Bare [Paperback ed.] 014013235X, 9780140132359

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® \^*/

George iviic^h

y

RARSONS

o

PENGUIN BOOKS

BARE

much

you up faster than .The look on stage, that kind of arrogance, is like putting on clothes for me. The person on stage and in the videos doesn't really 'There's not

that messes

celebrity and isolation

.

.

The songwriter does. And the songs exist. .' But the person in the videos doesn't really - George Michael exist.

.

Tony Parsons

is

.

an award-winning journalist (Features

Writer of the Year

1989)

and a

bestselling

novelist

(Platinum Logic, Limelight Blues). His work appears

in

Arena, Elle, the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph and

The Face. He has been covering George Michael's Wham! He lives in London with

career since the days of his wife still

and son. His favourite George Michael song

Everything She Wants'.

is

Digitized by the Internet Archive in

2012

http://archive.org/details/isbn_9780140132359

GEORGE MICHAEL

BARE George Michael, and Tony parsons

PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKS Published by the Penguin

Group

Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London

W8

Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Books 375 Hudson Street,

New

York,

New York

5TZ, England

USA

10014,

Inc.

USA

Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia Markham, Ontario, Canada L3R 1B4

Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 2801 John Street,

Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland

10,

New

Zealand

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England

First published

Published

in

by Michael Joseph 1990 Penguin Books 1991

3579 Copyright

10

8642

© Robobuild Limited, 1990 All rights reserved

The moral

right of the authors has

Lyrics

been asserted

© Morrison Leahy Music Ltd

Reproduced by kind permission All of the

photographs that appear

in this

book are copyright

material.

For permission to reproduce any of the photographs, please contact

Michael Joseph Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London

W8 5TZ

Printed in England by Clays Ltd, St Ives pic

Except

in the

United States of America, this book

to the condition that

it

shall not,

is

sold subject

by way of trade or otherwise, be

re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated

lent,

without the publisher's

prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in

which

it is

published and without a similar condition including this

condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

LOVE AND THANKS My

love and thanks go as always to my family and and to every voice in this book. (Even the nasty ones.) Special thanks to

and for

all his

this

time

Parsons, for his belief in his subject,

hard work.

PS For anyone doubtless

Tony

friends,

who wants

made

know, David Austin would have and amusing contributor to that his watch was still on French

to

a colourful

book, but he says

when he missed

his

appointment with Tony

etc.

.

.

George Michael, London, 1990

It

takes a lot of people to

Thanks go

to

Andrew

make

a

book

like this possible.

Ridgeley, Andros Georgiou, Shirlie

Holliman, Gary Farrow, Dick Leahy, Jazz Summers, Simon Napier-Bell, Rob Kahane, Michael Lippman, Connie Filippello,

Siobhan Bailey and Caradoc King.

Special thanks to George,

whose

faith never stumbles.

Love now and always to Fatima and Robert Parsons.

Tony

Parsons, London, 1990

CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS PREFACE 1

xi

GEORGE MICHAEL MAKES A SEXY NIGHT 2

THE IMMIGRANT'S SON

A

VERY EARLY MASTURBATOR

18

4

ENTER THE VOMIT FOUNTAIN

28

SOMEONE LIKE 6

7

I

HERO

BELIEVE IN JOY!

37

50

THE CONTRACT FROM HELL 8

9

A

MOSTLY DRUNK

64

79

EASY GIRLS AND LATE NIGHTS

90

GEORGE UNDERSTANDS THESE THINGS

13

11

MAKING

12

FOREIGN SIGHS

BREAKING

UP,

1

8

3

5

10

ix

IT BIG 117

137

COMING APART

159

103

CONTENTS

14 15

COMING TOGETHER

THE MAN FROM FAITH 16

BARE

LYRICS

213 231

179 193

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The Authors and

Publishers

would

for their help in supplying the

like to thank the following photographs reproduced in this

book:

Endpapers: Brad Branson.

SECTION

I

Pages 1-4 top, Private source. Page 4 bottom,

Page 5 top left,

top,

left,

CBS

Records.

Private source; top right, Brian Aris;

bottom

Rex Features Ltd. Page 6 Chris Cuffaro; bottom, Mike Owen. Page 7, Michael

Private source;

bottom

right,

Putland/Retna Pictures Ltd. Page 8 top, Michael Putland/Retna Pictures Ltd; bottom, Chris Cuffaro.

SECTION Page

1,

II

Chris Craymer/Scope. Page

2,

CBS

Records. Page 3

top, Chris Craymer/Scope; bottom, Daily Mirror. Page 4 top,

Martyn Goddard; bottom, Tony McGee. Page 5 top, Michael Putland/Retna Pictures Ltd; bottom, Neil Preston. Page 6, Chris Craymer/Scope. Page 7 top, Chris Craymer/Scope; bottom, Martyn Goddard. Page

8,

Michael Putland/Retna Pictures

Ltd.

SECTION

III

1 and 2, Tony McGee. Pages 3 and 4, Michael Putland/ Retna Pictures Ltd. Page 5, Chris Cuffaro. Pages 6 and 7, Martyn Goddard. Page 8, Paul Rider/Retna Pictures Ltd.

Pages

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

SECTION

IV

and 2, Martyn Goddard. Page 3, Russell Young. Page Michael Putland/Retna Pictures Ltd; bottom, W. Roelen/Pictorial Press Ltd. Pages 5 and 6, Michael Putland/ Retna Pictures Ltd. Page 7, Scott Downie. Page 8, Brad BranPages

1

4 top,

son.

The

Publishers

would

also like to thank

Simon Napier-Bell

permission to quote the extract from his memoirs

Have To Say You Love

Me on pages 98-9.

for

You Don't

PREFACE My

name

world

I

is

Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou. To the outside will be known as something else, but

am and always my name.

it's

not

As

a boy,

my

biggest fear

was

that

stay just out of reach of the child

created a

man

(in

my huge I

saw

ambitions would

in the mirror.

So

I

the image of a great friend), that the world

someone who could realize my I called him George Michael, and for almost a decade, he worked his arse off for me, and did as he was told. He was very good at his job, perhaps a little too good. Anyway, shortly before I was approached with the idea of this book, I decided that his services were no longer required. He went quietly, didn't make a fuss. I know many of you will think that it was a strange thing for me to do, but believe me, he reslly had to go. And if you can't think why, then read on. could love

if

they chose to,

me

dreams, and make

P.S.

I

think

I

a star.

may hang on

to the

name, though.

1

GEORGE MICHAEL MAKES A SEXY NIGHT (1990)

George Michael has a hangover. The familiar face like a

fist,

scowling at the two teabags he

is

is

clenched

clutching in the

London home. It is a mess in here, and he frowns at the broken dishwasher and a sink that is overflowing with glasses and plates. There has been a lot of celebrating around here lately. It's a Greek thing. He carries two cups of tea through a house that seems to be made of acres of glass and white carpet. You leave your shoes at the door, next to George's cowboy boots. It is spacious, light and airy and you feel that outside should be the Pacific and the lights of LA and not north London in February in the rain. It seems a curiously vulnerable home for a man whose first solo album sold fourteen million records. And it seems too quiet, too normal a home for someone who spent most of his time between the ages of seventeen and twenty-six trying to be the biggest act in the world. But then normality is a big thing with George. He's so normal, it's almost strange. There are no bodyguards. There is no cook, cleaner or trusty retainer to open his front door. He can open his own front door. He drives himself around town in a Range Rover (last year it was a black Mercedes). When he does want a cab he drives himself to a pick-up point to prevent his home address from becoming public knowledge. He has been known to have too good a time, be dropped back at the pick-up point only to realize that he has forgotten where he parked his car.

kitchen of his

GEORGE MICHAEL MAKES But sometimes

this quality

regular can this guy be?

SEXY NIGHT

A

of normality

He

tries

is

strained.

How

to live like an ordinary

when he walks into a room everyone knows his name, everyone has an opinion. He seems like a decent, likeable man and it's no pose. Yet sometimes you sense he is dealing with it - coping with the golden burden of being George Michael. As he says, there are not too many cases on person, but

record of people getting to the top of his profession at a young

age and then living happily ever after.

So

if

minutes

you meet him

approach him

he

if

sits

And

lonely at the top).

room

in a restaurant

he will always be

five

many people

will

because he has learned that too

late

alone (thinking - poor George,

then

when he

quickly, glancing neither right nor

Pacino after he had

just shot

two people

left,

rather like Al

in a restaurant in

Godfather. Here comes George, dealing with

He

it's

arrives he will cross the

The

it.

has always been socially active, his hirsute face seen

regularly

the city's nightclubs.

in

dances to his

own

He

goes to parties and

records (though he would be embarrassed

he was asked to sing something at a dinner). Piccadilly Circus but he

walks

He

if

steers clear of

his dog, a hyperactive

golden

labrador called Hippy, in the green pastures of Highgate.

An

alarming number of people want to be his friend but the

who are close to him have been there for most of his life. Sometimes the slobbering end of the media offer them fantastic sums to betray George (to be quietly paid into an overseas account - George need never know). They majority of those

invariably decline.

But by early 1990 he was growing weary of the demands of

He was in the studio most of the time, recording two separate albums, and he seemed to have come being George Michael.

to the realization that a.

household

He

face.

has been in

years now, but

you can't be the guy next door and it was getting harder. the music business for the best part of ten was his first solo record after the end of

Dealing with

it

1990

Wham!

that changed everything. The shadow of Faith's success showed up all over the world. After it became the biggest selling album in the United States in 1988 and won Album of the Year at the thirty-first Grammy Awards in 1989, George Michael seemed to be everywhere. You could see his image on the badge pinned to the arm of a flying jacket worn by a young black girl on the subway in downtown New York, you saw it again printed on the T-shirt worn by a middle-class kid

Madrid. Faith blanketed the planet. had imaginatively subtitled 'George Michael Makes A Sexy Night' elevated him to the in the

Prado

in

The album

Olympus of

that the Japanese

the entertainment industry

- among

the top five

earners of the year as calculated by the business magazine

The other names in the top five were Michael Jackson, Mike Tyson, Sylvester Stallone and Steven Spielberg, names to make you reflect on what George says about the difficulties of

Forbes.

surviving success. Spielberg, Stallone, Tyson, Jackson. Three

men who have been to

recently divorced

buddy around with

On old.

stormy afternoon

this

that he

won

his

The owner

worth whose

is

and another who used

a chimp. in 1990,

almost a year to the day

Grammy, George Michael

discussed in fashionable novels

names sound

last

is

twenty-six years

of the most famous beard on the planet, his

like first

('I

names,' a

don't trust

girl

men

him in doings - real

says of

Jay Mclnerney's Story Of My Life) and his dirty and imagined - can push world events and Princess Diana's

new

hairstyle off the cover of mass-circulation newspapers.

On

stormy afternoon, George

this

is

eating biscuits and

drinking tea and saying that a lot of the energy that went into the selling of Faith

Early in 1990, he

going to

had nothing

to

do with making music.

saying that everything must change.

I used to feel like I was a fraud, I used to think was an element of me that some day everyone was wake up to and that everything would be taken

George: that there

is

GEORGE MICHAEL MAKES A SEXY NIGHT away, the bottom would just fall out of my world. And that's gone now. The fear has gone. I no longer feel like this is a stage in my life. This is my life and not a rehearsal for it. The happy. To maintain challenge now is to stay successful and

just

.

a level of artistic

.

.

my

and personal happiness. In

think that's a very big challenge. That's

my

position,

I

goal.

box and sometimes I take it out and more than a certain amount of superstardom before it starts affecting you - and the people around you - in very sad and cliched ways. The I

keep fame

enjoy

in a little

don't think you can survive

I

it.

reason I'm successful indestructible

That's

why

and

I

is

because

I

have to protect

a certain phase of

have a

gift

- but

it's

not

it.

my

career

show myself

is

ending now. In

way

I have in the no longer promote and talk to the media the way I did in the past, I don't intend to stare the world in the face any more. I'll always make records because I love music. But I don't enjoy being in the business; I don't enjoy the hardening process that has already begun, that I can already feel in myself. I look at people who have been in the business for a long time and I know I don't want to be like them. I was at my other home in Santa Barbara recently. It's so peaceful, so serene there, so natural. You've got eagles flying around the house, chipmunks all over the place, you can step outside the door and pick oranges, lemons, all kinds of fruit.

the future past,

I

I

don't intend to

the

will

And it suddenly occurred to me - this is what rich people spend their money on. It wasn't a comfortable feeling for me. This was never about money. To tell you the truth, I hate meeting celebrities. I've got a lot

of time for Michael Jackson, he

when

I

won my award

enjoy meeting celebrities.

last year,

was very gracious

but on the whole

Not because of what

individuals but because the basis of your so flimsy. What can you say? Oh, hello,

famous

too!

Oh, so you're a

celebrity too!

I

to

me

don't

they are like as

common ground

is

so you're rich and

What

the fuck are

1990 you supposed to talk about? It's quite difficult. I tend to be the one who goes up to someone and says - look, I really admire what you do. And it's always true, I never say it to someone I don't feel that way about - and I have laid myself open to some nasty experiences that have made me shy away from talking to celebrities. If it's at all possible, I stay away from the situation.

harden up over the

few years because the and because I'm no longer half of something, as I was with Wham! So when I go out I've adopted a look - which is maybe part of the stage thing - to keep people back a little bit. In truth, I haven't changed at all. If people talk to me, then I talk to them. I'm not rude, I'm still I've

had

to

success has been that

friendly,

I still

much

last

greater

haven't learned

how

to get rid of people.

But the look on stage, that kind of arrogance,

on

clothes for me.

it's

an

act. In

It's

person,

exactly the it's

is

a defence mechanism.

an entertainment mechanism. Because the person

The songwriter

doesn't really exist.

That's

all

But the person

real.

like putting

same thing when

does.

And

I

On

go out stage,

it's

videos

in the

the songs exist.

in the videos doesn't really

exist.

'George Michael' was very

saw it's I

it

like that. It

over now,

it

was never

much real.

has totally outlived

will feel like being

a creation and

its

always it

but

purpose. Occasionally,

'George Michael' in the future but

me away - I have to bad for me as a writer and

to shut that side of

I

I'm not ashamed of

I

have

'down, boy', because it's so a person. 'George Michael' is locked in the basement, he's in the basement under the stairs until he grows up. Don't hold your breath. say,

George Michael has always been heading towards this day in his life, to this glass house on the hill. 'He had come a long way to this blue lawn,' F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote of Gatsby and, like Gatsby, George reinvented himself, leaving behind a podgy kid with fuzzy hair, thick glasses and the sex appeal of

GEORGE MICHAEL MAKES

A

SEXY NIGHT

an oven glove for a more golden, more radiant existence. That's what show business is for,' Andy Warhol said. To prove

you

it's

not what you are that counts,

it's

what you think

are.'

Nobody

ever looked

George did

in

so

the very

'Wham

full

of sheer, undiluted joy as

Wham!

first

video, the exuberant

nobody ever looked quite so glad to be part of the music business. Clearly, this was all he ever wanted to do. The fulfilled future and the wistful past were mingled in a single gorgeous moment,' wrote Fitzgerald in Early Success, 'and life was literally a dream.' The dream later soured for George Michael, soured very badly, and as the 1990s begin he is very aware of the dangers of it happening again, and very aware that this time it could

promo

for

Rap!',

be terminal.

The

beyond the records that it sold Americans bought a copy of the album), the records that it smashed (the first time six top-five US singles came from one album) and the prizes that it won (the Grammy, three American Music Awards - the thing cleaned up), beyond all of that, the significance of Faith was that it allowed George significance of Faith,

(eight million

came close to suffocating him Wham!, it allowed him to start to become himself. The two new records for release early in the 1990s complete the process, though his relationship with his adopted name remains as

to shed the adolescent skin that in

ambivalent as ever.

Two and a half years earlier he had sat at a corner table downstairs at Blake's talking about the album that was about to be released and the ten-month world tour that would promote

it.

Til be on the road and

I'll

be George Michael and then

I'll

come home,' he had said. Asked who he would be when he came home, he didn't know. 'Not Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou,' he said. 'I've always felt like George Michael than that. Though in my head it's still

more

1990 a

title.

George Michael.

It's just

a

little,

self-made

Exactly a year ago, on the day after he

won

title, isn't it?'

the

Grammy,

that music business equivalent of an Oscar, he wasn't so sure.

He had light

sprawled on a sofa at the top of this glass house as the mean February afternoon, barefoot

faded fast on another

and with the hairspray wearing

Grammy 'It

off,

squinting through a

hangover.

doesn't feel like a

And today he

is

made-up name any more,' he had said. George Michael in

talking about locking

the basement, burying his alter ego alive, dispensing with the outrageous

demands of image so

all

that only the music

remains. He has been talking like this for a year. George Michael wants to be left alone. And does he really mean it? Look him in the eye. He's dealing with it all the best he can.

2

THE IMMIGRANT'S SON (1963-1970)

The

Two

village that

George's father comes from no longer exists.

decades after Kyriacos Panayiotou

left,

the soldiers

came

abandoning their homes in front of the Turkish advance, just a few of the two hundred thousand Greeks who were displaced by the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974. The village that Kyriacos Panayiotou knew is gone for ever, but once it stood on the road between Famagusta and Salamis on the eastern shore of Cyprus, overlooking the bay where Aphrodite, the goddess of love, was said to have been born in the waves. When Kyriacos was growing up in the 1940s, long before he became Jack Panos in the 1950s and the father of baby Georgios in the 1960s, the small towns in this part of the island were called the Red Villages, after the colour of the local soil. These were tight, Greek communities of farmers and fishermen, tiny villages made up of huge, sprawling and the

villagers fled to the other side of the island,

The

was

mimosa and eucaand sheep, full of the constant buzz of cicadas and mosquitos. Water had to be pumped from the ground and at night the sky was full of stars and a Syrian moon. There were seven children in the Panayiotou family, four boys and three girls. The Cyprus that they grew up in was families.

air

full

of the smell of

lyptus and the stench of the goat herds

steeped in history and rich in legend. All the great lost empires ruled it in their time, from the Mycenaeans in the fifteenth

8

1963- 1970 century bc through the Greeks, the Romans, the Turks to the British in the nineteenth century.

