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.   

 

 

Visions of Malcolm

Malcolm McLaren as played on screen by David Hayman (1986), 

Mark Gatiss (2010), and Thomas Brodie-Sangster (2022)

 

 

I. 

 

I am not an actor. Not in any professional sense, at least. But I imagine that portraying a well-known public figure whose persona is established in the cultural imagination is particularly difficult because the audience already knows how they look, move, and speak.  

 

Rightly or wrongly, viewers will scrutinise the performance in order to assess its accuracy and if something feels off - perhaps only in the smallest detail - this can make the whole thing seem fake and awkward. 

 

Getting the voice right - but without sounding like one is simply doing a comic impression - is perhaps the hardest thing of all. Nevertheless, there are some actors who enjoy the challenge and have an almost chameleon-like ability to play famous real-life figures; one thinks of Michael Sheen, for example, who has given legendary performances as Tony Blair, Brian Clough, and Kenneth Williams [1].  

 

Whether Sheen has some supernatural ability to get under the skin of others and channel their essence - or is just a consummate professional who does intensive research, works closely with voice coaches, and has the kind of features and physique that lend themselves well to different roles - I don't know. 

 

But he's an immensely gifted actor and it's a shame he hasn't played Malcolm McLaren as I think he'd do a great job. He even has the slightly goofy grin, naturally curly hair, and Aquarian-white complexion needed for the role. 

 

Still, who knows, maybe one day ... And in the meantime, we have three other actors to discuss who have given us their on-screen versions of Malcolm: David Hayman, Mark Gatiss, and Thomas Brodie-Sangster ...

 

 

II.  

 

Of the three, Scottish actor David Hayman faced perhaps the greatest challenge when preparing to play Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren in Alex Cox's Sid and Nancy (1986). For he had to embody someone who was a still living (and still notorious) cultural provocateur. 

 

Because Malcolm was such a distinctively animated character, Hayman could not rely on simply reading a standard script outline for his interpretation. He was obliged to meticulously study many hours of filmed interviews with McLaren in order to try and master his accent and intonation which was an amusingly camp mix of art school affectation and cockney [2]. Obviously, he also attempted to get McLaren's theatrical hand gestures and mannerisms spot on too. 

 

Primarily, however, Hayman focused on capturing McLaren's mercenary energy, portraying him as a scheming, detached observer of events who viewed human tragedy purely from the perspective of marketing and media. In Cox's film, he gleefully delivers a line describing Sid Vicious as a fabulous disaster rather than a mere bass player. 

 

That's not entirely unfair or inaccurate, but it does mean we are not shown anything of McLaren's greatest asset - his charm. 

 

Malcolm possessed a very powerful, highly contradictory kind of charisma that he used to captivate, influence, and, yes, manipulate people. There was a reason that so many individuals bought into what Johnny Rotten would dismiss as McLaren's bullshit and if he prioritised cultural provocation over the well-being and long-term success of the band, well, that's not something that troubles me.  

 

My main gripe with Hayman as McLaren is this: he looked too damn old! Malcolm was a young-looking 31-year-old when Sid Vicious joined the Sex Pistols in February 1977. But Hayman, aged 37, was a much more mature screen presence in 1985 when the film Sid and Nancy was shot, as can be seen in the above photo. (And note to wardrobe: McLaren never wore Lennon-style sunglasses.) 

 

Finally, it's interesting to discover that a planned meeting on set to film a promotional face-to-face between McLaren and his cinematic doppelgänger was abandoned after Malcolm saw some early footage from the film and was appalled by how the production was shaping up.    

 

III. 

 

Next on our list is Mark Gatiss, who played McLaren in the biographical drama Worried About the Boy (dir. Julian Jarrold, 2010) [3], about the rise to fame of the singer Boy George (played by Douglas Booth) who very briefly sang on stage with Bow Wow Wow (as Lieutenant Lush) [4].

 

With slightly unfortunate timing, the 90-minute film aired on BBC Two on 16 May 2010, just five weeks after Malcolm's death. 

 

Gatiss approached the role differently to Hayman and gives us a markedly different vision of McLaren, whom he portrayed as more of an old-school impresario and natural-born showman who was then shifting aesthetically from punk nihilism to a new romanticism.     

 

Hayman's McLaren was cruel and calculating: Gatiss tapped into the lighter side of his character; flamboyant and eccentric, a man with wild hair and waving hands who could charm the birds from the trees; less arch-manipulator and more a shrewd and inspiring mentor to young artists such as George (and before him Adam Ant).     

 

Reflecting on playing real public figures like McLaren, Gatiss later revealed that his philosophy is not to attempt an exact impersonation, but to try and convey a suggestion of the person without letting the truth get in the way of the story being told. 

 

In other words, whereas Hayman gave audiences a darker, perhaps psychologically more realistic version of McLaren, Gatiss delivered the performative, larger-than-life figure who wished to cause trouble and make cash from chaos in the name of fun rather than malice.

 

Critics and viewers rightly praised Gatiss's performance. Writing in the Financial Times (21 May 2010), John Lloyd described it as a "vividly cynical cameo". Again, my only issue would be that Gatiss was just slightly too old for the role and his McLaren seems to be based more on a mid-rather than an early '80s version of the character. 

