My Boy George Book!

Writing and Writhing Through a Culture Club Quickie

The other day I watched the 2016 concert film Culture Club Live at Wembley on PBS Passport, and available for rent at Amazon Prime for a little as 99 cents. That tells you something about Culture Club, who once ruled a large segment of the crowded 1983-1984 marketplace with such dominance in the growing video music/hit records niche that I wrote a book about them. Or rather, him: Boy George.

Did you know I wrote a book about Boy George and Culture Club? Of course you don't, how would you know? It was a way to get my foot in the door of the book publishing industry.

It was spring 1984. MTV had busted out, taking over pop music with videos. It didn't matter that much what the band sounded like, but it helped if you were handsome, like Duran Duran, or fierce, like Billy Idol, or had a funny haircut, like the Cure, or played all-synthesizers, like Depeche Mode.

There was also Bruce Springsteen, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Cyndi Lauper, Prince, Tina Turner, the Police, Van Halen, the whole new wave and scads of others, but the biggest thing out of England in 1983-1984 was the band Culture Club, led by Boy George O'Dowd. Playing an engaging mix of lite reggae-influenced Philly soul and London pop, one was never far from hearing a Culture Club song: "Karma Chameleon," "Do Yo You Really Want to Hurt Me," "Church of the Poison Mind," "Miss Me Blind," "I'll Tumble 4 Ya" melodic, rhythmic, and positive, the hits written by the band, produced by Steve Levine. They were so popular that some people mistakenly thought that the contemporaneous Deniece Williams hit, "Let's Hear It for the Boy," was a kind of tribute to Boy George. I know I couldn't think of one without thinking of the other.

In the Wembley concert, directed by Mark Ritchie, the original multicultural club is back: Jon Moss on drums, Mikey Craig on bass, Roy Hay on piano and guitar. They're accompanied by three backup soul singers, a three-part horn section, harmonica, additional percussion, keyboard, and guitar players. Boy George has toned down his look just an iota: a big white fedora and a polka dot suit to start, a second with matching XOs from hat to cuff.

This was what the noise was all about 40 years ago. Wearing braids, tons of makeup, designer clothes that fit no previous fashion precedent, and patterns that made them look like the canvasses of a sort of not-really-attentive art student with a minor in abstract expressionism, they were the subject of brief but intense fascination. Also, the headgear, or the hats and kerchiefs donned by Boy George. Eyebrows and eye shadow and makeup beyond the realm of the day to day: a fantasy world.

He was coy about his sexuality: In retrospect, it was unseemly how obsessed people were whether O'Dowd was gay or not. He was, of course, but it was a hard time to be gay: Britain was still regressive, his dad and brothers were boxers, and the AIDS epidemic could not only kill you, but create aversion by association. Now George is more open about it: In "Black Money," a duet with singer Theresa Bailey, George says: "She's pretending to be my girlfriend." She gives a broad wink. George says: "Well, it could happen." At that point in 2016, George said he was also nine years sober. Nice going, Boy.

Back in spring 1984, I got a call from Madeleine Morel of 2M Communications, a literary agency and book packager. She subcontracted writers from publishers who wanted authors to work for hire: a small advance, in this case $3,000, no royalties. Ballantine Books, then part of Random House, was the imprint. The theme of the series was: "Everything you always wanted to know about..." followed by the name of the artist. Boy George and Culture Club was available, so I said sure.

But I did have competition in the marketplace. When I got the assignment in May, 1984, stylish writer Merle Ginsberg's Boy George book had just been published by Dell; I think it made the best-seller list. I had to hurry: I started working on the book Memorial Day weekend, and it was due for delivery and a very quick mass market paperback turnaround Labor Day weekend.

Many of these were what were known in the business as "cut-and-paste jobs" because who would do a researched biography for $3,000? And with no cooperation from the artists, most authors relied on previously published news clippings. I know I did. But I had read Gay Talese's epic profile for Esquire, "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold," in which Talese, assigned to interview Sinatra, never got to talk to his man. But he talked to everyone he could, tailing Sinatra for weeks, and got the most vivid personality profile ever published, without a single direct quote from his quarry.

This is not that.

But I did have a telephone: I called and interviewed people with the slightest expertise in things Boy George. I got detailed analyses of the signature anti-macho videos, guided by Siobhan Barron, part of the family-run Limelight Productions with Steve Barron and Zelda Barron. I spoke with Sue Clowes, a clothing designer who shared Boy George's boredom with the slightly Boy George-adjacent New Romantics movement; she and Boy George had operated a clothing store near once-swinging Carnaby Street called The Foundry in 1981. Lynne Franks, a London publicist who worked with top fashion brands, explained how the parts fit together. One of his hairdressers talked about that look. And I had lunch with Danilo, a makeup specialist in New York's Soho, who analyzed the colors and palette of George's facial style with the skill of an art historian.