Thousands of years of

vasion and emigration bred a people

who

in-

put nothing before

their family, whether they were in Salamis or a suburb of London. Greek Cypriots are a pragmatic, clear-eyed people with a fiercely

romantic streak, imported to the island by Aphrodite,

who rose from the waves again on Botticelli's seashell, and who wept for all star-crossed lovers when Adonis died, red anemones springing up where her

tears

mingled with his

blood.

Cyprus

is

the massive

where Europe ends, where the West gives way to sweep of Africa and Asia. This was where the

Crusaders often made their

last call

before going off to perish

Holy Wars, and it is where the Christian and the pagan have frequently met and sometimes merged. In his book Journey Into Cyprus, Colin Thubron reported a religious festival called Cataclysmos, which though a celebration of Noah's survival of the great flood, was rumoured to have pagan roots in a ritual re-enactment of Aphrodite's birth. Thubron also wrote of the poetry and music events at the in the

Cypriot village

festivals,

the entertainers, and of

of the fierce competition between

how

the intense social lives of these

island Greeks gave outsiders the misleading impression that

the lives of the villagers were one long binge of hedonism and lethargy.

'How the Cypriots were accused of laziness I do not know,' wrote Thubron, 'but travellers in the last century often decried them. Perhaps this was due to the islanders' excessive sociability - their leisure was always public and spent in cafes - or perhaps to the country's legendary fruitfulness (once called Macaria, the Blessed Isle) which prompted thoughts of Polynesian indolence. But other travellers, usually those who stayed longer, noted that the peasants lived sober and frugal lives, as they still do, and that this apathy, at least in the countryside,

THE IMMIGRANT'S SON was

we

a myth.

are idle,

"We

we

can't afford to be idle," the farmer said. "If

rot."'

In all the stories of

Cyprus and

its

people

is

it

possible to

imagine you see the shadow of George Michael. Today he spends much of his free time chasing the sun and in his blood is

the island that has

else in the

more hours of sunshine than anywhere

Mediterranean.

And

in the closeness

he

feels to his

on hard work and that Excessive sociability' - reflected in the flash of a thousand paparazzi - you can imagine you see his roots in the red soil of Cyprus. Sometimes his Greekness seemed to be the key to everything. At other family, the emphasis

when Wham!,

times, especially

golden days of

cavorting with it

seemed that

Andrew through

the

ever meant

was

all it

that he tans very well.

The 1950s were a good time for Jack Panayiotou to leave Cyprus. The tensions between the Greek and Turkish com-

EOKA, the National Organization of Cypriot Fighters, took up arms against the munities were mounting as the Greek

resident British Army, demanding Enosis, unification with Greece, a proposal vehemently opposed by the Turkish Cypriots.

At the same time as the cry for liberation was becoming young men of Cyprus began to hear another siren's song - the call of Britain for workers from the far-flung louder, the

reaches of a decaying empire.

It was cheap labour for Britain, emerging from the austerity of the post-war years and desperate to fill its menial jobs with Jamaicans and Cypriots,

finally

but it was a career opportunity for a hungry young teenager from one of the Red Villages. Cyprus exports copper, citrus fruits,

sherry and grapes. But like Ireland, Europe's other

divided island,

its

greatest export has always been

its

people.

was Dimitrios 'Jimmy' Georgiou, who was also his cousin. Their fathers had been best friends before them and their sons, George Michael and Andros Georgiou, the man behind the band Boogie Box High, have continued Jack's best friend

the tradition to a third generation.

10

1963- 1970 Andros Georgiou: Our together.

Though

came was with If

less

fathers

came

they don't admit

to flee National Service.

than a pound

it,

off the

banana boat

part of the reason they

They

arrived in

London

in their pockets.

you weren't a farmer or

a fisherman, the only things

you

could do in a Cypriot village at that time were be a waiter or

My

father had done his apprenticeship as a tailor came over but he and Jack had been waiters in Cyprus so when they came to London, they found work as waiters. It was the only thing they could do together. Then my godfather - Jack - met my Auntie Lesley and my dad met my mum and they both tried to settle down. They went for what they knew best - my dad went into tailoring and Jack had

a tailor.

before they

always been a waiter so he went into the restaurant business.

My

dad found work in south London and Jack and Lesley London. But every Sunday one of them would go to see the other - and they still do. settled in north

My parents were rock and roll dancers. They met dance and my father used to throw my mother all over the show. There are some really cool pictures of my dad which they never used to show me when I was growing up George:

at a

because they were afraid that well, look,

you did

I

could point to them and say

-

it.

very handsome. My There used to be a newspaper called Reveille, and they used to do a competition called 'Search For A TV Star*. Everybody sent their picture in with a little resume and my dad got to the final. He got his picture in the paper and he was in the final with one other guy. Mum kept the picture. It said underneath, 'jack panos' - he had shortened the family name to Panos - 'jack panos is CHASED DOWN THE STREET BY GIRLS WHEREVER HE GOES'. I remember reading that when I was about sixteen or seventeen and thinking - Jesus! I was impressed. When you think how

When

mum

he was very young

my dad was

sent his picture to a magazine.

11

THE IMMIGRANT'S SON people write about

Mum, Dad

me now,

looked a

it's

bit like

quite funny.

When he met He had this

George Chakiris.

great haircut with a real loose quiff.

Apparently,

my

maternal grandmother's family were French

and came to England fleeing the Terror.

at the time of the

My

Revolution - aristocrats

grandfather was a Jew, but

my

grand-

mother's origins, other than her nationality, are unknown. mother's family lived in Lulot Street, which

is

My

past Highgate

on the way down to Archway. North London. When I little kid I thought it looked old-fashioned and depressing, like a mining village. They were terraced Victorian houses with outside toilets, very working class. Recently, I took a wrong turning and ended up in this strange street between the back of Highgate and Archway. It was an old, blackened, cobbled road, V-shaped, and it seemed vaguely familiar. There was a church. It turned out to be Lulot Street. Hill

was

a

hadn't been there for nearly twenty years, since my grandmother died. And that was where my mum was living when she met my dad.

I

Lesley Angold Harrison (the

Angold was an inversion of the French family name) defied the ancient barriers of class and country to marry her jiving Greek boyfriend. As Richard Ellman said of Oscar Wilde's mother, 'She was more emancipated than her age'.

Jack remained as close to the huge Panayiotou brood as ever, sending

money home

Cyprus and eventually bringing and sisters (one sister emigrated only as far as Greece), all the while working his way up from the kitchen floor of the catering business and raising a family. Jack and Lesley's first child was a girl, Yioda, followed by another girl, Melanie, two years later. Two years after that they had their third and final child, a boy they called Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou, born at 73 Church Lane, Finchley, part of London's endless grey sprawl, on 25 June 1963. to

across most of his brothers

12

1963- 1970 Mindless optimism was in the air when baby Georgios was 'I Like It', a goofy mantra of simple-minded joy by the

born.

grinning Gerry and

The Pacemakers (when

a

Pacemaker was a

reference to a trendy person rather than a machine to keep an

pop

ailing heart going) stood at the top of the just dislodged first

Me To

'From

You' by The

charts, having

Beatles, their very

number one.

Elsewhere, the

mood was

just as

buoyant. The day after

Georgios arrived, President John F. Kennedy told the people of West Berlin, 'All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin

.

.

.

Profumo scandal was

lch bin ein Berliner? In England, the at its lurid height, dealing a

to the notion that positions of

power

death blow

are necessarily occupied

by men of honour. The case of the Minister, the Call Girl and the Russian Spy served as an overture for Swinging London. 'Sex began in 1963,' wrote the poet Philip Larkin, 'between

the

Lady Chatterley ban and The

Beatles'

first

LP.'

England finally shrugged off the widow's weeds of the Second World War, exchanging the whiff of bomb sites, ration cards and National Service for miniskirts, Mini cars and cheap foreign travel, happily trading Victorian values for In 1963

the

pill,

the spartan fare of

life

in

material heaven of the 1960s, or at least

1950s Britain for the its

promise.

But not everyone was wearing paisley, swanning down the King's Road and lighting joss sticks. On his son's birth certificate, Jack gave his profession as Restaurant Assistant Manager.

He had worked

was

still

built

his way up from waiting tables but life around long hours of hard work watching other

people

eat. Little Georgios spent his earliest years in Finchley above a launderette. The boy's front yard looked out on the back yards of a row of shabby shops. The 1960s were happening somewhere else.

living

D

George: I saw my dad every day but 1 didn't see him enough. Most kids go out to school when their dad's out at

13

THE IMMIGRANT'S SON work and they

see

him

in

the evenings.

My

dad had the

afternoons off and then he would have to go back to the restaurant in the early evenings. I suppose the area where he didn't have time for

me was

taking

because he worked seven days a week.

me I

out to the park

-

saw him but most of

we didn't get to do much together. He went into his first real partnership in

the time

a restaurant

when

At first he had been just a bus boy, then a waiter, then a manager. He did all of it very quickly, very early. But until he went into his first partnership it was just a total slog. As a very, very young child I don't suppose I saw him at all. In the years that you don't remember much of anyway he wouldn't have been at home hardly any of the time because he was working right around the clock. I know my dad's father had been extremely strict with him, but he didn't try to repeat any patterns with us. I am sure that he grew up with plenty of physical punishment in there and you were taught to fear and respect your father in the Greek tradition of things. I never met my grandfather because he died even before my parents met, but everything I have heard points to the fact that he was loved and respected but feared. Dad, however, never gave us any cause to be afraid of him. There was always the threat I'll tell your dad from our mum when we were small, and we knew that meant something serious - but I wasn't afraid of him. He's in no way a violent man - he's a very gentle man. The only two times he really hit me in my life I guess I deserved them, or at least he thought he had to make me remember. One of them was for stealing, which obviously everyone has to do, and the other time I was whining about a torch; I wouldn't shut up about this torch I I

was

six.

thought

I

needed.

my dad did a typical first-generation immigrant had a very mobile childhood both in terms of moving from the city to the suburbs and of moving from the working class to the middle class. I can't think of a I

think

thing.

I

14

1963- 1970 more

stable situation for

me

to have

grown up

in

because

I

didn't really experience any of the hard times at the beginning.

When

was a

I

that other kids

child

I

know we went

had but

I

without a

don't remember

it

so

I

lot

of things

never missed

it.

We

moved from

the

flat

above the launderette to a semi-

detached house around the time that my dad got the restaurant when I was six. He was in a partnership with two other people and we moved to Edgware. It cost £4,000.

The

first

thing

I

was

this

house

in

interested in

Burnt Oak, which

was nature -

I

loved collecting lizards and insects. As for music, there lot

of Greek stuff around

The

when

I

was

a kid, but

1

is

in

really

was

didn't like

a it.

was with an old had thrown out into the

sign of real obsession with music

first

wind-up gramophone that

Mum

garage.

My

parents gave

and one

Tom

school literally

me

three old 45s,

two Supremes records

Jones record, and I used to come home from every day, go out to the garage, wind this thing

up and play them. One of them had a big crack in it and I would let it go round and when it came off I would catch the arm and put it back on - 1 wanted to know what else was on there! I was totally obsessed with the idea of the records; I loved them as things and just being able to listen to music was incredible. Later they bought me a cassette with a microphone that I used to tape things off the radio - and at that point I became even more obsessive about it. The Supremes and Tom Jones records had belonged to my parents, but they were the only ones they had in the 1960s.

My mum

said she never heard

The

Beatles or anything like

enough money for a radio and she was so busy looking after the two girls when they were small that she didn't experience any of that at all. In the 1960s she was too busy being a housewife and scraping money

that because they didn't have

15

THE IMMIGRANT'S SON together to have a

good

time.

I

am

sure that

all

young couples

with small kids were exactly the same. It's a shame because that was a great time and she was only eighteen or nineteen then and she missed It's

all that.

and most people and father, but there were things going on was growing up that I never understood. There are

great to be able to admire your parents

love their mother

when

I

my mum that I only realized later, things that make me really admire her. If there's anything that Lhave got from her

things about

it's

that she's like a rock. I've got that stability

my

from

her.

work from him because I could never work as hard as he did. In a sense, what he's done is more of an achievement than what I have - and thousands of people do it - just the idea of coming to a As

for

dad,

foreign country,

I

didn't learn about hard

working

your fingers bleed to send for

until

your family, to bring them to a country that you arrived with twenty shillings. a

in

The idea of an immigrant doing that, going from living in room with seven kids when you are a child, moving out of

that, bringing

your family over, raising your kids, getting to

the point where you have a beautiful house in the countryside

- and

it took him so long, it took him twenty years of constant hard graft - that's heroic effort for me. And that level of work, and that level of determination, and totally going with-

out everything just for a vision of what your children are going to have and what your family are going to have - to me that's inconceivable. see.

I

But when

I

look at

my

dad, that's what

I

see lots of other things, too, lots of faults, but at the

of the day

I

see qualities in

him

that

I

end could never imagine

finding in myself.

An is

early snapshot of the young Georgios begins to emerge. He the privileged only son of a half-Greek family but because

of his father's absences, he grows up spending long hours with his

mother and two

sisters,

comfortable in the company of

16

1963 - 1970 women. He is both immersed in Greekness and removed from The music of the old country leaves him cold - the sound

it.

that

first

one-part

captures his imagination

Tom

is

two-parts Supremes to

Jones, a significant ratio for his output in later

life.

When Lesley picks him up from school he is covered in dirt. Not from fighting but because he has been lying on his side rummaging under a fence where large numbers of caterpillars and ants are known to hang out. And one summer morning he dawn, sneaks from the house in his pyjamas without and forages for signs of insect life in the field opposite their home. While he collects bugs in his pyjamas, the boy sings. Later a neighbour tells Lesley she has seen him in the field. 'Doesn't your George have a lovely voice?' she says. rises at

waking

his parents or sisters

17

3

VERY EARLY MASTURBATOR A

(1970-1975)

The 1970s dawned with pop music looking exhausted after the heady euphoria of the last seven years. The world was post-Beatles, post-1960s, and the longest party was definitely over. A feeling of fatigue was everywhere and, as if to compensate for the lack of imagination and fun around, the charts

suddenly began to swell with a plague of one-off novelty records, exercises in pushing back the frontiers of banality that achieved staggering commercial success.

'Wandering

Star'

by Lee Marvin, a record with the melodic

resonance of a belch, was a British number one, as was the

Home' by the English World Cup Squad, 'Mouldy Old Dough' by Lieutenant Pigeon, 'Sugar Sugar' by The Archies and 'The Streak' by Ray Stevens. hearty marching music of 'Back

Chuck roll,

Berry, the shrewd, duckwalking godfather of rock

had

his first

baby name

in

number one by giving

'My Ding-A-Ling'.

the creative famine perfectly

blond

manques

like

Kylie

and

his ageing penis a

Television stars understood

and - as

in the late 1980s when Minogue and Jason Donovan

ruled the airwaves - they had rarely had it so good. 'Grandad' by Clive Dunn, 'If by Telly Savalas, 'Two Little Boys'

by Rolf Harris and a number of polite ballads by David Soul, the balding half of Starsky and Hutch, all hit the top of the charts in the first half of the 1970s, often jostling for position with things that the 1960s had left on the side of its

plate like

'Voodoo

Chile' by the late Jimi

18

Hendrix and

1970- 1975 'My

Sweet Lord' by the ex-Beatle George Harrison. But popular music has an endless capacity for regeneration and these dog days were soon being enlivened by an army of young men wearing platform boots, satin jackets and too

New Wave at the other end of Glam Rock, were phrases that seemed any new face that won a place for itself in the

much mascara. Like

the term

the decade, Glitter, or to describe

charts and hearts of the nation, from serious musical boffins like the

frowning Eno, part of the early Roxy Music, to the The Sweet, who appeared to be brick-

working-class ravers of

and blusher. David Bowie, who was to dominate the 1970s the way Elvis ruled the 1950s and Bob Dylan the 1960s, had his first chart hit in late 1969 with 'Space Oddity', a dark response to the Apollo moon landings, but it was Marc Bolan and his band T. Rex who really jump-started the decade with 'Ride A White Swan', which peaked at number two at the end of 1970, stayed on the charts for nearly six months, and was followed by 'Hot Love', 'Get It On' and 'Metal Guru', all number-one records, plus the phenomenally successful album Electric Warrior. The mould was broken and the mood was energetic, camp, young. Though the class swots like Roxy Music and David Bowie - whose The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars was the Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band of the glitter kids - had more than their fair share of maudlin moments, the feeling in the air was loaded with the kind of fun, optimism and goofy hedonism that pop had not seen since the early 1960s. The pop kids of the day lapped it up. There were the semiliterate howlings of Slade - 'Mama Weer All Crazee Now', 'Coz I Luv You'; the surreal boasts of Gary Glitter, a grown man wrapped in tin foil The Leader Of The Gang', 'Do You Wanna Touch Me'; Bolan, Bowie, Roxy Music, Rod Stewart and his 'Maggie May', The Rubettes and their silly hats, Alice Cooper and his mutilated dolls. The avant-garde of layers with a taste for lipstick

Tm

19

A

VERY EARLY MASTURBATOR

its commercial mainstream have never been so in was often impossible to tell the Spiders From Mars from the girls from Abba and the studied decadence of a figure like Bryan Ferry was echoed in the cod campiness of a big brash pop band like Mud. Pop's sap was definitely rising. What Georgios liked best were The Sweet with their sense of humour and those gorgeous slabs of mayhem like 'Blockbuster' and 'Ballroom Blitz'. The boy also liked the early Queen singles and envied David Cassidy's hair, but more than anyone, Georgios loved Elton John, who had two number-one albums - Dont Shoot Me, Ym Only The Piano Player and Goodbye Yellow Brick Road -

pop and tune

-

it

and another two numberone LPs - Caribou and Elton Johns Greatest Hits - the year

the year that Georgios turned ten,

after.

Born humble Reg Dwight

in

lowly Pinner, Middlesex, the

piano player turned himself into the most flamboyant of

all

pop transforms its chosen people into heroes, boy kings invested with the glamour of old Hollywood, no matter how grey and suburban their origins. Elton turned every one of mother nature's cruel jokes to his the 1970s peacocks, living proof that

advantage,

made

every difficulty a virtue, each adding to his

outrageous stage persona. Thinning on top, he sported towering wigs. Hopelessly infinite variety

myopic

(like his

of bizarre spectacles

young fan Georgios), his became another part of

On the chubby side, he still pranced all over his keyboards with the mad abandon of some latterday Little Richard or Jerry Lee Lewis. the act.

