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
We changed the name from Sex Gang Children to Culture Club because Jon Moss, our drummer, went to L.A. on holiday and took some demo tapes with him. -Everyone loved the music but nobody liked the name. I -remember getting a postcard from Jon from L.A. saying, "I don't think America's ready for the Sex Gang Children."
I started going to Madame Louise's, the lesbian club where all the punk bands used to go - the Sex Pistols, the Clash. I remember seeing Billy Idol walk in there; he was gorgeous.
I would rather have a cup of tea than sex.
There's this illusion that homosexuals have sex and heterosexuals fall in love. That's completely untrue. Everybody wants to be loved.
As a kid, I would've loved to get a tweet from David Bowie or Joan Rivers or Tom Cruise. It's great that you can communicate with people and it's instant.
Whenever there's an interview with me, I might read it, but I don't read the comments because they're so hateful sometimes. When someone writes something nasty, I just think, "If that's your contribution to my day, I really don't need your impoliteness." I'm lucky that people are very cool with me and I get a lot of love. I appreciate that.
People say things about me all the time and I get over it. I've had some appalling things told about me.
A difficult crowd will always test your true ability.
I think people could be a bit friendlier. The only real contact you have with people is when they're annoyed if you've had a party - you know, it's been a bit too noisy for them or something.
I don't get all this Speedo stuff actually, I mean, whatever happened to the feather boa?
I was unwelcome in the U.S. for four years.
I'd got very successful, everyone knew who I was, but I felt very empty.
You find out so many interesting things when you're not on drugs.
My family knew I was gay when I was 15, long before I got famous. But it's a very different thing coming out to your family and coming out to the universe. That's a big step. Maybe without me, there wouldn't be Adam Lambert. Without Bowie, there wouldn't be me. Without Quentin Crisp, there wouldn't have been Bowie. So everything is part of a big daisy chain.