Culture Club

In 1982, a singer with make-up, coloured braids and clothes that mixed the masculine and the feminine appeared on British television and left half the country arguing about whether he was a man or a woman. He called himself Boy George and his band, Culture Club, was about to sell records all over the planet. The story told afterwards is almost always the same: that his love songs hid a secret romance inside the group. The romance part is true. Almost everything else that gets hung on it is not.

The boy who did not fit

George Alan O'Dowd came from a working-class family of Irish origin in the south of London and from the time he was a boy he was the one left over everywhere. Instead of hiding he turned that into a flag: he got into the New Romantics scene, became a club figure before he was a musician and reached British family television playing with gender at peak viewing hours, without asking anyone's permission.

And he had a voice, which is the part the visual scandal covered up for years: warm, with soul phrasing, far more classical than the look led you to expect. Culture Club was also a deliberately mixed band — hence the name — and its music crossed pop, soul and reggae with a lightness that made something difficult look easy. In 1984 they won the Grammy for Best New Artist, which George accepted by satellite, from London, with a line that sums up the way he stood in the world: thank you, America, you know a good drag queen when you see one.

The love that could not be named

Boy George and Jon Moss, the drummer, had a relationship that lasted a good part of the band's life and that was impossible to declare. In those years a pop singer did not say publicly that he loved another man without putting his entire career at risk. George has summed it up like this: our love, however sick it was, was the creative force behind Culture Club.

It is worth stopping on that word, sick, because the sweet version erases it. Both of them have described a violent relationship, with assaults on both sides and a secrecy that made everything worse. It was not a forbidden romance out of a film: it was a relationship that damaged them and out of which, at the same time, came nearly the whole repertoire.

And here comes the correction that is most needed, because it is repeated everywhere. "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me" is not the portrait of that relationship. George expressly denied it in The Guardian, on 14 October 2007: it was not only about Moss, but "about all the guys I was dating at that point in my life". What does hold up is bigger than a single song. The romance permeates the entire catalogue, and millions of people sang love songs between two men without realising it; but not because there was a coded diary on the A-side.

The success, the collapse and what came afterwards

The band's biggest hit nearly did not exist. When George brought it to rehearsal, his own bandmates laughed and told him it was horrible, that it was a country song. It was not "the people around him" or the record company: it was the band. He insisted anyway, and the numbers proved him right in scandalous fashion: "Karma Chameleon" was the best-selling single of 1983 in the United Kingdom, reached number one in some thirty countries and passed seven million copies.

The collapse was fast. The relationship with Moss ended and with it the writing machine. In August 1986, the American keyboardist Michael Rudetsky died of a heroin overdose at George's London house. That episode is the one that closes the era, not a vague decline in sales: the band split up that same year and George was left trapped in a heroin addiction that cost him years.

He got out of it, and what he did afterwards is a complete second career: DJ, producer, author of two volumes of memoirs, a regular face on British television, a figure respected by people who had not been born when Culture Club broke up. There is also a line that cannot be left out: in December 2008 he was found guilty of assault and false imprisonment against Audun Carlsen, and on 16 January 2009 he was sentenced to fifteen months in prison, of which he served four. With Moss, on the other hand, the matter stretched out for forty years: he sued in 2019 over his share of the group's income and the case ended in March 2023 with a settlement of 1.75 million pounds. The most creative partnership of his life was closed in a lawyer's office.

What to remember

Culture Club was an act of courage disguised as colourful pop. Boy George stood in front of millions of people being openly different, in an era that punished difference, and put on the radio songs that came out of a love he could not name out loud. He opened that door, and he opened it before it was safe to open it.

What is not advisable is to clean up the story so it fits into the praise. The relationship those songs came out of was violent, the addiction almost took him, there was a criminal conviction in the middle of it and the bond with Moss ended forty years later in a million-pound settlement. That he is a loved and respected figure today is not explained by none of that having happened, but in spite of all of it having happened.

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Sources

Culture Club is a British band formed in London in 1981, made up of Boy George (George Alan O'Dowd), Jon Moss, Roy Hay and Mikey Craig; the name alludes to the diversity of its members' backgrounds. In 1984 it won the Grammy for Best New Artist, which Boy George accepted by satellite link. The singer had a romantic relationship with the drummer Jon Moss for a good part of the group's existence; both have since described episodes of mutual violence. Boy George told The Guardian on 14 October 2007 that "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me" was not exclusively about Moss, but about several of his partners of that period, and he has stated that the relationship was the group's creative force. "Karma Chameleon" (1983) was initially rejected by the band's other members; it became the best-selling single of 1983 in the United Kingdom, reached number one in around thirty countries and passed seven million copies. In August 1986, the American keyboardist Michael Rudetsky died of a heroin overdose at Boy George's London home; the band split up that same year and the singer went through a heroin addiction. In December 2008 Boy George was found guilty of assault and false imprisonment against Audun Carlsen, and on 16 January 2009 he was sentenced to fifteen months in prison, of which he served four. He subsequently developed a career as a DJ, producer and memoirist, and the band resumed touring. Jon Moss sued his former bandmates in 2019 over his share of the group's income; the litigation was resolved in March 2023 through a settlement of 1.75 million pounds. Profile compiled for Rebobinados with fact-checking; interpretations of the meaning of the work are offered as the author's reading. No song lyrics are reproduced, for copyright reasons. Information drawn from The Guardian, BBC News, Official Charts Company, Rolling Stone, Wikipedia and other coverage.

If you or someone you know is facing problem drug use, in Chile you can call SENDA free of charge and confidentially on 1412. And if you are experiencing violence in your relationship, SernamEG's 1455 line answers from 08:00 to 00:00.