George Will
George Will
George Frederick Willis an American newspaper columnist and political commentator. He is a Pulitzer Prize–winner known for his conservative commentary on politics. In 1986, The Wall Street Journal called him "perhaps the most powerful journalist in America," in a league with Walter Lippmann...
ProfessionJournalist
Date of Birth4 May 1941
ideas like-you punk
I was about 16 when punk started to happen. It felt like you had this naïve idea that you could change things just by wearing something.
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.
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.
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.
laughing records kind
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.
exercise way records
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.