Four years ago, Boy George was on top of the world–or, at least, at the top of the pop music world. Culture Club, the British band the Boy fronted with gender-bender aplomb, had four Top 10 hit singles in a row that year; one of them, ”Karma Chameleon,” made it all the way to No. 1, stayed there for three weeks, and sold more than a million copies.
The Boy, outspoken and purposefully offbeat, was hot stuff–his face, framed by swatches of long hair and beribboned braids, was virtually inescapable that year–and he had fun in the spotlight. (Remember when he accepted the Grammy Award for Best New Act by noting, ”Thank you, America . . . . You`ve got taste, style and you know a good drag queen when you see one”?)
Things would never be so good again. Culture Club had one big hit the next year, ”Miss Me Blind,” but subsequent singles failed to make the Top 10; eventually the band broke up. When the Boy made headlines last summer, it was because of drug problems. Arrested for possession of heroin, George Alan
”Boy George” O`Dowd was later convicted and fined $370 by a British judge
(a punishment that struck some members of Parliament as outrageously lenient).
But that`s all ancient history–or, at least, Boy George figures it should be by now. These days, the singer has overcome his drug problems, embraced Buddhism, regained his health and creative confidence and launched a solo career with ”Sold,” his first post-Culture Club album.
The record, which includes a number of musical collaborations with longtime Motown songwriter Lamont Dozier (who, with partners Eddie and Brian Holland, turned out scores of hits in the 1960s for the Supremes, Four Tops and Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, among others) features Boy George trying his hand at a variety of pop styles; so far, it has drawn mixed reviews.
”Some people have criticized me for trying to experiment, but I wanted to give each song on the record a different character,” says the singer. ”I was fed up with being labeled a white soul singer. I was bored with (Culture Club`s) sort of bottle-of-milk sound. The trouble with all bands is that they get to a stage where they can`t help carrying on doing the same thing over and over. It`s very difficult to do anything different, with your audience expecting certain things from you. You tend to pander to your needs instead of their own.
”But I think it all really boils down to whether or not you`ve got good songs,” he adds. ”Of course, you never know. The audience is very unpredictable.”
In Europe, the Boy has had no trouble recapturing his audience–
”Everything I Own,” the first single release from the album, was a recent hit along with the album itself, which reached No. 1 in the Netherlands. But Europe is small potatoes compared to the vast American market. And America, Boy George acknowledges, so far has been ”a problem.”
”I feel a bit like Christopher Columbus,” he says. ”America is now being treated as a new territory for me.”
The singer is speaking by phone from London, where he`s in the midst of a European media blitz to promote the new album. American media blitzes also must be launched from Europe at the moment, since Boy George is not allowed in the U.S. His visa was revoked after his heroin conviction and he says he has
”no idea” when he will be able to launch an American concert tour.
His drug conviction, he maintains, coupled with ”the right-wing political atmosphere in America right now,” is also the reason his new album is doing so poorly in the U.S. While the single, ”Everything I Own,” has gotten exposure in dance clubs and on MTV, it got virtually no radio airplay
–an essential ingredient for mainstream commercial success–outside of major cities. The album itself has sold approximately 150,000 copies so far
(Culture Club`s albums all sold more than one million copies each) and only recently made a dent on on Billboard`s list of the week`s Top 200 albums.
”Most radio stations outside of places like New York and Los Angeles and Chicago won`t play the record because of the drug thing,” complains George.
”They didn`t like me much when I first started out (because of the makeup and sexual ambiguity), and now they have an opportunity to get back at me a second time.”
”There`s no question but that Boy George feels victimized,” says Phil Quartararo, vice president of promotion for Virgin Records, the Boy`s label, and the man who is spearheading the campaign to make Americans aware of Boy George again for the right reasons.
”Of course, you have to take some of it with a grain of salt, because nobody held this kid down and forced him to do drugs. He created his own problems and he knows it. But look at all the other artists who had drug problems and got a second chance–Elton John, Keith Richards, all those guys. Why should they get a second chance and not him?
”We know that we have an image problem with this artist,” adds Quartararo, who, as might be expected, is bullish on the Boy. ”As we see it, though, the problem isn`t with the consumer. The consumer is actually extremely sympathetic to Boy George because he had a problem and he kicked it. It`s radio that has a problem with playing him. The guy`s very talented–in a lot of ways, he`s the Liberace of our generation–but a lot of radio people haven`t even bothered to listen to his new album. They`ve just decided to condemn him, which isn`t fair, because I believe that the public wants to hear this record.”
Some radio programmers–the Middle America heartland types so dear to the Boy`s heart–aren`t so sure.
”We`re not playing his record,” says Keith Edwards, program director for WKZW-FM, Peoria`s No. 1 hit-oriented radio station. ”It`s not just because of the drug thing. I think that Culture Club`s image was pretty negative, and all of our research–we do call-outs, we watch record store action, we keep track of listener requests–shows that Boy George doesn`t appeal to teens or adults in this market. His looks and makeup turned off a lot of people, so we`re not playing him.
”I haven`t heard his single. If we saw that there was a lot of action on it, that a lot of other stations were playing it, of course we would check it out. But I just haven`t heard much at all about it. He`s going to have to prove himself all over again.”
They`re not exactly mad about the Boy in Des Moines, either. ”I haven`t listened to his album, and as far as I know, none of the pop stations in this market are playing it,” says Jack Emerson, program/music director of Des Moines` KGGO-FM, an album-oriented rock station. ”I would think that his image could be part of the problem. Personally, I don`t care about his drug convictions or whether or not he`s gay, but I think a lot of people at smaller stations might hold it against him.”
Nevertheless, the folks at Virgin Records are determined to break Boy George once again in the colonies.
”The jury is still out on him, but the jury is the consumer,” says Quartararo. ”So we`re going to have to go directly to consumers and let them know that he has a new album. Boy George is doing interviews, there`s activity with the videos, people are hearing the album in stores . . . . We`re going to make things happen, with or without radio. And we probably could bring him over to the U.S. this fall to tour–if he would let us.”
But what about those visa problems? ”They can be worked out,” says Quartararo. ”It`s just a matter of the State Department seeing that he`s clean and that he`s coming over here to do something constructive.
”But–here`s where the sad part comes in–Boy George is really reluctant to come to America because he feels that the American people don`t want to see him or hear from him or anything. That`s a shame, because I think that they do want to see him. He`s just as talented as he ever was–maybe more so, because he`s put the problems of the past behind him.”
Meanwhile, the Boy is gearing up for a tour of Europe later this year and continuing to work on his autobiography, an ongoing project during the last three years.
”I`m going to be talking about the drug thing in the book, but in my own way, so that people can understand what it`s like,” says the singer.
”I don`t know why I became involved with drugs,” he says in answer to the obvious question. ”I was stupid. That`s the million-dollar question, isn`t it? It`s not that easy to reason about. It`s not the sort of thing you can say, well, it was this or it was that. It`s a mixture of things. Just something that happened, really. You can reflect on why it happened, but I think it was just one of those things.
”There are days now when I don`t want to talk about my drug problems, because I`m feeling good now and obviously I don`t want to bring back horrible memories,” he adds. ”But I try to discuss it as much as I can because I find it therapeutic to be able to say to people, `Look, I`ve been through this and it`s really not pleasant. It really takes a toll on you.` I lost friends, I lost my confidence. I know that what I did was a mistake. But now I want to be a positive influence on young people and let them know that drugs aren`t just some party game. They don`t make you happy, they destroy your creativity, and, in the long run, they`re going to destroy you.”
