There always was something terribly disingenuous about Boy George. A trannie for grannies and little girls, he was like a Japanese rag doll, cute and safe, all ribbons and bows. The glorious shock waves that greeted his early '80s debut on Top of the Pops now seems quaintly bizarre. What was that? A boy or a girl? Suddenly a member of London's club land underworld was in the living rooms of Britain. The china rattled, and respectable people expressed a genuine horror.
The level of success that fell his way was enormous. The pressure of fame came quickly. Global and unrelenting, it was all too much, and much too soon. His image was on everything from magazine covers to pencil cases. Heroin addiction followed, and his first major fall from grace. He returned with a successful solo career, then re-invented himself as a DJ when the second wave of hits dried up.
The level of success that fell his way was enormous. The pressure of fame came quickly. Global and unrelenting, it was all too much, and much too soon. His image was on everything from magazine covers to pencil cases. Heroin addiction followed, and his first major fall from grace. He returned with a successful solo career, then re-invented himself as a DJ when the second wave of hits dried up.
Comments like preferring a cup of tea instead of sex, whilst he was carrying on a tempestuous affair with Culture Club's drummer Jon Moss, meant he delivered a media coyness utterly divorced from reality. The real George O'Dowd, far more cunning, complex, and cutting than his powdery facade suggested, was much darker. He always seemed a man in search of a suitable disguise. He embraced religion as eagerly as he embraced drugs, his appearance more a means of hiding his inner confusion than expressing it. Finally his demons have consumed him. The chameleon of contradictions has landed himself in prison.
Culture Club were a pretty vapid pop group fronted by a transvestite, except at the start he never admitted to being one, and when he finally did the scales fell away from American eyes, and everyone saw what they hadn't wished to recognize. The band's fortunes never recovered in the States . He now admits he'd have preferred membership of an outfit like the New York Dolls, instead of a cutesy pop confection. His heart lay in something more transgressive.
The penchant for dressing up was fueled by physical plainness, and the fact that his blurred boundaries facade meant it was easier to cajole straight boys into sexual availability. Yet his persona was non-threatening and sexless, like an ordinary girl making the best of her meager means by covering them with slap. His contradictions, lost in the bafflement his appearance generated, now seem painfully exposed and obvious.
He wasn't what he seemed, and it seems he never really knew who he was -- or if he did, didn't like what he saw. Despite the success of Taboo, the musical he created around his past and his friend Leigh Bowery, he has in recent years been in and out of the news for all the wrong reasons. His road sweeping punishment in New York generated more interest than his recordings. When reports surfaced about him imprisoning a male escort, chaining him and beating him up, there was no sudden gasp of surprise. As time passed he gained pounds like the Elizabeth Taylor of pop, becoming a hat -earing, decorated maverick. Quentin Crisp on acid. He became more candid about his taste for rough rent. It all seemed a little desperate and undignified and lost.
Boy George's problems stem from his lengthy addiction to cocaine. Just as Bowie pushed the envelope in the early Seventies, paving the way for a certain level of liberal acceptance, his influence continued via George O'Dowd, in all his androgynous finery, who, a decade later, made the unacceptable a topic for everyday appraisal. He is to be applauded for his brazen bravery. Bowie also had his time of thin white duke cocaine decline, but weathered the storm and is now a character at home with his former extremes. The Boy's actions have landed him on the wrong side of the law, and behind bars. It seems ironic that a man who achieved so much in changing entrenched opinions has such a major problem in extending to himself the acceptance he is largely responsible for.
His fall from grace has blurred the fact that he owns one of the finest white soul voices on the planet, and one can only hope his incarceration results in a return to form. It is sad that someone who provided pleasure to so many can find so little for himself. Money and fame creates monsters, and divorced from reality it means mistakes are made and boundaries crossed, Phil Spector being a prime example. Boy George is no longer a boy. His appearance is now so far removed from his glory days, it seems he is wearing his unhappiness in his increased physical presence. Like Marilyn, his sometime friend and nemesis, he is a larger, sadder shadow of his former self.
The boy who sang he was a man without conviction now has one. What passed most by as a mere disposable line in a catchy song was actually a rare expression of honesty. The cavalcade of color and shock was simply the tip of his emotional iceberg, his unease about being himself. We can defer and confound with youth issues that, if left untended, will claim and consume us in time. By imprisoning and humiliating another man, he has revealed his own inner sadness, and reminded us that what usually creates a bigger, blinding splash rarely emanates from the happiest of souls.