Boy George reveals Tracey Emin was in ‘early rehearsals’ with Culture Club

Singer Boy George has revealed Dame Tracey Emin was in “early rehearsals” with 1980s band Culture Club.

The former Voice UK judge, 64, said the artist, known for her headline-grabbing ’90s works Everyone I Have Ever Slept With and My Bed, later decided that band life “wasn’t for her”.

Boy George told the BBC: “I knew Tracey when she was 14, and in fact, it was at a Bowie gig that I met her again years later, when she became Tracey Emin.

“I knew her as Tracey from Margate. So when I went to see David Bowie at the Hanover Grand I went backstage, and he goes, ‘Have you met the artist, Tracey Emin?’ And he was introducing me to Tracey and I was like, ‘Oh, my God, you’re Tracey Emin?’

“It was a real light bulb moment, because I knew her when she was a kid. So that’s how I was introduced to her by David Bowie. I was very impressed.”

He added: “She was at sort of early rehearsals (with Culture Club), because in those days it was post punk, there was a lot of, ‘Oh, I can learn to play bass in three months, or I can learn this’. It’s very like impromptu, but she decided it wasn’t for her.”

Envisaging the impact she would have made in the band, he said: “It would have been great, but still, she’s done well without us.”

Asked if she was any good, he said: “Oh, brilliant. I mean, she’s always been amazing. She’s always been like this… you never forgot her.

“She’s one of those people that, even when I met her, I met her when she was 14, and she was memorable even from then.”

Boy George, real name George Alan O’Dowd, formed Culture Club with bass player Mikey Craig, drummer Jon Moss, and guitar and keyboards player Roy Hay in the early 1980s.

The new wave band has sold more than 150 million records worldwide and are best known for hits such as Do You Really Want To Hurt Me and Karma Chameleon.

Dame Tracey, who was given a damehood for her services to art in 2024, studied painting at the Royal College of Art in London during her early years and was nominated for the prestigious Turner Prize in 1999.

She has become known for her autobiographical and confessional artwork and her art installation, My Bed, featuring an unmade bed covered in debris, sold for more than £2 million at auction.

In 2020, she was diagnosed with bladder cancer after discovering a tumour while working on a painting of a malignant lump, and underwent surgery which saw many of her reproductive organs removed and she was fitted with a stoma bag.

When attending Buckingham Palace to meet the King and Queen, Dame Tracey brought along her stoma sack in a Victoria Beckham-designed bag.