  

 

IV.

 

The most recent actor to try on McLaren's tartan bondage suit is Thomas Brodie-Sangster, who played him in Danny Boyle's six-part miniseries Pistol (2022) [5]. Arguably, his was the standout performance of the entire show - salvaging an otherwise Disneyfied production - and he cleverly pitched it somewhere between David Hayman's hard-edged version and Mark Gatiss's high camp take on the character.

 

Rather than frame McLaren as a detached puppet master, Brodie-Sangster and series writer Craig Pearce actively tried to avoid making him a one-dimensional villain. Brodie-Sangster aimed to show why it was that young, working-class kids would willingly follow him in the first place, highlighting McLaren's genuine, infectious passion for a cultural and artistic revolution.

 

Because he has so much more screen time to develop the character, Brodie-Sangster is able to both experiment with the role and relax his way into it. He later admitted that he found playing the part not only a lot of fun, but liberating for him as an actor.  

 

Physically, Brodie-Sangster had a distinct advantage over the earlier actors who played the part. For he actually possessed the slight build, youthful face, and naturally boyish energy of the real McLaren. Also, during filming he was the exact same age as Malcolm in 1977 and that certainly helped. As does the fact that he pretty much nails the distinct, slightly high-pitched, breathless cadence of McLaren's vocal delivery [6]. 

 

There's a joy in his performance and no trace of tiredness. Having said that, McLaren's character isn't softened too much or emptied entirely of its more Machiavellian aspects. And whilst it's arguable whose performance is best - Hayman's, Gatiss's, or Brodie-Sangster's - the latter's is certainly my favourite.   

In sum: without possessing the uncanny power of Michael Sheen to transform into the character being played, each of the three captured a vital facet of a McLaren who spent his entire life ensuring that nobody could ever completely pin him down.

 

V. 

 

Finally, to end on an ironic note, it might convincingly be argued that the best performance by someone playing McLaren was given by McLaren himself in Julien Temple's The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980). 

 

In fact, so good was his hyper-stylised performance in this film that there are still people to this day who take it for an accurate representation - i.e., who miss the fact that McLaren was acting and that he wasn't aiming to expose the truth about himself but construct a self-satirising myth; that the film was a fictionalised narrative in which McLaren played the version of himself that he wished to be - not a documentary, ffs.    

 

The film's relentless cynicism was so perfectly tailored to McLaren's public persona that audiences completely fell for it - believing the lie that the Sex Pistols project was merely a manufactured, art-school scam used to sell bondage trousers from 430 King's Road. 

 

In later years, McLaren regretted being too good an actor. Being mistaken for his role as The Embezzler proved to be burdensome, when it meant that the public, the press, and cultural historians refused to see him as an avant-garde artist, but only as a fast-talking fraud and flamboyant failure.  

 

 

Malcolm McLaren as Malcolm McLaren (The Embezzler) 

in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980)

 

  

Notes

 

[1] Sheen played Blair in three works written by Peter Morgan: The Deal (dir. Stephen Frears, 2003), The Queen (dir. Stephen Frears, 2006), and The Special Relationship (dir. Richard Loncraine, 2010). He played Clough in The Damned United (dir. Tom Hooper, 2009), and Williams in Kenneth Williams: Fantabulosa! (dir. Andy De Emmony, 2006). Sheen has also played other famous faces including David Frost, Chris Tarrant, and Prince Andrew.

 

[2] One could write an entire post trying to describe McLaren's unique accent and intonation. His voice bridged the gap between his Jewish North London roots and his art school education. Thus, he retained the flat vowels of Estuary English, but stretched them out theatrically. 

      Sometimes, he spoke breathlessly at speed; at other times he spoke quite softly and deliberately as if drawing you into a secret. The pitch would go up and down depending on his level of excitement and this gave the delivery its camp and comic aspects. The most notable thing, however, was how he spoke about popular culture with the elevated vocabulary and conceptual framing of a French intellectual, creating a surprising juxtaposition and making him a highly articulate and amusing storyteller.

 

[3] Click on the link provided in the main text and go to 1:02:22-1:08:10 to watch Gatiss's short but memorable performance as McLaren. 

 

[4] Bow Wow Wow were the band McLaren assembled and managed after the Sex Pistols. George O'Dowd - who would become known to the world as Boy George - was, at that time (1980), a nineteen-year-old "gender-defying club kid noted for his soulful singing voice, sassy demeanour and outrageous appearance". O'Dowd's relationship with McLaren and the band was, however, extremely short-lived and he made only a couple of appearances on stage with them. See Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020). The line quoted is on p. 471. 

  

[5] Don't get me started on Pistol ... Readers who want to know what I think of this show can see the post 'The Great Rock 'n' Roll Castration' (30 Mar 2021). 

 

[6] Brodie-Sangster noted in promotional interviews that he found McLaren's voice the hardest element to capture, describing it as a mix of a salesman's hustle and an intellectual's lecture, delivered with an almost childlike glee.