The Rehabilitation of Boy George

Once Boy George had it all – not just the music career, but national treasure status to boot. Heroin dependency followed by cocaine addiction sabotaged all of that, culminating last year in an ugly court case that seemed to defy credibility, which saw George convicted of false imprisonment and led to him spending four months in jail. Here, in his first major interview since his release, he talks to Alan Franks about prison, privacy, love and regret…

I can’t say I was looking forward to meeting Boy George. Those photos of him two years ago, bloated, brutish and sinister; the arrest for imprisoning a Norwegian man in his London flat, manacled to the wall and to the bed, and beating him; his own jailing for the crime. He had become so unrecognisable that it was hard to believe he had once been the pretty and effeminate singer with the massively popular Eighties band Culture Club. Stars lose their looks, from Elvis Presley to Adam Ant, but there never was such a dramatic morphing as this, all the way across the spectrum from beauty to beast, sweet little thing to nasty piece of work.

For days before our meeting, the negotiations were dogged by the tedious rock’n’roll foreplay that often happens on such occasions. Boy George, said his representatives, did not want to talk if the whole thing was going to be about “my prison hell” (their phrase). He served four months of a 15-month sentence, until May this year, in HMP Edmunds Hill, a category C prison in Suffolk, and then wore an electronic tag for a further three. He is, in a word, out, and back in the public eye, if he was ever truly away. He has product to shift, namely himself and his new moves in the entertainment business – the imminent opening of a no-booze, no-drugs club called Godspeed, the return of his West End show in December and a live performance at the fashionable Proud Camden in London.

When we do meet, it is in the old stables that form part of Proud, a gallery cum music venue, where the matter of his crime and punishment stands like an elephant in the stall. So it’s a surprise when he says: “The thing about Pentonville [where he spent the first six days of his sentence] is that when you go in there, you are going into Scum [the violent 1979 film about life in a borstal]. You’ve got the classic picture of the balconies and the banging cups. I knew what to expect. I was quite hostile.” Hostile to the other prisoners? “Yes. Very hostile. And very grumpy. Not because I felt that way particularly, but because I felt it required that. The situation required me to be a bit feisty, a bit don’t-f***-with-me. I’d heard it all before. I’ve grown up with all that name-calling. I can’t walk down the street without someone calling out, ‘Karma chameleon.’ [Culture Club’s 1983 hit single.] That’s sweet; that doesn’t bother me.”

The 48-year-old singer hasn’t spoken publicly before about his prison experiences, but he is so quick off the mark in doing so now that there’s barely been time to take in the present look of the man. Something’s changed. He was always a chameleon himself, a professional one like his idol David Bowie, but the alteration in him looks far more profound than a shift of image. He cuts a very different figure now to the one on display at his trial and conviction at Snaresbrook Crown Court in December last year. He’s lost weight: he looks firm, and astoundingly solid. It’s more the set of a builder, which his late father was, than of a New Romantic, however middle-aged. He carries himself like someone who reckons he’s useful. But it’s in the face that the big change has happened. That awful frame of raddled flesh has fallen away to unveil the old androgynous expression of the young Boy George: hard little imp. His eyes twinkle with a weird but rather benign mischief, and there are times when he can barely talk for overjoyed laughter.

So this is why he wouldn’t talk of “my prison hell”. There wasn’t one. A nasty little time in Pentonville perhaps, where he wore a T-shirt with a glittering handcuff design and, according to one source, needed a minder because he was scared and disorientated.

But at Edmunds Hill it was a different story, and this is how he tells it: “I felt strong throughout the whole thing because I knew there was a beginning and an end to it. So for me it was a matter of, OK, so this is how long I’ll be here, what am I going to do with the time? I read everything I could. I read Bleak House, The Catcher in the Rye, The Ginger Man, A Confederacy of Dunces. I really identified with the central character of Ignatius J. Riley.” The Southern US novelist Walker Percy described Riley as, “A slob extraordinary, a mad Oliver Hardy, a fat Don Quixote, a perverse Thomas Aquinas rolled into one.”

