Boy George Shares Exclusive Insight: Elton John’s Supportive Gesture during Sobriety Journey Revealed

Boy George is praising his fellow singer Elton John for the help he gave him when he was in recovery.

John, whose own drug and alcohol issues had been well-known, reached out to pop icon George soon after he’d made headlines in the mid-1980s for being hooked on heroin.

He invited George, now 62, out to a concert at Wembley Arena, in north west London. “It was right at the end of getting clean,” George tells PEOPLE. “He called me up and said, ‘I know, you’re clean. Do you wanna come out?’ It was very sweet. He’s great like that, he was very supportive like that.”

John thought George would like to meet Tina Turner. “I’d become a Buddhist. And he was like, ‘Oh, Tina’s a Buddhist.’ So I said, I know.”

However, things didn’t go as well as planned for George (who says he’s the “biggest Tina Turner fan on the planet”). He recalls, “She wasn’t nice to me, which was the shame,” adding he left the dressing room at the gig upset.

“I’d just come off drugs,” George reflects now..” So maybe she was disapproving of — that could have been it.”

George was talking to promote his candid memoir Karma, which is out now in the U.S. In the book, George writes about growing up one of six in an Irish-Catholic family and captures his early days in the London music scene.

There are his perspective on the band’s heyday, his rocky romantic and professional relationship with drummer Jon Moss and his interactions with other household names like Madonna and Prince, and royalty like Princess Diana and Queen Elizabeth’s sister Princess Margaret.

The singer adds, “I love all the people I’ve written about.”

“I suppose when you write things about other artists, it’s also — note to self — you remember that perhaps there’s been times in your life when you weren’t friendly to everyone you met.”

“It’s 1000% easier to be nice. Not only Is it easier to be nice as it’s better for you,” he tells PEOPLE.