never going to do what you ask. Politeness and reputation are everything, as I was to find out later on. A very famous journalist refused to speak to me for years because I was late for an interview.
I went to a kabuki show and was invited backstage to watch Tamasaburo – who was called the Japanese Boy George – do his make-up. In kabuki all the women are played by men. It was so exciting to watch how quickly it was done and to watch him transform himself into a female for the performance.
I felt comfortable in Japan dressed up as me. Even though Japan is a conservative culture they seemed to accept me as a foreign oddity.
Back at home we had our second hit with ‘Time’, which was the final single release from Kissing to Be Clever but was a taste of our maturing sound. Kissing to Be Clever was a splurge of youthful anxiety but Colour By Numbers, our second album, soon to be released in October 1983 was in every way the perfect pop album. It was produced by Steve Levine, who guided us towards a more soulful sound. Helen Terry arranged and sang most of the backing vocals and we had guests like Colin Blunstone, from sixties band the Zombies and comic actor Derek Guyle, who played washboard on ‘It’s a Miracle’. I love having guests in the studio and Steve was like an excited teenager about sound, production and gadgetry. Sometimes we couldn’t move in the studio for new keyboards and life-changing sound equipment. I will never forget the sunny morning when Steve picked me up in his Aston Martin which had the first car CD player. He was playing ‘Why’ by Carly Simon and Chic and it sounded so crisp.
We were writing songs for our second album, and it was heavily influenced by American soul and had jazzy pockets. We always had pop in our music, and we added Motown with ‘Church of The Poisoned Mind’, which was kind of Motown meets The Addams Family, a traditional Motown groove with dark twisted lyrics about supressed queer love and fear. I hate to break it to Roy, but ‘Miss Me Blind’ is about queer sex and hypocrisy. Bet you got a good gun. Loaded or what? Of course, the listener can make the song about anything they want.
‘Karma Chameleon’ was just a rough demo at the time but it went with me and Marilyn to Egypt on holiday. We decided to take a two-week break in Egypt, and we went with our dreads and make-up. From the moment we landed the men were shouting ‘pretty ladies, pretty ladies’ and we got lots of attention everywhere. I had a version of ‘Karma Chameleon’ on a cassette tape which I played all the time. Marilyn hated it but I insisted it would go to Number 1. It’s funny how quickly you become an expert.
I loved Egypt because no one had a clue who I was, and it was like being an old fashion weirdo. Fame comes with so many complications and explanations but in Egypt I was a Blitz Kid again. We stayed at The Holiday Inn right next to the pyramids, which was full of American soldiers who obviously knew who I was but, for the most part, I was just a foreign bloke dressed up as Nefertiti. I’ve never been one to sit by the pool and at that point everything was about publicity so I got Andre Csillag to fly out with his camera to document me and Marilyn dancing up the Nile. I took a plastic rubbish bin from the hotel and cut it so it fitted perfectly on my head. I wrapped black silk around it and used the rest to make a flowing robe. I wore a tabard and some jewellery I bought in a local souk and turned myself into Cleopatra. I remember walking into the lobby with Marilyn and there was a round of applause. We went to the pyramids, and I rode on a camel. Everyone was taking photos.
Egypt was a break from being Boy George. I had a copy of Kissing to Be Clever on cassette and showed it to people when they asked what I did. No one was that impressed. But back home, things were about to really kick off.
* * *
Culture Club arrived in Sydney to mob scenes. It was described as Beatlemania and we had to be smuggled out of a side door. My dreadlocks were even ripped out of my head and my clothes were pulled everywhere. It was exciting the first time and maybe a few times after but I soon got to dread those airport arrivals, especially after a long flight. I couldn’t fly in my sweatpants because I hated being photographed out of make-up so I would fly as Boy George. Sometimes I applied my make-up in the toilet, inventing the mile high drag club.
By now, we were already huge in the rest of the world. We had won a Grammy for Best New Act and I had dropped my drag bomb. We arrived in Australia with so much notoriety. The Australian press were direct and asked blunt questions. Looking at old Lou Reed interviews from Australia I realised it was nothing new. Lou was asked by a journalist, ‘Are you a homosexual or a transvestite?’ To which he replied, ‘Sometimes.’ The journalist insisted, ‘Which?’ Lou said, ‘What difference does it make?’ He was clearly on another planet when he was answering questions and being a little bit Andy Warhol but the Australian journalists kept poking. I did some hilarious interviews in Australia and was asked stupidly, ‘Do you like football?’ I replied, ‘I’ve got better things to do with my balls.’