One of the books that made the deepest impression on him was The Thief’s Journal, Jean Genet’s largely autobiographical novel about the roamings and incarceration of a homosexual prostitute. “I found that very erotic, and I kept thinking, well, I won’t be able to pass this one on.”

As he talks like this, one elephant, the prison one, leaves the room, but another appears in its place, arriving trunk-to-tail.This is the question of remorse for a nasty crime. There is the familiar danger of a redemptive tale like this upstaging everything else – the consequences, the victim’s life, the contrition (or not) of the offender. In the course of the trial, the court heard how Audun Carlsen, a 29-year-old male escort, was manacled by the singer and another man for several hours, eventually managing to escape and run from the Shoreditch flat wearing nothing but boxer shorts, trainers and a pair of handcuffs.

The singer, whose real name is George O’Dowd, was by his own admission under the influence of cocaine. Indeed, he now says that he was rarely not under its influence for a five-year period that encompassed the incident, and came to an end about 20 months ago. He rattles off the starting date of his present abstinence – “March 2, 2008” – adding with triumph that 15 days have passed since his most recent cigarette. But the British courts are adamant: a drunken (or stoned) intention is an intention nonetheless.

Where is his remorse? We come on to this in a moment, and his reply is unexpected. But he has not quite done with prison. He says he was never physically afraid. “If anyone bothered me, I’d have hit them back, no problem. They would have got what they gave me. What people don’t realise is that bullies aren’t popular in prison. If you have someone ringing the alarm, then everyone gets locked up, like school. Someone does something wrong and you’re all blamed…” Like a working-class counterpart to Jonathan Aitken, who said jail held no fears for an old Etonian, O’Dowd says Eltham Green School, one of London’s first comprehensives, was pretty good prep for life inside: “Hideous place. Hideous place.”

The low point, he says, was being away from his family and friends. He is one of six children – five boys and a girl – with several nephews, nieces and godchildren. None of his own, however. “Ooo no,” he winces. “I leave that to the professionals.” His parents, Gerald and Dinah, came from Thurles in County Tipperary, and raised their family in southeast London. “While I was away,” he goes on, “I got so many letters from friends. Maybe some of them I had taken for granted, or thought, well, I wouldn’t call your name if I was drowning. They blew me away, it was really beautiful. That was the only time I ever got emotional in prison. I got about 15 cards a month from one of my friends, Dusty. My therapist Jamie, who now lives in Karachi, he told me, during all that turmoil after I was arrested in New York [for falsely reporting a burglary], he told me I had a public responsibility, and if I don’t like it, tough. I remember at the time being really furious that he said that to me – I thought, how dare you. I bumped into him at Heathrow a year ago and he said, ‘My God, you are clean,’ and I said, ‘You remember that thing you told me. I wanted to kill you but now I get it.’ I have a responsibility and that’s OK. It’s not something I should be embarrassed about.”

What then should he feel about the crime that got him jailed? Remorse, surely. Isn’t that what we want to hear before we too can move on from it? The good humour vanishes from his eyes and he says tartly: “I’m not going to talk about that. I’m not going to talk about that.” His face seems to lock up, although he denies that it is. But why no expression of regret? “The important thing,” he says, “is that I don’t feel malice towards anybody. That’s the most important thing. Whether I feel remorse or not is irrelevant. What I would say is this: what happened in the last five years of my life [that is, until he gave up cocaine] was all to do with drugs. I took responsibility for that, in a way. Generally, my attitude is, I put myself in those situations because of drugs. I never would have made those decisions if I had not been high. So that, if I sit down and start thinking about the finer details, I would drive myself crazy.”