Musically, he covered all the bases. 'Your Song', 'Daniel', 'Goodbye Yellow Brick Road' and 'Someone Saved My Life Tonight' were melancholic tearjerkers, choked with emotion, while 'Crocodile Rock' and 'Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting' showed Elton kicking ass. He could also do blue-

eyed soul, 'Philadelphia Freedom', and Christmas songs, 'Step Into Christmas'.

A

fine role

model

20

for

any growing boy.

1970- 1975 - let alone Alice Cooper - Elton more or less a regular guy. He was no space cadet, no bopping elf, and Georgios admired his craft, his nerve, the way this chubby man from the other side of nowhere had the talent and the gall to get away with it all. The two would later become friends after meeting at the Unlike Bowie or Bolan

seemed, under

it all,

to be

Chateau Minerval studios in France during the recording of Wham! album, Make It Big. Elton was pure 1970s. The old adage that show business gets glossier as the times get tougher has rarely been more true than in the early years of that decade. As the 1970s began, Charles Manson and his psychotic flower children were on trial in California for the Sharon Tate— Leno La Bianca killings. The innocent dead seemed to be everywhere. Four antiVietnam War demonstrators were shot dead by the National Guard on the campus of Kent State University. In Belfast, the Falls Road stank of CS gas and petrol bombs. And those who saw the photograph of a young Vietnamese girl who had been hit by napalm will never be able to forget it. Modern terrorism made its murderous debut in the early years of the 1970s. The PLO, the IRA and the Angry Brigade were all front-page news. At Tel Aviv airport in 1972, three gunmen massacred twenty-six people. A few months later the Israeli compound in the Olympic village in Munich was stormed by the Black September group. All the hostages were the second

killed in a

was

shoot out with the police.

and economic atrophy, a time when the innocents were slaughtered by the disenfranchised and the homicidal, and the soaring oil prices after the Yom Kippur War seemed to herald the end of Western civilization. The Panos family, who had missed out on all the fun in the 1960s, were largely untouched by the gathering of the sociopolitical storm clouds. Jack and Lesley, Yioda, Melanie and It

a grim, stagnant time full of mindless carnage

Georgios had never had

it

so

good and, when the youngest

21

child

A had been

VERY EARLY MASTUR BATOR

at school for a

family even had enough

first

time the

to take a vacation in Cyprus.

the seven-year-old Georgios stood with his father in a

And

smelling of sugar and dirt, in Famagusta, staring huge wall with gates that seemed to reach to the sky.

baking

up

couple of years, for the

money

street,

at a

On the other side of the gates was the Turkish was very strange to me. My father warned me not to go beyond those gates - he said that they could legally shoot me in there, that the Turks could shoot me if I went beyond those gates. I thought it was fascinating! I remember the people in Cyprus being very friendly when I was a child. My dad had come to England when he was eighteen and he didn't go back for fifteen years. There was no money until then. We went when I was seven, when I was ten and again when I was thirteen or fourteen. Then I went in 1983 by myself, just after we had finished the first Wham! album, and then one more time. In 1983 it was still quite nice, the people were unspoilt and the island hadn't been overrun George:

sector.

It

by tourism the way

The

refugee

it is

camps

today.

my

that

father's family lived in after

they were turfed out of their village were developed, and they lived in better conditions than they

but they

village,

was

all

missed

had

in that old

they wished they

it,

still

peasant

lived there

and

it

The

family live right next door to Limassol and their kids are

a

shame

to have to

growing up surrounded by culture

change so

tourists.

late in their lives.

really sad, all the

It's

going. They're better off materially than they were

is

I remember everyone being so friendly, so real was a kid, and all that's changing. It was very backward in the past but now it's all so false, so money-based; the changes that happen when tourism comes to a community

before but

when

I

like that are so

sudden, so extreme, that

Cyprus was also where the bud.

I

my

it

can't be good.

career as a thief

was with my cousin Andros; our

22

was nipped in had gone

families

1970- 1975 was ten and he was eleven. We was a game a lot of kids play something and the next day you go back for some-

out there together completely

you

steal

when

rifled this

thing bigger.

I

shop.

It

and progressed to a

started off with sweets

It

thirty-two-box carton of toy cars. Dinky toys.

Andros and the things

were very stupid - we hid

I

we

stole in the

same

place.

the rubbish

all

And

from

the shop owners

on us and eventually they caught us. Andros and I were on this fantastic beach at which is now in the Turkish half of the island. It those beaches where you can go out for literally and the water is still only between your waist and started spying

Famagusta, was one of half a mile

your knees.

we saw manager of the shop approaching our mothers on the

Beautiful white sand, perfectly clear water. Suddenly, the

beach.

And we

just tore

out to sea!

We

stood out there for

about three hours and looked at our mothers gesturing for us to come in! We wouldn't come in for hours and hours and,

when we did the manager came up to the block of flats where both our families were staying and he emptied this big bag full of the cartons of everything we had stolen on to this worktop in front of my dad. I was just dying. And my mum said - 'But you don't even like Dinky toys!' And it was true. I had no interest at all in toy cars. And I did get a thrashing from my dad for that. My dad never used to hit me so it really shocked me, it worked. It wasn't the beating that made me stop stealing - it was the

finally,

humiliation.

I

felt

completely humiliated.

But our upbringing wasn't very Greek. ent

when you

thing about

it

two Greek

don't have as far as

I

It

was very

It's

effective.

completely differ-

parents.

The only Greek

could see was that

in

comparison

was allowed to do as I liked. When I came home they would be there. They weren't out with their boyfriends because there weren't any boyfriends. The only time we had any Greek culture forced on us was when we went to Greek school - they wanted us to learn Greek. From with the

girls

I

23

A the time

want

I

VERY EARLY MASTURBATOR was seven

until

I

was

nine,

when obviously you

to be out with your mates, every Saturday this really

crappy

van would come round and pick up

little

all

the

children and take us to this terrible classroom in Willesden

where some extremely excitable Greek guy would try to teach us the language. But everyone else in the classroom had two Greek parents and they could speak it already - they just couldn't write or read it. So I was sitting there writing things parrot fashion and not understanding what anything was about. I used to go home to my mum and dad and say - I don't know

what any of it is about! I'm not learning anything! I don't understand what the teacher's saying! He's talking in Greek and I don't get any of it. But they kept sending us and sending us and I never learned a thing. Two years of my Saturdays were wasted I have never felt any ethnic connection between the Greeks and me other than how hairy I am. Hirsute. That's a good word. But although I don't feel any real affinity with Greece I'm glad that my father is Mediterranean and I'm not just of .

.

.

I think I would be a different person, I think I would have grown up with less belief, more reservations about what I wanted to do with my life. I think one of the

English stock.

things that's inherent in British people

is

that they think they

are doing something out of the ordinary

if they aspire to be something more than they are. Any kind of social or upward mobility is regarded with suspicion. Well, it was never ques-

my home. I saw it around me all the time. And today who don't have the nerve to realize their potential, who are too afraid to try, it frustrates the hell out tioned in

when

I

of me.

see people

I

see

it

constantly and

I

think

it

is

a very English

thing.

Another thing that I had no affinity for was the violin - I it from the time I was seven and I was always

started learning

absolute crap, because I

I

could have been okay

had no interest in playing it. I'm sure if I had wanted to learn. But when I

24

1970- 1975 my

when

was

wanted to stop, they was thirteen. Then I took Music Theory at 'O' Level and 'A' Level though I never took my final exam. I gave it up and took Art and English Literature instead. I passed my exams although I only went to one lesson a week. They didn't throw me out. They didn't told

parents

wouldn't

me.

let

I

eight that

I

learned violin until

I

I

even notice.

When I

first went to school until the age of about nine or ten I above average height, quite a cute little kid, very popular. No insecurity there. But then, just at the age when your hormones are popping up and everything is changing, my dad decided to move house and we moved to this big place in Radlett, which is in Hertfordshire. It was a real old shithole and it took a whole year to decorate. We couldn't live in it for all that time and, for the entire year I went to Kingsbury High School, we lived above my dad's restaurant. So I had steak and chips every night, popped down to the restaurant for ice cream whenever I felt like it — which was often - and in the course of a year I went from being a skinny eleven-year-old to a fat twelveyear-old. It happened at exactly the same time as puberty. From then on I was quite a tubby kid. I never had a gut - 1 was just kind of big all over. I suppose that was why I was never picked on at school. I was never physically weedy - only in my head perhaps.

was

I

just

was

a great masturbator.

heard that a

lot

A

very early masturbator.

of children are very sexual

young, and then there

is

when

I

they are

a point around six or seven where

they totally blank sexuality out of their minds until puberty

much how

-

remember it. I remember the old doctors and nurses games when I was very young. Very young. And I remember having terrible guilt feelings about it. And then I remember absolutely nothing until about twelve, when everything exploded. Masturbation is the first big secret. Parents can't condone it and kids don't want it condoned. They just don't want anyone else in the world to know they do it. They don't want to and that

is

pretty

I

25

know

it

they just

A

VERY EARLY MASTURBATOR

is

a

common

want

to be

The Panos family

alone with

eventually

want

it

condoned -

it!

moved

into the big, rambling

Jack had worked years for this, realization of his European dream. For his son,

in rural Hertfordshire.

house it

left

thing, they don't

was the

final

feverishly cultivating insecurities

inside his

newly acquired

was the start of his own adventure. On 9 September 1975, he donned the green blazer of Bushey Meads School and began his secondary education. At Bushey Meads he would learn how to confront his sprouting adolescent neurosis, he would learn that it is possible for an ugly duckling to transform himself, to make people want to remove his clothes - with their teeth. At Bushey Meads Georgios Panos would discover what he wanted to be. puppy

fat,

Andrew

it

It happens all the time at school. You get morning and the teacher says - we've got a new boy, who's going to look after him? They allot the new kid to someone they feel might be responsible. As a junior, I had never been considered responsible enough to have a new kid in my charge - so I was dying to have a go. He was introduced, I put my hand up - and I got him. At the next playtime, after he had been in my charge for a while, we were playing King of the Wall in the playground. You had to climb up on top of this wall and people tried to push you off. I taunted George. I made him play King of the

Ridgeley:

there in the

He

want to do it - he doesn't like sport. In that not very physical. In many ways he is very physical but certainly he would never have entertained the idea in a Wall.

sense, he

didn't

is

million years of getting

on top of a wall and trying to push get up there. I bullied him into it. And he got up there and pushed me off. He became King of the Wall. And from then on we made up for each other's de-

people

off.

But

I

made him

ficiencies.

26

1970- 1975 I

don't think his mother particularly cared for

me

at

first. I

and Lesley likes me, but it hasn't always been that way. I never understood what it was she didn't like! Maybe she was just frightened for her boy. But she should have known that it was going to turn out all right like Lesley

.

27

.

.

4

ENTER THE VOMIT FOUNTAIN (1975-1977)

On

the twelve-inch version of

i'm Your Man', Wham!

crystal-

media image of Andrew Ridgeley. A racing car is heard cleaving through a plate-glass window followed by the sound of its driver emerging from the wreck, cackling with inane laughter and demanding in the dumbest voice imaginable lized the

- there's

the bar?'

As a parody of the mass media's perception of Andrew it was almost faultless. The wanton drunkenness was there, and so were the car crashes and the reputation for habitual hedonism. All that was missing from the equation were the women, all that was missing was the wenching. It was an important omission from a portrait of Andrew Ridgeley - even one played for laughs - for this was the man who had once boasted, 'If there's a pulse, I'll have her.' Randy Andy, the Press baptized him. Randy Andy, the Vomit Fountain. He was painted as a drunken clown with a permanent erection, the leering, lesser half of Wham!, a useless appendage to the career of George Michael. In fact, Wham! George Michael's crucial apprenticeship - could never have happened without Andrew Ridgeley. The band was built on George Michael's talent, Andrew Ridgeley's character and a bond as profound as the friendships of childhood. And it was Andrew's character - consisting in equal measures of laziness, generosity and confidence - that allowed George's songwriting talents to grow and thrive when a

28

1975- 1977 meaner

spirit

would have clung

desperate for

like a limpet,

songwriting credits and royalty cheques of his own, until the

music was suffocated by avarice and the band collapsed, like many before, under the bitter weight of 'musical differ-

so

ences'.

But Ridgeley was a one-off.

And more than concert,

Andrew Ridgeley

Wham!

three years after

and fourteen years

after

he

first

played their

last

met George Michael,

back seat of a car heading west of immaculate in a double-breasted suit. Still strikingly good-looking, the black curls at the back of his neck are now shot with silver. His languid, aristocratic bearing is stooped from too little sleep. He has been in the recording studio, working hard. He smiles about it - he knows it's out of character - and removes his dark glasses to rub the sleep from huge brown eyes. As his car stalls in Friday afternoon traffic heading out of the city, Andrew talks about a fight he almost got into a week

London. He

is

is tall,

in the

thin,

ago. After years out of the country

when he

lived in

and then Los Angeles, he is back in England, back Hertfordshire neighbourhood, immersed once more

Monaco

in his old

in English

society, trying to avoid fights in pubs.

'Unreal,' he sighs.

'I

had a scrap,

I

And

makes me

very nearly got into a

sick, I abhor pub has been renovated and it has attracted a lot of new people. Some of them are very young seventeen, eighteen. Little pups. And some of them are little hoods. They want to express themselves, and they want to .' express themselves on me - because of who I am People were always more sharply divided about Andrew than they were about George. Andrew was too good-looking, he had too good a time for some people. And while George fight last

Friday night.

violence

violence. But our local

.

.

seemed reassuringly complex, as though there were still a few insecurities left over from his childhood that he had yet to shrug

off,

Andrew made

it all

'They were annoyed that

look very easy. I

29

was messing around with a

ENTER THE VOMIT FOUNTAIN couple of lady friends of mine,' he says. 'Not even their lady friends! Though I did have my eye on one of their lady friends.

And

But

.

.

.

violence

makes me nauseous.'

he talks a heavy Ford bristling with tattooed pulls alongside Andrew Ridgeley's car. They have

as

young men

recognized him and acknowledged their recognition - all those Top of the Pops appearances, all those lurid front pages - by pressing their puffy faces against the

windows of

the heavy

Ford and gesturing to him with a leering violence, an obscene bonhomie. Andrew Ridgeley gives no indication that he has noticed them. 'I

You

decide not to mention

it.

can't believe the suburbs,' he says.

Andrew always got

a reaction.

George: Girls really liked him. People wanted to be him. Which for someone

who was

like

same colour as a lot of the people they took the piss out of was quite remarkable. There was never any prejudice towards me but there was towards Andrew - because of the colour of his skin. He the

wasn't looked upon as having a father

and

half-Italian.

Pakistani.

He

got

People called

some of

who was

Andrew

half-Egyptian

a Paki,

meaning a seemed

that but the prejudice never

him because he was so popular. And the minute anyone got to know Andrew they never thought of him in those terms, which says a lot about racism. If an individual is

to occur to

that strong, then race never enters into

it.

Andrew didn't have an awkward adolescence, I've never known him to have an awkward time. He was a combination all the things kids want to be. He looked good, he dressed good and he thought he was a good footballer. We used to have a laugh, we had the same sense of humour. I think one of the reasons he liked me was because I knew a lot about music. You see, all he knew at that age was that he wanted to be famous. He didn't care if it was a football player

of

30

1975- 1977 or a pop star or whatever as

we grew up

together,

I

- he just wanted to be famous. And encouraged him musically - in terms

it. What I got from him were the aspirations to become the type of person I wanted to be seen as. It was a good exchange.

of giving his time, energy and interest to

The boys who were

destined to

become

the

the suburbs had corresponding bloodlines

were English, fathers

who were

Sam and Dave of - mothers who

first-generation immigrants.

Jack Panos and Albert Mario Ridgeley even come from the same corner of the Mediterranean - the distance between

and Albert's home in Alexandria in Egypt being somewhat less than the distance between London and Glasgow or Paris and Marseilles or Barcelona and Madrid. Albert Ridgeley's mother was Italian, his father an Egyptian Jew, who was educated at an English school in Alexandria as

Jack's village in Cyprus

the sun

was

Andrew:

finally

going

down on

the British Empire.

My father learned to put up with a lot of prejudice.

You can imagine

the problems that would have beset him in an English school in Alexandria in the late 1940s. He is a very liberal man and I grew up under the impression that everyone was equal because I was never taught anything different. His mother died in 1953 and he left Egypt with his father three years later, at the time of the Suez crisis. They were on the boat coming over and my dad wanted some film for his camera. There was a small shop on board with a little list Kodak, Fujicolor, and Tampax. My dad said - I'll have a packet of Tampax for my camera. They arrived in England with absolutely nothing.

Albert Ridgeley had a tremendous facility for languages.

He

went to St Andrew's University where he studied Russian and German to add to the Egyptian, English, French and Italian that he already had. joined the Royal Air Force

and

31

later

ENTER THE VOMIT FOUNTAIN The Russian and German were put to use when he did what later became known in the Ridgeley household as his 'undercover stint' in Berlin. Then he met a young English schoolteacher called Jennifer, they married and he found work in the Home Counties with a camera company. It was a standing joke in the family that Albert joined the firm because his experience on the boat to England had led him to believe that

photography and sex are inextricably linked. Albert and Jennifer's first child was a boy called Paul who was very quickly followed by a second son just over a year later. Andrew John Ridgeley was born in Windlesham, Surrey, on 26 January 1963. An instrumental called 'Dance On!' by The Shadows had just replaced a rather grim tribute to the single life called 'Bachelor Boy' by Cliff Richard and the very same Shadows at the top of the charts. The Ridgeley family moved from Egham to Bushey when their youngest child was five years old and there they stayed. By the time he met young Georgios in 1975, the young Andrew had become used to the easy affection and admiration he seemed to inspire in his peers. But perhaps somewhere in the back of his mind he wondered how he could possibly make all this last beyond his schooldays. For no celebrity peaks faster than that of the school classroom. faster than the little light of the playground.

George was

a

tion in Cyprus,

No

star fades

good boy. Apart from that shoplifting aberralittle Georgios was definitely a good kid. He

gazed thoughtfully at his insects, he spent hours with his music. He was sweet to his sisters, he did what he was told. He grew up used to affection and treats, the deprived part of

childhood beyond the reach of his young memory. He was taken to watch Arsenal Football Club play (though he was never crazy about sport). He was even pampered with the parental nightmare - a drum kit for Christmas.

his

The first time he revealed himself to be as strong-willed as he was sweet-natured - and there were later to be people in

32

1975- 1977 his career

who,

to their cost, mistook that affable, easy-going

nature for a sign of weakness

- was when, aged

refused to take an examination that to attend a private school.

of his parents was

obnoxious

little

when he

eleven, he

would have enabled him

The second time he

defied the will

home

refused to stop bringing

that

Ridgeley boy.

