Culture Club were a Grammy Award-winning British pop group that formed in the early 1980s. The band consisted of Boy George (lead vocals), Mikey Craig (bass guitar), Roy Hay (guitar and keyboards), and Jon Moss (drums and percussion).
In 1981, Boy George used to occasionally sing with the group Bow Wow Wow under the stage name "Lieutenant Lush". His popularity in this role caused friction with the group's lead singer Annabella Lwin. After his tenure with the group, George decided to start his own band and enlisted Mikey Craig. Next came Jon Moss, and finally Roy Hay. The group recorded demos, which were paid for by EMI Records, but the label was unimpressed and decided not to sign the group. Virgin Records heard the demos and signed the group in the UK, and Epic Records signed them in the US as Virgin did not have a U.S presence at the time.
Their first album, Kissing to Be Clever (1982), saw the release of their first single "White Boy". Although the song failed to reach the UK or U.S. Top 100, George was still happy because "8000 people bought my song and didn't even know me." The next single "I'm Afraid of Me" also failed at radio. The release of the third single "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?", a reggae-influenced number, went to #1 in the UK in late 1982 and became an international hit, peaking at #1 in over a dozen countries,and sold 6.5 million copies worldwide. The debut of the band on Top of the Pops caused headlines such as "Wally of the week" and "Mr. (or is it Mrs. ?) Weird" in the tabloids in reaction to George's androgynous look and eccentric dress. Pete Burns, lead singer of the pop/new wave band Dead or Alive would later claim he was the first to wear braids, big hats, and colourful costumes, but George would cut back with a sharp tongued remark, "It's not who did it first, it's who did it better".
The follow-up single "Time (Clock of the Heart)", featuring George's soulful vocals over an R&B groove, became another Top 10 hit in the U.S.#2 and UK.#3 "I'll Tumble 4 Ya" also became a Top Ten hit in the U.S.#9 and in Canada. This gave Culture Club the distinction of becoming the first band since The Beatles to garner three Top Ten hits in the U.S. from a debut album. The album sold over two million copies in the U.S., and another three million worldwide at the time of its release, propelling George to international fame.
Their second album, Colour by Numbers, was released in 1983. The first single "Church of the Poison Mind", featuring backing vocalist Helen Terry, reached the UK and U.S. Top 10, continuing the group's success. The second single "Karma Chameleon" gave the band its second #1 hit in the UK, where it sold 1.4 million copies and became the best-selling single of 1983 in that country. It also topped the U.S. charts for three weeks,sold 1.3 million copies, and would eventually hit #1 in sixteen countries,and sold 7 million copies worldwide. Colour by Numbers would go on to have more hits, such as "Miss Me Blind" (#5 U.S.), "It's a Miracle" (#4 UK, #13 U.S.), and "Victims" (#3 UK), (all three singles featuring R&B singer Jermaine Stewart on background vocals) and sold four million copies in the U.S. and another five million worldwide at its time of release. With that album, Culture Club was the first group ever to have a diamond album (10 times platinum) in Canada, for more than a million copies sold. The band also won the 1984 Grammy Award for Best New Artist, where George gave a speech via satellite stating, "Thanks America, you've got taste, style, and you know a good drag queen when you see one."
The group's back-up singer, Helen Terry, began work on her solo album, for which George and Hay wrote the song "Love Lies Lost". The pair also wrote "Passing Friend" for the Beach Boys' album. Culture Club were asked to write two songs for the soundtrack to the movie Electric Dreams. George and Hay wrote "The Dream" and "Love Is Love", with the latter being released as a single in Canada and Japan,the E.P "love is love" became a hit in Japan. George also collaborated on "Electric Dreams", sung by P. P. Arnold. The song was written with Phil Pickett, who had co-written "Karma Chameleon" with the band and frequently played keyboards for the group.
Despite all this success, trouble was brewing within Culture Club. First, George was occasionally using drugs with money from his new-found fame. Second, unknown to Craig and Hay, George was romantically involved with Moss. Their relationship lasted for over four years and was often turbulent, with physical and verbal abuse. The pressure to hide the relationship from the press and the public started to take its toll on the band.
