Mr. Clean: Boy George Straightens Up His Act

As Boy George sits on the couch in his neo-Gothic mansion, in London’s exclusive Hampstead section, baring his soul about his recent drug problems, it’s hard not to wonder if he’s trying to pull of some kind of con. Sipping tea, and smoking cigarette after cigarette, George spends hours detailing his sins — not the least of which was a year and-a-half-long addiction to heroin — in a kind of media confessional.

”Most people think I’m obsessed with headlines, and they’re probably right,” he says. ”People think of you as a sort of publicity monger. I do like publicity, and I like the way you can create illusions about yourself through publicity. But also it can be brutally true as well. I know all sides of it now.”

This much must be said for the Boy; he’s always been good copy: his arrest and conviction for possession of heroin; a three-gram-a-day habit; a subsequent prescription-drug habit that found him abusing metha-done and gobbling legally prescribed narcotics and sedatives by the handfuls; the ”traumatic” court appearances and the incessant hounding by England’s ravenous tabloid press; a $44 million lawsuit by the parents of a friend, musician Michael Rudetsky, charging that George contributed to their son’s death.

It was on the floor of this very sitting room that Rudetsky, 27, died of a heroin overdose in August 1986. Another flamboyant friend, Trojan, who is the subject of the song ”Little Ghost” on George’s solo LP, Sold, also died of a drug overdose. And methadone took the life of George’s good friend Mark Golding, 20, this past December. As George recounts how Golding downed nearly a whole liter bottle of methadone and nodded off for the last time, he becomes silent, stares down at the carpet and strains to hold back the tears.

”I went hysterical,” he says, pulling himself together after a long minute has passed, reaching for another cigarette. ”That was the last straw. When Mark died, I thought, ‘It’s gonna be me if I don’t stop.’ ”

How frank he’s being now is anyone’s guess. Earlier this year the London Sunday Times magazine reported that between late August 1986 and the end of that year — a time when George claimed to be drug free — he took not only Valium but also heroin. Yet in this interview, George insists that he was only abusing prescription drugs during that time. In June, during a Good Morning America interview, he denied that he was still receiving treatment for his drug problem. But, in fact, during that period he was under the care of his personal physician, Dr. Victor Bloom, and seeing a psychoanalyst several times a week.

But when he talks about Rudetsky’s death, George seems sincere, even if part of what upsets him about the incident is that his friend didn’t have the good grace to die somewhere else.

”I was almost suicidal when I found out,” George says of Rudetsky’s overdose. ”As far as I was concerned, that was the end of my complete existence. It wouldn’t have been bad if it had happened in a hotel, but it was in my house. I really just wanted to jump out of the window.”

This public confession and verbal repentance is being made for at least one obvious reason: Boy George is trying to breathe some life into his career. In Europe, he’s still a bankable star. His first solo single, a reggae version of Bread’s romantic 1972 hit ”Everything I Own, ” released this past March, went Number One in England and was in the Top Ten throughout Europe. Subsequent singles and the album haven’t fared so well.

But America is more problematic, and George wants desperately to change his image here. Sold, though critically well received, only rose to Number 145 on Billboard‘s album chart before plummeting to Number 193 three weeks later; the single didn’t even make the Hot 100. ”His image is such — because of the drug thing and the fact that he’s gay — that radio didn’t even want to hear the record, let alone play it,” says a source at George’s label, Virgin Records. ”It’s been like hitting into a stone wall.”

On top of that, George can’t enter the U.S. — his visa has been revoked due to the heroin conviction — to promote the record with a tour (he’s in the process of putting a band together and plans to tour Europe beginning this November), inperson interviews or TV appearances. As Boy George is learning, it’s a hell of a lot easier to blow your career to pieces than to make a comeback. ”There’s a lot that’s against me in America at the moment,” he says. ”Even now, people are more interested in drugs than they are in my album. It’s a struggle, more than anything. It’s like starting over.”

With America out of the question for the moment, George is busy flogging his album and career throughout Europe. On a Tuesday morning in July, he begins a two-day promotional junket that will take him to Italy and Belgium by private jet to meet with reporters and lip-sync his new songs on TV shows.