But instead of living the life I was punching Jon and crying in my hotel room. Behind my back they were all snorting coke. They passed the coke around on flights while I sat there oblivious. I had used drugs prior to being in the band, mostly speed and a bit of acid. I had drank heavily in my late teens but was actually pretty straitlaced by the time we started Culture Club. I would go mad if I smelt weed or knew the others were high.
Something changed in me then. I started smoking a bit of weed. At first it was just a toke of somebody else’s joint. I started having the odd cigarette too, menthol ones because I thought they were less harmful. At first, people were more shocked by me smoking the cigarettes than the weed but eventually the weed became more useful. Suddenly I realised what I’d been missing. The boys had been taking drugs for ages and I had been on Mikey’s case a number of times when I caught him smoking a joint. But once I started smoking weed, I got over myself.
Drugs are everywhere in music and I had managed for a while to avoid the cliches, but weed really takes the edge off things. I didn’t need it until I started using it and it soon became essential. We were in Holland a lot where attitudes to smoking weed were completely relaxed. They considered it a vitamin and I looked cool which was helpful. I sneered at coke in much the same way but within a couple of years I’d tried that too.
It was very rock and roll to do drugs. It was mostly hidden from me but eventually I found my own sources. There is no one to blame for my drug use but myself. They say tragedy always seeks a hostage and you find people to accompany you on your way to hell. I can’t even say the schedule drove me to drugs but it didn’t help. Weed in particular allowed me to expand my thinking and it improved my lyrics and, at times, enhanced my innate cynicism. It helps you to see and laugh at the bullshit more clearly. It sounds crazy to say that I hate fuss because I cause so much of it. I guess I like fuss on my own terms but not the fuss that’s inflicted on me by fame or other people’s ideas of fame.
From Australia we went to Germany. There were times when I had to walk into a press conference after a fight with Jon, or sing on a German pop show in a Hansel and Gretel castle. When Jeremy and Haysi Fantayzee appeared on Musikladen they were surrounded by shitting and copulating rabbits. Germany can be quite surreal but I was amazed at how popular we were there. When you perform a new song on German TV it is a known fact that if everyone claps along you will have a hit. On our first visit to do a small live show our coach was bottled and bricked by skinheads. Poor Tony was horrified and Jon wasn’t exactly pleased but thought we must be doing something right if Nazis hated us.
I was using my new found insight to write. I was still hooked on ‘Karma Chameleon’ being a hit. When I first discovered the word ‘karma’ I understood it as a punishment for bad deeds. Of course, the word karma simply means action. Some people believe that you get bad karma in your next life if you’ve been a shit in this one. It’s a little bit optimistic to think you get another chance to mess things up but it’s a nice idea.
I often start a song with a title because it can provoke the imagination. I would smoke weed and think about Jon.
The lyrics are really simple but they tell the story.
If I listen to your lies would you say
I’m a man without conviction
I’m a man who doesn’t know
How to sell a contradiction
You come and go, you come and go
Jon certainly did come and go, quite literally. It wasn’t meant to be innuendo but if the cap fits. I sang it a cappella in Roy’s kitchen and had to fight with them to get it on the album. They hated it so much that Steve Levine brought in Phil Pickett from seventies band Sailor and he helped us write the middle eight:
Every day is like survival
You’re my lover not my rival
Phil ended up working on a few other songs and became our live keyboard player. I was a massive fan of Sailor – they were one of those anachronistic bands who made a sound from another era – and Phil brought their pop sensibility to Culture Club.
However much the boys hated ‘Karma’ it was the last track added to the album, almost over their dead bodies. Was it country? Was it camp? Was it camp country? I didn’t care about those details and I still don’t. One morning I’ll wake up wanting to be Dolly Parton and the next I want to be in Bauhaus.
When ‘Karma Chameleon’ was released in September 1983 it was an instant hit on radio and with the public. The reviews were predictably scathing. But it stayed at Number 1 for six weeks and it became that albatross song. Everyone has one, if they’re lucky. I think we have a few but no song fires up a gig like ‘Karma Chameleon’. It’s like it belongs to the people.
The video was shot on a paddle steamer on the side of the Thames. The day of the shoot it was overcast and we had to get on with it. Looking back, it looks like an episode of Bridgerton with black extras in Victorian period costume. Mikey is dressed like a suave Bill Sykes and there I am in the middle of it dressed like Boy George. I think video directors had a field day with Culture Club. Some of their ideas were terrible and I hated every single video we made. The worst being ‘Victims’ where I’m on a wobbling crane and Helen Terry looks like she’s about to appear in Up Pompeii with Frankie Howerd. In the video for ‘Time’, Helen looks like Hilda Ogden. She hated it. Her best look was in ‘Church of the Poison Mind’, which is probably my favourite Culture Club video because it wasn’t trying to tell a stupid narrative. I hated storyboards and narratives that had nothing to do with the song.