George: After

I

- which — my dad gave up on

refused to go to a private school

killed my parents financially me career-wise. I didn't want to go to a private school because my friends would have called me a sissy. Plus would have

would have

I

want to be with those kind of people. Lots of reasons! Anyway, my dad gave up on me when he saw I had no interest in trying to get to university. He was convinced that I was going to be a liability to him when I was thirty, always coming to him for money. Which, in fact, I still do - I don't carry cash around with me. Like the Queen! My parents used to let me bring home anyone I liked - but been intimidated by

they didn't like

and

it

Andrew

than they were used to

really didn't

I

at all.

my

He was much more

confident

friends being, he didn't have any of

when

the inhibitions or cautions that most people feel

they

walk into someone else's home. He was never like that, he was always himself. And he got my mum and dad's backs up straight away because he was totally comfortable - he never called my mum Auntie Lesley or anything! They didn't like that at all - and they were blaming him for my worsening grades at school. And, of course, they were right Yog - which is what my closest friends and family call me comes from Andrew. He was at my house and heard my sisters or mother calling me Georgios - Yorgos - which they would shorten to just Yorg. And so Andrew went back to school and .

said,

to

ho-ho-ho,

it's

really

.

funny round at his house, they all like Yoghurt, innit? So I used A lot of my teachers used to

him Yog. Yog - ho-ho - it's get called Yoghurt a lot too.

call

.

33

ENTER THE VOMIT FOUNTAIN me George-gee-os, which is a dumb English way to pronounce Georgios, and that really annoyed me. But most of my friends, because of Andrew, ended up just calling me Yog. call

Andrew: house

I

remember

in Radlett.

What

the

first

surprised

time

I

was

invited to his

me was how

wealthy they

would have thought that George would be a different character coming from a background like that - it was only later that I realized his mum and dad had started out on an economic and class level that was very similar to my parents'. seemed to

be.

I

His father's an immigrant, a foreigner, my dad's the same, and they both married these very, very English girls, and I suppose that those girls took a risk when they married the foreigners. I had never thought about it until my mother pointed out that

it

wasn't exactly the thing to do in those days.

But we were

just friends like

any other friends. What kept

it

was that we had a laugh and, as with any relationship, you make up for deficiencies in each other's character. Between a husband and wife, between friends, it's always the same. You make up for what the other one hasn't got. There are parts of his character and what he is that make up for what I don't have. When we are together we are more of a force than we are apart. We found we had an awful lot in common and bonded a very strong relationship right from the start. And we had an awful lot of fun. An awful lot. We have always been

together

able to laugh together.

George has a really good sense of come out now, I don't feel that he gets the opportunity to explore his wit so much these days. At school I don't think he did an awful lot of work and I

humour but

it

doesn't

did next to nothing.

I just couldn't be bothered with it. I did by so that I wouldn't get sent up in front of the headmaster. Anything for a quiet life. Neither of us were

enough

to get

interested in school

beyond the

A

social sense, as a

forum, that's what school was. That's really good.

place.

34

meeting

when

it

was

1975- 1977 roll's last stand, was dominating the headlines by 1977. Andrew and George were into Genesis and Queen and Elton John, artists who were content to build on the

Punk, rock and

musical traditions of the 1960s rather than smash them

down

all

an orgy of three-chord nihilism. But the punks despised how fat and grotesque the great dinosaur called rock music had become. They loathed the stadium status of the music industry's platinum acts, they sneered at the heroes of the counter culture who couldn't go out to buy an Art Deco lamp without a line of South American marching powder. It was Jubilee Year in Great Britain, and the bunting flapped in the shabby English sunlight to celebrate Queen Elizabeth's twenty-five years on the throne. 'God Save The Queen', leered Johnny Rotten and The Sex Pistols, mocking the epidemic of feudal banality, the rampant patriotic fervour, and questions were asked in Parliament about this latest in

threat to the nation's youth.

The Clash, The Jam, The Buzzcocks, The - punk was the cultural equivalent of three days and nights on amphetamines (the favourite tipple of these spike-haired rascals). It was quite glorious fun while it lasted but all too soon it was to collapse from terminal exhaustion. No movement could maintain that blinding pace for very long. In the morning after the great punk ball, it sometimes seemed that punk's biggest achievement was that it had made The

Pistols,

Stranglers

flared trousers unfashionable.

But there was something else - the first law of punk. Younger musicians than The Sex Pistols and their peers, the

who were

to start the Ska revival of the golden rule with them into the future. The first law of punk was - you can do it. Play an instrument - you can do it. Form a band - you can do it. Go

provincial ex-punks late 1970s,

would carry

this

on stage - what's stopping you? Only you The provincial ex-punks who were about to start the Two-Tone heatwave of the late 1970s and early 1980s would .

35

.

.

ENTER THE VOMIT FOUNTAIN be for ever grateful to punk for teaching them this invaluable lesson of demystification.

ing law

- was

The

to be passed

first

on

to

law of punk - that liberatGeorge and Andrew by the

upbeat strains of the Ska bands. In the meantime, apart from Andy's soft spot for The Jam, punk left them unmoved. But there was a party waiting just

around the corner. They were about to be awakened - stirred, inflamed - by another music in a different

galvanized, dancehall.

36

Jack the Lad. This picture stayed hidden in the family vault until

eighteen.

I

was about

Bad example,

etc.

The young me. with Dad and my

sisters.

Regent's Park methinks.

Love me. seven

I

love

turned

my

donkey.

David Austin and me snowed.

My father's village.

down sponsorship

in

my

offers

Patriki.

At the tender age of

from Diet Coke and Bergasol.

garden, back in the 1960s

when

it

still

Melanie. Yioda and me.

I

think this

course.

is

the only existing shot of us

As vou can

see. there's

all together.

That's

no family resemblance whatsoever.

Mum.

of

A school photo.

Notice the hair

is

beginning to curl, the cheeks are filling out.

soon there won't be a

to smile about.)

An

early photographic session. Nice jacket,

shame about

the carpet.

lot

Gary Farrow.

Simon Napier- Bell.

Dick Leahy.

Jazz Summers.

Rob Kahane and Michael Lippman.

Andros.

Deon Estus and me Help

Me

Shirlie

1

together.

in

Japan. 1985.

The

Holliman and me. 'George Michael

up,' she says.

'It's

next year

we recorded 'Heav

Deon has worked with me longer than anybody

not someone

I

know*

is

else.

someone who has been made

On stage with Paul Young at Wembley

With

Aretha

in

Detroit.

It

Arena. 1986.

was a proud moment.

Ms Franklin wears glitter)' make-up, which stuck

in

Unfortunately,

mv beard for two days.

5

SOMEONE LIKE

A

HERO

(1978-1980)

The month that George Panos became a teenager, the cover of New York magazine had featured a crowd dancing in a New York City nightclub. 'Tribal Rites Of The New Saturday Night by Nik Conn,' it said on the cover. It is unlikely that the June 1976 copy of New York made it to Bushey - but the phenomenon it was to inspire certainly did. Entitled 'Another Saturday Night', Nik Cohn's story told of gang of 'third-generation Brooklyn Italian' kids growing up Bay Ridge who escaped the mind-numbing drudgery of their lives in the strobe lights and sweat of a disco called 2001 Odyssey. The story was typical Nik Cohn - a tale of teen angst and spotty martyrdom blown up to epic proportions. The young male lead, Vincent, of 'Another Saturday Night' was not just a kid who liked to go out and boogie at the weekend. He was mythic, tortured, heroic - lost in music, caught in a trap. It was impossible to know what was straight reportage and what was the product of Nik Cohn's brilliant, overheated imagination. When Vincent - renamed Tony a

in

Manero

in the film

-

tried to explain to a mysterious stranger

what he wanted from dancing, what he wanted from life, he seemed to speak for every kid who ever tried to transcend his existence under the lights of Saturday night. 'I

want

to be a star,' he said.

'Such as?' asked the 'Well,' said Vincent,

man

in the suit.

'someone

37

like a hero.'

SOMEONE LIKE

HERO

A

Twenty-four hours after 'Another Saturday Night' appeared on the street, Robert Stigwood had bought the film rights. Two years later, Saturday Night Fever came to Bushey. For some it was a cultural lightning bolt as profound as Elvis had been in the 1950s or The Beatles had been in the 1960s. The soundtrack became the bestselling record of all time (until the release of Michael Jackson's Thriller). It revitalized the career of the Brothers Gibb (who made their warbling contributions to the film without even seeing the inspired

screenplay),

a

plague

of

dance-orientated

films,

prompted outbreaks of disco madness on both sides of the Atlantic. But more than any of this - and just as Presley and The Beatles and The Sex Pistols had worked their wonder on earlier generations — Saturday Night Fever changed lives.

Andrew: those

little

It

knocked our socks off. I wasn't like one of who saw The Sound of Music a hundred

old ladies

and forty times - once did the trick. It wasn't just the film, it was everything it triggered - which was modern disco, modern club music. Everything comes from there. There was disco before Saturday Night Fever but after that it all caught fire. It revolutionized dance music. And us. I used to love dancing at school discos. I always fancied myself as a ballet dancer when I was a kid but I never got round to taking lessons. My mother talked about it at one

point and

I

was

never had the

all

money

for the idea but for a start

.

.

George never used to go to school shyness.

never happened. She

discos.

used to love going out to discos.

I

Chatting up the

Not

it

.

girls,

getting a dance. But

it

I

guess

it

was

Most boys

do.

wasn't his

gig.

Not until Saturday Night Fever. stems from his family life, growing up with his and his two sisters because his dad was away at work all

until later.

A

mum

lot

of

the time.

it

He had grown up

with

38

sisters

and

I

had grown up

1978- 1980 with

my

brother and boys. That's very

got girlfriends but the

I

much

don't hang out with

company of men,

as

as

girls.

Edmund Blackadder

I

put

it is

now.

I've

always prefer it.

But the world of boys and girls was very different from George's home life. That's what those early school discos were - and it took him a long time to adjust to that.

George had a lack of confidence personal aesthetic. That was Fever. Completely cured

expression for George.

was when

that

it

He

it.

is

head.

No

white

We

Dancing was a means of

And

when he began it

own

George's bright red suit came

is,

self-

and

to express

turned our social

went out and bought our dungarees,

suit.

And we

in his physicality, his

solved by Saturday Night

a great dancer, he really

began, that was

his physicality, his sexuality. its

all

life

on

tight cords.

later.

used to go to London, to really 'dive'

little

discos,

and there we would dance. We went to a lot of local places too but we were not too keen on those because you could never tell when you were going to get a bottle in your face. The clubs in the suburbs are always more violent than those in the inner city.

But there was not much violence

Bushey Meads. It - though we had our fair share of hard-nuts. After school, a few of our friends joined the Marines. If you went to Bushey Meads, you either joined the Marines or Wham! We practised dancing at home, we practised dancing when we went out, we got all of our moves together. We were very much into the pair dancing thing. Dancing on your own is such a waste of fucking time. The great thing about dancing is wasn't too bad.

that

it is

It

the only

was

way

at

a bit of a poofs' school

there

is

to get that close to a beautiful

woman you do

it.

And

have never met before. Convention allows you to that's what dancing is all about.

George: Before Saturday Night Fever I was blind to that kind of music. You didn't hear a lot of dance on the radio,

39

SOMEONE LIKEAHERO everybody was still into the 1960s and early 1970s idea of getting into your own thing at home. Saturday Night Fever got me out to clubs. By the time I was fifteen I was even

had the money to go to clubs. Andrew and I worked out these routines that we could do at school discos. That would have been when I was fourteen - I had just got my first contact lenses. I put my contacts in and suddenly realized that I wasn't busking so that I

was

I

a terrible dancer but

Quasimodo. I actually started getting invited to parties. Before I was the kid with the sense of humour who would muck about and everybody liked but who didn't get thought about when it came to parties because they didn't expect him to get that

off with anyone.

So

I

got

my

contacts.

The

saying he's too young, he's too young, but

badly I

.

.

I

optician kept

wanted them so

.

used to babysit over the road from our house and

Andrew

would come over. We would put on 'Stuff Like That' by Quincy Jones and make up a little dance routine where we would walk rather stupidly across the room. Not one of our best. Then one night I got so drunk I burst a blood vessel in my eye. My eye was red for three weeks. That was the night I came home saying, I'm so ugly, no girl will ever like me - but it had less to do with self-doubt than it did with the bottle of Spanish wine I had drunk. I wasn't racked by self-doubt, but I still didn't feel very confident. This would have been the second summer of school parties. It was the time of spin-thebottle, cider and everybody fucking in the bedrooms. Stuff like that. This was the pre-AIDS generation. I don't suppose the current generation of fourteen- or fifteen-year-olds are very

Maybe they are a bit by now. But although I was in and part of the group I wasn't convinced that 1 was attractive or popular. That was still a way off.

different.

there

Andrew:

I

remember the time he got so drunk he went That was the only occasion it happened to

right over the edge.

40

1978- 1980 him.

I

used to do

regularity. his

own

was

It

it

with nauseating regularity. Nauseating

a cider adolescence.

George had no sense of

physical attraction. But then he just wasn't physically

attractive so

I

don't suppose he would.

George and Andrew's schooldays recall the old Beach Boys line, 'The bad guys know us and they leave us alone.' They were pacifist hooligans: disrupting lessons with the jeering mob at the back of the class but shying away from the more violent aspects of playground rites. Neither of them were picked on - George was always one of the biggest kids in the class, Andy always the dazzling local star - and their roles as class jesters, green-blazer clowns, lip

always quick with irreverent

as the teacher gazed balefully at the

back of the

deeply impressed the more slow-witted hard

class,

men whom

they

palled around with.

George: Andrew and I were a little army by this time. He had luminous soul-boy gear - a sky blue, short-sleeved shirt with a shocking pink tie and cerise satin trousers. And everyone used to say, is he gay? I used to say, no, I promise. They didn't say,

people

derogatory.

much

is

he queer? They said,

who would I

is

he gay? Because the

ask would not necessarily be trying to be

used to say, no, no,

it's all

right.

It

didn't take

But he was shocking in Bushey. A bit later he would do things like turn up at my house on New Year's Day when all the Greek family were there - and Andrew would arrive in a kilt. to be shocking in Bushey.

George delighted

in his friend's

outrageousness - the

Andy invariably got away with it. They spent hours in George's bedroom

way

that

taping spoof radio

shows, rolling on the floor almost paralysed with laughter as they parodied the great cultural mish-mash of the new commercial radio

- concerned agony 41

aunts, inane jingles,

dumb

SOMEONE LIKE ads.

They sampled excerpts from

HERO

real radio

own

bastardized them, supplying their merrily tinkered

A

away on drums and

shows and then

soundtrack as they

guitar.

Andrew's favour-

tape was the one in which they sent up Saturday Night

ite

Fever, doing a hilarious

of the scene where

-

well,

it

John Travolta

seat of a car with a girl

who

cracked them up - travesty is

getting sweaty in the back

turns out to be a boy.

Already George had most of the friends who were going to him a lifetime. Apart from Andrew, he was still close to

last

Andros and to his childhood friend David Mortimer be renamed David Austin because 'Mortimer' reminded him of 'Meg Mortimer', the fictional harridan who ran an overwrought motel in a popular soap opera called Crossroads. The boy Mortimer was a more accomplished musician than Andy, so when George started earning club money by busking, it was David who accompanied him to the overpopulated pitches of London's West End where harassed street musicians ply their trade and try to avoid the police. his cousin

-

to

later

George: I would pretend that I was going to school but I would go to David's house and then we would go to London. I was fifteen. David would bring his twelve-string guitar. There was a really good pitch in Green Park tube station - it was good because the police didn't often move you on from there but you had to get there early. You rarely got more than a fifteen- or twenty-minute stint anywhere before the police moved you on. We used to do David Bowie numbers and some Elton John songs. We had written a few things and we did those too. And Beatles things.

I

loved

it,

I

loved busking.

I

loved the

way

it

sounded - the way the voice and guitar would reverberate down the tube station. And I loved it that we were good and that we were getting paid for it.

And

I

loved the exhibitionism about busking.

hibitionism. But only

if

it

is

in

42

I

love ex-

front of a lot of people.

1978- 1980 Exhibitionism in front of thousands

becomes

faceless.

I

is

easiest because

everyone

get really embarrassed at a party or a

if someone asks me to sing. I can't stand it. And my most embarrassing moments as a performer were those first rehearsals at Top of the Pops when there were only eight technicians there. Doing it in front of just a few people always

dinner

freaked

me

out. Exhibitionism needs an audience.

As the great disco

fall-out

D

from Saturday Night Fever began to

change, with the euphoric hedonism of boogie nights giving

way

to the po-faced

dawn

of jazz-funk, the Bushey soul boys

decided to look elsewhere for their kicks.

Two-Tone

fulfilled

most of their needs, the Ska revival of the late 1970s providing the most fun they had known since Travolta first strutted his swarthy

stuff.

Two-Tone was

a spirited revival of Ska, reggae's jaunty,

upbeat Jamaican forebear. It was the product of punk's defeated army, specifically those punks who had been too

from London to participate in the anarchic and 1977. The youthful speed and habitual sneer of punk was echoed in the multiracial funkiness of bands like The Specials, The Beat and The Selecter. Madness, the 'Nutty Boys' of Two-Tone, were from Camden Town in north London, but the Two-Tone label was based in Coventry and essentially the music was the revenge of the provinces. Two-Tone revived the Mod sensibility of the early 1960s and soon Top of the Pops, the Ellis Island for new English pop, was brimming with young people dressed in mohair suits, white socks and midnight shades. George and Andrew were impressed. When, after much agonizing, they finally formed their first band in the summer of 1979, the group was a Ska outfit whose name attempted to conjure up all the hand-made mohair smoothness of Two-Tone. The Executive were formed after the summer exams and, following months of heated rehearsals in various living rooms,

young and too

far

revelry of 1976

43

SOMEONE LIKE they played their

first

show on

5

A

HERO

November,

a misty Bonfire

Bushey where Boy Scouts usually practised tying their knots. The band invited all their friends and, despite months of acrimony in rehearsal, The Executive suddenly came good on the night. Bushey legend remembers George Michael's stage debut as a success. The Executive consisted of George, Andrew, Andrew's brother Paul, David Austin and Andrew Leaver. This other Andrew was born on the same day as Andrew Ridgeley, who remembers him being exceptionally talented (Andrew Leaver night,

in

Methodist church

a

hall

in

was to die of cancer at the tragically early age of twenty). By the time The Executive were a performing band, Andrew Ridgeley had left school for the leisurely academic life of Cassio College. George stayed on, coasting through his Art and English Literature courses (he had wandered away from Music Theory), and for the first time it seemed that their childhood friendship was going to fade away. George: The friendship would probably have ended then it

hadn't been for the band. This was the only time

remember

I

if

can

between Andrew and me because he went and became terribly adult. Suddenly, he was a serious fashion victim. He was wearing really outrageous clothes that looked absolutely terrible. And taking drugs and friction

off to college

stuff.

