INTERVIEW BY Mike Gee

01.03.2007

Boy George would like to have a chat with God, well, at least, the son of God. There's a few things he needs cleaning up and they aren't what you'd imagine them to be. Not it seems: How did I end up sweeping the streets of New York as part of the five days community service I copped from New York judge, Anthony Ferrara? George had pleaded guilty in March 2006 after falsely reporting a burglary at his Lower Manhattan home. The punishment (including a $US1000 fine) probably reflected the cocaine the police found in the house when they turned up.

Neither does he want to ask: How come I, a man who sold 35 million records between 1982 and 1986 when my band Culture Club ruled the charts, ended up a heroin addict with no major record contract (not that he wants one) and a peculiar place in the hearts and minds of the public? Nor, how come nobody else I've been involved with has the guts to come clean about their homosexuality the way I have?'

So, yes, George Alan O'Dowd, now 44, has lived a somewhat eccentric, perhaps erratic, life, yet he remains an endearing figure to many people: in 2002 he was named as one of the 100 greatest Britons in a poll run by the BBC. DJ, fashionista he has his own label B-Rude, artist, performer, commentator he remains fashionably unfashionable and unfashionably fashionable. To his critics he is an overweight former drug addict; to his fans he is one of the more richly talented figures to grace English music and culture in the past two decades.

Today, he is in Berlin where he is due to DJ for fashion god, Hugo Boss, the next day at a fashion week party that alone says something about the kind of pull this likeable man has. As he talks, he is immediately friendly and somewhat loquacious without being overbearing or egotistical. There is a sense of an underlying resolve and suspicion though, perhaps best echoed at the end of the interview when he says, You've been very good, really well-behaved. What could be patronising is simply a matter of fact. Obviously, the questions he just answered weren't the questions he didn't want to hear. So, okay, no questions about his past drug problems, but then again, why would you? Pop stars with drug habits are two a penny. Their confessions are no different to those of any other poor sod hung up on one kind of junk or another. They just do their business in better places that's all.

And you get the feeling with Boy George that these days he would like his life to be very much his business. He moves quickly to counter any possible misinterpretation by the interviewer. For instance, B-Rude, which recently opened a new store in London draws an immediate I wouldn't take the name too literally. It's more to do with what offends others. People don't offend me. It's not about being rude to people, or encouraging that.

He is also somewhat modest. He's just co-written and released a new single, Time Machine, with double Ivor Novello Award-winning songwriter, Amanda Ghost, who co-wrote the smash hit, You're Beautiful, with James Blunt. The duet is a dark, heavy ballad that contrasts the George voice still gloriously high and soulful with Ghost's darker purr. It's his first commercial release in eight years.

It isn't coming out in the UK, he says matter-of-factly. It's just digital. Radio 1,2, don't play my stuff and I've done a few other records which didn't get much airplay.

I've known Amanda since she was 18; she was a fashion colleague who went to the club I went to. One day I heard her sing and said why don't you sing and give up fashion.

She did and label giant, Warners, recognising that here was a genuine talent, signed the daughter of a Spanish mother and Indian father. Her debut album, Ghost Stories, was a patchy but under-rated affair and Ghost slipped off the radar as soon as fast as she appeared. Six or more years later she is now being hailed as one of the best songwriters in the world and has just finished writing the new Beyonce single. George says of the Warners deal, She was given too much too soon and Warners did nothing with her. But she's a smart girl and explored other areas of the business.

As far as Time Machine is concerned, the Boy almost makes out like he's the supporting act. However, it does offer the perfect opportunity to ask where he'd go if he was given one chance to travel anywhere in a time machine.

I'd probably go back in time and visit Jesus, he says, and clear up a few things. I'd go and question him about Leviticus [it contains many laws some of which to concerning sexual conduct including a few that are often interpreted as referring to male homosexuality, ask him a few things about Fred Nile. I'd also ask him: Do you really talk to George Bush? I'd go, C'mon do you really talk to these people ... ?'

He talks to me all the time though I just don't listen. I'm like all good Catholics: I hear what I want to hear.

Currently, he's been hearing some sweet reggae grooves as he works on a new solo album with legendary dub artist and producer, Dennis Bovell, and he's a big fan of young British pop/soul singer Amy Whitehouse and the NY-based electroclash duo, Avenue D. I don't think much of what is going on in the charts though, he says. The last person I got excited about was Jeff Buckley. The major record companies have derailed music. Kids have no sense of the past, of the great body of music there.

He has also come to admire Kylie Minogue having gotten to know her when she asked him to design some clothes for her current world tour.

Ooh, I'm a big Kylie convert, he says. I did some costumes for the tour and we've been working on some music with her. We've been working on something for a documentary she's doing.

She's a very well-mannered lady. When we made the costumes and she got them, Kylie rang to thank me. It's rare for a person to do that. People don't usually bother. I appreciate that she did. I've got very good manners and I like politeness. And I like Kylie.

Enigmatic as ever, Boy George remains a contrary loner; a true karma chameleon.

Catch Boy George this Friday March 2 at the Metro.

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