A Little Slice of Post-Punk Music History: How Lieutenant Lush Became Boy George

Annabella Lwin and George O'Dowd (Lt. Lush)

Photo by Kevin Cummins (1981)

 

Sex gang children gang up on you, jump on top, on top of you 

Make love, make love, make love to you, one two three four five miles high

 

 

I.

 

Not a lot of people know - even among those who might possibly care to know - that before finding pop stardom as Boy George with the band Culture Club [1], 19-year-old George O'Dowd was briefly an associate member of Bow Wow Wow. He even twice performed on stage with them under the name Lieutenant Lush. 

 

To understand how that came about - and to uncover the origin of this rather odd-sounding alias - we must travel back to Paris in 1980. There we find former Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren trying to engineer his next move.  

 

Keen to discover a fresh sound, McLaren chances upon the Burundi beat. In his mind, this connects him to the primal origin of rock 'n' roll, just as images of Geronimo and Black Beard suggest the possibility of a new, more romantic look to go with the music - part Apache, part pirate, and - crucially - post-punk.  

 

At the same time, McLaren was also hoping to find financial backing for his own film company - Tour D'Eiffel Productions [2] - which would specialise in porn projects aimed at a pre-teen audience. Paul Gorman writes (disapprovingly) that McLaren's thinking in this area was shaped by his "radical political grounding" and the "countercultural conceit" [3] that children should be accorded full agency. 

 

These projects included 'The Mile High Club', for which he had written a speculative script "revolving around an orgy on an inflight plane" [4], featuring such colourful characters as Jimmy the Hoover and ... Lieutenant Lush [5].        

 

 

II.  

 

After agreeing in the winter of 1979 to act as a mentor and creative consultant to Adam Ant for a four-week period and receiving a fixed fee of £1000, McLaren worked closely with the Ants - guitarist Matthew Ashman, drummer Dave Barbarossa, and new bassist Leigh Gorman - soon bonding with them. 

 

In fact, McLaren grew so close to the three musicians and recognised their puppet potential that he decided they should "provide the backdrop for a younger and more easily manipulated performer" [6] than 25-year-old Adam. And so he persuaded the band "to announce to Ant that they no longer wanted to work with him" [7].

 

The band then embarked on a lengthy but fruitless and frustrating audition process in an attempt to find a suitable lead singer. Fortunately, fate lent a hand when talent scout Dave Fishel encountered 13-year-old Annabella Lwin singing along to the radio at a West Hampstead dry cleaners where she worked. 

 

Impressed by her vocal ability and her youthful good looks - her warm skin tone the result of her bi-racial heritage (Anglo-Burmese) - Fishel persuaded McLaren to audition her. 

 

Shortly after, despite the fact she was completely untutored "and was largely unaware of pop music beyond a liking for Stevie Wonder" [8], Annabella joined the group and suddenly - magically - everything seemed to fall into place. They had the sound, they had the look, and now they had the teenage singer that McLaren desperately wanted (his Eliza Doolittle). 

 

However, that old showbiz maxim about never working with children (and their interfering mothers) soon came back to bite McLaren and the older members of the band and it wasn't long before they began thinking of a possible replacement for Annabella ... Enter George O'Dowd ...  

 

 

III.  

George was always going to be a star. But it's also indisputable that meeting McLaren and briefly working with Bow Wow Wow in 1980-81 was an important stepping-stone for his career. For although his association with the band only lasted a few months, it catalysed the formation of Culture Club.

 

Apart from growing impatient with Annabella, McLaren hoped that by recruiting George to the band's lineup he could inject something extra into the mix; perhaps a little more visual drama and queer romanticism (McLaren was obsessed at this time with homosexuality as a challenge to heteronormative values). 

 

McLaren gave George the stage name Lieutenant Lush. His role was to provide a soulful, vocal presence that would contrast to the band's signature Burundi beat and punk energy. He only performed live at two of the band's shows, but immediately stole the spotlight - which didn't go down well with Annabella and the boys and it was immediately obvious to McLaren that either she had to go or George had to go.

 

Whether he tossed a coin to decide who should stay and who should leave, I don't know. But it was George who was shown the door in the spring of 1981. However, as in the case of Adam Ant, this dismissal was ultimately a blessing in disguise. 

