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J u st o u t ▼ I
3. IMS ▼ 19
INTERVIEW
T he
PHOTO BY UU WEBER
C omeback
I con
In an exclusive interview ,
Boy George takes it and
dishes it out
like a man
So do you embrace an idealized future with
the conceivable possibility of working to build a
“community”?
I think one of the problems is that we are so
varied, but we have a common interest and we have
common issues and the problem is that there is so
much animosity within the gay community— les
bians don’t hang out with queers, there are profes
sional homosexuals who hate drag queens...and if
we can’t within our own community be more
tolerant, what chance do we stand in the real world.
So I think that we arc the problem. What we need
to do is look at the shit that’s going on in our own
backyard instead of focusing on the world, because
it’s almost like we are constantly asking permis
sion to be who we are. We need to change. I know
that as I’ve gotten older and become more confi
dent with my sexuality, and it is much harder being
a public figure because you are dealing with mass
opinion and association to something that is basi
cally very personal. So I no longer feel the need to
ask for people’s permission to be who I am. People
who say "1 can’t come out because of work or
because of my parents” are basically saying I am
ashamed of what I am. That kind of life is no life.
So you’ve become much stronger in your
approach to your own sexuality.
It’s something that I talk about a lot. It’s dinner
conversation. You know wherever you go, whether
you’re with straight people or with gay people, it’s
something that seems to come up all the time. I’m
either talking about sex, or I’m talking about being
gay or politics or O.J. Simpson or something.
O.J.? Oh, my! We’ll talk about that later.
It’s a big move to take responsibility for your
life. It’s a challenge and society doesn’t really
encourage any of us to do that regardless of what
we are sexually. My experience of school is that
you’re being conditioned for the real world, and
the real world is about conforming. It’s about not
In
Jav Wilson Jr.
having too much personality, not having too rfuch
spirit. And that’s why I always suffered at school,
because I always was very needy, very sensitive
and very loud, and that’s been an ongoing problem
hether you ’re a dedicatedfan impervious to the scandal that surrounded the pop figure, or one o f his detractors in my life, really. [Laughs.] But at the same time
who believes his zenith o f fame lasted fa r too long, it is almost impossible not to have an opinion about Boy it’s forced me todcal with certain issues in my life.
George. Boy George may not be everyone’s favorite pin-up boy, but no one can deny the indelible mark that he Because as a kid, I wasn’t one of those kids who
left upon ’80s pop culture. When he burst onto the pop scene in 1982 as the flamboyantfrontman o f Culture Club, could hide what I was. I was very feminine, I was
he challenged stifled sensibilities and a largely homophobic music industry. However, he kept the press and very girly and people pointed it out to me every
day. From the age of six, people were calling me
public at a distance with an aura o f sexual ambivalence, both flaunting his sexuality and at times steering clear o f the
controversy
“girl”
and giving me girls’ names, calling me
altogether.
“poof,” so I was aware of it from an early age, as a
There is no question about Boy George now, as he is indeed out in full force on his new album, Cheapness and Beauty, and in lot of us are actually, from before we understand
the pages o f his recently published tell-all autobiography, Take It Like a Man. While he was in Portland recently to promote his what it all means.
c.
W
book, 1 had a chance to meet with Mr. Boy George as he revealed some o f his thoughts on Michael Jackson, O.J. Simpson and the
state o f pop music in the 1990s.
Do you find it exhausting to live up to the
celebrity surrounding the persona of “Boy
George”?
Sometimes people treat you with too much
awe. They forget that you’re just like them. There
are some people who are turned on by what they
see as power. Ce-
lebrity to a lot of
C elebrating O ur
people is power,
fjgL f i l l
and at the peak of
\
is F
my success with
-
Culture Club I did
_ L —w d H U B
feel that people
were just scream
ing at an idea
rather than a per
son. And of course
there were people
who really did re
late to me, and there were a lot of young gay kids—
there were a lot of girls who recognized a certain
vulnerability and they recognized themselves, in
some ways, in me. But for the large part with all
hysteria like that, it’s very vacant. It’s what you do
when you’re a teenager...you scream at famous
people. But having said that, there ace people whp
really do understand what you’re about, they un
YEAR
ANNIVERSARY
derstand what you’re saying, and that’s a whole
different story.
Are you more a gay icon in the 1990s?
Well that’s a strange thought because on the
one hand I am seen as a gay “spokesman,” but there
are 15 million homosexuals in this country and if
they were all buying my records then I would
believe that I was a gay icon, and I don’t think it’s
just gay people who buy my records. There are a lot
of gay people who buy my records but equally,
there are a lot of gay people who are turned off by
what I do. You see, we’re not a species. There are
conservative homosexuals, there are drag queens
and disco dollies, there are so many different types
of homosexuals. We all don’t like the same things,
unfortunately. Because on the one hand we com
plain about not being visible, and then when a gay
artist is making a statement, we ignore it as a
community and I think that is kind of a strange
irony. And so when people ask me if I’m a gay
icon, I’m like, check Madonna, check Kylie
Minogue. I really wish that I did have more sup
port.
V . Do you receive a lot of criticism from other
gay recording artists?
It’s just one of those things about us as a
community that we seem to often be very deroga
tory about our own kind. I’m always hearing gay
artists slagging me off—Holly Johnson, Jimmy
Somerville, across the board—and it’s like, stop
pissing in your own handbag guys, for fuck’s sake.
It really annoys me, and I used to do it, absolutely,
I used to do it, and I do see it as a sign of complete
immaturity. It’s one thing to have a joke, it’s good
to have a joke, but sometimes it crosses the line
where it’s boring—just bitching for the sake of it
and it’s more to do with insecurity than anything
else.
Society makes us insecure from an early age,
because we are basically abandoned by society, we
are abandoned by religious organizations, and con
demned by most, so we’re used to that. It’s part of
our makeup: rejection, disappointment, alienation.
So it’s something we’re comfortable with. Even
though sometimes we realize it’s not beneficial.
Somehow or other, it’s in our blood. And that is the
thing we need to challenge. We need to know when
it is appropriate and when it isn’t— I’m not saying
we need to live in a politically correct, humanist
world, but at some point, we need to come together
as a community and be strong.
As you have existed under a cloud of per
petual scrutiny from journalists, have you be
come more immune to their presence?
Well they’re not there to help me. They’re not
there to carry my message. That’s why I wrote this
book, because I feel the media generally treats
homosexuality or drug addiction or any other seri
ous issue very irresponsibly. And part of the reason
for writing this book is todo it in a responsible way:
to tell the truth.
When you go on TV, it’s like, “talk about your
heroin addiction in three sentences and make it
funny,” and it isn’t funny, I can’t do that. The
media is constantly searching for a sound bite and
my life isn’t a sound bite. Life is so much more
complex than that. I find it frustrating a lot of the
time. I can be very funny, but it’s not all I do. I get
frustrated playing the comedian, playing the kind
of humanless freak for other people’s benefit. But
with this album and this book I am dealing with
contentious issues, and people just want to treat it
all like a joke. It’s always got to be humorous, and
sometimes it just isn’t humorous.
Do you feel as if you are taking yourself—in
relation to your music and the messages
therein— more seriously now as a solo artist?
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