Hey There Georgie Boy

Hey There Georgie Boy

FEATURES

Sylvie Simmons

It’s a tough life in today’s pop world. In these dark days of decreasing sales, with tight-fisted conservative little brats putting their pocket money into savingsand-loans instead of assuring the propagation of the limousine, stars are being forced into moonlighting to make ends meet.

You’d have probably never heard of their humiliations—Steve Perry doubling as a duck decoy, Simon Le Bon standing in for the braindead—if it wasn’t for all the attention given to singer and part-time cop Boy George. Don’t know what all the fuss was about: Ozzy’s been enticing lowlife out of the woodwork for years. Anyway, dozens of mean offenders who’d evaded justice for years came crawling out of their lairs at the promise of Dinner With Georgie.

Nine out of ten criminals prefer Boy George (it’s true! In a British TV documentary about psychiatric prisons, one inmate with BG pix all over his cell turned very nasty when the guards took away his make-up.)

About eight out of ten of the slightly-less-criminal prefer Boy George, too (everybody except Frankie Goes To Hollywood and Princess Margaret, who called him an overdressed tart). / prefer Boy George. Hell, Boy George prefers Boy George!

“Well, I’ve always been bigheaded. I’d rather be big-headed than be boring.” He lands in the room like a DC10, big but gliding in gracefully for a perfect landing in the executive chair, his blackgloved hands laying precisely in his lap like an undertaker meeting a client before taking off and whizzing around like hyperactive bats.

He’s wearing a cuddly sweater topped with the bauble to beat all baubles, a veritable Liberacean Christmas-tree-ornament on a pendant. The ever-changing hairdo looks like Rula Lenska mowed down by a combine harvester while romping in the hay with Nikki Sixx. There’s that pout you can only get by munching a handful of blackcurrants and immediately sucking on a lemon. And there’s the sharp eyes and the sharper wit that halts journalists in their tracks quicker than a can of Raid. He’s on good form too.

“I’m much more bitchy than most people.” Makes Joan Collins look like Sheena Easton. “I’d much rather be like Joan Collins and get on with my life. I love looking glam.” Like Motley Crue? Now there’s a glam band...

“I must say I don’t really like heavy metal. I think everything’s got some good in it, Led Zeppelin were good, there’s not really anything that compares with that now, that’s got the intelligence that Led Zeppelin has. A lot of it now is just totally brash. It’s very sexist, heavy metal, isn’t it? Like Prince is very sexist. Its very ’70s and ‘baby get on your knees and lick my guitar whoah yeh I’m a real man’ and it’s so boring. I hate rock bands with girls with their tits out running round the stage. It’s so offensive.”

Nine out of ten conservatives prefer Boy George. The media have had a grand old time presenting him as the acceptable face of androgyny, everybody’s favorite cuddly queer, safe as mother’s milk, a bigger hit with parents than perverts. The man the press invented the term “genderbender” for is so, well, normal.

“I am conservative,” says the man who posed in a union jack shirt to sing the praises of Britain to the tabloids. “There are some people in this world who have an affinity with homosexuality and transvestites simply because they feel that it’s decadent. Well, I’m not interested in that side of it. I don’t think transvestites are decadent. I think most of them want to be like housewives,” says the man who simpered on the front cover of the mag that teaches British housewives how to make yummy casseroles of canned hot dogs and beans, Woman’s Own. “I think there’s another side to them which you don’t know about because you’re too busy looking at what the Sun [the British National Enquirer] says and all these other newspapers. I have a different angle. It’s part of everyday life really,” says the man who told Cosmopolitan he was bisexual and wanted to settle down one day. “Which is why last year I didn’t want to answer questions on my sex life, because it’s just so boring, it’s just the same as everybody else’s, really.

“Everywhere you go there’s gay people. I don’t think there’s any point in singling out gay people. It’s good to make people aware that it’s perfectly normal. Which is why I object to Frankie Goes To Hollywood so much, because I think the video they made, the first one”—for Relax, which shows young Frankie lured by the bright lights of an underground gay club into the joyous life of S&M all CREEM readers and their families already know and love—“where they simulated buggery was offensive, and it portrays homosexuality like a dirty word. Like the film The Ritz, it just makes out everyone who’s queer has sex in a gay bathhouse and never falls in love and just has sex the whole time, which is a complete fallacy.

I wouldn’t say I was gay, I wouldn’t say I was straight, I don’t represent either, I don’t think your sex life has got anything to do with what you are as a person, a whole, and I think that it’s important that you educate people, not shock them. You should tell people that it’s perfectly normal.

There’s this complete fallacy that straight people fall in love and gay people have sex, and it’s complete rubbish. People won’t ask you direct questions about homosexuality because they’re so scared of it, especially in America—they never ask you, because they don’t want to hear the truth.

