A lot of people felt I was getting work because I was Boy George. My response at the time was that there’s a lot of DJs making records, they’re not all making good records, but they have the right to do that.
I suppose all of those New Romantic clubs were quite up their own asses in a way. Well, Taboo was up its own ass in a different way, but not in terms of rules.
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.
And it’s taken me the best part of 54 years to reach that point where I’m like, “I’m very lucky, I’m lucky, I’m blessed” – all of those things. I wish I could impart that to other people but I think when you’re young, you just don’t listen.
I suppose I was seen more as an elder statesman because I had been around the London club scene for so many years. To the Taboo crowd I was really seen as a pop star, someone famous.
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.
I cried. I absolutely wept, because it wasn’t the usual stuff like, “Oh, he was a drug addict and he did this and that…” It was really looking at the music and it was really complimentary. It was a huge thing.
It’s quite nice that we can have almost direct contact with anyone in the world at any time. I don’t know how important it is in terms of one’s career. It seems to be pretty much superfluous in terms of that, but it’s nice to communicate.
