1984: Classic BOY GEORGE interview | Wogan | Classic TV Interview | BBC Archive

why are you so big in america why has it happened so quickly for you i think because we work hard and also because we haven't compromised on the way we look on the way that we think about things you know we haven't gone to america and watered down our act a lot of english bands you know when they started to feel success in america they went they cut off their hair they took off their false eyebrows and basically made a real compromise but with culture club my attitude was go there give them some culture you know bring them some english you know bring them some real english eccentricity because i mean let's face it england our culture is placed in accenture city you know and i think that it's it's good for the americans because i think a lot of the time you know and their idea of glamour is is very it's like our idea of glamour comes on the street young kids are glamorous in england you know a lot of fashion a lot of the top fashion designers steal their ideas from young people like 15 you know kids are coming out of college whereas in america glamour is much older people are old stars and it's a new generation now but it wasn't it hard for middle america particularly i can understand the east coast and the west coast accepting it but but the whole what about the bible belt and the southern states i mean what what's their reaction the word accepting obviously doesn't come into it because um number one i haven't accepted us at all i was watching a program a week ago i woke up back at six in the morning i was watching breakfast tv i won't say which side and um there was a program on about kids that wore one white glove to school michael jackson fans and the headmaster said god damn if we let them wear this they might dress up as boy george and that kind of really brought it home to me that they they just they they love the music but they haven't accepted me not at all i mean they've you know when we did the grammy awards i turned around and i said america you know a good track drag queen when you see one and of course it was like they analyzed that and then the next day and some of the colleges in middle america were analyzing what i'd said you know what do you think of what george says you know so i think that they they're very worried about me there they kind of but then i suppose that's the general attitude all over the world oh you're not accepted in some countries you had a hard time was it france you had a hard time getting in the night hall oh no the french always hated the english yeah they hate them even worse since about the middle of last week now they i think that the french are very french it's the only country in the world where i think you know no in england we we accept other people's cultures we're we're very democratic in france france is france the french are french and they don't take anything else and you know they don't really react i mean it's very you're very lucky we played in strasbourg and we played seventeen thousand people in america strasbourg two hundred people came that was uh yeah more than the first i don't think it's anything to do with the language no they're just very lazy you know oh rock and roll you know it's kind of they're more into potatoes and wine and things like that but it would seem to me that that some of the the music you do is closer to the eurovision song contest than to the it's funny because rock and roll royal guitarist when we played in france he couldn't believe why we only played to a half full full audience because we sold a million singles in france of do you really want to hurt me karma chameleon has sold you know over a million but you know they don't have the same appreciation for music in france or europe i mean my my tour of europe was the most depressing thing ever happened to me you know in italy we play to all men you know one person screamed at me it was like they just looked at us and it wasn't you know because all the girls are very yeah the young girls are catholics and they're not allowed really to go to rock and roll concerts after you know it's 10 o'clock at night so it's very strict there so to play to all men was quite weird you know but that's the strange thing about but if i may say so about your audience here and i'm not sure what this is true of america but certainly here it's right across the board it's very young to very old why why do you think that should be i think because in england we're we're far more liberal we're far more democratic i mean you know you can complain about this country you know but basically it's the best country in the world you know for um for everything you know all the best things happen here you know music england i think is like a laboratory for ideas and all the best things happen here i mean whether or not we capitalize on our best assets is another thing i mean i think a lot of the time you know we could really put more into our musicians like at school i was never really encouraged to do music it was you can't kick a ball right outside the class you know it was it was um it wasn't a case of giving you and making you do what you were good at it was a case of do everything else or you know but maybe you were an unconventional pupil i don't think so i mean i bet you were i wasn't actually i think that i knew what i wanted i think there are very few people who know what they want obviously but your head master reckoned you were unteachable well he was there he was very untalkable too but you see a school can't cope with the eccentrics can it i mean you've got to have a confirmation i wasn't always an eccentric i think that um no no i think that i've i've always i've always been very logical one of the things which my mother always says is that you know when i made a comment to her it was a logical comment i didn't just say i'm not doing it you know i kind of give a good reason and at school i did the same thing you know um if i felt that something was unjustified then i'd say so and obviously got me into a lot of trouble because it's easier to teach 20 people who think the same than it is to teach 19 and one of course you know what but um i don't think that's such a good thing should there be schools for people special schools for people like you a school for weirdos no i didn't mean that but for people with special talents or people who take a different view well i don't i don't know actually no i think so one person like you in a class is going to disrupt the whole class you can see how the headmaster felt but then but also you see there were girls at my school who now work behind the sainsbury's checkout you know who were just as cheap as i was and they had really had no ass you know they didn't aspire to being pop stars they were just cheeky young girls and everything that was said you know they would comment to so there was a lot of it going on at my school i mean also because my my headmaster who you see in the papers quite a lot he used to wear a board and tassel so he had this thousand pleated cape i mean he was a complete drag queen well you see i i think there's a certain amount of hypocrisy within society because a priest wears a dress it's not a dress if a harry krishna walks past a building site nobody whistles but if boy george does oh well when i wasn't boy george it was get a load of that you know slap your legs but it was you know you never you know when you when you imagine that something's part of somebody's culture you don't object to it but um i think there is a lot of hypocrisy in this world you know i mean this is a this is a kilt so i'm not wearing a skirt this is a kilt scottish kilt now this is an address so you know if if i had big football knees and hairy legs which i haven't actually but if i did have i would be quite acceptable it's because i'm not the norm but i i feel very normal because what i do is very normal for me you know so in a way i don't have to justify myself