“I think somebody like me has got a lot to do sexually for young people. I think you’ve got to educate them to accept other things which exist in the world.

I’m definitely trying to do that. I would do anything to break down barriers. I’m the first man to be on the cover of Cosmopolitan. I’ve just done a feature on beauty in Harpers. I’ll do anything that will break down those stereotypes.”

Oh—and he’s also done some music in between. An album called Waking Up With The House On Fire, a single called ‘‘The War Song,” the “’best thing we’ve ever done,” he says, ‘‘it carries a message.” It’s in the lyrics, dummies: ‘‘War is stupid/people are stupid” he says in the song. And says it in several languages too: Japanese, German and Spanish versions have been done, with Russian, Italian and Chinese in the pipeline.

‘‘Because of the subject matter of the song I thought it would be a good idea to do it in different languages. Especially in Spanish, because there’s a lot of people that speak Spanish in America, the Puerto Ricans, and Culture Club haven’t really reached them. Because they’ve only got that group Minuendo,” he butchers Menudo, ‘‘or whatever they’re called. It’d be nice to give them something with a little bit more taste. It’s hard to do them all— Russian and Greek are very hard. But I think it’s a nice gesture. I think a lot more people should do it.”

Well, a lot of people have done songs about war lately. Hell, even HM groups have done songs about war! And let’s not forget Frankie Goes To Hollywood...

“Oh yes,” the London-bus-red rosebuds curl into a sneer. “It was because of Frankie, that’s the only reason, and I’m now into gay bondage and leather and whips as well!” (There’s no love lost between George and Frankie, what with George accusing them of exploiting homosexuality, in an open letter to the press, what with Frankie making rude phone calls to George after he accused them of jumping on his bandwagon, and giggling they’re “too busy trying to earn as much money as George” to care what he thinks!)

“Keith Richards looks like an extra from Thriller.”

“Do you think Frankie Goes To Hollywood is the only group that’s ever thought about war? Obviously you can draw comparisons, but I’ve had sex with them as well, so maybe Frankie goes home and copies me! It’s a very important subject and it’s also very topical at the moment.

“If you listen to the lyrical content of Frankie Goes To Hollywood, it’s not about much, is it? It’s not really that intelligent. ‘The War Song’ has got very good lyrics, probably the best I’ve ever written, and I think it’s a more intelligent, emotional song. I don’t think you can compare it really.

“Millions of people write songs about love, and you could say that everybody’s copying Julio Inglesias, but nobody draws comparisons there. The whole of the new album is a lot more sensitive as regards the lyrics—because I think there are so many songs around at the moment that are so bland, like Wham! and Bananarama.”

[Okay, you get to talk about the new album, but first we get some Good Press. Let’s hear some bitchin’, Boy! The Jacksons? “It’s very sort of formulated. I don’t find it particularly interesting. I think it’s so boring now, all these people doing duets with Michael Jackson. Even when he asked me to do it I wouldn’t have have done it, because even then it was a cliche. I wouldn’t work outside of the band at the moment on things like that. I wouldn’t sing with anyone else, apart from Dolly Parton and Gladys Knight.” And what was it like meeting Keith Richards, George? “He was very nice to me, but he’s just like a dinosaur, the side of rock I don’t agree with. He looks like an extra from Thriller. ” And what about Culture Club getting to be like Duran Duran? “I suppose if we eat enough donuts we will be!” And the rest? “I find a lot of rock stars really hideous. When you meet them they’re usually very predictable. They usually go around—sniff, sniff, sniff—you know.” I know, I know. And I know it’s time for you to plug in the album...]

“The album is kind of autobiographical. There’s a lot of songs on there about things that have happened to the band, to me. There’s a song about Frances Farmer— she was like an actress who was given a lobotomy by the American government— things like that. Every time I go out of my house I get photographed. If I go shopping I get photographed. It’s a bit like Hollywood in a way, it’s a bit sort of mad. I come out of a restaurant and some maniac jumps out of the blue with a camera and starts going berserk.

“It can be fun at times—like when George went to Jamaica on holiday with co-crossdresser Marilyn and the press hounded them like dogs in heat. “In Jamaica there was this guy crawling across the hotel roof all day and all night—he spent two weeks doing this—and I got a huge mirror and I reflected the sun on his camera which made it impossible for him to photograph me. It can also be very upsetting,” like when the Sun printed a picture of a blood-soaked young girl, supposedly a Duran Duran fan beaten up by the Boy after telling him how much better she liked Le Bon-bons. ” A complete and utter set-up; one has to wonder where that came from and the mentality of the people who printed that. But the people who are into Culture Club, the fans, read so much rubbish about me, they have to have some kind of understanding about what they’re buying—otherwise they wouldn’t buy it. They can’t believe what’s written about me otherwise they wouldn’t go out and get my records—our records, sorry! I think it’s very difficult for people like me to avoid the press, because they’re so interested in The way I look and the things I say, and it’s just like constant amusement for them.

