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
fun nice airports
Tweeting is something you can do wherever you are, on your phone, on the computer, in an airport lounge. It's easy to do, and I do find it fun to communicate with people. It's quite nice that we can have almost direct contact with anyone in the world at any time. I don't know how important it is in terms of one's career. It seems to be pretty much superfluous in terms of that, but it's nice to communicate.
lemmings firsts band
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.
good-friend my-best-friend wow
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.
summer gay clubs
A lot of Donna Summer and things that maybe weren't trendy anymore or weren't hip in gay clubs but you'd hear them at Taboo.
london revolutionary punk
I was about 16 when punk started to happen. It was so exciting. You had a social depression going on in the U.K. There was a sanitation strike. London was really grim, gray. You had Margaret Thatcher coming in. It was a really revolutionary time.
new-york culture going-out
When I first went to New York, I didn't really go out to clubs. It was the height of Culture Club so I didn't really have a social life. It was only after I had been to New York a few times that I started going out.
sexy long interesting
For me the most interesting thing about Leigh Bowery was the way he used his body as a style statement. He was a big guy, but, because he was tall and had long legs, he looked in proportion - even sexy - -despite being overweight by conventional -standards.
kids media people
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.
song drug musical
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.
book character guy
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.
suicide doors hunger-strike
Leigh [ Bowery] would make up stories about people committing suicide or going on hunger strikes because they were refused entry at the door.
clubs way different
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.
new-york house paradise
The most significant New York club for me was Paradise Garage, where they played house music. This was around '84 or '85.
makeup blue ideas
The Taboo scene was a kind of deconstructed version of the New Romantics. The Taboo crowd was using a lot of the visual ideas that had already been used. I remember the first time I spotted Leigh Bowery and Trojan parading around in clubs: They were in their "Pakis from Outer Space" look, and the makeup was quite similar to one of my old looks, because I was quite fond of wearing blue, green, or yellow foundation, and so I was pretty dismissive of them at first.