Those who are enraged by this answer will probably say it’s unforgivably selfish. Forgivable or not, it is selfish in the sense that it puts his recovery from drug addiction before anything else. In that respect, his approach is in line with the 12-step programme of Narcotics Anonymous, which he has joined with a ferocious commitment. Get clean, runs the argument of that organisation, and the right things will begin to happen – therefore, your abstinence is your primary responsibility. “It [my face] is not locking up,” he continues. “The reason I’ve not done any interviews about any of that stuff is because it’s not helpful to me in any way. One thing I’ve learnt in the past few years is that less is more. I don’t have to tell everybody my business any more. Some things are sacred, and it’s taken me a long time to realise that. What I’ve experienced in the past year is that the energy around me has changed so much. I guess my soul used to feel wretched.”

When it comes to his recovery, he is, as in so much else, out. This too will probably ruffle the feathers of the NA mainstream, which takes anonymity as a core principle. But here again he has no compunctions. Quite the reverse. He wants to sing the fellowship’s praises, and so he does: “In NA, you see people getting their lives back. They come in broken. At my first meeting I could hardly breathe or walk. I talked like Darth Vader, got off at the wrong stop and had to walk up Goswell Road.

“When I was away, I wrote a lot of stuff, which will be released next year. I wrote a diary and songs. I got into trouble because I wrote on the wall: ‘Some things are past understanding, you just need a place to land.’ It was part of a lyric. I actually wrote a song about Amy [Winehouse] when I was in prison.” The two have only met once, at a gig at Koko in London, when they were both the worse for wear. It was the last show he did before, as he puts it, “things went crazy”. He was falling out with his band, who were refusing to do any more work with him in that state. Winehouse went backstage to see him. This was exciting for him, because he considers her a great talent. The song he wrote is called Your Pain Makes a Beautiful Sound. He recites the lyrics, slowly and intensely, and is visibly moved as he does so:

“It was easy to make them love you,
All you had to do was sing.
Now it’s not enough to listen,
They want to know everything.
Every day another rumour,
Ugly headlines in the press.
You’re a genius, you’re a car crash,
It’s hard to say what you do best.
But when you sing, you sing,
The whole world gathers round.
It’s a glorious thing,
Your pain makes a beautiful sound.”

It sounds as if it might be as much about him as her, and he says as much himself. He also says that this is the case with a lot of his songs – more than 20 albums’ worth in his various incarnations; you go back to them after several years and realise they weren’t about someone else, but you. He recites again, this time from Brand New, which he says could have been written now: “I don’t want to change the world/ I know I can’t change you/ Maybe I can change myself/ Make it all brand new.”

Maybe. He has tried before, breaking his heroin addiction back in the Eighties. Like Winehouse, his songs are toxic with the pain of love and the difficulty of relationships, particularly with yourself. They are songs that beat up the singer as well as the listener – emotional S&M. When the two spoke, they discovered they had a favourite song in common: the Gerry Goffin/Carole King song He Hit Me, recorded in 1962 by the Crystals and produced by Phil Spector. “He hit me/ And it felt like a kiss/ He hit me/ And I knew he loved me.”

As with the incident that led to his imprisonment, he won’t say much about the strange episode three years ago that led to his receiving a community service order in New York. Regrets and remorse? He gives the same uncompromising message that he won’t go there. At least, not here and now. “It doesn’t matter. It’s what you do now. The whole Eckhart Tolle thing [author of the spiritual self-help book The Power of Now] is about living in the day.”

He struck a deal with the authorities after police had responded to a call from him saying his Manhattan apartment had been broken into. They found no evidence of a burglary, but they did come across 13 bags of cocaine. Part of his penance was to sweep the streets of the city in the glare of publicity. He does say that he felt a bit duped. “I was told I would be working in a park, away from public view. But I was thrown right into the centre, in Chinatown. I called it my Media Circus Order.” He couldn’t explain why he had made the call and won’t try to do so now. It has to be put down to the great bully of cocaine, which was running the show for those five years. Though it may be a cliché to say so, that, more than HM Prison Service, was his true jailer. It was Edmunds Hill that was, ironically, a liberator.