He

thought that he had it made, that he had everything And at that time there was a lot of friction between us and the only time we would actually talk or socialize was at the sussed.

band practices. We both still believed in that but we were having a bad time between the two of us. We were anyway at the time when people normally drift apart - and I think that would have happened to us if we hadn't had the band. And it was on the day he

left

Andrew:

school that he told

On

Friday

we made

44

me we should form a

band.

the decision to form a

band

1978- 1980 and on Saturday we were in George's front room - with David Austin getting an electric shock. I was the one who insisted we get the band together. We had talked about doing it for such a long time. George said - after the 'O' Levels. He wanted to get his 'O' Levels because his mum, his parents, were expecting it. So he said it had to be after that. Then he said

-

I

wanted

to

the motivation. But I

And I just said - no, George, it's make music and have a good time. I had

after the 'A' Levels.

tonight.

George

.

.

.

George had the

vision.

why George stayed at school. I felt but George gave me the impression that he at Bushey Meads. The Sixth Form common

could never understand

was growing up, was happy staying room was this little clique that just didn't have any relationship to what I thought growing up should be about. So I went to Cassio College - full of really hot-looking women. Fabulous.

I

And totally different from school. You were an adult at college. Well, you weren't, but you thought you were. School was stale. Really stale. I had to get out. I went to Cassio and Cassio was fucking vibrant. I think George thought he was a grown-up. I just wanted to have as much fun as possible — fun being one of the major themes of my life, as I think you can tell by now. So I went to Cassio and now I look back on it and I think - you were there for two years and you didn't read one book. Not one. I was having too much fun. I didn't have my first proper girlfriend until I was sixteen and at Cassio. And then it was like — it's Miller time. I was growing away from George a bit then. At school we had been like a couple of little schoolgirls - always together, always giggling, totally inseparable. It wasn't like that any more. But the band held us together. Absolutely fabulous.

George:

I

only started to

feel

confident with girls

when

I

was sixteen. And I'm sure it's not a coincidence that Andrew was out of the picture then. I didn't have to deal with his shadow any more. Nobody was there to watch me fail.

45

SOMEONE LIKE

A

HERO

Their friendship would have gone the way of all the finite bonds of childhood if it hadn't been for the band, their mutual life. The Executive banged out the of Ska - 'Rude Boy', their theme syncopations sunny happy,

insurance against adult

tune,

was written

at

their

nothing light-hearted about their

in

hysterics

parents'

living

- smoking

first life in

rehearsal

- but

there

was

the band. Their rehearsals

rooms were fraught with amateur and screaming

amplifiers, electric shocks

fits.

The band dropped down to a four-piece when Andrew left. They went into a sixteen-track studio to cut a demo tape, recording their first-born 'Rude Boy' plus a Ska cover of the old Andy Williams' tearjerker, 'Can't Get Used To Losing You'. The most bizarre part of The Executive's canon was their Ska version of Beethoven's 'Fur Elise\ Leaver

With their touring circuit extended to include Cassio Colwhere Andrew Ridgeley was taking his hedonism mas-

lege,

The Executive demo

tape began its ill-fated journey and Repertoire departments of the record companies. George and Andrew would take time off from school and college, travel to the capital and then sit around in the waiting rooms of the music business until some lethargic talent-spotter finally agreed to see them. But even when they were granted an audience, the man who lolled in his chair on the other side of the desk invariably pressed the STOP button before their tape had gone very far. 'Come back in the next millennium,' seemed to be the general consensus among the major labels, thought Andrew, and even those sympathetic to the Ska cause failed to offer them anything resembling a deal. It was part of the young band experience - after the exhilaration of first performing live comes the long, disheartening round of record company rejection. Andrew was cocky enough to attribute the negative response of the record companies to the advanced ages and modest IQs of the men who staffed the industry's A&R

terclass,

around the

Artist

A&R

46

1978- 1980 George was confident enough to think that

departments.

perhaps 'Rude Boy' was sufficiently derivative to deserve the rejection

it

had heaped upon

it.

He would do

all

better next

time.

The combination of his contact lenses and a new distance from the intimidating presence of his friend Andrew had encouraged George to come out of his hirsute shell over the last year. He was still some way from regarding the mirror as any kind of pal but he had begun the process of personal metamorphosis that would ultimately transform him into what he wanted to be. Despite the disappointing rejection by the blow-dried custodians of the music business, he felt that things were going his way at last. Andros Georgiou noticed the change in his cousin. Andros: The only person I can remember growing up with We used to get on the bus and go to see each other every weekend. Then I started reading custom car mags and is

George.

He was still into his music John album, concentrating when Top of the Pops came on. He didn't watch that show the way everyone else does - he concentrated. When I got to about

he wasn't at

all

interested.

listening to the latest Elton

fifteen

and started driving, fucking around,

cars,

stealing

whatever, he wasn't into any of that. So for about six months

when we were into

my

Then sixteen.

cars I

fifteen, sixteen,

and he was into

I

remember meeting him

We

lived in Purley.

completely changed person.

didn't see

him because

I

was

his music. I was and - he was a a beard - he was

off the bus just before

He got He had

off the bus

long hair, always real hairy - and he was wearing this Ska second-hand old man's suit. I thought, what a wanker.

suit,

a

He had been going out to London clubs, to Le Beat Route, and he said - you have to come. So I went with him and I was outraged at what was going on around me. I never knew these things were going on out there! Just walking around London 47

SOMEONE LIKE at eleven o'clock at night

been doing cool about I

this for a

A

HERO

was outrageous

to me. But he

while so he was used to

had

he was very

it,

it.

My

hated school. So did he, but he worked.

parents

always used to say, Yog always works, Yog wants to do well. I had a hard time because I went to a tough school where they

would beat you up twelve and sixteen bluffed it

was

my way

different.

Between the ages of never really went to school - then I

for being half-Greek. I

into college

and got

a diploma.

With George I remember

His parents pushed him so much.

once he asked his dad for a little Portastudio for his birthday and his dad said - you're not getting that rubbish. He

bought him a pair of guns instead. Antique guns. George has still got them. His dad said, I paid five grand for these and they will be worth thirty in ten years' time. Get an education, they told him. You're never going to do anything with music.

The demise

of

The Executive turned out

to be

sad natural deaths of adolescence, that time

one of those

when childhood

- and schoolboy bands - once so intense and important, suddenly run out of steam. David Austin had promised his fellow band members a gig at Harrow College, friendships

where he was taking what Andrew smirkingly referred to 'an air conditioning course'.

Harrow was

as

London than The

closer to

and more of a genuine stop on the gig circuit Executive had been used to in the past. This was their big break. The Executive were alleged to be supporting wrinkled

punk

The Vibrators. There was only a week before when George and Andrew - prompted by a unease that they couldn't quite put their finger on -

veterans,

the big night certain

called the social secretary of the college

and discovered that he had never heard of them. George and Andrew were incensed and The Executive were swiftly put out of their misery. In the band's aftermath, David went off to work with a

48

1978- 1980 group

in

Thailand, Paul Ridgeley defected to a jazz-funk

and George and Andrew attempted

outfit

form a new had make any real commit-

group with some older musicians. But these too

many domestic

ment

responsibilities to

to

local players

young group crackling with ambition. was only the two of them now. And adult

to a

So

it

life

was

closing in fast.

Me and my dad were having this big argument. were driving in the car and I was playing him this demo tape. Apart from 'Rude Boy' I had done something with David and I was plugging this thing around all the record companies as well. And I remember playing it in the car to my dad and he was going on about how I had to realize that there was no future in this for me. He had been telling me all this for years and I had given up arguing with him long ago - I knew he wouldn't take any notice. But now I really had a go at him. I said, you have been rubbing this shit into my face for the last five years. I told him, there is no way I am not going to try to do this so the least you could do is give me some moral support. George:

We

'All seventeen-year-olds

'No, Dad,'

I

said.

'All

want

to be

pop

stars,'

he said.

twelve-year-olds want to be pop

stars.'

49

6 I

BELIEVE IN JOY! (1981)

George Panos left school just as England appeared to be coming unravelled. The long, hot summer of 1981 began with the first warm nights of spring and didn't end until Prince Charles married his podgy kindergarten teacher in St Paul's Cathedral at the end of July. In between, England burned. The sight of young rioters hurling bottles, bricks and Molotov cocktails at lines of slowly advancing riot police, the urban battleground

lit

by the ferocious night-lights of

burning buildings, became a regular item on news programmes

around the world, and a major part of what people thought about when they thought about England. Once it had been a swinging land, the Merry Olde England of 1960s myths, full of dolly birds and pop groups, red buses and bobbies on bicycles two by two. Now the English were famous for their riots.

The riots began in Southall, London, when forty policemen were injured in fighting between a thousand skinheads and Asian youths. This was to be the last time that there was any form of apartheid between the rioters and when Brixton went up in flames shortly after the Battle of Southall, white and black youths fought together against the police. The riots were stoked by record unemployment (two and a half million

and

rising

pression), racial tension

inner city black youths

-

the highest figures since the Deespecially

- and by

50

between the police and

the wonderful bargains

it

was

1981 possible to pick

up when looting an

electronic store at

two

in

the morning.

The

riots

spread to

all

corners of the country, with insurrec-

tions breaking out in Liverpool,

Luton, Reading, Chester,

Wolverhampton, Hull and Peckham in London. The rioters and the police faced each other like rival street gangs. Night after hot summer night, neighbourhoods burned, shops were looted, heads were broken. There seemed to be no end Preston,

to

it all.

After the stylized sedition of the punks, with

all their

whining about having 'No Future' and being the flowers in society's dustbin, this seemed like the real thing - genuine anarchy, outright rebellion from a lost generation which, unlike the punks who had carved out quite lucrative careers for themselves in the entertainment

industry,

really

didn't

seem to have any future in Mrs Thatcher's new England. Monetarist policies were forcing inflation down - but everything else seemed to be falling apart. George remained largely untouched by the insurrections in the street. While many a young rioter was eagerly looking forward to burning another police car or looting another shop, George was peacefully contemplating buying his next pair of dungarees. Indeed, his set was so far removed from the violent sedition going on all around that Andros, close friend and cousin, was even contemplating a career in the Metropolitan police force.

George could not remain totally immune from peer Even if he wasn't out in the streets building barricades and spoiling his new dungarees, a few semi-radical thoughts found their way into his life via records by such angry young men as Elvis Costello and The Specials. Although George's first single would soon be hailed as an anthem for the young unemployed, he would never politicize his own music. Even when he sang about the unemployment line he would still sound like someone who preferred a new pair of dungarees to a new England. The only party he was Still,

pressure.

51

I

BELIEVE

IN JOY!

was one where you brought a bottle of England was burning without him - though he was happy to buy the soundtrack. interested in joining

cider.

George:

It

was

a college consciousness.

records

I

was buying, it

I

was

wasn't, simply because of the

the music

I

was

listening to.

is

is

That college

always there

was much more dominant.

on me was the thought, loving disco

The

thought

I

it

thing, that political consciousness,

but back then

I

but

completely untouched by

Its

in

music

ultimate effect

not enough.

had dominated the pop charts form of such current heart-throbs as Adam Ant and Shakin' Stevens, who racked up five of the year's number ones between them, was interrupted by a sombre note of reality from George's Two-Tone heroes The Specials. Their 'Ghost Town' went to number one at the height of the riots and encapsulated the fear, loathing and discontent that were abroad in the country. 'Ghost Town' was one of those rare occasions when what was happening at the commercial end of pop music chimed with what was happening in the streets. Across the Irish Sea, Belfast burned for eight days and nights after the death of IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands. light-hearted escapism that

in the

Down

in

Dublin, the Irish police baton-charged the thousands

who attempted to storm the British Embassy. end of June came the ultimate assault on English authority - six shots were fired at Queen Elizabeth as she rode her horse down The Mall for the Trooping of the Colour.

of protesters

And

at the

Assassination attempts, like riots, were very

-

much

in

vogue

than a year, John Lennon had been murdered outside the Dakota while Pope John Paul and President Reagan had both survived being shot - but the young man in The Mall in less

who

Queen turned out to have been firing blanks. seemed that perhaps Britain would survive the summer of 1981. Perhaps the thin fabric of English society shot at the

After that,

it

52

1981 would not be torn

The

riots

to shreds, perhaps they

continued for a while,

for skateboards or their

new-fangled

they had used that

life

like

Hula-hoops, and

were

some

now

all firing

the police hid behind

riot shields instead of the old

when

the riots

was returning

first

to normal.

blanks.

short-lived craze

dustbin

began, but soon

When

it

lids

seemed

Prince Charles tied

the knot with his blushing virgin bride in front of a television

audience of seven hundred million,

enjoyed such a cosy image.

life in

England had rarely

One wedding ceremony and

it

seemed that the baying mob was ready to tug its forelock again. The happy couple were still on their honeymoon when 'Ghost

Town' was

replaced at the top of the charts by 'Green

Door', a happy slab of showbiz lobotomy by the slick Shakin'

Unemployment was

were were still there but it seemed that revolution was off the menu. England had survived its darkest hour since the war. And though there would be hard times ahead - in a few months unemployment would top the three million mark - the riots never returned on that scale. Before the next summer came around, Mrs Thatcher would be dispatching her Armada to rescue the sheep farmers of the Falklands from the heel of the Argentine jackboot and the country was once more plunged into the warm Radox bath of patriotism. The Royal Wedding spirit seemed set to run and run. Only the unemployed, the monstrous army of the idle, were left out in the cold, and they were finding sympathy increasingly hard to come by.

Stevens. still

still

rotting, all the causes of the

'My

rising, the inner cities

summer

riots

father did not riot,' a Conservative politician called

Norman

Tebbit told his party conference. 'He got on his bike and looked for work.' On your bike became the great cry of 1981 - to the right it meant that a man (presumably a man with a bicycle) has the power to shape his own destiny, to the left it was seen as a symbol of the heartless nature of the kind of

Government

that

about to dominate the decade on both sides of the Atlantic.

53

was

I

BELIEVE

IN JOY!

all the unemployed were quietly weeping at soup George and Andrew would later sometimes be portrayed as emissaries of the Conservative dream and George Michael in particular - a self-made millionaire who had been

But not

kitchens.

born

in

Mrs Thatcher's

constituency of Finchley

-

as

some

ambassador for the grasping, upwardly mobile spirit of the age. In fact, they were closer to the Conservative nightmare - enjoying the best days of their life on the fruits of part-time jobs and social security, whooping it up on welfare, living the easy lives of the happy scrounger. sort of

The

year 1981

was the worst time

for

fifty

years to be

leaving school. But the dole queue never held any horror for

George and Andy. Constantly flirting with the black economy, handouts and snoozing through assorted casual jobs

collecting

(George was more the casual worker, Andrew more the unemployment statistic), this was when they wrote the songs that they would build a career upon. This was when they wrote the lines - and you could take them straight, you could take them tongue in cheek, you could take them any way you wanted -

Vm a soul boy - I'm a dole boy Take pleasure

in leisure

-1

believe in joy!

George: There wasn't the optimism around that there had once been, but it was easy for us to be positive about the future. I mean, this is true - it was okay for Andrew to be on

was

living at home and he was a lazy want to go out to work. I was working at two jobs, and I was working hard, but I was coming home with £70 a week, which was like a dream come true. I was giving £25 a week to my parents and the rest was mine. And I had no other worries. I was independent of everybody. I knew that if anything really shitty happened at home then I could make it living on my own. I was eighteen and I felt that the way the media were

the dole because he

bastard

who

just

still

didn't

54

1981 representing kids things going

my

wrong

age was completely negative. There were in

terms of unemployment and

riots but

the media were giving the impression that everything

hopeless and you shouldn't even try to do anything.

1981 as the year that I worked. And the year that probably the happiest year I have ever had. I

worked on

a building

site,

I

was

a

DJ

I

I

was

think of

worked was

in a restaurant,

I

cinema usher. That last job was great. The only problem was that you had to watch all the films for three weeks at a time. I used to keep myself occupied by playing this game where I would memorize the film's dialogue and actually play it out just before it happened on screen. I used to time how long I could go getting every part of the script right. When I fucked up, that was what I had to beat next time. I saw Superman, Caligula, Airplane. I saw Airplane a lot.

was

a

'Doctor - surely you can't be serious.' 'I

am

serious

- and don't

call

me

Shirley.'

DJ I was working in a restaurant - the That was the worst, the absolute worst probably the most embarrassing thing that I have ever done in my life. Being a DJ is one thing but being a DJ in a restaurant is horrible because you are standing there and everybody's talking, their knives are going, the glasses are rattling and there's a bit of background music and everyone's well into their evening when suddenly the music stops and you say 'good evening, ladies AND GENTLEMEN, HOPE YOU ENJOYED YOUR MEAL HERE AT THE BEL AIR RESTAURANT.' And the whole place stops while everyone looks for where the noise came from. It was especially bad in my case because I was halfway behind this post in the middle of the room and some of them had no idea that I was going to be there. Half of them didn't know that the price of their dinner included a disco. So they were all staring at me. I swear I did it for nine months and even on the last night my hands became clammy

The

first

time

I

was

a

Bel Air near Bushey.