Once you have a hit record you have to be careful not to be swallowed by media duties. Just because everybody wants to talk to you doesn’t mean you can’t shut up for five minutes. I started to enjoy and need the attention too much. Roy talks about the cult of Boy George’s personality and he has a point. We never took breaks or time to breathe because we feared it could all end tomorrow. Of course, if Roy, Mikey or Jon had been the centre of attention it might have gone the same way. It’s easy for other people to tell you what you are doing wrong when it’s too late. Everyone’s a genius after you’ve been arrested.
Roy ended up with a massive cocaine problem. We’re talking helicopters and FBI agents and Roy hiding in the rafters of a house. I don’t know all the stories but there are hundreds. One afternoon my friend, Amanda Ghost bumped into him at the St. James Club in Los Angeles and thought he was Dee Snyder from Twisted Sister. Roy was rake thin with a full perm and guyliner and was very animated. Roy’s only daughter, Sunny, who is my goddaughter, ended up on drugs too. I hope one day she writes her own book because the Roy Hay story makes me look like Mother Theresa. Sunny has been through hell but she loves her Dad and has become a beautiful young woman. She has a young son called Lion who has made Roy a proud grandfather.
* * *
The lights got even brighter and the attention was more extreme after ‘Karma Chameleon’. Such was the Culture Club schedule, we were touring in America when ‘Karma’ was released in the UK. We were lucky we were famous enough for the records to survive without us: Karma was at Number 1 for two weeks when Colour by Numbers went to Number 1 in the album chart.
The worst thing about fame was me and Jon. Instead of being fully present at the Grand Canyon or at the top of the Empire State Building I was distracted by us. I missed so much because of my petty obsession. That doesn’t mean there wasn’t laughter and fun because there was, but it was all too quickly dulled down by our drama. I could write about all the good times but that was always in between the sheets or up against the wall. Laconic platonic.
I got so good at covering up for the both of us I started making comments like, ‘Sex? I’d rather have a cup of tea.’ A cup of tea would have been more reliable and I was being deeply sarcastic. They took me literally because I was the face of a sanitised queerness. At the back of Heaven nightclub there were some arches that served as a dark room, not the kind you process photos in, I mean sex clubs where there was little conversation or discretion. If somebody puts their penis through a glory hole you don’t get to know their star sign. I never went into those rooms because I was always dressed up and I’m a little bit of a romantic. The way I looked made me feel so alien towards other gay men. Carmen Miranda meets Colin the carpenter and they don’t get on. That hyper sexualised side of gay culture was going on while I represented the slightly more acceptable poofter.
Meanwhile on the border of America and Canada one of the band was discovered to have a tiny amount of disco weed in his luggage. They wanted to strip search us all but I started crying. I was so emotional. We were starting a tour after weeks of promotion and almost anything was making me cry. I was such a good boy at that time. Virtually a nun when it came to narcotics. I’d had the odd joint but was not so invested that I needed to carry it round with me.
On that tour we went through America and dipped our toes in the south. Suddenly they couldn’t resist us. We were in everyone’s living rooms via MTV and I was as familiar as Big Bird. Japan was next and we rode on the bullet train and were followed by even bigger hoards of girls throwing Japanese dolls and cuddly toys at our toes. Jools Holland greeted us at Tokyo airport and followed us to film a Culture Club special for The Tube – it showed just how big we were. We went back to Australia and the crowds were even bigger and even more intense. We were surrounding by moats of fans at every hotel. You couldn’t go out and if you did it was for a photoshoot. We would go restaurants and there would always be fans peering in through the windows.
I wanted it as much as I didn’t. You can’t prepare for what shape fame will take. It changes too, depending on which country you are in. There were a few countries like Argentina where my quirkiness might have been misunderstood. My bad moods were untranslatable to any reasonable person. I hate fuss. I keep saying this. I don’t want it but I sometimes expect it. You get thrown into situations without warning and no one tells you anything, and if they do you don’t listen. I am much better if I breathe, and I find as I get older I can pause before reacting. When I can’t control myself, I come back from it more quickly.
I wish I could have done that when I spoke about Princess Margaret on Australian TV. I cannot emphasise how glamorous it is to be using my name in the same sentence as one of the royals. I’m not a royalist unless it suits me and in this instance it does. I shook hands with Princess Margaret at the Sony Music Radio Awards at the London Hilton. Afterwards she was heard to say, ‘Who’s that Boy George? He looks like an over made-up tart.’ I snapped back in the press and had T-shirts made of Princess Margaret’s face on my body with my hat and ribbons with the words, ‘I’m not a tart.’
