Jan
Beep beep. An engaged tone. Beep beep. Another engaged tone. After stalking Boy George for an interview for the past six months we’re concerned that his legendary prima donna reputation that precedes him may have a grain of truth.
Since the time when Maggie Thatcher was ruling the country with an iron fist and an even more iron perm, Snickers were simple Marathons and Culture Club were in the Top Ten, Boy George has gained notoriety for all of the wrong reasons. When we tell people we’re interviewing him everyone rattles off the tips of their tongues the stories of heroin addiction, prison, sweeping the streets of NYC– anything, but his music. As the familiar headlines run through our head, we’re finally broken out of the trance induced by the chiming engaged tone by a very polite and husky ‘hello’.
The Boy George we speak to today shows no sign of the negativity or tragic melodrama that has blighted his career over the past decade. He tells us he’s been working feverishly on a forthcoming new solo record, Ordinary Alien, collaborating with producer boy wonder, Mark Ronson, and finding time to squeeze in numerous DJ gigs. Proudly sober for two years, five months – he’s charismatic, witty and extremely talkative: regaling tales of dressing Kylie in his own fashion label B:Rude, gushing over his new band crush, Hurts and cackling with an infectious throaty laugh about being asked to sign Lady GaGa’s ‘gaga’ – he’s anything but the high maintenance drama queen we’ve been led to expect.
The last time Boy George was thrust into the public consciousness was in late 2009 when, following a spell in prison for assault and false imprisonment earlier in the year, he hit the headlines after being refused by the parole service to take part in Celebrity Big Brother. The tabloids’ three-decade love affair with his personal life was reignited as the pages were filled once again with stories of drugs and drama. But, rather than seeing this as a missed chance to get back into the public eye he now sees it as a blessing in disguise: “I’m really glad, I didn’t do it. Absolutely. I think I had a lucky escape, I think it would’ve been a disaster. I think to be dragged back into that media attention…not for me”. This is a far cry from the tragic, fallen 80s icon shamelessly looking for press the media have encouraged us to believe in; the Boy George we speak to today is instead keen to distance himself from the theatrics of his past and shift the focus back on his first passions: djing, music, and fashion.
He first started getting his life back after becoming sober on 2 March 2008. “It was the best decision I’ve ever made”, he says. “It’s made my universe much more sparkling”. The main thing we notice when talking to George today is his overall positive attitude and refreshing, pragmatic outlook on life; none of the ‘drug crazed idiot’ he became caricatured as. “Nobody’s a headline, no-ones a soundbite. Life is more complicated than that and in other ways more simple”. “Even though, in my life I’ve gone through really difficult times, even during those times I’ve been able to laugh and smile and be happy.”
When talking about the darkest chapter in his life, spending four months in Edmunds Hill prison for assault and false imprisonment, he’s surprisingly open and upbeat: “When I think about it now it’s like I can’t even believe I even went, but I did”, he confesses, “What I did was surrender to the fact I was there; I got on with it, I got a job, I worked and got on with it and it went really quickly”. Rather than relapsing into bad habits, he kept himself busy by swapping his designer Philip Treacy trilby for a chefs’ hat to pass the time: “I was working in the kitchen from quite early morning to quite late afternoon. It was good fun to work in the kitchen because most of the people who work in there are quite cool because you can’t work in there if you’re crazy, as you’re around knives”. So, what was his favourite dish to cook? “I did lots of curries, lots of stews, dumplings, lots of things…none of the food was that great!”, he laughs huskily. “I would describe the food as kind of sandbag food: ‘fill ‘em up and shut ‘em up!’”. Although, he lost four months at Her Majesty’s Service, he sees it as a positive chapter, reflecting: “I’ve still got friends that I met in prison, people that I go and visit”. Still, no drama, no tantrums.