In 1984, the group released its third album, Waking Up with the House on Fire. It was a commercial and critical disappointment compared to Colour by Numbers. The album sold just over a two million copies worldwide upon its release, with 1,000,000 of those in the U.S. Although it was certified as a Platinum album in the US it was still considered a disappointment compared to the Multi-platinum successes of Kissing to Be Clever and Colour by Numbers in the US. The album had one hit single in "The War Song" which went top ten and top twenty in the UK and U.S. respectively. "The Medal Song" (UK #32) and "Mistake No. 3" (US #33) were also released as singles and became modest hits. George would later state that he felt the album experienced a lukewarm reception because he felt that the album was a mediocre and half hearted attempt only made because of record label pressure to quickly release a follow-up to Colour by Numbers. According to George at the time the band had just come off a world tour of North America and Australia during the spring and summer of 1984 and the group felt exhausted and as a result the fatigue ended up coming off of the album. Some music insiders think that the lukewarm reception may have represented a backlash against Culture Club and Boy George due to overexposure in both the American and British press at that point.
At the end of 1984, the band was recruited by Bob Geldof to attend the Band Aid recording, consisting of mostly internationally-known UK and Irish recording stars. George was in New York City when Geldof called him, but managed to catch the final Concorde of the day to London and was the last singer to record a vocal track for the song "Do They Know It's Christmas". The song would eventually become an international hit, raising millions for famine victims in Africa.
George had been abusing drugs for several years and by 1986 he became seriously addicted to cocaine, which then evolved into a heroin addiction. The band continued to lose its place musically. The recording of their 1986 album From Luxury to Heartache dragged on for so long that producer Arif Mardin had to abandon the sessions due to prior commitments and leave it to engineer Lew Hahn to record the final vocals. Songs like "Gusto Blusto" and "Reasons" took days for the addicted singer to finish. Nevertheless, the album seemed capable of returning Culture Club back to hit-making status as the first single "Move Away" peaked at UK #7 and U.S. #12. However, George and Jon could no longer be around each other due to constant relationship battles and, coupled with George's drug problem, a forthcoming American tour had to be canceled. By the time of the release of the second single "God Thank You Woman", news of George's drug addiction began to circulate in British and American tabloids, which were denied by the singer, and the single stalled. From Luxury to Heartache began to fade from the charts and the album eventually sold fewer than one million copies worldwide. By the summer of 1986, George announced that he was indeed addicted to drugs. In July, he was arrested by the British police for possession of cannabis. The band broke up and George pursued a solo career.
In 1998, the band put their differences aside and decided to do a reunion tour. Kicking off with a performance on VH1 Storytellers. The tour was a major success. A compilation album based around the Storytellers performance was released,and went platinum in uk, which included new songs such as "I Just Wanna Be Loved", which hit UK #4. "I Just Wanna Be Loved" had been written during the Peter Asher reunion sessions in the early 1990s.
Their 1999 studio album Don't Mind If I Do peaked at #64 in the UK. Although not a strong seller, it included moderate UK hits in "Your Kisses Are Charity" (UK #25) and "Cold Shoulder" (UK #43).
The band went on to tour, then reunited again for a 20th anniversary concert in 2002 at the Royal Albert Hall. This performance was released on DVD the following year. Culture Club then became inactive again, largely due to George's DJ career.
In 2006, two original members of Culture Club (Craig and Moss), tried to launch a new tour with another lead singer. (George and Roy Hay have declined to tour). Early that year, the band's record company placed an ad for a lead singer to "...take part in a 2007 World Tour and TV Series." The new singer, Sam Butcher was selected because of his own personality, "not a Boy George lookalike." George expressed his displeasure in the press with his replacement, even though Culture Club's MySpace page says otherwise. . A tour was announced for December 2006 in the UK, but was postponed to give the new line-up time to finish recording their album. Without official press statements, in 2007, band manager Tony Gordon, said that the project was "on hold," while drummer Jon Moss stated that the project was shelved.
N.B. Each of the first four songbooks includes a detailed official biography, which is each time updated: this way, such songbooks, corresponding to the band's first four albums, chronicle the early official biography of Culture Club, from 1982 to 1986.
