Boy George
Boy George
George Alan O'Dowd, known professionally as Boy George, is an English singer, songwriter, DJ, fashion designer and photographer. He is the lead singer of the Grammy and Brit Award-winning pop band Culture Club. At the height of the band's fame, during the 1980s, they recorded global hit songs such as "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me", "Time" and "Karma Chameleon" and George was known for his soulful voice and androgynous appearance. He was part of the English New Romantic...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPop Singer
Date of Birth14 June 1961
CityLondon, England
My God is better than your God
Beethoven had a great look. It was very much about the drama of appearance.
Karma chameleon: we come and go, we come and go...
Leigh [ Bowery] would make up stories about people committing suicide or going on hunger strikes because they were refused entry at the door.
The fabulous side of Taboo was dressing up and dancing like no one was watching you. There were no rules. You had Jeffrey Hinton playing every kind of music. It was like going back to when I used to deejay at Planet in '79, where you'd mix in nutty things like hip-hop or reggae or The Sound of Music [1965] or other film soundtracks - whatever.
Taboo was kind of celebrating trash, the kind of records you secretly loved, like Yes Sir, I Can Boogie, by Baccara [laughs] - things that you probably shouldn't like.
I felt that making records in a traditional way - putting them out in the same way, wasting loads of money - was just a pointless exercise.
Certain punk bands were influential because I thought, If they can do that then I can .Hanging around those bands was how I started my first band - In Praise of Lemmings.
The Taboo crowd was certainly less precious. They were happy to end up in a pile of vomit and booze at the end of the night. It was antifashion, in a sense. They were just as obsessive as the New -Romantics but they acted like they didn't care.
I suppose all of those New Romantic clubs were quite up their own asses in a way. Well, Taboo was up its own ass in a different way, but not in terms of rules.
I was approached by this guy Chris Renshaw, who had read my book and had read Leigh's book. He wanted to incorporate both characters - he probably felt Leigh wasn't famous enough and he realized Leigh [Bowery] and I were associated.
What happened during the previews of Taboo [ musical] was that it was the first time I'd ever been written about as a great song-writer - I cried. I absolutely wept, because it wasn't the usual stuff like, "Oh, he was a drug addict and he did this and that . . ." It was really looking at the music and it was really complimentary. It was a huge thing.
I was really good friends with Matthew Ashman, the guitarist in Bow Wow Wow. He died, unfortunately. He was one of my best friends during my sort of punk period.
The New Romantic scene was so tiny. Although it got lots of mileage in the media, it was a really small club with only a core group of people. As it got more popular, kids started to come from the suburbs all dressed up, but it -really wasn't as big as it looked.