Despite his own fight to shift the spotlight away from his past, the media’s obsession with his personal life is still going strong. The BBC earlier this year broadcast the drama, Worried About The Boy, based on his life before Culture Club became famous. Starring Douglas Booth as Boy George and Matt Horne as Culture Club’s drummer Jon Moss, the film focuses on his rise to notoriety at London’s Blitz club and his love affair with Jon. “I watched it a couple of times” he tells us “I thought it looked brilliant – the styling and details were brilliant…It was fun, but there were a lot of things about it that were completely wrong. It was an adaptation of that period, it wasn’t a literal translation”. In particular, he felt the programme favoured the sensationalist aspects of his life, the drugs addiction, the tortured affairs rather than the cold facts: “There were a lot of things missing, for example I’ve got four brothers and one sister! My dad speaks in a cockney accent not Irish; he is Irish, but he’s not got an Irish accent. Also, my mum was turned into this curler wearing dreary character and she’s the most important, vibrant person in all of our lives. My mum was like, ‘oh my god, look at that!’” he laughs “They could’ve fixed those things rather than jumping forward to the drugs”. And, on his troubled relationship with Jon? “”I think all relationships are great until they end; that’s the same for everybody” , he reflects. “I think relationships are really hard to have, and I think everyone knows that and most people don’t have their personal lives put on TV and it makes it look worse. …I went with Jon for six years, it wasn’t always bad”.
With everyone having their own take on his life and having already penned two books about his – ‘Take It Like A Man’ and ‘Straight’ – isn’t he tempted, like the recent film The Runaways based on singer Cherie Currie’s biography ‘Neon Angel: The Cherie Currie Story’ to get his version of events across?: “I don’t think I’d be objective enough – it would just be ‘and, everything was fabulous!’ I think it might be egotistical” he laughs throatily. “I’m not sure. I think as I’ve got older, I’ve realised less is more. If I could turn back the clock there’s a lot of things I wouldn’t have said, there’s a lot of things I would’ve kept to myself.” Like most people growing up, he learned the hard way to keep a little back for himself, but unfortunately under the glare of the public eye: “When I was younger, I didn’t have an off button; I kind of told everything to everybody and I don’t think that’s a great thing to do”. But, now a little older and wiser, he’s keen to keep a bit back for himself: “It’s entertaining for other people, but I don’t know how much it actually improves your own life… There’ a lot of misery in the world, why add to it?”
Keen to push the attention back to what we know and have loved him for – his music – he’s releasing his first solo album in eight years – Ordinary Alien. The record’s a collection of work with a producer called Roland Faber aka Kinky Roland, his collaborative partner for the past 15 years. He explains; “The album’s all tracks produced and remixed by Roland. There are some things from a while ago that never got finished or a new track, but it’s very dancey – the album that relates most to what I do as a DJ”. As well as featuring recent single, Amazing Grace, the record also includes tracks from his early career: “One of the tracks I actually recorded around 20 years a go with a DJ called Nicky Holloway”, he tells us. “It’s a cover of a Terry Callier song called, ‘Don’t Wanna See Myself’ and, at the time, I didn’t really like it and I didn’t want it put out. And, then I found the vocal, and I was like, ‘oh, it’s really good!”. For the album, George took his inspiration from the life that has gained him so many column inches: “I always write about what’s going on in my life”, he explains “kind of like a diary, what I’m feeling how I’m seeing the world, what’s going on personally”.
One of those personal issues is his continuing quest for gay rights. The opening track of Original Alien called, ‘Tense Lust’, is about re-addressing stereotypes of gay men: “Ragga artists call gay men ‘chi chi man’ and it’s about that kind of hatred that we get from ragga records”, he says. “People don’t understand what they’re sayin, when they call us ‘batty boys’ and ‘chi chi man’”. Always committed to promoting gay rights and issues – and as part of his recent reinvention and past negative press about his sexuality – he’s keen to be a positive gay role model: “I really do try and inspire people, especially at the moment…as there’s been a lot of negativity about me ….I feel really passionate about that – it’s very important to be inspirational and show a good confident image to people”.
