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In The Mix – ‘Do You Really Want To Hurt Me’

IN THE MIX – Where legendary producers talk about classic singles

Iconic Producer Steve Levine discusses Culture Club’s 1982 mega single ‘Do You Really Want To Hurt Me’

Producer Steve Levine

We all know the single is back, streaming has helped with that for sure and we all love a great single regardless of genre, a great song is a great song right?.

But what about the guys who make them sound great? The ones who bring that ragged, rough diamond of a demo into a world where it sits alongside those huge singles of yesteryear and becomes one in its own right.

SOUNDS own one-time producer David CP met up with Steve Levine, the multi award winning producer behind releases by everyone from The Clash to Culture Club to discuss the meteoric rise of George O’Dowd’s 3rd single release with his band Culture Club.


“We went off in a transit van and by the time the tour finished they were the biggest band in the UK”


Sounds: Steve, ‘Do You Really Want to Hurt Me’ will always be seen as the track that sky-rocketed Culture Club and in particular Boy George into pop super stardom –  even by 80’s standards. It seemed to come out of nowhere. As the producer what are you own memories of the origins and recording of the track?

SL:  It’s very interesting when you look at Culture Club now and its worldwide success because in the very beginning back to when Sounds were looking at the band, everything was very centric. As in, Culture Club were a London-centric band just as China Crisis were a Liverpool-centric band. OMD were also a Liverpool-centric band. And you could have the Sheffield sounds of those bands. And even within London actually Depeche Mode were Essex and Culture Club were more Central London. You’ve got to imagine a landscape where the band were only very popular in London and not breaking out of London initially. The first two singles ‘White Boy’ and ‘I’m Afraid of Me’ went down an absolute storm in the clubs in London and it was one of those great “oh my God we’re going to have a big hit here” moments but then failed to really catch on.

At the time of recording ‘Do You Really Want to Hurt Me’ the band were not successful. All the archive footage that you see from 80s documentaries of George and the Blitz club and all those types of things that was what was going on 100%, it absolutely was. The moment we went to ‘Do You Really Want to Hurt Me’ the landscape changed and the band’s demographic changed.

Radio One at the time used to do these sessions which, in those days, were not live sessions where you stood in front of the host DJ and you played live. They were normally pre-recorded at Maida Vale or around the UK at the various BBC studios. It was a way of not being so London-centric. In this case, Peter Powell’s radio show, he would have his sessions recorded at the BBC studios in Birmingham. So, Culture Club got a Radio One session with Peter Powell and he became a phenomenal early adopter of the track.

We needed to have a third song for the Peter Powell session because you often did three tracks. The first two tracks were going to be ‘I’m Afraid of Me’ and ‘White Boy’, the two current singles, which at the time were on the borders of not being successful. They were just kind of floating but they hadn’t failed at that point. We previously demoed ‘Do You Really Want to Hurt Me’ at my publisher’s office in Parson’s Green, which I still have. I thought why don’t we do that song because we can cut that one live.

At the Radio 1 sessions, you were able to do overdubs and make a good quality version but you still only had 3 hours to record the tracks. It wasn’t like you had the whole day to do the track, which why those Radio 1 sessions, particularly the John Peel ones, sound so good today because they weren’t just live impromptu sessions. The band rehearsed, they went to the studio, which was a special moment because it was exciting, you were given the opportunity to do one or two takes. In most cases, the vocals were overdubbed which meant that the vocals sounded great on the radio and the sessions stand the test of time. Many of those John Peel sessions sound so great because they were recorded in a way that sadly the sessions are not done today. Most of them are done live and if you are lucky enough you can get a good one.

I was gifted with Boy George who was a phenomenal singer so I suggested that we actually cut ‘Do You Really Want to Hurt Me’ live. We did ‘White Boy’ and ‘I’m Afraid of Me’ in the traditional sense with overdubs but we were running out of time and we had literally 15 minutes left in the session. So we cut ‘Do You Really Want to Hurt Me’ 100% live.

The Peter Powell radio version is the first recording of it in the kind of shape that became the record. Because it had such a great vibe I suggested to the band that we cut it in the same way in the studio in London.  So the backing track of ‘Do You Really Want to Hurt Me’ was cut live including George’s voice. We put George in the corridor of the studio so that he could cut the vocal live with the band, but also so I had some separation against the drums and everything. Because if you cut it live in the same room, you don’t get the control. And specifically, I learnt very early on with George that he really loved the dub echo on his vocal and if you’ve got a lot of spill in the room you can’t do that on the vocal because there is instrument spill on the mic.

