Boy George’s Nightmare
BOY GEORGE, THE FLAMBOYANT pop star who’d seduced the world with his sweet soul music, looked a mess. Standing in a backstage trailer at an Artists Against Apartheid rock concert held on Clapham Common in London on June 29th, the twenty-five-year-old singer was desperately trying to do something about his makeup.
Since his last public performance, in the summer of 1985, Boy George’s appearance had changed dramatically – so dramatically that the bouncers backstage at the antiapartheid concert hadn’t recognized him at first and had refused him entrance. Once slightly plump, George was now thin and emaciated. His long hair had been cut short and dyed blond and was concealed by a broad-brimmed knit hat. His blue-green eyes, once so full of life, were concealed by round, dark granny glasses. His clothes, which he’d always arranged with great care, appeared thrown on at random, and some rather strange expressions were printed on his coat: one read, FUCK ME STUPID, another said simply, SUCK MY NOB. Across the back of his shoulders was a third slogan: HEROIN FREE ZONE. And now, to make matters worse, the scorching ninety-degree heat was causing George’s makeup to run.
Boy George’s performance at Clapham Common was to be a solo outing; the other members of Culture Club apparently realized that this might not be the best moment to join their leader onstage. They already knew that over the last six months, George had been using heroin. According to one of the singer’s brothers, twenty-one-year-old David O’Dowd, and one of his best friends, twenty-year-old “Fat Tony” Marnoch, George was now doing as much as two grams of heroin a day.
When George finally took the stage, he looked even worse than he had in the trailer. A makeup artist had told him that because of the heat, there was nothing she could do, so he had wiped his face with a towel and then applied a facial. To the crowd, though, it looked as if George had splashed water on his face and then dipped it in a bowl of flour. “It was unbelievable what people were saying as he went onstage,” one of George’s business associates said later. “People were going, ‘Look at him, he’s stoned. He looks ridiculous. What an imbecile.’ ”
The audience responded to George’s brief set – which included a gripping version of “Black Money” and two other songs – by hurling nearly two dozen bottles and cans at him. Before leaving the stage, George bid the crowd a sarcastic goodbye from “your favorite drug addict.”
Unfortunately, there was more to it than his sarcasm would suggest. Boy George, the world-renowned pop star, was about to become a world-famous junkie.
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SHOCK. HOW ELSE COULD ONE RESPOND TO THE REVELATION that Boy George was now addicted to heroin? This was not some openly decadent hedonist like Keith Richards, who had based his public image on being a bad boy of rock. Quite the opposite. Boy George was the harmless, lovable windup doll of pop, a cartoonlike fantasy figure who could sing like a white Smokey Robinson and trade glib one-liners with Joan Rivers and Johnny Carson. He always had time to sign autographs for his fans and to answer their letters. He once said he preferred a cup of tea to sex. And he was outspoken in his disgust with drug use of any kind. He considered drugs to be stupid and a sign of weakness. He was the pop star whom everyone from your grandmother to your little sister could like.
In the early days of Culture Club, Boy George – whose real name is George O’Dowd – didn’t smoke or use drugs; for him to drink more than one beer was unusual. He laid down the law about drugs and Culture Club: the two were simply not compatible. During a 1984 tour of Japan, bassist Mikey Craig was worried as he smoked some hash with a journalist, afraid that George might hear them giggling and realize they were breaking the band’s rules.
In many ways, George’s story is sadly familiar. A young boy from a working-class English family becomes, at the age of twenty-two, an international superstar. Overnight, he’s rich and famous. The next three years are an accelerating whirlwind of activity, as more than 10 million records are sold around the world.
Then things begin to go wrong. In George’s case, the trouble began in late 1984, after the release of Culture Club’s third album, the mediocre Waking Up with the House on Fire. The public, seduced by new stars like Madonna and Wham!, gave the LP a cool reception. Culture Club’s first two albums had yielded seven Top Ten hits in the U.S., but just one song from me third LP made it into the Top Twenty. And despite an elaborate million-dollar stage production, the group’s world tour was also a disappointment.
When the tour was over, the members of Culture Club realized it was time for a long vacation. Manager Tony Gordon moved to Spain, spending a year there as a tax exile. Guitarist Roy Hay spent time in well, while Mikey Craig sojourned in France. Only drummer Jon Moss – George’s longtime friend and lover – remained in London.
But George and Jon were drifting apart, a situation only exacerbated when George took up residence in New York with Marilyn, a transvestite and would-be pop star who had changed his name from Peter Robinson. And Boy George was also becoming bored with Boy George. For three years, he had lived and breathed Culture Club. His every waking hour had been spent working. He designed his clothes, his record covers, his image. He co-wrote the songs and hung out in the studio through-out the recording of the first two albums. He did hundreds of interviews, as well as numerous photo sessions and TV appearances. He starred in Culture Club videos and toured the world. It had all taken its toll.