His ongoing commitment to gay rights saw him DJ at Venus at this year’s Manchester Gay Pride: Playing “Pride is always an honour. Obviously as a gay man myself it holds a lot of meaning to me personally and because of this I’m proud to both support it and perform over the weekend. It is a great occasion to celebrate our sexuality and, minus a few idiots who don’t quite get that it is Gay Pride weekend, it is always a fun event too”, he says.
Along with his new album, George has also found time to collaborate with producer Mark Ronson on his new project ‘Mark Ronson And The International Business’ on a track called, ‘Somebody To Love’, which will feature on Ronson’s upcoming album ‘Record Collection’. “I DJed with mark in New York for years and I know that he’s a 80s fan and he loves that kind of period”, George explains of their meeting, “[the track] is quite Culture Clubby, actually, and that’s what we were going for. I imagine it would be what we would be if we were making records now. It’s got a hint of the original Culture Club sounds about it, but it’s quite modern – it’s Mark Ronson’s style”.
As well as spending time in the studio with a pen a paper he’s also been busy with a needle and thread building up his fashion label, B:Rude. Set-up in New York in 2005, the label started when George had downtime between his rehearsals for his play Taboo and started making t-shirts for himself to pass the time. George cites his inspiration as “Vivienne Westwood and Boy – very much, the punk aesthetic”. It was a way for him to channel his creative side: “Fashion is an important part of my life, which is one of the reasons why I set-up B-Rude”. He has already styled several celebrity clients, including Debbie Harry and Kylie Minogue. “For Kylie, we made quite a few things. We made a suit, a hat, trousers and ties. And, Debbie we also made a pencil suit with red flashes of sequins on, like blood drips, which she loved. Doing something with Debbie Harry, is amazing and to see her in it. They gave a rough outline of what they wanted. They saw stuff of what we done (sic) – Kylie, in particular was pretty open-minded and did what we wanted”. The future could see George relaunching the label and giving it a very modest name: “I might be changing the name to G.O.D. It’s because it’s my initials George O’Dowd”, he says. “Not that I’m claiming to be God or anything!” he huskily chuckles.
One avenue though, George is eager not to explore again is reality TV. “No. I try to avoid reality, really. I’ve done a pretty good job of it so far!” he laughs. So, would he turn down a chance to sit next to Princess Cheryl Cole? “I think [XFactor’s] reached new levels of cruelty”, he says dismissively. “To have people on who are completely delusional and cannot hold a tune, just to make fun of them, I think is really wrong… It’s like, ‘judge less thy be judged’, as they say”. Coming to fame himself the traditional way of working up from clubs to getting signed, he’s dismissive of the show: “XFactor is about Simon Cowell and it’s not necessarily about finding new talent. Thank God, he wasn’t around when I was a kid, imagine if you saw Ziggy Stardust went on XFactor, it’d be like: ‘lose the cape, love’. They wipe away anything that’s individual”.
2011 sees the 30-year anniversary of Culture Club. With all the attention being about his past, is he going to reunite with the band? “Yeah, definitely”, he says defiantly. “We’re talking at the moment; we don’t know what we’re going to do at the moment, but definitely something”. Rather than just comeback to cash-in on a comeback tour, George is looking to record again with Jon and has already started planning: “I’ve already talked to Mark Ronson about maybe producing some tracks for us and I’ve already started talking to my American friends who run labels. I want to work with some of those 80s classics, like Jam and Lewis and various people”.
With a new record, fashion label and a Culture Club reformation all in the near future and a fresh new outlook on life, George wants to be remembered as something other than “I wouldn’t want people to think my life is one big tragedy, because it’s not. Y’know there’s so many amazing things about my life”, he says. “I’ve finally realised that I’m really lucky to do what I do. It’s the best job in the world to do and get paid for – and that’s something I’ve finally realised after lots of pain!”
Ordinary Alien
Released: tbc