Later, I ran into her son, Lord Linley in Knightsbridge while having lunch with Marilyn.
‘Can I have a word?’, he said.
‘Of course.’
‘I just wanted to say my mother never called you a tart. She had loads of gay friends and knew exactly who you were.’
‘It must have been Carol Decker,’ I said. ‘Although I don’t think she wears as much make-up as me.’
I actually loved Princess Margaret. She was my type of royal, very glamorous, full of it and excited. She did all the things the Queen could never do.
Aside from being insulted by Princess Margaret, my royal credentials are rubbish. I did some work for the Prince’s Trust and became an ambassador; I went to Clarence House with Mark Ronson and hung out with Charles and Camilla. Tom Hardy was there and Eric Clapton. Neither seemed pleased to see me. I met Princess Diana twice. The first was at the Hippodrome at a charity event attended by Diana. I had just gotten over a very public heroin addiction and my reputation was ragged. I wasn’t in the official line-up of guests but nightclub owner Peter Stringfellow whispered in my ear, ‘Princess Diana wants to meet you.’ I was with Mum and she said, ‘Go on, meet her.’ I went upstairs and stood in line with the other guests but a palace official shooed me away.
‘You’re not on the list. Stand aside.’
So I went over to the bar and ordered a drink. After shaking hands with everyone, Diana broke protocol and approached me. She was very sweet and complimented my outfit, which was a Judy Blame coat and hat covered in silver safety pins.
‘Wow, that must have taken forever.’
‘I didn’t do it myself, love.’
I asked her if she would meet Mum and she said, ‘Where is she?’ So I walked her to the balcony and pointed out Mum who was wearing a gold sequin top. Later she sent for Mum and they spent ten minutes chatting. She told Mum I was a true survivor.
I met Diana again at a Capital Radio charity lunch and she sat facing me and had the vegetarian option because I was vegetarian. Morrissey would have loved her. Wayne Sleep was animated and falling on her shoulder. She looked at me, smiled and shrugged her shoulders. I think Wayne was later led away. My boyfriend Michael Dunne met Diana and she asked him what job he had.
‘I’m on the dole,’ he said.
‘That’s nice,’ she said.
He was so embarrassed and kept saying, ‘I told her I was on the dole.’
‘Don’t worry. So is she.’
This queen flew to Miami after touring Australia and bleached my hair in the hotel bathroom.
It was like I was going into my own witness protection scheme. I thought going blond would annoy Marilyn, who I was due to meet, and give me a disguise. We went to Jamaica on holiday thinking I could escape Culture Club and recognition. Turns out ‘Karma Chameleon’ was a massive hit in Jamaica too and I landed to, ‘Boy George has just landed in Jamaica,’ on the taxi radio.
Walking around with Marilyn people would say, ‘Which one of you is Boy George?’ Followed by, ‘Whitey, whitey.’ Marilyn was trying to get noticed and I was trying to hide. We went to Dunn’s River Falls and Marilyn was wearing a negligee and had his nylon dreads pulled up in a pineapple. People were shouting, ‘Boy George, look look.’ I just walked behind, furious that he was bringing so much attention to us. Marilyn was born in Jamaica because his Dad was in the Army. Someone tell Buju Banton that Marilyn is a sista.
We were waited on hand and foot in Jamaica. The food was amazing. But I got sunburnt on the first day and had to stay in for a week so we extended the holiday. I was relaxed for the first time in ages and spending freely. I felt like I deserved it. We smoked weed and spent the day at Keith Richards’ house. Marilyn got his phone number from a cab driver, such is security in Jamaica. When I rang and said it was me there was a pause followed by laughter. Keith said, ‘Is this really the bag lady?’ I put the phone down.
Somehow a message was sent telling us to come to the house and we went. We didn’t discuss the phone call and there were lots of chemical distractions. I had taken cocaine already in New York with Marilyn but it didn’t leave a massive impression. The first time I had ever seen cocaine was in a bowl in Freddie Mercury’s hotel room in San Remo. Culture Club were beckoned to meet Freddie and we went down fully dressed on our way to the TV show. At first, I thought it was sugar but the boys knew what it was and I glared at them. Freddie was checking me out and it was exciting to be in his presence. I could tell he was nice. All the times I met Freddie after that he was charming and friendly. We had a mad chat on the doorstep of the Townhouse studios and discussed everyone from Elton to George Michael and a bit of Bowie. He always used to say, ‘Oh yes, dear, completely.’ He talked about me in an interview once and said, ‘I don’t think Boy George is going to come and go. I think he’s here to stay.’ This was when Freddie was more straitlaced and perhaps he wouldn’t have become quite so iconic had he stayed Killer Queen. Ironically, he turned into the archetypal gay clone and I took the mantle of wearing Zandra Rhodes’s blouses. The interview was suggesting I was a wannabe, nothing more than my clothes. Freddie put him right. If I was just a clothes horse I would be completely out of fashion.
