Interview

MR: When was the last time you were here? 

BG: The last time I was there was when I swept up. [laughs] Is it still clean? 

MR: Yeah, it’s amazing. You did a commendable job. [both laugh] I could pass a Boy George exam on what I know about your life. But I thought we’d just get to talking. I’ve only ever done an interview once before—with Malcolm McLaren. 

BG: You know, I worked with Malcolm very briefly. 

MR: That was something to do with you and Bow Wow Wow, right? 

BG: Yeah, I was really good friends with Matthew Ashman, the guitarist in Bow Wow Wow. He died, unfortunately. He was one of my best friends during my sort of punk period. He was originally in Adam and the Ants before Malcolm stole the whole band. [laughs] Malcolm created Bow Wow Wow with Annabella Lwin, who was about 14 at the time . . . She was a baby. Anyway, I used to go to Malcolm’s all the time and we used to sing and piss around. He used to say, “God, you’ve really got a good voice. I wish you were in Bow Wow Wow.” I guess he thought, Why not bring in a drag queen? My first gig with that band was when they did a big concert at the Rainbow Theatre in Finsbury Park. I came on in the encore instead of Annabella and did an old Peanuts Wilson song called “Cast Iron Arm.” It was my first ever performance and I literally got pushed onstage. The audience was flummoxed, like, What the hell is this? 

MR: Has your look quite evolved at that point? 

BG: My look was actually more extreme. It was heavier makeup, more goth. I was in a skirt. Vivienne Westwood was there before I went onstage and she had all of these clothes from her Pirate collection, and she was trying to get me to wear them. 

MR: The New Romantic look was very much -everything-and-the-kitchen-sink, right? 

BG: Well, we didn’t have much money. So you’d maybe have a scarf or trousers or bits of designer stuff, and you’d mix it with junk-store stuff or things that you’d stolen or gotten from Oxfam shops. Everyone always had just a piece or two of Westwood—like a pirate hat. 

MR: Your look was a bit goth, which later really got incorporated into the New Romantic look. But what specifically were you being influenced by in those years before Taboo? 

BG: One of the most significant things at the time was a closing-down sale at this place called Charles H. Fox. It was a massive theatrical costumier’s. I remember all of us went to this clearance. It was all vintage, so we were really just getting our hands on different costumes. You know, the New Romantic scene was so tiny. Although it got lots of mileage in the media, it was a really small club with only a core group of people. As it got more popular, kids started to come from the suburbs all dressed up, but it -really wasn’t as big as it looked. But Fox’s clearance was a huge milestone in New Romantic style. 

MR: Let me ask you about Warren Street. It was the infamous squat where you lived when you were coming up, right? 

BG: Yeah. Warren Street was at the high end of the New Romantic scene. They were mostly college art students and people who knew top designers. 

MR: So it really wasn’t squalor. 

BG: No. There was one room on the third floor that was done very Grecian. It wasn’t squalor, but there wasn’t hot water and there wasn’t always electricity. But the people who lived there made it really good. 

MR: I was watching the Joe Strummer film [Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten (2007)] recently, and he talked about how he left the hippie thing
behind and decided he was a punk and started living in a squat. A lot of groundbreaking movements are born out of squat culture. It was something going on at the time. 

BG: Oh, definitely. I was about 16 when punk started to happen. It was so exciting. You had a
social depression going on in the U.K. There was a sanitation strike. London was really grim, gray. You had Margaret Thatcher coming in. It was a really revolutionary time. It felt like you had this naïve idea that you could change things just by wearing something. [laughs] 

MR: So punk was influential to you? Because with punk there’s a feeling that anyone could do this. But on the other hand you are a pure singer—
you have a beautiful voice. 

BG: Certain punk bands were influential because I thought, If they can do that then I can . . .
Hanging around those bands was how I started my first band—In Praise of Lemmings. 

MR: What was the next one called? 

BG: Caravan Club. 

MR: Then there was something with sex gangs . . . 

BG: Oh, Sex Gang Children. One of the songs that Malcolm had written for me was “Sex Gang Children.” So I nicked the title. We changed the name from Sex Gang Children to Culture Club because Jon Moss, our drummer, went to L.A. on holiday and took some demo tapes with him. -Everyone loved the music but nobody liked the name. I -remember getting a postcard from Jon from L.A. saying, “I don’t think America’s ready for the Sex Gang Children.”