I

55

BELIEVE

I

IN JOY!

it was so embarrassing, it was so tacky and naff. was on my way to DJ at the Bel Air when I wrote 'Careless Whisper'. I have always written on buses, trains and in cars. These days it's planes - but for me writing has always been about boredom and movement. It always happens on journeys. With 'Careless Whisper' I remember exactly where it first came to me, where I came up with the sax line. I can remember very vaguely where I was when I wrote things after Wham! got off the ground - but with 'Careless Whisper' I remember exactly the time and place. I know it sounds really weird and a kind of romantic thing to say - but I remember exactly where it happened, where I was sitting on the bus, how I continued and everything. I remember I was handing the money over to the guy on the bus and I got this line, the sax line: der - der - der - der, der — der - der — der. Then he

because I

moved away and totally in

my

my

I

continued writing

head.

worked on

I

it

in

my

head.

for about three

I

wrote

months

it

in

head.

Andrew helped me put

it

it

have

down on

this great

sax or a vocal

tape.

in the finishing of I

melodic line.

it

when we

actually

went to Andrew one day and said line

but

I

don't

know

if it

I

should be a

So he said - sing it to me. And he said it goes with these chords I've got. And

that really sounds like

he had these four chords, the guitar

He

lived

in

lines.

awful, horrible

flat with Shirlie Holliman. They tried to live there because I think that Shirlie wanted to get out of her house at the time and in the evenings

we would

sit

this

there

really

and

try to write.

And I remember we we did a lot more

finished 'Careless Whisper' there. But really lyrical

than musical collaborations.

we did our demo of 'Careless Whisper' and a couple of other songs, I had been given the sack from the Bel Air for always turning up late and for not playing the music that the guy in charge wanted me to. The Eventually, by the time

place where

I

DJ'ed

after that

56

was a squash club -

I

was a

1981 restaurant

DJ who had

My DJ career had But the very

demo

been

been relegated to a health club DJ.

night

last

downhill.

all I

ever

of 'Careless Whisper'.

I

worked

knew

it

as a

DJ

I

played the

didn't matter

if I

got

had already given in my notice the week before. So right at the end of the night I played it and the floor filled. They had never heard it before and the floor filled. I remember thinking - that's a good sign. And I wondered what was going to happen to that song later into trouble because

.

.

I

.

.

.

.

on.

Andrew:

Shirlie

the day before

was my

my

girlfriend at that point.

eighteenth

birthday.

She was

I

met her

my

best

from George, and then she became my girlfriend and my best friend. For the whole of that period, during the end of my stay at Cassio, the three of us would hang out together. After George left school in the summer and was working at the cinema, we would all go swimming in the morning at Watford pool where Dave Austin was the attendant. George, Shirlie and I used to hang out together all the time. She was a big part of our thing. I knew of her at school but I had never spoken a word to her until the day before my eighteenth birthday. We were all very close. She had a car, she had wheels and later she would drive us about, but that was never the reason we were close. Never the reason. friend, apart

Shirlie

Holliman was

Andrew to

Ridgeley.

Martin

Kemp

a pretty teenage

Today she

is

of Spandau Ballet with a baby daughter, the

Moon, and half She went out with Andrew soon sing and dance her way through

smiling Harley

the striking blonde in

all

last,

there

of the duo Pepsi and Shirlie. after

the

meeting him and was to

Wham!

years (Shirlie

was

the band's early videos, the back-up

sandwich on all the tours). But was her friendship with the boys.

singer with a mouthful of

and

ex-punk when she met

a housewife superstar, married

57

first

BELIEVE IN JOY!

I

Holliman: Although we had gone to the same school, know Andrew then, I had only seen him around. I met him in a pub - the notorious Three Crowns, though I had thought better not say too much because I'm married now.

D I

Shirlie

didn't

I

of charisma, a real presence, and he was very

he had a

lot

stylish for

Bushey.

He had

And

didn't even

I

this

long

plait. It

was

his confidence

me and said - hello, Shirlie. know he knew my name. We just got instant. He started telling me about his

that struck me, he just

came up

to

it was so band and their singer - and I kept saying, oh no, I want to sing, you have to get rid of your singer. Not knowing it was

chatting,

George. I

wasn't actually doing anything musical and

them

that gave

me

A

it

I

couple of weeks after meeting

to George's house. then! But there

I

was meeting

- I never would have done

was working with horses be an AI - Assistant Instructor.

hadn't met them.

Training to

the chance

it if I

at the time.

Andrew he took me round

don't think he was at his most attractive

was a confidence and a charm about him that I I thought - my God, I have met two such

couldn't believe. nice people.

And

Andrew was

they were such an incredible balance because

was so sensible. But it was only when you actually got to two of them that you realized George was the more so flashy and George

wasn't an obvious thing.

know

the

It

and the one directing it all. was never a Saturday Night Fever victim. I used to be a punk. When I met them I didn't know what identity I wanted. Punk had gone dead. Andrew got me back into music again. I remember going round to George's house all the time and we would run up to his bedroom and put the music on. We used to practise the dance routines in his bedroom before we went out. None of us were working and we just used to dance round in George's bedroom all the time. I don't know what his mum used to think we were doing up there. Two boys and a girl and, after the dancing, coming out of there all hot and sweaty!

stable I

58

1981 all the time. We used to make up was so natural - the strongest point about it all and about what happened with Wham! was that it was just George entertaining himself. Because he has just got it so

We

used to play

just

stupid tapes. But

naturally to like.

it

He

it

seems that whatever he does everyone else seems selfish as he likes but it will always be

can be as

what everyone wants. We used to go swimming a lot and then into McDonald's. It was such a brilliant time, though George was obviously so much more aware than we were of what was happening. I just thought - this is my life. I would never have thought of in a song like, 'Wham Rap!'. George, being a one of those people who will always look back on things and warm to them. Because when I look back on those days I just think - oh my God. I know that I will never have another time like that in my life. To have that friendship with two boys, and just to be able to muck around all the time and not have any worries. It was all so innocent and your only aim was to have fun. It's not like now. I know I will never experience that again in my life. I think Andrew's grandmother

putting

it

down

Cancerian,

thought

it

is

was

like a love triangle thing

She thought - well!

But

it

really

who made

How

with the three of

us.

strange!

was something unique. Perhaps

it

was Andrew

that relationship between the three of us possible

because it was as if he could never give George up. I remember sometimes thinking - oh no, not round to George's house I don't call him George. It was - oh no, not round Yog's house again. But they had such a strong relationship that I don't think any girl, even if Andrew had been head over heels in love, could have stopped it at that time. It was just lucky that I got on with them. I just liked them so much. It was weird. But we all had a real love for each other. I remember I could only dance with George. I could never do it with Andrew because his way of dancing was all horrible and strange. I always felt far better dancing with George, his

again. Well,

59

I

BELIEVE IN JOY!

rhythm and everything, whereas with Andrew he would try to take off and swing you around. Andrew was too bony and hard and George was far softer - he just suited me to dance with. I was always telling Andrew - don't do that! Perhaps it was because we went out together. I would say to him don't! I don't want to do that! You know what it is like when you are a kid and you get on somebody else's bike - it always felt buckled. The pedals felt different. Dancing with George was like riding my own bike. Dancing with Andrew was like riding somebody else's. I was working when Andrew and I lived in Peckham. They were just hanging round in the flat. But that was a horrible time. That wasn't a nice time because I didn't like living in Peckham and I didn't like living with Andrew. You live with someone and all of a sudden you think - oh my God! That wasn't a nice time.

O

Andrew: I went to live with Shirlie in her aunt's basement Peckham. That didn't last too long. We moved back to Bushey because George said - I can't come down here and write. The flat was terrible; the only toilet was outside. And I couldn't travel every day up to Radlett to write with George. It' was too expensive. And I was too lazy. So it was easier to go home. We decided that we would write songs, demo them as best we could and try to get a contract. The feeling had always been with me since I was a kid - what was I going to do when I grew up? I could see no other way of doing something with my life apart from music. George lacked confidence in his convictions - he was always going on about getting an education, having something to fall back on. To me, if you fell back, you landed on your ass. Of course, not all time at university is wasted - some people have an incredibly good time there. flat in

My

parents actively tried to discourage

music - especially

my

me from

going into

father, because of the troubled times

60

he

1981 had had

He wanted my

his youth.

in

me

brother and

to

something with real solidity, real security, a middleprofession such as the law — though how he could

establish class

my brother or me as lawyers is beyond me. had already had various odd jobs. I was cleaning at college most of the time and then I worked at the warehouse where my dad worked. I wanted something outdoors, something physical, because I had experienced the office life and I couldn't believe it. There was the office lech, who was gay he was all right, actually, he wasn't too bad, he just liked to flirt, he never tried to goose me or anything - and there was perceive either I

the office bitch, the office slag.

I

couldn't believe

it.

I

thought

- I am not going into this, this is not going to be my gig. I was much happier working down on the floor with the other guys. At least down on the packing floor there was a real cross section of people - there were black guys, black girls, Asian guys and gals, there were Irish. It was brilliant. There were fights, there was illicit sex - it was really good. to myself

That's where the action was.

And

then

depressing.

of

my

I

was on

My

the dole for eight months.

friends

time with them.

- not

unless

it

was

had It

a lot of free time

didn't find

it

spent most

I

wasn't depressing being unemployed

pissing

down

standing in the queue thinking

end of

I

and

.

.

with rain and you were .

hmmm.

This

is

the ass

life.

Peckham it is possible that George and Andrew had a vision of the crushing monotony of most adult lives. The pair of them certainly hit a creative streak around

In the black hole of

this time, flight

working on the songs that would chart

plan for the next few years

Tropicana' and 'Careless Whisper'. their

debut single and the

start

'Wham

their career

Rap!',

'Club

Rap!' would be

of the prancing, dancing

would be the distinguishing feature of Wham! 'Club Tropicana' would steer them away from

leather-boy look that early

- 'Wham

61

I

BELIEVE

IN JOY!

more balmy shores. And 'Careless Whiswould break hearts and lay the foundation for George Michael's solo career. A classic pop song but charged with real regret, it covered the usual themes of love, temptation and the street to sunnier, per'

betrayal but with a unique despair, a rare beauty.

But all this was still some time away. George and Andrew wrote these early songs together and would continue to collaborate until they recorded their first single. After that, George Andrew Ridgeley' would write alone. If the 'George Michael

&

songwriting credit which appears on just a handful of records never marked a great songwriting team then that was because their contributions to the partnership

what Andrew lacked

in

were never equal. But made up for in blind

musical vision he

Andrew forced George into finishing that first eclecbunch of songs. He encouraged, prompted, insisted that they did it. Growing up and suddenly being ordinary was anathema to Andrew. George had more to gain from the success of their fledgling band - soon to be baptized Wham! after their mocking protest song 'Wham Rap!' - but Andrew had more to lose if it failed. ambition.

tic

George: Having been, in his own way, a child star anyway, he was impatient to be a star as an adult. I had this fixed image of myself still being a struggling musician when I was in my twenties, I didn't expect anything to happen before that. I thought I would leave school, hopefully get some session

work,

I

because

was any particular point in rushing I was going to have to wait. The does. But Andrew was impatient to get

didn't think there I

was convinced

same as everyone else on with it. He was the driving force in that sense. When it actually came down to doing it, when it actually came to really working, then I was the driving force. He doesn't have a huge capacity for work! But the impetus to do it all came from him. Being a child star at school, someone

62

who

everyone loves,

is

1981 very frightening because sooner or later you have to leave.

had

this

belief in the songs

Andrew had

and

in

my own

ability

the belief in the songs and in himself.

of a lot of optimism but explosion. But

I

I

I

- but

had a

hell

wasn't expecting any kind of

Andrew was - and he was

right.

Jack Panos had just about had enough. He told his son that he had six months to get a recording contract or he would be kicked out of the house. Although one day the rhythms of

Wham! and George Michael would

echo proudly around the Panos restaurant - the threat seemed real enough at the time. But Jack never had to disown George. The six-month time limit was almost up when George and Andrew signed their record deal.

And

then their troubles really began.

63

7

THE CONTRACT FROM HELL (JANUARY-JUNE

1982)

Bushey already had its very own music business hot shot. At twenty-one, a few crucial years older than George and Andrew, Mark Dean had already earned himself the reputation as someone capable of discovering raw young talent. He had

worked

And

for

The Jam's publishing company, way through the minefield and then moved on to bigger things in the

Bryan Morrison

of the

Mod

AStR

department

revival, at

Phonogram.

At Phonogram Dean of

at

Son, successfully picking his

new

won

the rights to a compilation

synthesizer bands, the

Some

album

Bizarre LP, and then

negotiated a deal with the very best of the acts featured on the record: the quirky, sleaze-nouveau his faith

duo

Soft Cell,

who

repaid

with their single 'Tainted Love', a number one in

England and twenty other countries. Also in 1981, Mark Dean unearthed ABC, a wry, romantic outfit from Sheffield led by a blond, neo-matinee idol called Martin Fry. Within a year ABC had racked up three top-twenty singles and released a brilliant debut album, The Lexicon Of Love, which reached number one in the UK. staggering early success of Soft Cell and ABC estabyoung Mark Dean as a mover, a shaker, a man with a plan. At a time when the music scene looked hopelessly fragmented - with old Bowie victims, ex-punks and soul boys seeking salvation in everything from synthesizers to a renewed belief in the healing power of pop - a young man who looked

The

lished

64

JANUARY -JUNE

1982

though everything he touched turned to gold records was

as

regarded with slack-jawed awe by the record industry.

The

major labels all looked at Mark Dean, the wunderkind from Bushey - wherever that was - with longing. But attempts to woo him to a major label were unsuccessful. Mark Dean didn't want anyone to give him a job. Mark Dean wanted someone to give him a record company. CBS, the jolly giant of Soho Square, granted his wish. If they could not get young Dean on their staff then they could still have him on their side, they could still benefit from his magical instincts, his mystical sixth sense, the way he seemed to know what was going to happen next. CBS would finance the label, manufacture and distribute its product, and Dean would run it.

Profits

would be

Mark Dean's

split

- even

if

not

down

the middle.

was called Innervision Records, and the name and the company's logo (a quiffed young man with the word INNERVISION pouring from his eyes like some cosmic hallucination) seemed to revel in his reputation as a hip young soothsayer of teen taste. Dean set up shop on the third floor of 64 South Molton Street, the pedestrians-only Mecca of fashionable London, and there he set about building his vinyl Camelot. The Berry Gordy of Bushey, the Phil Spector of Hertfordshire, started looking around for acts to sign. Understandably, the last place he expected to find them was in his

own back

label

yard.

George: We had a £20 demo tape that we had recorded in Andrew's front room. What we wanted was for someone to give us £200 to do it in a studio. We were just looking for a

chance to prove the songs. 'Careless Whisper', 'Wham Rap!', 'Club Tropicana' and 'Come On'. The demo was incredibly rough but it had half of 'Careless Whisper' on it and if there was any such thing as a good man then he should have

A&R

been able to spot that. All we wanted was a chance, a couple of days in a studio to do a proper demo.

65

THE CONTRACT FROM HELL We

went to music publishers,

we used

other places, and

and about a dozen up and pretend we had

at Virgin

to turn

appointments. Otherwise they would never have agreed to see us.

We

had a

little

routine

- we would

be nice and then

first

pretend that the secretary had fucked up and get very angry ...

it

really did

We

got into most of the big publishers up and did our routine. They nearly

work.

that way, just turned

always believed you.

They normally would turn remember sitting

listened to the tape in

We

crappy

they

it

our presence. Usually

off after about ten or fifteen seconds.

there while they listened to

'Wham

I

Rap!'.

Doctor Rhythm going boomThey wouldn't even wait for the bass to come in, they would go - tch, another synthesizer band. And we would go, no we just haven't got any money for any drums. The attitude was horrible, really horrible. In a way I can understand it because they see so little talent. But they just used to tell us it was crap and send us away. Andrew gave Mark Dean the demo tape but at first he didn't listen to it. He had already worked with a band from the area called The Quiffs, trying to manage them, and he had had problems with that. I guess he thought - I am just about just

had

this

little

cha, boom-cha, boom-cha.

to set

up

a subsidiary label with

in the

world,

down

the road.

I

am

one of the biggest companies five doors

not going to look for talent

had nearly made my stage debut with The Quiffs. They were some of the people Andrew knew from college, he was probably smoking dope with these guys. And one night their drummer dropped out. I could play drums and they knew I could, but they took one look at me and said I couldn't do it. I I

didn't look the part

-

I

just

looked too bad.

I

remember being

crushed by that.

What use could a budding entrepreneur possibly have with a man who had been rejected by The Quiffs? Still, a combination 66

JANUARY- JUNE

1982

of Andrew's smiling persistence at the bar of that oasis for

Bushey adolescence, the Three Crowns, and the enthusiastic report of a friend eventually persuaded Dean to give the Wham! tape some of his time. He was immediately and wildly enthusiastic. Wham!, born in January, entered negotiations with Innervision in February and were to sign, in a premature ejaculation of agreement (their respective lawyers had not yet completed contractual negotiations), on 24 March. They were rehearsing at the Halligan Band Centre in Holloway, one of north London's less salubrious outposts, when Dean came in brandishing a contract and insisting that the deal was completed immediately. CBS release schedules were cited as the reason for all the urgency. George, Andrew and Dean walked around the corner to a greasy spoon cafe and very soon all their signatures were on the contract.

Andrew: You have

to grab your chance

- and we did - and

about it. When you are that hungry you are not going to hang around. The men always wanted to see you live. Bands were being signed for a shitload of money - ABC, Spandau Ballet, Haircut 100 - but the record companies all that's

A&R

wanted to

we

see

you

didn't have. So

live,

they

when we

all

wanted

signed

a full repertoire.

we were euphoric

.

.

Which .

Mark's good - he's got incredible energy, a great ear for music and he's a nice guy. We later fell out with him because we thought he was working against us. We didn't understand the sort of problems he had. He had a tight deal with CBS; it

was had

on his own. And we didn't was this big A&R figure who

his first deal, his first gig

realize

any of

it all

that.

worked

To

us he

out.

But he was only a few years older than we were. George: One of the most incredible moments of my life was hearing 'Careless Whisper' demo'ed properly, with a band and a sax and everything. It was ironic that we signed the contract

67

THE CONTRACT FROM HELL Mark that day, the day I finally believed that we had number-one material. The same day we signed it all away. But you can never really know what you are capable of, you can with

never really have that foresight.

had the feeling, if I don't sign this, it could all away. Everyone tells you that it is only the lucky ones that make it and you think - this is it. This is my lucky break. Later, when people described the contract, they always used I

definitely

slip

the

same word - punitive.

