Drag Queen Articles
© 2009-2012 dragqueendiaries.com all rights reserved.
Drag Queens
Just a few of our favorite drag queens.
Drag Makeup
Tips and tutorials to help you look fierce!
Drag Queen Shows
What to expect at a drag queen show.
Drag Queen Names
How do you pick a good drag queen name?
Contact | Terms | Privacy Policy | Blogs
Visit Our Sponsors!
When you visit a sponsor you help us keep this site operational!
A Gay Owned & Operated Website! We’re Proud and Loud! Show your love by supporting our sponsors!
Drag Queen Diaries.com Must Have Movie!
Boy George Biography
In Eltham, London on July 14, 1961, a son was born to Gerry and Dinah O'Dowd. Given the name George Alan O'Dowd, we know him better as the "Transvestite Irish singer" Boy George. George is one of six children born to Gerry and Dinah, including Richard, Kevin, David, Gerald and Siobhan. George, of course, is the English singer-songwriter who was part of the English New Romantic movement which emerged in the 1980s, and helped give "androgyny" and international stage with the success of the band known as "Culture Club". Often classified as "blue-eyed soul" his music is deeply rooted in rhythm and blues and reggae. His 1990s and 2000s era solo music is influenced by glam artists David Bowie and Iggy Pop. George also founded and was lead singer from 1989 to 1992 of the band Jesus Loves You. Between his many other activities including song writing, DJ-ing, writing books, designing clothes, photography and his jail time, George has released far fewer music recording in the last decade alone.
Speaking of his naughty ways, George has recently been granted release on good behavior
from prison at HMP Edmunds Hill in Newmarket, Suffolk. Serving just four months of
a fifteen-month sentence for the assault and false imprisonment of a male escort
in his East London flat, he will wear an ankle monitor and be placed on a curfew
for the balance of the sentence. But let's take a look back at the career of (Boy)
George Alan O'Dowd.
As a follower of the New Romantic movement which was popular in Britain in the early 1980s, O'Dowd, along with his friend Marilyn, were regulars at The Blitz, a trendy London nightclub run by Steve Strange of the group Visage. The two friends also worked at the nightclub as cloakroom attendants. Boy George's androgynous style of dressing caught the attention of music executive Malcolm McLaren (previously the inspiration behind the Sex Pistols), who arranged for him to perform with the group Bow Wow Wow, featuring Annabella Lwin. George's association with Bow Wow Wow ended soon afterwards, and he started his own group with bassist Mikey Craig.
The group was to be called 'In Praise Of Lemmings', but the name was later abandoned. Jon Moss (who had been the drummer with The Damned, Adam and the Ants and London) then joined the group. The final member to join the band was Roy Hay. The group abandoned another name, Sex Gang Children, and settled on the name Culture Club, an in-joke about the ethnic background of the group, which consisted of a transvestite Irish singer (George), a Jamaican-Briton (Craig) on bass, a Jewish drummer (Moss), and an Anglo-Saxon Englishman (Hay) on guitar.
The band signed with Virgin Records in the UK, and with Epic Records in the US and released its debut album Kissing To Be Clever in 1982. The single "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?", reached #1 in a dozen countries around the world, and #2 in the United States. This was followed by "Time (Clock Of The Heart)" (not on the UK LP), which reached the US #2, and "I'll Tumble 4 Ya" which reached US #9. This gave Culture Club the distinction of being the first group since the Beatles to have three Top 10 hits in the US from a debut album.
Their next album, Colour By Numbers was also a huge success. The single "Church Of The Poison Mind" (featuring Helen Terry) became a Top 10 hit, and "Karma Chameleon" became a #1 single in sixteen countries, including the US, where it stayed at #1 for three weeks. It was the best-selling single of the year in the UK, spending six weeks at #1. It stands as the group's biggest hit. "Miss Me Blind" and "It's A Miracle" were Top 5 and Top 20 hits respectively, and "Victims" was another Top 3 UK hit.
