George O’Dowd was born on the outskirts of London in 1961. The growing reverberations of the Swinging Sixties were a fitting platform to the impact the future singer and cultural sensation would have as he went on to kickstart something of a cultural evolution after founding Culture Club in 1981. The four-piece amassed many chart hits, including number one singles on both sides of the Atlantic, three top 5 albums, and courted global publicity. Thanks in no small part to their lead singer’s animated persona, elaborate dress side, and androgynous identity. Despite the singer’s headline-grabbing addiction issues, a nation quickly came to adore Boy George. His rogue behavior matched an era of expression in the 1980s that saw the country throwing off the music, fashion, and commerce shackles. That the singer/songwriter fell victim to his own exuberance is probably not a surprise, “I was living a life that was unsustainable in so many ways.” Yet, reinventing himself in the 1990s as a solo artist, then globally renowned DJ, he stepped back from excess and has spent the last few years engaged in art projects, speaking up for the LGBTQ movement, embracing Buddhism, and, of course, religiously visiting in charity shops.
STRIPLV: What was your home like? O’DOWD: The road I grew up in was nondescript and still is, and there was always the faint buzz of a dual carriageway whenever you stepped into the garden or opened a window too wide. Growing up in southeast London was famously samey. It didn’t really matter who you were. You were in houses that felt comfortable and modern but ultimately were there to bully families and individuals into conformity, sanity, and normality during times when there was always the dangerous hint of rebellion in the air. We had nice family times, and there was never anything unfulfilled about childhood, but I look back on it now, and it was the epitome of normality. There was the telly, the record player, the vegetable patch, the trip to the park. I always had the feeling I wanted to rebel against the sterility of it. However, I did soon realize that sterility is a perfect breeding ground for love, affection, and security. It is a fantastic platform. STRIPLV: Who were your big inspirations? O’DOWD: Well, seeing David Bowie live was a huge moment for me. I was 11. He gave kids license to say, “You can be an adult and a fantasy character, a magician, someone other than yourself.” He inspired me. Space Oddity inspired me; and so many millions of others. My dad, too, he was a tremendously hard worker, and it was often at the expense of the one thing we truly craved from him, time. I was a stand-out teenager, an exhibitionist, and in the rough climate of 1970s London, a lot of people didn’t understand or tolerate that. I was chased down the streets by lads who wanted to kick the sh*t out of me. Thankfully, I was blessed with Olympic-like athleticism and never got caught. I know I had to stay fit to survive, but it wasn’t a particularly comfortable existence. How could it be? STRIPLV: It’s very different today. O’DOWD: The attitudes now are obviously very different from when I was growing up. As a young man, I would go through various episodes. Some where I was elated to have freedom and individualism and expression, albeit most of those were in the bedroom of my modest house. London’s diversity was as prevalent then as it is now, albeit perhaps in different ways. I would take comfort in the fact that you could be in some affluent neighborhood, yet you’d turn a corner and find some rough and ready council estate. It gave me a nice metaphor for life and a lot of hope and optimism when things went wrong. It basically said to me, “However uncomfortable this may be, there could be somewhere quite beautiful around the corner.” I was often lured to certain parts of London by the greatest charity shops. Given the sorts of clothes I was buying when I was discovering myself and my sexuality as a teenager, I didn’t want the visibility of going to the West End to be seen buying all this stuff. I had no need to anyway, and I still go to local charity shops today. It’s one of my favorite hobbies. It was in one charity shop that I met one of my best friends, Myra, across the clothing rails, looking like a pair of freaks. If you want to meet people who have an alternative view of the world and who aren’t afraid to step outside the norm and do things differently, go to a charity shop. STRIPLV: What else inspires you? O’DOWD: I’ve always loved architecture. I remember a stunning red brick house by Blackheath common that I used to stare at when I was a kid. It has this great big huge clear glass outhouse, and I always wanted to see inside. STRIPLV: How do you look back on the early days? O’DOWD: My life was one of the pretty happy discoveries in those early Culture Club days. The newspaper headlines were about love triangles, drug accusations, and all that stuff, but in reality, every day was exciting. I used to hide away from the press by going for long walks. I still do. The problem was I wasn’t that cautious about what I put out there as regards my private life. Perhaps I got a little too stung by that when I was growing up, and I’m certainly more reserved now in terms of what I say. Touring was exhausting and always took a toll on us. I think our third album, Waking up with the House on Fire, was a skeleton of what it should have been because we were all totally done in by a world tour we had just completed. STRIPLV: What’s the story about Letterman and the Band Aid single? O’DOWD: Yeah, I almost didn’t appear on the Band Aid, “Do they know it’s Christmas?” track, which has gone on to be one of the biggest selling tracks of all time in the UK. I was doing the David Letterman Show in New York when Bob [Geldof] called me. I managed to get on the last Concorde flight of the day and make it back in time for the recording. STRIPLV: You’ve been in a few scrapes over the years. O’DOWD: I have always had a mistake in me, but that’s okay. As far as the troubles I had back in 2006 (he called police to his New York apartment to report a suspected burglary. Officers instead found a stash of cocaine, which led to month-long community service as a dustman on the streets of Manhattan) and 2009 (he served four months of a jail sentence after handcuffing and falsely imprisoning a male escort), of course, they are things I am not proud of. Yet, at the same time, they remind me that I hadn’t shaken off that nihilistic attitude of the past, nor would I ever want to. And every mistake is a positive life lesson. It really is. STRIPLV: What was prison like? O’DOWD: I always maintained it would finish me off, but it didn’t. You somehow find the strength. It was a life-changing experience, and I feel I came out of that situation with some wisdom and knowledge. I don’t view that period in my life as negative, but I wouldn’t want to go back. STRIPLV: And you subsequently reinvented yourself. O’DOWD: Getting out on the DJ circuit and touring again was a revelation for me. It reconnected me with my past. Without the chaos and without feeling, I had to be the center of attention. DJs are generally quite discreet, they hide in the background, they play for a couple of hours, then they disappear off again and go home. Getting clean from the haze of drugs transformed my life in ways I didn’t expect. There are the big things, of course, but getting sober also led me to take in nature so much more too. I remember when I first got clean and walking over the Hampstead Heath thinking, “I don’t know this place, I don’t recognize that tree over there or that hill, or that meadow,” even though it’d been there forever. I’ve learned that when you dabble with chaos, disorder, and nihilistic endeavors, it really is those things that make the ground beneath your feet bumpy and uneven. Essentially you need to decide which one it is you want because you sure as hell can’t have both! STRIPLV: Are you worried about getting older? O’DOWD: No, getting older is a gradual, slow-burning process. It’s not like I turned 50 and said, “Okay, I’m going to grow up now.” I think men will always tend to take longer to mature, especially in my business, this industry, this lifestyle. It has a way of keeping you firmly planted in infancy, so I think, for me, over the last few years, I felt a bit more grown-up, a bit more responsible, and a bit more alert, really. And that’s enough for now. I don’t take it all too seriously, and being able to laugh at yourself, for what you wore, what you did, what you said. It’s absolutely essential. And, to this day, I’m still laughing!