Boy George
Leicester Square Theatre, London
It takes Boy George just seconds to establish two important facts about tonight’s comeback gig, part of a residency the singer performed during the festive period in a theatre that was re-built to host his musical, Taboo. First, his soulful voice remains as sweet and nimble as ever it was. Second, whatever else the singer may have lost during his recent period of incarceration, it wasn’t his sense of irony.
“Nobody Knows The Troubles I’ve Seen” sets up the evening perfectly, allowing both his six-piece acoustic band led by long-time collaborator, the excellent John Themis, and his audience, who have travelled from near and far, to relax immediately.
As George finds his vocal range on “Blue Moon”, you can feel the residual love flow from the stage and back again – this despite a vocal mix-up that renders Lorenz Hart’s beautiful lyric somewhat incomprehensible.
DJ, designer, impresario, drug addict, street sweeper, convict. Boy George has done it all, but throughout he has never stopped writing and his new songs are as drenched in pathos, as is the voice with which they are delivered. “Pentonville Blues”, which features a witty – some might say ill-advised lyric – about a chain gang, shows that from dire personal circumstances the best art is often produced.
In a world without Simon Cowell, new single “Amazing Grace” would surely top the charts, but it as much to remember what briefly made Boy George one of the most famous people on the planet that people have braved the wintry weather outside. Their host is happy to remind them. “Everything I Own” has the audience rise to its feet to dance with all the lack of inhibition that comes from knowing you are among friends.
George spices up one of his own songs with the 1960s protest refrain “Ain’t gonna go to war no more”. As is often the case with this most ambiguous of performers, it is impossible to know whether this is a comment on foreign policy or on matters much closer to home. The same could be said for “Knocking On Heaven’s Door”, which is cleverly segued with “You Keep On Knocking But You Can’t Come In”.
Seldom has George sung with more control or passion. “Losing you is like living without music”, he sings. The audience clearly feels the same way and its response is rewarded with a stripped-down “Victims” and then, from 1982, “Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?” It’s the song that made him a star and I ask myself whether I would be quite the same person I now am had I not happened upon Culture Club’s startling Top of the Pops debut almost 30 years ago.
This is followed by “Il Adore”, the standout track from his feted 1995 glam rock album Cheapness and Beauty. It tells the story of a friend who died from AIDS and briefly brings a hush to the theatre, reminding all present that the world is now a very different place to the one George lit up all those years ago. But if he stopped for too long to reflect on personal tragedies, we would never have got here in the first place and “Karma Chameleon”, with its refrain of “I’m a man without conviction” –- although not any more – drags the willing audience back to its feet.
However, it is a ballad George wrote while in HMP Edmunds Hill about fellow troubled superstar Amy Winehouse that best sums up his return to the stage. “Every day another rumour/ugly headlines in the press/you’re a genius/You’re a car crash/it’s hard to know what you do best/but when you sing, you sing/It’s like the whole world gathers round/It’s a glorious thing/your pain makes a beautiful sound.”
It’s a welcome return by a true original.
Cary Gee