“Walking to work one morning,” he recalls, “when I was away, I thought, ‘Who am I now?’” He was working in the vegetarian kitchen, seven days a week, starting at 8.30 in the morning. “You can get off drugs and still be in an oblivious state. Last year I had a huge reality check, and I felt very bare and open. That was quite scary to start with, in that I thought, I don’t know if I want to deal with this. I don’t know if I want to be George. Actually George is all right. George is quite nice. I thought, I’m XB7073, I’m just George O’Dowd, and I’m happy to be George O’Dowd. When you’ve shown them that you can just get on with it, then you’re pretty much free to do your own thing. The kitchen is quite a stressful environment. You can’t mess around. If there’s 140 for curry, and another 40 to make something else for, you’ve just got to get on with it. Once you show them – and I do like working – you will be pretty much left alone. You come in in the morning, you get your menu and you get on with it.”

“I’m happiest when people don’t notice me. I’m in heaven. On the Tube or the bus. The tattoo [a huge swirl on the back of his head and neck] is a bit of a nightmare. But people aren’t sure it’s me. I’ve got the hood up and the glasses on. I’m very happy when people don’t bother me. I have a strange sense of freedom. When I put gear on, I become that person, and I expect it. But with day-to-day business, I love to be anonymous.”

So Boy George, or George O’Dowd, is saying he doesn’t need the limelight? “I absolutely don’t. I’m not into being a star. I want to be a great musician. I want to be happy with what I have. I used to define myself by how much money I had, where I went, how many records I sold. I stopped doing that some time ago. Even when I was huge, I wasn’t insecure. I haven’t really hated myself for a long time, despite the fact that I used to take drugs. I don’t know what that was all about. I haven’t really had that self-loathing thing. I saw those pictures of me in the papers, all bloated, and I had no idea I looked like that. I don’t think I’m unattractive. I think I’m charming. I’ve got something.”

A lot, actually, including the lovely Hampstead house that he rented out during the chaotic years; and, in case you’ve forgotten, a beautiful singing voice, nimble, light and strong. Whatever other elements of his life were vying for attention, that was always at the heart of his appeal. He is now considering adding management to a career that has combined design and photography with the music. When he plays at Proud Camden, he will be joined on the bill by a New York (male) jazz singer called Coby Koehl, whom he is eager to promote and who he says is the best he has heard since Amy Winehouse.

He has even restored his friendship with Jon Moss, the former drummer of Culture Club. The two were lovers in the Eighties. It was an obsessive, turbulent affair. “Yes,” he says with a smile, “people were fascinated with that relationship, weren’t they? He has children now, he’s a married man. But yes, it was a big passion, absolutely. For a long time [after the split] I couldn’t be in the same room as him. I love him, but I’m not in love with him. I’ll always love him. I’ve only recently found that how I behave really makes a difference to how everyone else behaves. Because I do have quite a strong force in that department.”

There is a man in his own life. He describes him as “a special friend – and not into drugs”, and has known him for a long time.

I have to confess, it’s not until after this conversation that I think of a possible explanation for his absolute refusal to talk about remorse. There are many obvious ones, including shame, privacy and the complexities of the case. But there is another, and it is to be found in the literature of Boy George’s, or rather George O’Dowd’s new “family” of Narcotics Anonymous. This fellowship is run along the lines pioneered by Alcoholics Anonymous in America 74 years ago. At the heart of its method is a 12-step programme designed to help addicts get clear, and stay clear of their habit. Step No 8 reads: “We made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.” Judging by the changes in this strange, tough, talented man, he is taking his recovery seriously enough to suggest that he is practising the steps to the best of his abilities. So the chances are that he is saying sorry, or thinking about it, to people he has wronged. Unlike so much else in his life, the public won’t catch him at it.