Jamaica was bliss. We drove up at night to Fern Gully and ate food from flaming pots in the darkness; jerk chicken, fried plantain, rice and sweetcorn. That Jamaican weed makes the food taste even more pornographic. In the house we were served sandwiches all day and one of the cooks knocked up a marijuana milk shake which sent me doolally for days. I went to sleep thinking I’d sleep it off and woke up even more stoned. We were by the pool listening to Luther Vandross’s ‘Never Too Much’ and reggae, which goes well with Jamaica.
We even met and befriended the Prime Minister’s wife, Mitzi Seaga and went to her house for dinner. I shook the Prime Minster’s hand and went up to Blue Mountain Studios. That trip was super friendly. Only one nasty guy said to me, ‘Which one of you is fucking Boy George.’ He meant fucking, literally. We ignored him. We hung out with some Rastas up in the hills and we were embraced. I could have stayed there forever.
Andre Csillag, my friend and photographer, came for a few days and we posed around the island. We set up certain pictures for the press because Andre could get them directly to a newspaper: I wanted to control the pictures in the pool rather than be at the mercy of a snapper over the fence. I was successfully shot in the pool and looked like Ursula Andress. By then, I was getting comfortable with the idea of shattering my public persona. I casually but quickly became a regular drug user despite having been quite sanctimonious in the other direction. Like a convent girl who suddenly gets exposed to boys. I was young, I could handle it.
It was in Paris that I first tried heroin. I wanted coke but the guy said what about this.
‘Heroin? Oh.’
Maybe I wanted to look cool. I bought it. I snorted it in the hotel and was instantly over the toilet bowl throwing up the lining of my stomach. It was hideous and then boom – I felt such peace. It was like time stood still. I think taking heroin was the most dangerous thing I ever did, and I was lucky to survive it. It took a few of my friends but I thought I was safer because I never injected it. I was too fearful of doing that. I stuck to snorting and smoking it. I don’t know how Marilyn started taking it or how we started using it together but I remember taking heroin with Steve Strange, and I found others who were in the same dark hole. Before I took heroin, I thought it was a disgusting drug taken by low-life addicts, but I soon found it completely normal. After that first time in Paris, it was a while before I used it again, but I guess it had left some cellular imprint.
I let my guard down in Jamacia and freebased cocaine for the first time and it was euphoric. Cocaine is a bit of a one-night stand because it’s only powerful the first time you take it. Whether you snort it or smoke it, you are always chasing a one time high. Like many people, I thought I could control my drug use and even when people were dying around me, I still didn’t get the message.
Culture Club was starting to fall apart, and our records were failing to impact the charts. Maybe it was my energy or my relationship with Jon or maybe it’s just what happens to all artists or bands. I know the boys and our manager Tony could see the changes in me but what could they do? Especially when everyone except Tony was using drugs. Like me, I guess they all thought they were in control and I don’t know how they dealt with it. But I had the pressure of being under media scrutiny and I know there was talk on Fleet Street about my partying.
I had a massive birthday party in New York, which started with a small select dinner party and went on to the Palladium nightclub and then to Area. The dinner was thrown at the apartment of Publicist Couri Hay who was friends with Cornelia Guest, my socialite new best friend. Couri had worked with Andy Warhol and was one of those classic ‘move that building’ types. Nabila Kashoggi was at dinner dripping in so many diamonds she had security standing behind her. I hardly knew anyone there but Couri, Marilyn and Cornelia. The drug taking started at the hotel, and I hardly touched the food at dinner. By the time we got to The Palladium I was high on ecstasy and coke and the cameras were flashing.
Those nightclub moments are always a blur and I spent the night avoiding cameras and people who just had to tell me something. Everyone was high or very drunk. The mix of booze, coke and ecstasy made people very touchy and talkative. I could write a book on nightclub moments alone but, in the end, they all dissolve into one big nightmare. Was I having fun? I thought I was.