 

Confident that he could hold a tune and command a stage - and keen to have his revenge on Malcolm and show him what a mistake he'd made in sacking him - George decided to form his own group. And this group - whom he considered at one point naming the Sex Gang Children [9] - would find global fame as Culture Club - once they found their own identity and stopped trying to sound like Bow Wow Wow [10].        

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Culture Club had their first big hit with the release of the single 'Do You Really Want to Hurt Me', which got to number one in the UK and number two in the US. The track was taken from their debut album Kissing to Be Clever (Virgin Records, 1982). It's not my cup of tea at all - but George looks good in the video directed by Julien Temple.   

 

[2] French speakers will point out that this is a misspelling (whether deliberate or otherwise) on McLaren's part; that the company's name should technically be 'Tour Eiffel', and not 'Tour D'Eiffel'. I reproduce an image of the company letterhead in a post titled 'From the Office of Malcolm McLaren' (26 Oct 2022).   

 

[3] Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 437. For Gorman, these and related projects to do with underage sexual activity "represented the development of the most tiresome, not to say misguided and divisive, aspect of McLaren's creative outpourings" (437).  

 

[4] Ibid., p. 436. Another of McLaren's proposed film projects mentioned by Gorman was 'The Adventures of Melody, Lyric & Tune' - "a musical about the three titular fifteen-year-old girls featuring songs written by McLaren" (437), including a track that Bow Wow Wow would later record, 'Sexy Eiffel Towers' (it's included on their debut mini-album Your Casstte Pet, (EMI, 1980) and features on various compilation albums). 

 

[5] As this is a post about Lt. Lush and not Jimmy the Hoover, I don't want to say too much about the latter here. Not that there is much to say and details are vague. Originally conceived by McLaren as a kids' comic character (and an expert in the art of oral sex), there was no person as such. 

      Later, McLaren would put together a band of this name intended as a support act for Bow Wow Wow. They joined the ranks of one-hit wonders thanks to the single 'Tantalise (Wo Wo Ee Yeh Yeh)', released in June 1983 (Innervision Records). Again, it's really not my cup of tea - and I'm not particularly taken with the band's look in this video directed by Derek Jarman.     

 

[6-7] Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, p. 448. The only thing more creatively daring (if commercially reckless) than pushing Adam out of his own band, was making Rotten walk the plank in January 1978 at the end of the Sex Pistols American tour. 

      To his great credit, Ant licked his wounds, assembled a new band with the brilliant guitarist Marco Pirroni, and, putting all the ideas that Malcolm had given him into practice, he went on to find global success. His first big hit single in the UK - 'Dog Eat Dog' (the opening track on the Adam and the Ants' album Kings of the Wild Frontier (1980) - featured the Burundi beat and significantly outsold the debut single by Bow Wow Wow - 'C·30 C·60 C·90 Go!' (although, of course, selling records and becoming a successful pop group really wasn't the point as far as McLaren was concerned). Both are fantastic songs, though it's the latter - with lyrics by McLaren encouraging home taping - that has the more subversive political edge. Readers can decide for themselves which they prefer by clicking on the links provided.      

 

[8] Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, p. 451.  

 

[9] This provocative phrase - sex gang children - was a favourite of McLaren's; one that he borrowed from The Wild Boys: A Book of the Dead (1971), a novel by William S. Burroughs. He incorporated it into the lyrics for the Bow Wow Wow track 'The Mile High Club', which can be found on several compilation albums, including I Want Candy (EMI, 1982).  

      Whilst I think we can all agree that George wisely chose not to go with this as the name of his new band - drummer Jon Moss was having none of it - it was picked up by his friend Andi for his own gothic punk outfit (at that time known as Panic Button). 

      The Sex Gang Children would not achieve the level of commercial success achieved by Culture Club, but they did establish themselves as Batcave favourites and influenced the later dark cabaret scene. Their only studio album - Song and Legend (Illuminated Records, 1983) - reached the top of the UK Indie Chart and produced the brilliant single 'Sebastiane' which is ten times better than anything Culture Club came up with - Eat your children baked in a pie! 

 

[10] As Paul Gorman says, Culture Club soon transcended their influences and we have to acknowledge that Boy George, like Adam Ant, showed huge strength of character (as well considerable skills as a songwriter ad performer). McLaren later dismissed him as "strictly a commercial enterprise" lacking any subversive edge, which may be true, but it sounds a wee bit like sour grapes. See The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, p. 476.