The lesson that I learnt doing the Radio 1 session was this is a great way of capturing George’s performance and something that stood with me for the rest of my period with him – that if ever possible try and capture as much of the vocal in one go as one possibly could because that’s how good he was. And he’s still good, I saw him just before Christmas at Leeds with the current roadshow that they are doing. Honestly, he’s fantastic live, everyone was blown away. His voice has changed and he sings much lower now but he’s still a great vocalist.

We felt very strongly that we had a great track with ‘Do You Really Want to Hurt Me’ and Virgin agreed and wanted to release that as the single and this is what I said about how the demographic changed. When the single came out, the reviews – and I think possibly even in Sounds – were kind of lacklustre because the band were from this cool, trendy clubland world of the first 2,  which were very much the Blitz club and all the great clubs in London and yet we brought out, what they called, this “light white Reggae.”

But here’s the difference, the very, very first person to make it record of the week within a day or so of its release was David Hamilton on Radio 2. Radio 2 then was not the Radio 2 of today. Radio 2 which is probably like Radio 1b. In the olden days, my mum listened to Radio 2.  But what happened is Reggae was still incredibly popular as a throwback from the 70s. In that period in the 70s when the Trojan Records label was flying high, Radio 1 and Radio 2 played all those Reggae records. So, David Hamilton made it his record of the week and within moments the record was flying out of the stores. The difference was noticeable because we were really struggling with the first two records but the third one ‘Do You Really Want to Hurt Me’ was happening.

We were out on tour at the time and I went with the band and did the sound for them on the road. The gigs were getting bigger and bigger, as the record was getting more and more air play. At this point Radio 2 had influenced Radio 1 and the commercial stations. And in London, its worth remembering that Capital was pretty much the go to commercial station. So, for Capital to get onboard was incredible and in fact Capital Radio did a live broadcast from Camden Palace (now Koko). We had a tremendous amount of radio support almost immediately with the success of the mass audience that Radio 2 initially gave us, so much so that Tony Gordon, the band’s manager, was struggling to increase the venues. I remember doing a club in Derby, the club was maybe 150 capacity, the queue was down the road. We’re talking multiple hundreds.

Sounds: So, were you also involved in the live side then?

SL: I did the live sound. The thing about the band is they were always really good live but we also made studio production very much part of the sound. We had additional stems and additional things – it was quite a big show even then.

If you look at old pictures, John had a four-track reel to reel with some stuff on it which he would play with. A lot of the records had two parts to the drums, they had programmed drums and they had live drums, actually with the exception of ‘Do You Really Want to Hurt Me’, it was one of the few that didn’t have programmed drums on it. It’s got a tiny drum machine quietly in the background but everything else had 2 drums. John would play along live with his programmed drums. John’s background was from Bow Wow Wow and London and Adam and the Ants who had two drummers. John was very keen on Adam Ant ‘tribal style’ drum rhythms that you need two drummers to do, but John didn’t want two drummers. So we did it by having programmed drums doing one set of parts and then him playing live and because he was such a great drummer, or still IS such a great drummer, it was a seamless situation, you couldn’t tell where one ended.

Consequently, that was quite an involved set up and it’s unfair to the in-house engineer at these smaller venues who are not familiar with the setup, not familiar with the band, not familiar with the vocal cues or the guitar cues. We had a horn section and everything live even in those days.  So, it made sense for me to go on the road and do the sound because I knew the records intimately and I knew where all the dub sections were. When George sings, we often extend ‘Do You Really Want to Hurt Me’. If you listen to the full version of ‘Do You Really Want to Hurt Me’ the reason its got that dub break is because we used to do that live and that could go on for 10 minutes and I would dub his vocal and then Terry the trumpet player would do a little solo and I’d dub that and some stuff with Mikey. So, we were kind of doing a real time dub mix whilst they were playing, adding dub effects to the songs and it unfair to expect an engineer who doesn’t know the material to do that.

By the time we got to Glasgow things were going so well to such a degree that the band were number 1. Just prior to that we got the Top of the Pops slot and we knew it would change everything.

There are two stories of truth and rumour about how we got the slot. My story is that Elton John’s ‘Baby’s Got Blue Eyes’ was going up the charts and was going to be featured on Top of the Pops but he wanted to play the video and at the time Michael Hurll wanted a live band in that slot and so we got it. That’s my story which I’m sticking to. The other story is that Shakin’ Stevens was ill and so couldn’t do it so Culture Club got the slot. We were the highest new entry at 32 so if it was going to go to anyone it was going to us because we were the highest new entry. We did Top of the Pops and the next week it went to number 13 and then it went to 5, 4 and then 1.

Sounds: And you and the band were you on tour that whole time? that must have been so exciting for the band?

