Boy George should consider new business cards that twist the old Fresh Prince/Jazzy Jeff slogan: “I’m the deejay, I’m the pop star.”
For the past eight years, the former/future Culture Club frontman has been pursuing twin paths, singing both solo and with the re-formed Culture Club, while also becoming a popular deejay in some of the world’s hottest clubs. His first American deejay tour takes him to Washington, D.C.
“I’ve always managed to mix the two together, really,” Boy George said recently from his London flat. “Sometimes it’s quite nice to have a break from deejaying and vice versa. I enjoy both things and, to me, it doesn’t make any difference, it’s all performance.”
According to Boy George, “there are all kinds of deejays, from the studious types who keep their heads down and don’t really make a big scene to the showoff deejays. I probably fall into that category,” he adds, with a hearty chortle. “It’s an individual, personal thing. I don’t think you can separate the man from what he does.”
Funny thing: Clubs are where one-time cloakroom attendant George O’Dowd first transformed himself into an exotic creature in the early ’80s by donning flamboyant fashions (including a full nun’s habit) and flawless makeup. His ultra-androgynous look, and a sharp tongue, landed him in glossy British popzines that dubbed O’Dowd “The Immaculate Conception” and suggested he might be “a budding celebrity.”
Culture Club, of course, erased the budding element. Under Boy George’s gender-bending, genre-blending leadership — and spurred by his sweet, soulful voice and perfect-for-MTV image — the group became one of the world’s hottest pop acts before imploding in 1986 after recording the presciently titled “From Luxury to Heartache.” The band’s demise coincided with Boy George’s heroin addiction, which elevated already-hysterical Brit-media coverage of his private life (he was one of the first openly gay pop stars).
Professionally, there were some highs — Boy George’s first solo single, 1987’s “Everything I Own” topped the British charts and 1989’s “Everything Starts With an E” was a massive club hit, while 1992’s “The Crying Game” returned him to the top of the American charts. But they came far less frequently, and though Boy George has toured on and off over the years with his own band and, since 1998, with a reunited Culture Club, he has been without a record deal since 1995 (though he runs his own dance label, More Protein).
“I’ve managed to make a very good living without releasing records,” Boy George says, conceding that for a while, he had a bit too much time on his hands. Which is why he applied them to spinning discs, something he had first done when he was still a teenager from Kent.
Having established himself in trendsetting clubs such as Progress, Cream, Gatecrasher and God’s Kitchen, Boy George has just released his first “Essential Mix” compilation. It includes 18 tracks of two-step disco, techno trance and progressive house. Among the hands-on tracks: Boogie Mavs’ funky reworking of “Girl From Ipanema” (he produced), the Colein’s “Spreading the Light” (he sings backup), and Cultural Diversion’s “See Through” (actually Culture Club, their first new material since 1986).
“As a deejay, you tend to be looking for new things, and you don’t focus on the past too much,” Boy George says, though he notes that a progressive mix of Culture Club’s breakthrough hit, “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me,” did quite well in England a few years back.
The band is mulling a new album and, he says, “if we’re going to work together on new stuff, I would personally like it to be a bit more dance-floor oriented, more soulful. We always had that kind of blue-eyed soul thing, but the dance-floor element would be a good way to go because we as a band — and me also as an individual artist — don’t get played on the radio in America or England. Doing stuff aimed at the dance-floor would give us a lot more freedom. We wouldn’t have to worry about the charts or anything like that, and that would be quite a healthy thing.”
The band — which includes drummer Jon Moss, guitarist Roy Hay and bassist Mikey Craig — reunited in 1998 for VH1’s “Storytellers,” though an earlier Culture Club special on the music channel’s “Behind the Music” series almost derailed matters. Seems everyone except Boy George hated that one, which focused on the singer’s drug problems and homosexuality, particularly his fixation on Moss (Boy George explained that all his songs were pleas to Moss about their turbulent relationship).
Not long ago, the singer’s travails were examined once again on “You Only Live Once,” a British variation on the classic American bio-show “This Is Your Life.”
“They videotape everyone you know telling stories about you and then you have to kind of either confirm or deny the stories,” Boy George explains. “It’s difficult to do that with someone like me because I tell everybody everything anyway. I’m not really big on secrets, so it wasn’t very effective because I’m not a person who would go on and say, `No, I didn’t do that.’ I usually did!”