The night continued at Area with Breakfast in Bed. Well, that’s what it said on the invite but who was eating? I had been getting birthday snogs from strangers all night, but I was agitated and suddenly had the worst asthma attack. Someone had to rush to a pharmacy and beg them to give me an asthma spray. I was saved and carried on partying with the likes of Jean Michelle Basquiat and Matt Dillon who was nervously seated next to me on a bed. I had said in an interview that I wanted to be reincarnated as his underwear. Classy. I don’t think there was a man more beautiful in the world at that moment. Warhol was there taking pictures and staring into the void. The party was the talk of Manhattan and I slept for days after.
I was going back and forth to New York alot on Concorde, sometimes jumping on at the very last minute with Marilyn or Fat Tony. Those flights were a fortune, but by now I had money and I didn’t care. I was having a Marilyn moment and living like a glitzy star like he always told me to. Marilyn wasn’t famous in America, but most fans or trendies knew we were associated and Marilyn in those days could own a room. I covered up with layers of clothing and Marilyn went for ‘give her an inch and she’ll wear it’. Her look was a big Kate Garner from Haysi Fantayzee but less Vivienne Westwood and more like the cheap part of Hollywood Boulevard.
Now everyone was noticing me, it wasn’t quite what I thought it would be and even when I tried to hide, the spotlight would just get brighter. I never thought of myself as ‘cuddly’ but it was said about me. The cup of tea thing. I said it on the Russell Harty Show and it followed me like Lynx deodorant. I wanted to be bad. Like Marilyn’s inner Rolling Stone.
New York is a city that indulges you, and even more if you’re famous. I was very famous by now, but doesn’t that just mean I am everywhere all of the time? I was. I was always in the press and without trying. Even now I get so much press but mostly the negative variety.
During this time in New York, Marilyn wanted to write and make some music. He met producer Man 2 Man in a club, and we worked with him in Jersey. He knew musician Michael Rudetsky and we all went into the studio. I loved Michael and we became super close. He was one of those musicians who just got me. Very talented and funny as funny can get; a true unforgettable character. We created music for Marilyn, but we were all taking too many drugs and going around in circles.
We managed to finish a version of Norman Greenbaum’s classic ‘Spirit in The Sky’, which we mixed with Nina Simone’s ‘Oh, Sinner Man’. I had met a powerhouse singer called Diva Gray and she came back with Jocelyn Brown and a tall white chick. The white girl did all the falsetto, but the power came from Diva and Jocelyn. Marilyn sounded great on it, but it never came out.
Michael ended up coming to London after a stint in rehab and we used drugs together. It’s shocking to look back on this time because he died in my house after a session. He had just come out of treatment and was vulnerable. I wasn’t there as I was still partly living in St John’s Wood, but it was the saddest and most brutal news and I remember watching him being carried out by the coroner. I was questioned by police and his family tried to sue. I understood how much they hated me, and I hated myself. I still think of Michael all the time and even talk to him. I loved him. He was my friend.
It was around this time that I was found with a tiny bit of hash and my world was crumbling. It wasn’t my first or last arrest though. I had been arrested at fourteen years old for going with the intention to steal. I used a bunch of wire hangers bent together to create a claw and put it through the letter box of a local boutique. I say local, it was close to my then-girlfriend’s house in New Eltham. I ran when I saw the police and a ginger one tried to catch me and fell over ripping his trousers. They put me in the back of a police car and punched me in the face. Like, smack in the face, full force. I screamed that my Dad would murder them, and they just hit me more. At Eltham police station they strip searched me and then realised I was underage and needed a parent present. I remember sitting in the cell scratching and pinching my face so the bruises wouldn’t go down – I have a skin disorder that makes me react to even subtle touching and they battered me.
Dad and mum arrived and when Dad saw my face he yelled, ‘Which cunt did this?’. I was quick: ‘the ginger one’ and Dad almost jumped over the counter swinging at the two coppers. Mum was screaming, ‘No Jerry, no’.
At home, I got a bit of sympathy but not too much as I had broken the law. I remember that Dad wanted to act against the police, but I was warned by a visiting officer that it would not be wise. I had to live in Woolwich, and I was already constantly being stopped by cops. The O’Dowd’s, well, Richard had a reputation. I stood out like a sore thumb with my dyed hair and bondage kegs.
Despite my second run-in with the law, there was still a lot of partying and flying back and forth. I went to a fashion show in Austria, fully intending to stay sober for the aristocrats in attendance. I think I remember a Prince and a Princess someone, but that might have been somewhere else. I was unpacking my luggage and found a gram of heroin in my trousers. Like an idiot I took it before my performance and I was as to be expected. We were heading to Switzerland to work with producer legend Arif Mardin. To say I was distracted is the least of it. The first three days I slept under the console. Arif was such a beautiful man but he worked with Aretha and Chaka Khan so he knew about temperament and tripping.
