Meeting Boy George
On the complication of identity and time.
Meeting my Heroes is an occasional essay series from Matt Carmichael.
There are any a number of reasons why I liked Culture Club. First and foremost, their songs were good, ‘80s pop that has stood the test of time. Which is not to say it’s timeless. It’s very ‘80s. But then again so am I. Colour by Numbers dropped in the magic year of 1984. The Tigers won the World Series going wire to wire in first place. The A-Team was on every Tuesday night as I recall. And lying on the living room floor listening to Casey Kasem was non-stop hits. Thriller. Van Halen. Purple Rain. The Replacements. And this guy named Boy who dressed not just like a girl but like Cindy Lauper at that. She was big that year too. He wore bigger hats though.
So there was this curiosity about him. Dee Snider was around in this era. David Bowie had had his Man who Sold the World days and was now one of the best dressed and most dapper gentlemen in rock. Was Boy George gay? No one was really gay to a 10-year-old in the suburbs in the ’80s. Tipper Gore and Reagan were leading social voices of the day, after all. Boy George was unusually daring and flamboyant but still didn’t quite come out and say what was in hindsight rather obvious. Or maybe he did. It’s not like you could ask Google at the time.
I didn’t know what to make of him. Or if I should even make anything of him. And it’s hard to make sense of what I did or might have thought then from the perspective of today. Or from the perspective of a young pre-adolescent who had his gender roles questioned and challenged by the school bullies.
I especially loved that he was on an episode of the A-team! And that he sang a lot of great songs. Did I respect that he just was at least mostly who he was? Maybe?
Meeting Boy George as an adult was entirely about impressing younger me. When Culture Club reunited I was able to interview Roy Hay and Jon Moss for Addicted to Noise. I parlayed that into a photo pass and after show when they came through. Howard Jones was on the same bill and I was pretty excited about that too.
Back stage milling around I chatted with other fans and industry hangers on. Backstage isn’t generally all that exciting, by the way. People waiting around for the stars to maybe show up. Then taking their turns for whatever interaction they are hoping for. I killed time by interviewing Howard Jones’ young son.
Backstage I had a weird request. I owned the Color by Numbers album on picture disc. Those were records that weren’t just black but had an image on them. I wanted it signed by didn’t want them to ruin the record. So I had them sign a piece of acetate that I then layered over it and framed. The manager was a little skeptical because as he pointed out I could put it over anything like “a picture of Hitler” which was of course the example he gave… but he eventually trusted my fandom and helped find the band.
And so a lifetime or two later (if I start counting at 10) I got to meet Boy George. He signed the acetate. He posed for a photo. And we chatted for a moment about what I honestly don’t remember.
But I know that 1984 me was excited. And I did all I could to soak that in on his behalf. As far as motivations go I think thats a petty good one. Meet the heroes you had at all points of your life. Tho do the work to evaluate how heroic they still are. Boy George probably made a lot of kids like me and not really like me feel like they could be just a little more of whomever they were. No matter what they wore or listened to.
Here’s what I wrote for Addicted To Noise at the time (it’s now archived on MTV News)
Culture Club Reopen For Business
In the aftermath of reunion tours by everyone from the Sex Pistols to the original Kiss, perhaps it is no surprise that the '80s new-wave quartet Culture Club are back in business. "I don't know if this is a rebirth or a revisit at this stage, to be honest," Culture Club guitarist Roy Hay said. "It's really good to be back with the band without all the pressure and insanity of being a 'big band' and caring about everything." Best known for their smash 1983 U.S. pop-soul hit, "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?" , Culture Club were once international stars with videos constantly aired on MTV. Twelve years after they broke up, they are back together.
As the press release for their "The Big Rewind Tour" -- which kicked off Thursday night at Chastain Park in Atlanta and which will take them around the U.S. for 19 dates -- describes them, "One black, one Jew, one Irish transvestite and one Anglo-Saxon: a clash of cultures and a fondness for clubbing. It had to be called Culture Club."
The quartet, which wore colorful, sometimes dayglow outfits, played a catchy brand of blue-eyed soul that was occasionally set to a light reggae rhythm. They were led by the sultry voice of a makeup-donning male diva who went by the name George (born George O'Dowd), the man who put the "Boy" in flamboyant. In their heyday, they helped bend gender in rock music and break conventions about the traditional male lead-singer.
"Our legacy is what we are. We're not suddenly going to do some crazy alternative music, because nobody is interested in that," Hay said. "If we wanted to do that, we would have done it in the last 10 years on our own." The group's debut album, Kissing to Be Clever, was released in 1982. "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?" (which George later revealed was about his relationship with drummer Jon Moss) broke big here in early 1983, and "I'll Tumble 4 Ya" also went top 10, helping the album sell more than a million copies in the U.S. A second album, Colour by Numbers, released in late 1983 and containing such hits as "Church of the Poison Mind," "Miss Me Blind" and the #1 hit "Karma Chameleon"), seemed to cement the group's position as a major act.
"We used to think we could go anywhere musically, and we had the uniting factor of George's voice to bring us back," Hay said. But by the release of a third album, 1984's Waking Up with the House On Fire, the group had peaked. The band members just didn't know it yet.
"George was rich and he was famous," drummer Moss said. "What a great lifestyle -- dishing out free drugs and flying around the world on a Concorde, very nice, thank you."
Boy George, who at one point chastised band members for smoking pot, had acquired a heroin addiction. His drug use made it difficult to record a fourth album, the more dance-oriented From Luxury to Heartache [produced by R&B hit-maker Arif Mardin (Aretha Franklin)]. That album bombed, George's drug addiction became public -- dominating the front pages of the British tabloids for a period -- and the group broke up. George entered rehab, cleaned up and launched a solo career -- but his (and Culture Club's) time had passed.
For years, a reconciliation seemed unlikely; Moss now says there was occasional talk of meeting over coffee sometime. "Like once every 100 years," Moss said. But 12 years after the breakup, the band found itself featured on a VH1 "Behind the Music" special that focused on the tragic demise of Boy George and Culture Club instead of their musical contributions to the sound of the early to mid-'80s.
"They hadn't released any of them [the series of shows, which includes features on Meat Loaf, Joe Cocker, Billy Joel, etc.] when we did the interviews," Hay said of the VH1 show. "The questions didn't seem too bad. But then I watched the show and it was like reading the National Enquirer. So I phoned them up and called them a complete bunch of bastards and how that was the kind of checkbook journalism that killed Lady Di ... and [I] upset them very much." That call led to a new VH1 special on Culture Club that allowed the band members to tell their own story via "Storytellers," which features the music of the band and the story behind it.
For the first time in more than a decade, the original Culture Club performed together last spring in New York City; the performance aired from New York on June 14 and included one new song. That song, "I Just Wanna Be Loved," will be included on a two-disc anthology, due in August. This summer, the reunited group has decided to hit the road with its new-wave peers Howard Jones and the Human League. Whether or not the reunion tour will contribute to a career rebirth remains to be seen. Moss has faith that the sound of Culture Club's old hits, such as "Karma Chameleon," "Church of the Poison Mind" and "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?," which have appeared on numerous '80s-pop compilations, are timeless.
And their new tune is no departure from the sound that once took them to the top. "[The new song is] a bit like a Culture Club song you think you know, but you actually never did," Hay said. On the eve of the tour, the band members said that the old spark is back and that they're hopeful the public will welcome their return to action. "There's a magic there, and that hasn't gone away," Moss said. "It doesn't feel like nostalgia to me. It was like somebody switched off the plug for 12 years and just put it back in."