Adisaster of mediocrity,” screamed the once-glowing Smash Hits about Waking Up With The House On Fire, the Culture Club album that had failed to scale the giddy heights of its two predecessors. It was clear that the band who’d defined the early 80s but had started to seriously flag by its mid-way point needed to mix things up for studio effort number four. For some, including their frontman, they tried just a little too hard.
Far from returning the quartet to the top of the charts, 1986’s From Luxury To Heartache proved to be the final nail in the coffin of their pomp years. Still, the fact that it hit the shelves at all is nothing short of a miracle. After all, its 10 tracks were recorded amidst seemingly insurmountable tensions. Not only had the on/off Boy George and Jon Moss just gone through their messiest split but the former had suddenly gone from a virtual teetotaller to a full-blown heroin addict within a matter of months. With Boy George wrapped up within the grips of his addiction, studio sessions reportedly also became delayed and interrupted so frequently that the in-demand man tasked with re-energising their sound, Arif Mardin, had no option but to delegate the final production stages to engineer Lew Hahn.
Considering this difficult inception, it’s perhaps little wonder that Culture Club appear determined to erase From Luxury To Heartache out of existence.