In Montreux I shared a private chalet by Lake Geneva with Jon which we called the bunker. The recording was chaos and mostly held down by Roy. I was smoking pot relentlessly and invited Philip Sallon and a car-load of misfits to visit. Philip brought Linda Queenie, who was a trans dominatrix who had once worked in the mines. She kept running around screaming, ‘Innit camp, Switzerland.’ She would show her tits to everyone and say, ‘I got these on the NHS. God Save the Queen.’
My friend Paul, who we called Tranny Paul – in fact he called himself that – was wearing a one piece swimming costume with stilettos and a huge Priscilla Presley wig swapping use of the real fur coat that belonged to Linda. I can hear her coarse voice: ‘Fucking animal rights. Bollocks.’ Linda was terrifying unless you knew her but she was basically terrifying. Linda had full transitional surgery and considered herself to be a woman. She taunted anyone who was pre-op, especially if they took themselves too seriously. ‘You’re not a woman. You’re a man in a dress.’ Spreading her legs, ‘This is a pussy.’ You could never have cancelled Linda because she cancelled herself. Philip said she used to stand in a doorway in Soho and say, ‘Help me. Help me.’ And then when anyone did she would holler, ‘Git away.’
But despite all this, recording continued, and this time I was in a hotel. Me and Jon had the fight of all fights which threw itself into the corridor and Tony and Avi Gordon’s room. I belittled Jon in front a group of debutantes he was trying to impress and as I put my key in the door he jumped out of the lift and lunged at me. Veteran journalist David Wigg popped his head out of the door hoping for an exclusive. He got one and wrote it up in the Daily Express. Liz and Richard were at it again.
Jon broke a finger and a wrist after he punched a lift door after I had run into the lift. A sympathetic picture was given to the press along with a dishonest explanation.
I was invited to the opening of a new club, Palladium, in New York by Steve Rubell who founded Studio 54 and owned Morgans with Ian Schrager. The opening of the Palladium was wild and everyone was there. Madonna arrived with Sean Penn and pretended she didn’t see me. I saw John F. Kennedy Jr at the bar and somebody gave me a box of quaaludes. I didn’t even know what they were but I took one. Keith Haring was there, Grace Jones, Warhol of course and his lover Benjamin Liu, known as Ming Vase. Compared to Andy, Ming was effervescent, which took very little effort. Of course, I didn’t know what Andy was going through. He’d lost his lover to the Aids pandemic, and he was very fragile. I kicked myself about not being nicer. Okay, he slagged me off in his diary three times, which was a badge of honour. We were mean to him, but only because we were mean to everyone. Meanness was polite conversation at times. We could get scathing, one notch up from meanness.
I gave Jean-Michel Basquiat, his alleged protégé, $300 cash in a nightclub. He literally asked me if I had any money on me and in those days I carried wads in my handbag. I was old school, I thought I was Aretha Franklin. I don’t know what he used it for, but I hope he had fun. In return, he told me to come to the studio and choose something. Marilyn reminded me of that constantly, but I never felt comfortable doing it. I would have kept anything he gave me because I was such a fan and still am.
I flew Philip to New York a few weeks later and he hated it. He kept saying it was ‘dry’ and everyone was pretentious. We did have fun in New York but Philip doesn’t take drugs, so he had less fun. He knew what I was up to though and made comments:
‘Marilyn’s bad news for you, dear. I warned you.’
When I invited Philip to join me in Jamaica he asked, ‘Are there any gay clubs there? If not, we’ll start one.’ So Marilyn, Philip, Cornelia, Dencil and me flew in. I paid for everything but I was going anyway and I rented a big house. Philip hated Jamaica more than New York and did nothing but moan. I suppose it was unsurprising because we just stayed in the house getting off our nuts round the pool while Philip wanted to explore the island.
After a few blazing rows, Philip flew back to London needing another holiday and we flew back to New York. We checked into the American Stanhope and planned to do some recording work for Marilyn.
I remember we stole two straight boys from a restaurant and took them to see Madonna at Radio City Music Hall. They were having dinner with their girlfriends when Marilyn walked up to the table and said, ‘Do you want to be our dates?’ Such is the audacity of fame and the desire to be around it, they dumped their girlfriends and came to the gig. Marilyn and I spent the entire night slagging off Madonna’s vocals but as I’ve said, I actually like her music.
In those days drugs were still scandalous even though you saw people openly snorting cocaine in restaurants, clubs and bars. There was a looseness under Mayor Koch and clubs were hedonistic and brazen.