So I wasn't entirely out to sea. But I was out of my mind. I was freshly divorced with a two year old in Great Neck, Long Island, living in basement apartments, some illegal, living nearby the house my ex now owned, to share custody. Being rendered unqualified for a second date by most of the women I met, some stood me up rather than deal with the louche mess I was. But then on a blind date in Manhattan, I met Susan, and for the first time in years found myself punching above my weight in the mating game.

Susan was the New York bureau chief for the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. As such, thanks to the CBC’s benevolence, she had the most gorgeous New York apartment I'd ever seen. It was a small building of modern apartments, hers with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Hayden Planetarium. A famous model/actress lived in the building.

I had tried to cut down my drinking, sticking with a glass or two of wine at dinner. That lasted for a little while. Then, quickly getting semi-serious, we had a dinner at her place when her parents visited from Canada, and my dad and his statuesque second wife came in from Queens. Of course, I knew my dad and his Anna would want chilled vodka. I thought we should have some nice after dinner drinks as well, a pricey clear framboise eau du vie. The next morning I was unable to accompany Susan and her parents to brunch. The hangovers were back, and so was vodka.

This didn't seem to bother Susan too much. She had her eye on a career maneuver. The summer of 1984 had both the Democratic and Republican political conventions, and there was no greater prize for a journalist than covering a presidential campaign. She applied for that job, as the producer for the CBC's Washington bureau chief, and got the job. So just as our relationship was cementing, she moved to Washington through the election. Which was not horrible. We still spent a lot of the summer together; when things got quiet on the campaign trail in July, she convinced her bureau chief that they should go to Kansas City to cover the opening of the Jacksons "Victory" tour, featuring Michael and his brothers. We hooked up there, although we had a disagreement over whose hotel to stay at. She also got me paid to report on the Jacksons show the next morning for a national Canadian radio show out of Winnipeg.

And being in D.C., she found a vacation house rental where I could pretend to be a real author and spend a week working on the Boy George book. It was in Fenwick Island, Del. (population 355), next to Ocean City, Md. I disliked the place immediately. It was spartan, a long walk to the beach, and desolate. I felt better as I unpacked the gallons of vodka, gin, and bourbon I had purchased for our week-long sojourn. Susan had an electric typewriter that used cartridge rather than ribbon: It was as close to a word processor as one could find in 1984. Then the cartridge broke, and we spent a day driving to places like Salisbury, Md., looking for an office supply store that might have a cartridge. There was none to be had. I drove aimlessly in a silent sulk.

Then I started having panic attacks, one so bad that I called my editor, Karen Moline, collect from a gas station, and begged to be taken off the project, offering to return my advance. The weather wasn't that great, but I was resentful that Susan went to the beach every morning while I pretended to be an author. Karen talked me down from the ledge, but really, my mind was on vacation, hungover from one day's cocktail hour until the next. How out of it was I? One afternoon we smoked a joint and went to see Top Secret!, the spy spoof starring Val Kilmer. After a stretch, having lost track of the plot, I went to the bathroom for a minute, and returned to see that the movie had ended. I thought it was at most halfway through.

Somehow, I finished my manuscript, handed it it in, and found it published that fall. Meanwhile, Ronald Reagan had been nominated for a second term as president, his campaign theme "Morning in America." Reagan won reelection by sweeping 49 of 50 states in the Electoral College; his opponent, Walter Mondale, won Washington, D.C., and his home state of Minnesota. In 1983, the U.S. had a short war in the Caribbean, invading the island of Granada for reasons that seemed absurd even then, but mostly to stop creeping Communism, or something.

It was in this jingoistic environment that Culture Club's first single that fall was "The War Song," which was, of course, an antiwar song. Nobody wanted to hear an antiwar song from Boy George or anyone else in 1984: Radio didn't want to play it; MTV did not lust for a video. It’s not even on the anthology, The Best and Worst of Boy George and Culture Club (1993, Virgin/SBK Records). During the three months from assignment to finished manuscript, Culture Club went from heroes to zeroes. They were essentially done. And so was my career as an author for 15 more years, when I got hired to do VH-1's Behind the Music: 1968, another work made for hire.

Postscript.

The book got one review, years later, in The Rock & Roll Reader's Guide, by Gary M. Krebs (1997, Billboard Books). "Robins adds some spark to Ballantine's series on pop stars .  . . (He) tells a tells a concise history of glam rock and punk rock, which builds up to George's rebellious need for public spectacle and the ability to ignite fashion trends. While researching the book, Robins attempted to find out the Boy's make-up secrets by speaking to top artists in the field. Predates the group's decline and the Boy's junkie habits, but for what it's worth, it's one of the better treatments from the era."

Susan and I drifted apart, but each of us married and stayed married to our next serious partners. She interviewed me a few years ago for a freelance story she was writing about Ed Sanders and The Fugs for a newspaper with reach near her Hudson Valley weekend home. About 12 years ago, I was copy editor at a free, ad-supported weekly in Queens. An intern named Sam, or Samuel, I think, came in one day and said: "I enjoyed your Boy George book." I looked at him the way people sometimes look at me: "Excuse me, what is your home planet?" He was Susan's son, pranking me.