As a kid, I would’ve loved to get a tweet from David Bowie or Joan Rivers or Tom Cruise. It’s great that you can communicate with people and it’s instant.
My mother and father were fantastic, very active. I find it difficult to say this, but I’m quite a loving person and I’ve always been loving to my friends. In the long run, that pays off. I’m very interested in other people, and if you are, they’re interested in you.
When I go onstage, I’m going to work …I feel like my performance is about an emotional connection. I want to connect with people, whether it’s like a romantic song or a happy song.
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 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.
When Culture Club broke up, I hadn’t been going out a lot because we’d been working all the time, so I suddenly had this period of leisure. And it was just around the time that the whole acid house thing kicked off in London.
I’m a big Bob Dylan fan, a huge David Bowie fan… none of those people have orthodox, cabaret voices. These are people where what they’re singing about is just as important as how they’re singing it.
My family knew I was gay when I was 15, long before I got famous. But it’s a very different thing coming out to your family and coming out to the universe. That’s a big step.
Everyone loved the music but nobody liked the name. I -remember getting a postcard from Jon from L.A. saying, “I don’t think America’s ready for the Sex Gang Children.”