Back in London I had acquired a new house guest in Alison Hay. She said she wanted to spend some time with me but she’d actually just been sent by the band to make sure I got on the flight to Holland where we rehearsing for our upcoming tour to Israel, Greece, Japan, LA, Puerto Rico and New York. Alison was a rubbish detective. I gave her the slip and went to Heaven, arriving back at 4am. They had trouble getting me on the flight but they managed it.
We had a lacklustre rehearsal but we were playing our hits so we weren’t worried. Things were awkward with Jon but I was mostly over it anyway, clinging on for dear life but feeling less enchanted. We returned to London in July 1985 on the day Live Aid was broadcast live from Wembley Stadium. The boys were furious that we weren’t taking part but I knew I wasn’t in a good enough state to do it. I knew it would cause damage rather than be a moment like it was for Queen.
We flew out to Israel and I stashed a gram of heroin in my underwear and took it on the flight. I arrived incoherent behind dark glasses.
I wanted to get to the hotel and sleep it off while Jon went to visit family friends.
We played our show to 35,000 people, that was one per cent of the population. It went well even if it could have been much better. It was a tired performance and the reviews complained there was a lack of style. I wasn’t dressed like traditional Boy George but I thought I was moving on. I’m always moving on.
When Culture Club got bottled off stage in Athens, Robert Smith told the press we deserved it for making crap records. Athens was bad timing because the anarchists were coming for us all. It was a huge government-sponsored festival in an amphitheatre with the weirdest line up of century: The Stranglers, The Cure, Culture Club and The Clash. The troublemakers demanded free entry and broke into the stadium just as we took the stage. We were bottled, stoned and jeered. A brick hit our keyboard player Phil Pickett and I heard an ‘ouch’. I enjoyed the animosity, which I completely misinterpreted as homophobia. I told the crowd, ‘You Greeks invented homosexuality.’ Obviously, I know it’s not an invention but sometimes I feel like one.
It got worse. In Japan I invited Billy McKenzie from The Associates to sing ‘That’s The Way’ with my backing singer Jocelyn Brown and me. Culture Club were on tour with The Associates and Paul Weller’s Style Council. Billy went off on a vocal tangent and Jocelyn looked at me with that Jocelyn face. Of course, I loved Billy and that never changed but it was an awkward moment.
It was the end of Culture Club for a while. We did our last tour date on Long Island and went our separate ways for a time. I spent some time decorating my New York apartment. I brought over some friends from London, like Fat Tony.
I’ve mentioned Tony in passing throughout this book but he probably deserves a bigger mention. We met on the King’s Road when I first got famous, and he made a bitchy remark about my ‘weave’. He called my dreadlocks ‘shitlocks’. These days, and for some time, Tony has not been fat but he keeps the name because it holds a certain legend. His Instagram page has become a go-to for those who cannot bear to be too politically correct and it reflects Tony’s twisted and dark sense of humour. Like the time we were in a limo in Manhattan with our friends and he adapted the classic, ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’ to torture me: ‘On the first day of Christmas, Boy George ate in front of me . . .’ It went on and on.
‘Five doughnut rings, four calling birds and a partridge in a pear tree.’ It was funny for about the first ten minutes but I stopped the car and hid in a shop doorway until he stopped. If Tony found it funny almost everyone else did until it was their turn to be tortured.
In those days, Tony was well known on the club scene and even when he got skinny he was able to throw his weight around. No one messed with Tony, and I didn’t need to because I was part of the circus. At times I envied Tony’s ability to dodge the public bullets I got hit with.
One time, when I relapsed at The Wag Club, he said, ‘Welcome back to the dark side’. He was there for most of my tragedies, and I witnessed and often experienced his. He could go further with everything and would get his new sneakers dirty in the pursuit of debauchery. I have never seen his one-eyed trouser snake, but I hear it has its own postcode. He had more stamina for excess, but I had a cut-off point. Or so I believed.
I really got to know Tony when he got sober because he lived with me for five years with his dogs, Reggie and Tailor. Our lives became all about banter. We’ve always liked to trade bitchy comments. He likes to call me Gina. He says, ‘Gina I love. Boy George I can’t stand.’
Alice was another friend I brought over from London. She was like a boy so we decided to have an affair. We were doing loads of drugs, Ecstasy and Quaaludes, heroin and cocaine, and I hardly remember what we got up to. There were always new clubs opening and parties to go to.
I think I was a safe middle ground for Alice who is now gay and sleeps exclusively with women. With all the drug taking I wanted to break some other rules. Rigid ones about my sexuality. Turns out, just like Alice, I am homosexual.