Boy George, he's still got it

Boy George has been up and down more often than an e-commerce company’s share price. Yet the ’80s popstar turned ’90s DJ, who’s currently performing in his own smash West End musical, has just released an album which confirms that he remains one of the best bets in the business. And he’s still as outspoken as ever.

For someone who insists that he initially became a popstar because he hated working, Boy George O’Dowd is certainly keeping busy. One of the most sought-after dance DJs on the commercial club circuit he’s also appearing in his Taboo show in London and planning a series of live dates in support of his latest solo album U Can Never Be Too Straight.

“The new album is a reflection of how I’ve developed, as an artist and a person,” he explains. “It’s a romantic album but it’s also got elements of bitterness that’re a part of any relationship. When I started with Culture Club, I remember singing about a boy I was involved with at the time and the engineer told me I couldn’t use the word ‘he’ in relation to a lover. And I was baffled. I’d grown up listening to David Bowie using the word ‘queer’ in his songs and I didn’t see why somebody would object to me as a pop singer singing about my own experiences.

“Nowadays it’s considered normal to be gay, as if that’s a good thing. I never wanted to be normal or considered myself to be normal. So I settled for being ambiguous. There are more out gay popstars now but even they’re not singing about how they feel. It’s all very, ‘Love is great’ type platitudes and real love is more complicated than that.”

Ambiguous he might have been, but Boy George was certainly embraced by the wider public in a way that icons like Morrissey and the aforementioned Bowie never were. While little girls danced to Culture Club on Top Of The Pops, their grandmothers also loved the dreadlocked, cross-dressing crooner.

“That’s because I’m not a twit,” he quips. “I may be a plastic Paddy but I’m not stupid. But I’ve never understood what I’ve done to earn the love of older people. That certainly wasn’t my plan, and even now the age range of Taboo’s audience is vast. One man who’s seen the show four times is 82 years old.”

The Taboo show is centred around London’s burgeoning art-music-fashion scene in the early ’80s.

“It’s about a photographer with a bad relationship with his father, who gets involved in a love triangle with another guy and a straight girl,” George explains. “In those days sexuality was a lot more vague, people were a bit more experimental and liberated. AIDS changed all that and people are less likely to behave like that now.”

Could the bitterness he expresses on the album be frustration at the kind of person who might enjoy a same-sex liason while still considering themselves straight.

“Oh some of those boys came around,” he laughs. “But usually they don’t call. I find that words like straight and gay are lazy and everybody is confused about their sexuality at some point. I mean masturbation is basically playing with a penis and that’s hardly straight. How can you not love what you are? But I think the idea that the world is more tolerant now is a load of old crap.

“I went to a So Solid Crew concert recently and if it weren’t for the police I wouldn’t be talking to you now. The kids were shouting, ‘Batty man’ and shooting imaginary guns at me. The difference between me and Will Young and Stephen Gateley is that my sexuality goes before me. I wear it on my sleeve. I’m as proud of being gay as So Solid Crew are of being black. And I’m flirtatious. Indifferent men are my favourite type.”

So how does the Boy feel about the rampant homophobia expressed by Eminem, amongst others?

“It’s a new phenomemon,” he considers. “I’ve been DJing for 15 years but only recently have I been called ‘faggot’ by kids. And I can deal with it, I’m like, ‘Come here and say that and I’ll break your fucking nose’, you know. Eminem is a talented guy but he’s obviously very troubled. And any white guy operating in that genre seems to feel they’ve got to be harder .

“If I made a record that was anti-semitic or anti-black would I be getting the support Eminem’s getting? It pisses me off when gay people say, ‘Yes but he’s really talented’. True, but he’s abusing his position. The responsibilty of an artist is to challenge stereotypes.”

So he won’t be doing an Elton John and joining Marshall on stage.

“That was a huge betrayal,” he insists. “That was like Vivienne Westwood accepting an MBE after punk. Traitor. But I don’t think Elton did it out of malice. I watched an old Top Of The Pops recently and she’s there on stage with T Rex playing the piano. And there was no piano on the track. She’s been at it for years, love, ‘Oh look, someone new and trendy, quick, jump in’. But when you live in the cultural bubble that Elton John does, you forget how hard it is to be gay in, say, Thurles.”

Does he believe that the popularity of out gays such as Graham Norton has helped the cause?

“No I don’t,” he insists. “It’s cool to be queer and camp, and I think Graham Norton is very good at what he does. I like him, but we still live in a ‘spare us the details’ society. You can be gay but don’t frighten the horses. I came to DJ in Northern Ireland about seven years ago and a senior policeman in Portrush called me a ‘junkie sodomite’. Ok, ten out of ten for observation, and, uh, thanks (laughs).”

Before I let him go I have to ask if Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys is correct in stating that George has slept with several of the ‘Boy George’ players in Taboo?

“(Laughs) No,” he insists, “I’ve slept with one cast member who was nothing to write home about actually. But no, I haven’t fucked myself.”