The young men when

were

hurry/ a judge would

in a

the recording contract

was the

later say

result of furious litigation.

George had done his best to proceed with his characteristic prudence - for example, a diner at his father's restaurant who happened to be an executive of CBS had been asked to confirm that Mark Dean did have a deal with the label (and, of course, he truly did) - but in the end the three young men were all a little too anxious for their success story to begin. Wham!, who had been turned down by everyone, and Mark Dean, who had been feted by everyone, were now all in the same leaky boat, HMS Innervision, that Titanic of a record label, sailing precariously

The

deal that

a lobster's ass at

out of swish South Molton Street.

Wham! had fifty

with Innervision was tighter than

fathoms. For a £500 advance each, to be

paid back out of future royalties, the boys from a five-year contract with Innervision. rate of 8 per cent for singles

stingy

Wham!

They agreed

and albums

in

signed

to a royalty

England, with a

6 per cent for albums and 4 per cent for singles

everywhere

else in the

world. Their twelve-inch singles

-

that

great growth area of the music business in the early 1980s

would not earn them a penny. Not ever. punitive - but there was worse to come.

It

-

was more than

would be owed an company deemed fit, they

Innervision, those hard taskmasters,

album

a year for five years. If the

could ask for an extra album every year, meaning that

68

Wham!

JANUARY -JUNE

1982

could be told to produce a mind-boggling ten albums in

five

workload that would make the average galley slave faint with shock. If the band broke up towards the end of the contract - for example, shortly after delivering their ninth album - then Innervision would be at liberty to ask for yet years, a

another ten albums from each of the boys, the cardiac arrest clause. In layman's terms, Innervision

owned

their souls.

This ball-breaking, mind-aching contract was provoked partly by his

young Mark Dean's hard-nut determination

company succeed

(Innervision was, after

all,

to

make

his big

break

George and Andrew's) and partly because of the company. CBS, for all their faith in the young mogul, and for all their largesse in setting him up in business, were understandably keeping him on a short leash. For worldwide rights to Innervision's output, CBS were paying Dean's company a non-returnable advance of £150,000 for the first year of its existence, followed by payments of £150,500, £165,000, £181,500 and £199,650 over the next four years. Each of these payments would be backed up by a yearly returnable loan facility of half the annual payments, which was to be paid back in full to CBS at the end of five years (in 1987 - ironically the year of Faith's release). Innervision's as well as

tightness of his contract with his parent

- from which the company would have to pay and producers - was 8 and 11 per cent for singles in the US and Britain respectively, while albums would bring the label a royalty of 13 per cent in America and 15 per cent at home. Earnings from the sale of twelve-inch singles would begin once sales had topped the thirty-thousand mark. Dean felt that CBS were giving him enough room to sign only one act a year. He wanted to sign many more. Somewhere someone was going to have to skimp. CBS were tough on him (though they were granting his deepest wish), he was tough on Wham! (though he was making their dreams come true). It was a tough deal all round and the only possible way it

royalty rates artists

69

THE CONTRACT FROM HELL can be defended is by saying that it was the big break for three young men - Dean, George and Andrew - whose combined ages would not qualify for a free bus pass. Anxiety, inexperience and greed

make

and the big break was most new young bands,

a potent cocktail

always a recipe for disaster.

If,

Wham! had

modest success or (even more

achieved only

common) soon disappeared

like

into pop's black hole, then

all

of

would have they became, the more

the ludicrous clauses in the contract from hell

been academic. The more successful inevitable a legal bloodbath became. But, though they were

welcome mat of success nervision made them feel

D

still

some way from standing on

itself,

the

signing the contract with In-

like they

had already

arrived.

remember standing at a railway station with he went off with a group to Thailand. One of the guys in the band had a very rich father who had property in Thailand and they went over there and recorded this album. And I remember David saying to me at this station just before he left, Yog, if you were any good, if your songs were any good, someone would have picked you up by now. And we had an argument about that. Then he went off and when he came back, we had the contract. Which I really George:

I

David Austin

just before

gloated about! I

out.

always knew that

We

argued

all

if I

worked with David we would fall anyway and it would have been

the time

had something serious to argue about, like would Wham! have lasted more than a year had been David and me.

horrible to have business. if it

No way

Andros: George and David had lived in the same road in Edgware - Redhill Drive. When George came to my house I would have my local mate there, and when I went to his place, there would be David. It is very difficult to find friends in the business - but with David or me Wham! would never have

70

JANUARY- JUNE happened. David

is

1982

much more pushy than Andrew. George Andrew more because George was

could probably relate to

always the boss. In friendship or career, he was the more powerful personality. Even today, David tries to be a stronger personality than either

Andrew

or me.

I

think that George

needed someone around him who he could boss about. Because he knew where he was going, he was plotting out all the steps.

And Andrew would been saying - fuck

follow willingly. David would have always

off,

I'm not doing that.

George and Andrew signed a publishing deal with Morrison-Leahy, a new company set up by Mark Dean's erstwhile mentor, Bryan Morrison, former manager of The Pretty Things, Pink Floyd, T. Rex and Robin Gibb, and the former owner of GTO Records, Dick Leahy. Tall and thin, tanned and steel-haired, dapper in understated, expensive suits and toting a cigar the size of a small torpedo, Dick Leahy was to become one of the most crucial factors in the career of George Michael, a man who always transcended the traditional role In April,

of the publisher.

Dick Leahy: Sometimes you hear something and you know.

And you really do know - it is not a question their demo at first with three songs - 'Wham On', 'Club Tropicana'.

'Wham

-

I

of

if.

Rap!',

I

heard

'Come

loved the whole lyrical content of

And then in a day or two I heard 'Careless Whisper' too, which was the other end of the scale and, even in the early days, showed you where George Rap!'

was going.

It

is

it

even read well.

rare that

you hear that spread and quality

within four songs, that you get two outstanding pieces of

work such

poles apart as

'Careless Whisper'

was

'Wham just

Rap!' and 'Careless Whisper'. an outstanding, timeless piece of

music. It

was easy to understand 'Wham Rap!' and 'Club Tropiwhen you were sitting there talking to the young - the

cana'

71

THE CONTRACT FROM HELL - George Michael. And the very young Andrew it was very much a duo that came to see me. wasn't George Michael with Andrew Ridgeley just sitting

very young

Ridgeley, because It

there.

and almost without hearing the make it. There was something very, very special about them. Just as people. Put they knew what they were those songs with them and doing. You hear stories about managers shaping artists moulding talents - and maybe it has happened sometimes. But as far as I am concerned it is all bullshit. It all comes from the artist. If an artist doesn't know who he is and why he is doing it, you are wasting your time. And that was there on day one. George always knew. The demo tape had come to me from two directions. I was given it by a friend of mine, a lady, whose sister-in-law was quite a good friend of George's parents. And I was given the tape by Mark Dean. I knew Mark, of course, because he had worked with my partner Bryan Morrison. I think I am right in saying that he thought he had something great but his problem was - how do you do it? He needed somebody to talk to about this. There was a lot of competition for them. They had signed their record deal - which is a very good insight into their character - and publishers were chasing them. And rightly so, even though I had heard that several record companies had turned them down. But it doesn't matter. You never know what people have heard at that stage. Yes, there was a lot of

They walked

songs you

into the office

knew

that they were going to

.

.

.

some reason they decided to sign to me. what they were going to do. They looked like they were going to do it and I totally believed they were going to do it. There was absolutely no question that these two boys stood out from the crowd - they looked phenomenal. Andrew walked down a street and got a reaction. In many ways Wham! was George writing for Andrew and a

competition. But for

They knew

exactly

72

JANUARY -JUNE That's the

friend.

happened to be the

Wham!

set

way

I

1982

always perceived

it.

George

just

friend.

out to prepare the ground for the release of their

was not quite same endless slog up and down motorways and around the scuzzball gig circuit of dank dives and fleapit hotels that it had traditionally been. In 1981, Warner Amex Satellite Entertainment Company had launched MTV, a round-the-clock music-television cable channel that built its programming around the growing vogue for promo videos. Within five years, would be arriving in twenty-eight million homes via nearly a first

record. Paying your dues in the early 1980s

the

MTV

thousand cable companies. There had been what amounted to promos in the past. As far back as the 1960s, The Beatles had capered around in a

promote 'Strawberry Fields Forever', while TV series had advertised product as diverse as Bob Dylan's 'Subterranean Homesick Blues' and any number of Monkees hits. Though he would later tire of the whole process, George had enjoyed Queen's 'Bohemian Rhapsody' (the birth of the modern promo) and loved The Human League's glorious melodrama 'Don't You Want Me?', the last number one of 1981 and a song that owed at least part ploughed

field to

excerpts from a film and

of

its

success to a superbly evocative video.

were

'little

them

tell

changes

MTV's

stories'

Whaml's songs

and promos were a device that would help

those stories in a clearer,

more expressive

voice.

The

music business would not happen overnight advertising revenue vers only $7 million in its first in the

eighteen months, though by the time 'Careless Whisper'

came

out in 1984, that figure had skyrocketed to $1 million every

week — but the changes were irrevocable. Before MTV, bands could get by without making promos. After MTV, promos were practically compulsory. This new climate suited George and Andrew perfectly. For one thing, it meant you didn't have to be a band any more.

73

THE CONTRACT FROM HELL The whole concept of a group consisting of guitar, bass and drums had taken a severe bashing with the glossy advent of the video and for their first appearances before their potential public, George and Andy were accompanied only by their first record and a brace of glamorous dancing partners.

Chaperoned by a nice lady from the newly-formed CBS Club Promotions department, Wham! embarked on a series of personal appearances at a string of nightclubs, pair dancing

way through

their

(swiftly replaced

they cut their

young Amanda Washburn

the night with

by Diane Sealey, aka Dee C. Lee, before

promo

for

'Wham

Rap!') and the ever-faithful

Shirlie

Holliman. This was the Travolta experience

effect

except

that

Andrew's energetic as

all

those

the

audiences

oscillations

treated

to

in full

George and

were not quite as enthusiastic

stunned extras had been in Saturday Night

Fever.

George:

We

had done college

gigs with

The

Executive,

about ten of them, gigs where you would pile in the van and go and play to hippies. Those kind of shit gigs are what most people do for years and years and we only did for a short period of time. After that

it

was Wham! and

all

the dancing in

the clubs.

We ing,

were very aware of

how you

how

the music business

was chang-

could suddenly reach more people with a video

MTV

on than with a ninety-date tour of the States. We knew it was the future, we knew for the first time you didn't have to be a band, but we were still very naive about what it really meant, the way most of the business was for a little while. I remember thinking that for The Human League to have a number-one record in America was outrageous - all they were there was a video and a song - but it was enough. Obviously, these days it has gone the other way a bit and a band is one thing and a video artist is something else - but in Wham! we were totally into the way it was all changing, we loved the idea

74

JANUARY- JUNE

1982

band was going

that the old notion of a

right out of the

window.

The girls always came with us on our personal appearances. have the funniest memories of all that. We would practise our dance routines at my mum's house. Every weekend the I

woman from CBS would come and take us out. We worked off! The woman was from Club Promotion because

our asses

we were considered a club band. And we would have to play at six clubs in one night, you would have to move around locations. It was exactly like being strippers at that time

and we got exactly the same reaction.

Our

very

first

PA was

at

a

club called

One

Level

in

Neasden. And it was terrible because there were six hundred people in this club and, because there was no raised stage, they just formed a big circle around us. And so you are doing this thing and you have two really attractive girls with you, and you are trying to play out this little scenario between two

- just like on Top of the Pops - but you had all the drunks coming up and joining in! And the drunks would go up behind the girls; it was an absolute nightmare. couples

It was all a complete joke because people would watch for a few minutes, take their free record and then they couldn't wait to get back to their disco. It never happened to John Travolta. There is a great reality about dancing on the same level as everyone else. You don't look or feel like you are in any

position of power. There

You

you.

just

is

no difference between them and

look like a jerk.

It's

all

The

as basic as that.

physical fact of being a couple of feet above the ground

makes

the difference.

We

did Stringfellow's,

rassing one. There

kick and

my

was

I

remember

I

was

first

embar-

a really

routine.

I

shoe flew off into the crowd - so then

the other one off with great

And

that

a kick in the

did this I

kicked

aplomb to make it look deliberate. was dancing in socks on the glass

had to keep going. I and trying desperately not

floor of Stringfellow's

75

to cock

it

up,

THE CONTRACT FROM HELL my

face. I was holding the fake mike remember going to the side of the dance floor with this thing and I felt the lead pull out, which totally exposed me as miming to the track. And I thought, ah, no one will notice. Then when I walked back to the other side still singing into the fake, unplugged microphone, I saw this

trying not to

fall flat

on

with the fake lead and

I

drunk in the middle of the dance floor holding the unplugged end of the microphone lead. The whole thing was so amateur and so awful - but a good experience. We had to do those PAs; there is no way we could have rehearsed in my mum's living room and expected the thing to translate straight away on to live television. Those PAs were the best practice in the world. I think that is why people still get sent out on club gigs. Record companies tell acts that it makes a difference in it makes absolutely fuck-all you don't get your record played on the radio it is not going to make any difference whatsoever. I think acts that do those kind of club gigs are being primed. It shows them what they can do, it gets them ready for television. It

chart return shops, but in fact difference. If

steels

your nerve.

This was the time that I changed my name. I knew I was going to have to change it but they started pressing 'Wham Rap!' and I still hadn't chosen a name. So there are about twenty-thousand pressings of that first record with my original

name

on, with Panos on the label. At that stage I knew I would have to choose something. I don't remember how long I had been trying to choose but I was sitting in David Austin's living room and I said - 1 like your dad's name, Michael Mortimer. I really like Michael and my dad's brother

is called Michael. Also I had a friend at school, a whose name was Michael. So - what about George Michael? I thought it was a nice name. It rolled off the tongue and I didn't have to give up the Greekness totally. I didn't drop the Greek thing entirely, although most people ended up thinking that it was a Jewish name. I still get called George

Greek

kid,

76

JANUARY -JUNE Michaels to Springstein.

But that convinced it at

1982

day by so many people. It's like Bruce said - 1 like that name, I want to be decided it and immediately I was I sounded right and I didn't have to think about it this

And David was when

.

.

.

all.

Rap! (Enjoy What You Do)' was released in June and make an impression on even the lowliest regions of the charts, peaking at an unimpressive hundred and five despite all those nights spent hoofing it around those slippery

'Wham

failed to

dancefloors. This likeable, light-hearted ode to a the

workaday world would have

to wait until

life

beyond

rerelease at

its

the end of the winter before winning the affection of the nation. In the

a large

meantime,

'Wham

radio that

Wham! were

when

their critics

ten

Rap!' did two things.

number of people who heard

bread, milk toast

it

black Americans

sissies)

(a fact

damned them

later

- and

convinced

quickly forgot-

for being white

tone for what was to

set the

it

It

storming out of their

follow.

George loved - white - with lyrics that both celebrated the big-cocked boastfulness of rap and parodied it. It was mocking, knowing, ironic, it was impossibly catchy and effortlessly literate ('Dancing shoes and pretty girls - boys in

The record combined

English

the music that

pop and black American

leather kiss girls

profound pop ability of

in

pearls!')

sensibility,

soul

The product of

'Wham

what was coming out of

a

deep and

Rap!' traded on the dance-

New York

of what was happening in England,

all

with the reality

those good times

still

being had in the face of hard times, and didn't take any of very seriously. George and

Andrew were

far

it

too smart and far

too self-conscious to attempt to play the role of either the

sixty-minute-man rapper or the unemployed working-class hero It pulled together a lot of modern themes and.

totally straight.

though hardly anyone noticed,

it

77

worked.

THE CONTRACT FROM HELL Most of all, 'Wham Rap!' defined the parameters of George and Andrew's band. What you noticed was the sheer joy of that music, the way it seemed to fizz with the euphoric rush of youth, the boundless passion of the very young. This is what the song and the band were to be about. They celebrated that fleeting moment when youth is at its glorious peak, before life has had a chance to go wrong.

78

8

MOSTLY DRUNK (JULY-DECEMBER

1982)

the second single, 'Young Guns one of several early Wham! songs to have its inbuilt euphoria punctuated by that overexcited exclamation mark. The song, written by George alone, was archetypal early Wham! - elated pop-soul buddy music introduced by a dawn chorus of brass and followed by the funky, cautionary tale of a young soul boy (called George) who discovers that

The breakthrough came with (Go For

his

pal

It!)',

is

tottering

on the rim of the black

pit

of adult

married man*' gasps the George of the song in a horrified rap. 'You're out of your head - sleepless nights on an HP bed. A daddy by the time you're twenty -one - if responsibility. 'A

you're happy with a nappy then you're in for fun.'

This was working a pair dancing.

leaving his

One

little

tension into the cosy couples of

of them was getting serious about a

more wayward

him about the horrific reality bliss. George was in the middle of of married

life

when

girl,

no choice but to enlighten behind the myth of domestic

friend

his rap

about the nightmare

the scowling virago

on the arm of

his

'We've got plans to make, we've got things to buy,' she chides her betrothed, 'and you're wasting time on some creepy guy.' Though it always carried its implications lightly and with an arch sense of humour, 'Young Guns' struck a chord with anyone who has seen the bonds of childhood broken by the friend abruptly dismisses him.

ties

of adulthood.

It

was funny, funky and curiously

79

real. In

MOSTLY DRUNK its

happy, heady grooves

it

carried the grey dread of age, a

fear of the one-directional rush to the grave.

music -

was

It

was

escapist

about escaping. Escaping the responsibilities of grown-ups, escaping a bad early marriage, escaping the day that every soul boy has to die. Unfortunately, it also looked as though it was going to escape the attention of literally

it

all

October 1982, the song entered the slip back into obscurity. For a Wham! were destined for pop's remainder

the nation. Released in

top 100, hovered, and began to while

it

looked as

if

bin.

George: I remember a week of real, total despair. There was more than one reason. 'Wham Rap!' had come out and flopped and that didn't seem so bad at the time. It seemed bad, but we had exposure - a single-of-the-week here and there in the rock Press. flop.

It

wasn't unusual for a

Then 'Young Guns' came out and

was going to flop too. And I had met a girl. Andrew and

I

first

single to

that looked as

if it

had been to Corfu to who was out

take a break and have our picture taken by a guy

Mark Dean

there taking pictures of villas for holiday brochures

that's

how we

being

got free photographs, this was

smart - and

we went

had met this girl and had a one-night thing. I thought she was wonderful. And when I got back I kept phoning her and her friend always said that she was in the bath or that she had laryngitis - things like just before

this.