George had been occasionally using drugs, but by 1985 he had developed a heroin addiction, which would prove to be the "beginning of the end" for Culture Club. Waking Up With the House on Fire and From Luxury to Heartache, which would be the group's next two albums, were not nearly as successful as the first two, with each album garnering only one chart entry in the U.S. It was at this time when George would be arrested for possession of cannabis, and sadly, Michael Rudetski, keyboardist who co-wrote and played on the song "Sexuality" on From Luxury to Heartache, was found dead of a heroin overdose in George's London home. A second death, that of friend Mark Vaultier, from an overdose of valium and methadone at a party that George was arrested en-route to on suspicion of carrying drugs. Several months after the release of their fourth album, Culture Club disbanded.
With his heroin addiction still a problem and a subsequent dependence on prescription narcotics emerging, George started recording his first solo album. In 1987, Sold was released and George enjoyed several hit singles including "Everything I Own" (UK #1), "Keep Me In Mind" (UK #29), "To be Reborn" (UK #13) as well as the title song (UK #24). His second US album High Hat was composed of songs from two of his solo British albums released after Sold. The R&B song "Don't Take My Mind On A Trip", produced by Teddy Riley, became the only hit from High Hat, reaching top 5 on the R&B chart. His following release was a protest song against the governing UK Conservative Party's legal restrictions on anyone working for a local authority "promoting" homosexuality, 'No Clause 28 (Emilio Pasquez Space Face Full Remix)' was an underground acid house hit.
In 1989, George formed his own label, More Protein and recorded under the name Jesus Loves You, (writing under the pseudonym Angela Dust).
From March 1990 to April 1991, George presented a weekly chat and music show on the Power Station satellite channel called Blue Radio. In 1992, George had a hit with the song "The Crying Game" (produced by the Pet Shop Boys), which was featured in the movie of the same name, and reached the top-twenty of the US Hot 100. Although he had had several solo hits in the UK, this would be his first and only big US hit since the Culture Club song "Move Away" reached the Top 20 in America in 1986. George made many recordings between 1990 and 1994, but none were issued. A pop and world music-oriented album was scheduled for release by Jesus Loves You in 1992, named "Popularity Breeds Contempt", but never came out. Only three tracks with their respective remixed versions survived, ending up on the "Sweet Toxic Love" EP, released in the last year of the 1990 year (which only reached #65 in the UK Chart). The album (the tentative title of which, "Popularity Breeds Contempt", also survived as opening line spoken at the beginning of the 1993 collection called At Worst: The Best of Boy George and Culture Club) was shelved, as it were, in favour of the recent growing interest in rock for George.
In 1995, Harper Collins published the first autobiography of Boy George, Take It Like a Man, written with Spencer Bright. The book was released to coincide with the timing of George's solo album, Cheapness and Beauty, actually released at the same time, dealing with the same themes, and also including a number of photographs as in the book. Take It Like A Man was a bestseller in the UK. In Take It Like A Man, George told his side of his secret relationship with Culture Club drummer Jon Moss. He stated many of the songs he wrote for Culture Club were directed at Moss. He also alleged that Moss had broken off his engagement with a woman to be with George, but that Moss was never comfortable in a same-sex relationship, although Moss was bisexual.
In July 1998, a reunited Culture Club performed three dates in Monte Carlo and then joined Human League and Howard Jones in a "Big Rewind" tour of the US. The following month, the band appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman and made an appearance in Britain, their first in 14 years. Later that year, the band had a Top 5 hit in the UK with "I Just Wanna Be Loved" and later a top 30 hit with "Your Kisses are Charity". In 2006, the band decided to again reunite and tour; however, George declined to join them for this tour. As a result, two members of Culture Club replaced George with vocalist Sam Butcher. George has expressed his displeasure at the turn of events. Finally, after one showcase and one live show, that project was shelved.
It is rumored that in 2012 Culture Club will again reunite and speculations are running high. In 2010 Boy George released another solo CD called “Ordinary Alien”.