SL: Yes, the gigs were getting bigger and bigger and yes, it was incredible!. We were going to do a small tour; we went off in a transit van and by the time the tour finished they were the biggest band in the UK. It was bizarre. We were in Edinburgh and I was having breakfast with George in this small hotel because we had no budget. We hadn’t taken enough clothes because we thought we were only going to be out for a week and then more and more dates were added for bigger venues. George said to me I need some more pants so I said we can just go down to Princes Street to the department store there. Now when George is ‘Boy George’ with the full make-up, he’s instantly recognisable as ‘Boy George’. But Boy George can also be George O’Dowd at breakfast with no make-up on. So, he still had the hat and the dress but he didn’t have any make-up on and when we went in the store that when we realised things had changed. We bought the pants and as we were leaving the store we got mobbed and we had to run out of there, it was incredible. There was another situation in Birmingham when we felt slightly frightened. We were only in this little transit van and when we got out of the gig there were thousands of fans rocking the van like you see on archive footage of the Bay City Rollers. It was really scary because you can’t drive forward because you’ll run someone over. The thing that was interesting with George, unlike the Bay City Rollers fans, the fans were both male and female to the same degree all dressed like George, it was incredible.

Sounds: It was bonkers, I remember it in the newspapers. The way you’ve described it, the meteoric rise of the song, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a track where the band went on tour as virtual nobodies and then ended up the biggest band in Britain. I remember when he was on the front of newspapers like The Sun, it was like Beatlemania, I’ve never seen anything like it. I remember how good the song was, it wasn’t hype it was an incredible record.

SL: The thing about ‘Do You Really Want to Hurt Me’ unlike the other Culture Club songs, the other songs are timestamped. You hear them and you’re in the 80s in a second and yet ‘Do You Really Want to Hurt Me’ if you’d never heard it and I played it to you and I said this is a new band I’m working with you wouldn’t dispute the fact. ‘Do You Really Want to Hurt Me’ is a timeless track, despite it being Reggae its doesn’t have a timestamp on it. The sound of Reggae can be from both the 60s and the 70s, by nature Reggae is a timeless sound. Luckily that song is timeless because of that. It’s a fascinating song and a fascinating journey and it definitely stands up today as a great song. Also, an interesting fact about Reggae that’s worth remembering that the only two consecutive Reggae number ones were ‘Do You Really Want to Hurt Me’ and ‘Pass the Duchy’. That’s never happened before. Reggae was incredibly popular at that time.

Sounds: Yeah, you had UB40 also at that time, it was influencing a lot of UK bands.

SL: And don’t forget the Police, they were considered to be a Reggae band at that time. The Reggae rhythms extended into a lot of late 70s/early 80s things like Tom Tom Club and Talking Heads, they experimented with a cod Reggae but never the less the Reggae feel was strong on quite a lot of records. It’s only when you look back and start to go through the songs you can see it.

Sounds:  Where was ‘Do You Really Want to Hurt Me’ recorded?

SL: Red Bus Studios in north west London, near Abbey Road

Sounds: Can you remember what was in there, what desk?

SL: An MCI desk. Elliott is the owner of the studio to this day and it now has a blue plaque. The great thing about Red Bus is that whilst we were in there doing Culture Club, Spandau Ballet were in the studio making their record which would become their big moment as well – the True album. Bananarama were in there too so it was a big hot house of hits. ‘Do You Really Want to Hurt Me’ was actually mixed at CBS Studios only because I block booked Red Bus for quite a long time and there were a few clients who were getting miffed that they couldn’t get in there themselves. There was a moment where, probably because we were out on the road at the time, a couple of clients were in and then they were overrunning so I had go back and finish off and mix it at CBS. One good thing about CBS is that they had a new harmoniser at the time so I was able to do that dub bit in the middle which I wouldn’t have been able to do at Red Bus.

Sounds: The Eventide?

SL: Yes, it was the Eventide 910, I only used it because it was there.

Sounds: We all liked a toy if it’s hanging about! Cheers for this Steve been a brilliant insight into a brilliant track and recording. Just one final thing about that album – even though ‘Do You Really Want to Hurt Me’ was the breakthrough record I loved ‘Time’, its my favourite track on that album, beautiful production on that track.

SL: ‘Time’ isn’t actually on the British version of the album because it was released afterwards. We added it to the American release of the album. ‘Time’ is one of my favourite songs and I got lots of other projects as result of that song. Its also the one that features 10 seconds of me the video. The video was filmed at John Foxx’s (Ultravox) place, near where Strong Room is now. In a passing shot you’ll see me in a black and white check shirt!.

‘Do You Really Want To Hurt Me’ was released in the UK in September 1982 where it reached No 1 in the UK charts before going on to top the charts in 10 other international territories. The U.S. release reached No 2 in the Billboard top 100 – being kept off the top spot for 2 weeks by Michael Jackson’s ‘Billie Jean’.