“It’s got to the stage now where everything you say and do becomes newsworthy. So the album title is really a reflection of that. It’s like you’re completely naked, exposed to everybody, everybody’s looking at you and scrutinizing you. And it’s like waking up with the house on fire—you have to run into the street completely naked.

“I think a lot of people end up like Frances Farmer but on a smaller scale. I think a lot of rock stars go completely mental. But it’s just one of those things. You just have to live with it. One paper says I’m a childbasher. Another paper printed I was about 20 stone (280 lbs.) because of all the sweets I was eating, when in actual fact I don’t even eat sweets and I’ve actually lost weight. You’ve just got to have a sense of humor. And confidence.

“I am a cynic. I think you’ve got to be a bit: 50 percent cynic, 50 percent optimist, and I’m both.’’ Not to mention self-righteous.

“People just don’t take me seriously. People are still saying, ‘oh, all pop stars dress like that, it’s like Gary Glitter.’ They just don’t understand that I look this way because I want to and because I do it better than most other people. Nobody goes around asking Joan Collins when she’s going to stop dressing up and stop wearing make-up. Pop stars are always associated with having bizarre images, but when you see Gary Glitter shopping he wears jeans, he doesn’t wear tinsel. / wear it all the time.” Only takes him 10 minutes to put on his make-up these days, too.

“I’m the first man to be on the cover of Cosmopolitan.”

“I think image is important. Just look around you, everybody looks the same, everybody looks androgynous, everybody wears make-up, every single band looks like a copy of Culture Club, everybody’s got dreadlocks, every newspaper has articles about androgyny, and every question you answer is like like ‘do you think there’s a new sex developing?’ You get bored.

“I think people should see me as intelligent, and they shouldn’t look at me like they do Danny La Rue,” the famous British female impersonator comic. “They should see that I represent a different part of rock ’n’ roll. I think if you go on TV, it’s such a rare opportunity—and not too many people get that chance—there’s no point going on swearing and being obnoxious. I think you go on as a spokesman and you go to to sell your product or whatever you sell, so you do the best job possible.”

He’d turn down an offer for his own TV chat-show, he says, “Because I think it’s a mistake to be seen too much.” This from the man who gete so much media attention he makes the Jacksons look like a cult band! “Maybe if I was a bit older and needed the money I’d do it.” Who would he have on? “I’d interview Lady Di and ask her why she called her baby Harry.” George is such a regal name. He doesn’t fancy acting either (although Jon Moss, Culture Club’s drummer, is working on some TV scripts at the moment) but he doesn’t intend sticking with Culture Club forever. “I intend to do other things. Even now I’m working outside of the band, making sure I have something to fall back on. I don’t want to end up like Mick Jagger. I believe that I’m capable of doing other things.” He’s just written a song for Tina Turner. Which she turned down, and one for the Beach Boys, which they haven’t, and Robert Palmer looks like he’ll do one of his songs.

“People are always asking me to write songs for them. That would be the biggest achievement for me, getting someone else to have a hit with one of my songs. Eventually I’d like to be a manager, get somebody, especially a girl group— because I think most girl groups are really rubbishy, I’d like to get a good one, because there are some brilliant girl singers about, for instance the two we’ve got singing with us—and work with them.

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Having a great voice doesn’t always mean you’re going to be a star. I don’t consider myself the world’s greatest singer. Usually the backing singers are better than me.”

From all accounts, George’ll get his ambition soon: rumors are rife of Culture Club splitting up, what with Mikey—who didn’t even turn up for the cover photo of the single—off working with other musicians on the side, and Jon with his TV and theater projects, and as Moss puts it, “the Boy George personality completely removed from Culture Club.”

The press is to blame, says George. “You’re the one’s who’re ignoring them.” His picture is always up front because “I look fab,” he says, and he does. “That’s probably one of the things that keeps us together, that everyone benefits equally from Culture Club. I’m not getting more than them, they’re not getting more than me, and it balances itself out.” Or almost. Last I heard, Jon wasn’t amused that if he went into a posh restaurant they might find him a stool in the kitchen, whereas a mere hint that George might be showing up brings on the severe red-carpet situation. And George muses, “sometimes I crave to go into Woolworth’s and shop unnoticed.”

So whose records would he pay for at the checkout stand if he did? “I’m a fan of everything. I listen to the radio and I read the papers and I listen to music. A lot of things impress me—but not one thing in particular.” Any American bands he likes? “I quite like the Romantics. I like the Fixx as well.” They’re British. “But they’re big in America, not in England. Eurodisco is becoming very popular...”

And there we leave him, a man so in control he makes Playtex girdles look limp in comparison. I hear he’s just dyed his hair blond. So’s Cher.