but to get back to my original question remember that question all those years ago but i said but i said why is it that that older people have no difficulty accepting you is it because your songs are softers because they're balanced or is it because your images is not it's not interesting it's not it's not challenging any sex there's no there's no aggressive sexuality about you i i believe that if you want to educate somebody it's like if you want to blow up a building there's no point finding a bum for the winter you've got to go inside and plant it in the middle that's the best way to bring it down and i think a lot of people their attitude is i'm going to shock now my attitude is a very internally attitude i think there are hundreds of pubs all over england where there are drag queens you can go and laugh at i'm not a drag queen i don't want to be like i'm very serious and i think if you want to confront the world with eccentricity you have to have a good explanation you know it's it's okay to be a clown in a circus but not to be a clown in a supermarket and i'm trying to make people more tolerant towards things which aren't harmful you know i don't deal with sex you know and um are you trying to get them to accept bisexuality not transsexuality no i've you see when you when you become very successful the thing the press want to know is are you bisexual so i say when i want sex i have to buy it all right there is another one do you sleep with men i never sleep i usually try to stay awake whoever i sleep but basically you know i i think one of the reasons i like cliff richard is because he avoids that why should he have to talk about his sexuality why should he i think there's some i mean i believe in monogamy anyway and i think that you know i was i made the point because you said you were trying to make things acceptable i mean that's what i was thinking i was asking what i'm saying is that except say if i save tomorrow what are you trying to make acceptable let me just put it this way say if the son tomorrow said okay to rogan is a suit rocker he wears a suit so the next morning everyone you see is that's a suit rocker now when you look at no that's that's an illogical way of looking at it but you can boil it right down to people who wear yellow socks i don't like you because you've got yellow socks on and what i'm saying is that you know you can't judge a book by its cover and that's something that you know that's an old saying that's an old wives saying almost and i think that you you know i try to be intelligent i don't like to come across i don't want to be just a rock and roll star i want to be a personality but why have the old wives accepted you so readily as readily as the young people people accept me because i think i'm intelligent i hope that people think i'm intelligent but intelligence is not normally a reason why people would like you i think it is in rock and roll because there's so many dumb people i think you know years ago i don't know i i think it's got lots of rock about years ago pop stars were very they just kind of dressed up and they had these huge high shoes and outrageous clothes and they didn't have to justify themselves you know but now people like because i've come along and because i've got a big mouth naturally and i love talking you know rather like yourself i mean there are people who can bore you silly i mean you're quite charming when you talk to people and you know you talk a lot but you talk a lot and i think that not tonight you had to get one in i just think that we people like poor george there are other bands like annie lennox a lot of fantastic bands around very talented people who look odd but also have got some kind of explanation they've got something to say for why they look the way they do and i think that people you know you become like a parental figure you know there are a lot of people who really rely on me and i think obviously you're in a position where you can influence people and i think if you do that in a bad way then obviously you won't succeed but if you do in a positive way you can really really help people so it's the image first that will attract people to your music that's really the way pop music has become isn't it it seems to be all image now but for me that that isn't the case i mean i've tried to explain this because um i didn't come along i mean a lot in the 70s a lot of the bands were old hippies and they suddenly put a bit of glitter on bit of eyeshadow sort of dyed their hair and they became successful but with me um i dressed up for years i mean i got i wore a kilt actually to work once when i worked in poland street and the woman had a fit and she said you can't stay here in a kilt a skirt you know and she had one on why not you know you can wear one it looks better on me than it does on you basically you know i think that we've made it very difficult for people to be bland yeah but can you have can you have an ordinary life now i mean what's an ordinary life well i mean you're obviously not going to walk down to the pub for a drink are you i never went to pubs anyway yeah i you know but i mean would you say that it will eventually make you rather like michael jackson something of a recluse i am already i mean definitely because you're a very outgoing person yeah but i i find my i find pleasure in different ways now i go to restaurants i go to quiet places i like quiet it's funny i've gone the opposite years ago i used to go to clubs every night and now because i'm surrounded by people all the time i i like to be quiet you know and also and i think like michael jackson i channel all my energy into couch club otherwise it wouldn't work i mean that's why we're successful because we work hard what about the o'dowd family how do they how do they react to you that's your own irish family yeah i have to say that my parents um are very very intelligent you know they've always been my if somebody black moved into the street they wouldn't tell me to say oh my god the street's gone down a peg you know they've always been always the first people to go and help somebody i mean we had a lady of ill repute living next to us once and her house burnt down and my father went in and rescued it in her underwear pulled her out and every and you know he never lived it down he had to move actually partly because of my mother but you know they've always been very they they they've always said you know talk to somebody before you judge them you know don't go out to someone and say oh my god i mean it's like if you say that because someone dresses weird you can't accept them then you could say something about crippled people and people who are you know physically disabled you can't do that you know i i never laugh at somebody who's disabled i could never laugh at somebody like that i can never understand anyone who does i don't believe anybody really is really that different i think that we all want to be loved we all want to be needed and we all want some kind of attention and affection and of course everybody everybody needs that and that's what i try to give people but you dress like this then not to draw attention to yourself of course you know there's there's no question about that i mean of course i do you know this but um by the same token i mean why do you wear makeup on tv you know you probably don't wear it at the pub but you wear it because you know it's part of your job and the thing that i find hypocritical is that you turn on the six o'clock news and there's this guy um the weather is uh and he's plastered in foundation and max factor he's not walking down the street here also then i'm a bit more honest than he is because i'm for real and i do it for real and i i'm saving the world [Music] you have to open it out and put it on save the world you

Channel: BBC Archive

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Id: h7MyKtrOnUY

Length: 14min 15sec (855 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 28 2022