And

I

It

was

a bad

to Corfu

I

really liked her.

went down the

week

for

me

because the day 'Young Guns'

charts, this girl basically told

was

me

to piss off.

A

pub on the King's Road with Steve Brown, the producer of 'Young Guns', and I was saying to him - I can't believe that two records have flopped. Okay, one record can flop but there is no way that 'Young Guns' should be a flop - I can't believe it! I clearly remember sitting there griping to Steve and then going out to the phone really nasty day!

I

sitting in a

80

JULY- DECEMBER

1982

box, calling this girl and having her tell me dreams were disappearing down the chute.

to get lost. All

my

George's publisher, Dick Leahy, called on a lifetime of experience in the music business to keep the record alive, drawing

on

his years at Philips

(Dusty Springfield,

The Walker Brothers),

Records (The Bay City Rollers, David Cassidy) and his own label GTO (Donna Summer and the number one 'I Feel Love') to give the crucial second single a crucial second chance. In the past, in the era of Tin Pan Alley and the Brill Building, the publisher had been a song's midwife, responsible for getting tunes out of writers and then making sure they would be performed by artists. In these ancient times, publishers had been creativity's pimp. But after The Beatles and The Beach Boys completed the process started by Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry and Little Richard, the artist and the writer were usually the same person. Publishers became less important and record companies more so. But Dick Leahy was far from an ordinary publisher. He had come into publishing through a Bell

GTO

when he sold to CBS in 1977, the sale agreement included a non-competing clause. He could not start another record company for three years. So he went into side'door because

publishing.

Dick Leahy:

How

It is all

music.

It is all artists.

But when

I

came

brought record company attitudes with me. many publishers have demo studios in their basement?

into publishing

I

my attitude was - sign a young artist but don't on the record company. You work with the artist, you work with them musically. You establish with the record company which singles go out, who promotes it - everything. Absolutely everything. And that's what we started doing with George and Andrew. You don't just sign a writer because you like their songs and then let the record company get on with it. The traditional role of the publisher was to

As

a publisher,

rely

81

MOSTLY DRUNK represent the writer and to get covers of his material.

don't do that.

with

I

use publishing as another

way

I

just

of working

artists.

Rap!' had flopped. That was a great disappointment George - not so much to me because I always thought he could make a better record of it and in some ways I thought it was a good lesson to learn at that stage. But then 'Young Guns' started going down the charts and that was a dangerous time. It was another great record by a young duo who everyone was talking about - but it's a fickle market. If that one had leaving November and December alone, you not made it get back in the studio and it's spring of next year before you have another record out. You can't be the young- artist- about-

'Wham

to

.

.

.

to-happen for ever

You have people hear

.

.

.

to believe that it

it

is

a great record, that

they are going to go out and buy

in Britain is a collation of sales in a all it is.

it.

The

when chart

sample of shops. That's

In the top fifty the curve of sales flattens off at the

depends who has bought which records in week. When a great record that you believe in is going down the chart then all you can do in a time like that is to motivate everyone who is involved with the record: Radio, Press, salesmen going into record stores. And you tell people - this is not over. It really isn't. Give me a week. V/e can turn this around. We really can. Get the stores playing the record. You get ten million lower end. So

which shops

it all

in a particular

people listening to a record on the radio - but a small percentage of them are record buyers. A very small percentage. In a record store, however, everyone in there is a record

Remember, I have got daily information coming in of what the sales actually are. Now if there are no sales coming in, you don't do it - because people don't want the record. There's no point. But sales were there. So you persuade people to go along with your way of thought. Hopefully, they respond to it because they know you are not a bullshitter. buyer.

82

JULY-DECEMBER

1982

George Michael was too good not to have happened but if 'Young Guns' had not happened, I think it would have seriously affected Wham! But fortunately the next week the record went up and then we got Top of the Fops. They did Top of the Pops on the Thursday when the record was at forty-two and on the Monday morning at CBS distribution centre there were over thirty-thousand orders. That was the chance to get Wham! across to everyone on just one TV performance. George just didn't go on and do Top of the Pops. This was his chance for the big one and he grabbed it. A very well-known manager called me up on the Monday morning and asked me for the name of the choreographer! It was an outstanding live TV performance - and it broke Wham! right open. It took them nationwide. George: 'Young Guns' had gone into the chart at seventy-

gone up to forty-eight then it dropped to fifty-two, which was when I was really in the dumps. Then the morning the new chart came out it turned around, jumping from fiftytwo to forty-two - and that's when we got Top of the Pops. It was outrageous for a band who were only at forty-two to get Top of the Pops, but the producer of the show had seen us do a Saturday morning children's show, Saturday Superstore, and because it was so different, with Shirlie and Dee and everything, they decided to stick us on Top of the Pops even though we were not in the top forty.

three,

I

didn't try calling the girl

who

told

me

of the Pops. That would have been a probably would have worked.

Top of the Pops has

Top Though it

to get lost after

bit tacky.

straddled the British music business like a

grinning colossus since the 1960s. For three decades

it has been the nation's Thursday-night fix of popular music, thirty minutes of prime-time pop, more important to the domestic

singles

market than

all

the other media outlets put together.

83

MOSTLY DRUNK Top of the Pops lantern that can

is

the gateway to the singles charts, the magic

make

measure your pop

life

all

pop dreams come

You can The

true.

with memories of this show -

Beatles live in the studio surrounded by nodding flower chil-

The Sweet camping it up like effeminate hod carriers, Townshend smashing his guitar (to the outrage of one of the BBC DJs who host the programme like indulgent uncles), David Bowie enigmatically smirking his way through 'Stardren, Pete

and Wham! dancing through 'Young Guns' with Holliman and Dee C. Lee, nineteen years old and Top of the Pops watchers from way back. The single was plucked from the jaws of defeat and hurtled up the charts, peaking at number three in December, two long months after its release. Wham! had arrived.

man'

.

.

.

Shirlie

George: That was the big turning point, a time you should remember. To be honest, most of it is a bit of a blur because I was really drunk most of the time. At that time I used to go to the Wag at least two or three nights a week, I would go to the Camden Palace Tuesdays and Thursdays, and there would always be a party somewhere. So five or six nights a week you had an excuse to go out and get drunk. But we also managed to get up early and go and do promotion and pictures. I was still living with my parents but I think my life was about as far from normal as it could possibly have been at that point. Because I was either working or drunk in clubs and there was nothing in between. I was always in clubs because I stopped going to pubs. Andrew and I both tried to go to pubs - and he has held out much longer than I did - but you could no longer go to the pubs that you had grown up going to because you no .

.

.

longer got a nice feeling in them.

Andrew still goes to pubs today - he fits in perfectly well and he has a laugh and people get used to him being there. But at the end of the day he is still the one the girls want to fuck and the men want to pick a fight with.

84

JULY- DECEMBER Andrew:

I

never

1982

woke and found women queueing outside It evolves - though celebrity

my bedroom door. It's not like that.

and fame don't evolve slowly. I just took it as it came. At that point George's career and the career of Wham! were getting serious. He had to apply himself - but I was free most of the time. Even when we were recording or working or touring, once we decided that he would write the songs, I didn't have the pressure of supplying the basic raw material, of being creative. There were two of us - sometimes one of us had to write and the other was free to do something else - and that was me. George couldn't bear the thought that someone was sleeping with him because of who and what he was - but when it gets to that level you are what you portray yourself as being. It's impossible to separate the image and the real person. Whatever you portray yourself as being, that is a part of you. If someone is

attracted to that, that person

way And

chose to see

I

anyway.

it

is

attracted to you. That's the certainly served

It

its

purpose.

George felt that he was being used, what was he doing there anyway? It's a two-way thing. At the end of the day they get what they want and you get what you want. I don't think ydu can go around whining — she doesn't see me for what I am! What do you see her for? never regretted stepping back from the songwriting. I if

Number didn't

one, he didn't need the help.

want

it.

He may

- and

say that

I

And number two, he

could have been a

bit

more

probably could have been. But he seemed to be getting on fine without it. You don't go around patting your mate's back and stroking his hair, do you? If he's doing a supportive

good

On a bit

job,

I

you take

occasions

more

I

it

for granted, don't you?

did

feel that

I

would have

involved. But they were rare!

liked to have got

The

creative thing

took a back seat for me and I didn't want to go to the effort of changing that. Compared to what I was doing, it just didn't seem worthwhile.

We were going where we wanted to go. 85

MOSTLY DRUNK Shirlie:

I

was very

frightened.

I

suddenly

felt

that

I

had

taken a step back from what the three of us were, a step back from our friendship. I had this huge fear because I always

George was going to make it. I loved his voice so knew he had to make it. And I always had this feeling - 1 know that they will become famous and leave me. When they did their first photo session in Corfu I remember they went without me and that was the first time I had this pang. I felt that I was about to experience a huge loss. I knew they were going to be taken away from me. I didn't care about the career. It was our friendship. What I knew was that these people were so strong in my life - they were my life. I didn't want to be in front of the cameras, I didn't want the money or anything - just for us to be friends. The problem was not so much them as other people, the way other people reacted to them. People would always be

knew

that

much,

I

George and Andrew! George and Andrew! Putting arms around them and later turning to me, oh, and what do you do? George and Andrew couldn't see it, that was the direction their lives were going in, but I kept thinking, uh-oh. This is not a good sign. All of a sudden it was - oh, sorry Shirlie, we can't. We've got an interview to do. So bring out the violins. Even when they had their first lot of money and they went out and bought new clothes, that made me feel bad. I kept thinking - oh no, I preferred them when they were saying, their

.

.

.

scruffy.

When I look back at 'Young Guns' now, at the way we danced on Top of the Pops and in the video, it all looks so set up. It looks like this guy - some old man - has come in and want two

said,

I

them

to dance. But

girls,

I

it all

want two boys, this is how I want happened so naturally - and that's

why I think it worked. The success changed Andrew first. George remained quiet for a longer period where Andrew suddenly thought - great! The rich and famous lifestyle! And he really went for it

86

JULY -DECEMBER 1982 whereas George was more reserved, still kind of shied away from it all. But George is one of the most secretive people I know so I am not sure how he feels most of the time. He is one of those people who you have to push to get anything out otherwise he will carry on playing

of,

But he

is

what they are doing. anything.

- I'm okay, I'm

very aware of other people's

If

We

lives,

coping.

always analysing

used to be able to talk about

he hadn't been a musician, he could have been an

D

agony aunt.

George: Shirlie got freaked out that

it

didn't stop, that

it

kept getting bigger. She never wanted to be mistaken for one of the people on the periphery.

I

think she thought that

if

she

was around us people would think she was just another hanger-on. She was always freaked out by that. I used to say to her, I don't know how you can make that equation when you know Andrew and me better than anyone. But I think out of her

own

self-respect

quite a lot

down

and pride, she distanced herself from us

- she probably doesn't

to her.

to the friends

character for

realize

actually tried quite hard.

I I

had

me

I

how much

of

it

was

have always held on

would be very out of from anyone.

in the first place. It

to distance myself

That first flush of fame is all a bit hazy. And I didn't know what I was doing then - not as a writer and certainly not as a performer. But I knew what I wanted and when I was likely to get it. And seeing your dreams come true gives you a certain confidence.

All the

good

liquor, the

bad

women and

the

first

intoxicating

rush of success have combined to blur the picture of the

first

meeting between George Michael and one of his earliest

David Bowie. Recollections of this historic meeting between the Stanley and Livingstone of pop - vary enormously. Andros Georgiou remembers his cousin being dumbfounded, stupefied, mute with awe while Bowie was magnanimous,

heroes,

87

MOSTLY DRUNK encouraging.

supportive,

dumbfounded,

stupefied,

George himself remembers being mute with awe while Bowie was

completely baffled.

Andros:

When Wham! had

TV

just started

we were walking

Bowie was walking in. And Bowie tapped George on the shoulder and said, 'You're with Wham!, aren't you?' And George was out of breath, totally breathless. I was shocked. I said, I can't believe it. David Bowie knows who you are. out of some

studio just as David

George: Andrew and I were recording 'Wham Rap!'. For some reason David Bowie walked into our recording studio looking exactly like David Austin. He had a green camouflage jacket on and a blond, soul-boy wedge haircut. This was just before Let's Dance. He had his head down - and I went, HI DAVE! I thought it was my friend. And David Bowie looked up. He had these two big bodyguards with him because it was not that long since John Lennon had been shot. And Bowie obviously didn't

my

was

know who

the fuck

I

was. For the only time

had been such a huge Bowie fan and that was the only time I ever acted like a fan with anyone. Bowie looked at me - am I supposed to know this person? He obviously thought I was a real asshole-type fan. OH HI, DAVEV. YOU DOING" He had to walk around me because I was totally speechless and it was impossible for me to move. We were still catching the tube then and Andrew took the piss out of me all the way home. I remember saying to Andros - the next time I see him, he will know who I am. The next time. And the next time I saw him was at Live Aid. in

life I

literally speechless.

I

HOW

Wham! saw

out their year of wonders by playing the Christmas concert at their old school, where everyone knew who they were. Workloads and litigation and the shrieking obsession of

88

JULY- DECEMBER the gutter Press

would soon shade

1982

their lives with a darker

hue, but for now, with one hit single under their belts, this

was

one that they could one that reflected the

a perfect celebration of their success,

share with their

hometown

friends,

strong Mickey Rooney-Judy Garland

mondo-show

business

through the early, pair dancing days of Wham! Hey, they seemed to imply, we can put on the show right here.

ethic that ran

Dreams can come

true,

seemed to be the message.

happen to you.

89

It

could

9

EASY GIRLS AND LATE NIGHTS (JANUARY-JUNE

Remixed and

rereleased, the

1983)

new, improved

'Wham

Rap!'

climbed into the top ten at number eight in February. It was followed in May by 'Bad Boys', the final part in Wham!'s trilogy of leather-boy street

anthems. The song, credited,

like

'Young Guns', to George Michael alone, showed that the baby bikers' concept was getting a little threadbare. Though 'Bad Boys' contained the same typical George Michael killer couplets - 'Easy girls and late nights — cigarettes and love bites!*

-

it

came

across as too contrived for comfort, too

phoney for words. George and Andrew - devoted sons who were always good to their mothers — were never going to be convincing as howling young barbarians threatening to kick down the door if Mom and Pop tried to stop them going to the hop. Musically, 'Bad Boys' rattled along, was easy to remember and fun to chant along with, but it was the Wham! boys' weakest moment so far - yet one that yielded their greatest hit. 'Bad Boys' peaked at number two, kept from that elusive top spot only by a truly classic single, 'Every Breath

You his

Take', which Sting of

muse was writhing

The

Police wrote post-divorce

when

in pain.

champions win even when they Wham! - and George Michael - with their commercial peak so far and their creative low point in total alignment. This was championship form indeed, though two years later George would describe to this It is

a sporting truism that

are playing badly.

'Bad Boys' was

90

JANUARY- JUNE Wham! who

writer the

1983

strutted through the 'Bad Boys' video

And though this solo songwriting had not panned out as well as the previous singles, it was already clear that, from here on in, only one man was going to do the writing for the band. as 'such a pair of wankers'.

effort

George: Andrew was really starting to ambitions begin to accelerate. or anything but

going

it

was

just so

terms of writing.

in

I

feel

my

songwriting

wasn't trying to edge him out

obvious that was where

And

it

is

we But once we

only because

it

was

didn't

talked about it that it became a tense subject. about it we got it out of the way and we never talked about it again. We never needed to. It wasn't a matter of something we didn't want to talk about again. It was always understood talk

how

we were to each other in the framework of and we both understood that the group would

important

that group,

have a certain lifespan. The only other thing to be decided

was when

it

would become defunct. And

talked about after that

initial

confrontation

that's what we - when would it

finish. It was always totally amicable. But we had a big argument when he felt he was getting nudged out of the writing. Then he said — look, Yog, the

be time to

and the fastest way for us to get to be a really big band you to write everything. He may not have wanted it particularly but what he wanted most of all was to be a big star. Everything that we ever wrote together was written before the release of that first single. By the time that 'Bad Boys' came out the friction was increasing - then he said, go ahead and do it. Some of it was laziness and some of it was that he was losing confidence about his songs in the light of what I was

easiest is

for

Our

writing.

roles reversed very quickly because the singer

always becomes the focal point, no matter character

me. So

I

how

strong his

within a band. People's interest drifted over to suppose he must have seen all that happening. He is

91

EASY GIRLS AND LATE NIGHTS good time but the point when there was no was when we became so big and he was so happy with that, so happy to be a huge star, that it really didn't matter to him. And by that time he was enjoying the was having

a very

friction involved

fruits

of

and getting very Andrew's just comes, which I don't. I it all

things are good, life

as

it

Andrew:

lazy, fine.

I

suppose. But as long as

He

has a capacity to take

just don't

have

that.

We sat down

and made the decision that he should Where we wanted to get and how fast we there would be achieved more easily if he wrote

write the songs.

wanted

to get

We

had been collaborating, but he had been good of the career we made that decision and I wasn't going to force the issue. It never occurred to me. I was too lazy. everything.

writing most of the melodies and stuff. For the

By the time of their third top-ten record in six months, Wham! had gone global. Suddenly, an avalanche of demands on their time came pouring in, the whole random cavalcade of record industry obligations: requests for them to do German television appearances, Australian radio, Press in Japan, live shows in Italy, demands for product - the next single, the first album from every corner of the world, demands that were all allegedly urgent and essential if their product was to realize its potential in these particular 'territories'.

was baying for good offices of

flesh

and blood and

their trusted consigliori

frantic efforts of

Mark Dean up

The music

business

vinyl, and, despite the

Dick Leahy and the had no

at Innervision, they

manager to keep an avaricious world at bay. George and Andrew had always prized

their

autonomy,

always distrusted the notion of 'being managed', but faced with the corporate realities of worldwide success in the early it seemed that they had no choice but to find someone could be a barrier between them and the rest of the world. They asked Andy Stephens at CBS International if he would

1980s,

who

92

JANUARY -JUNE manage them, but he

declined.

1983

They had

heavyweights

Ron Weisner and

who managed

such teen titans as

talks with

American

De Mann, the team Jackson and later Madonna,

Freddie

managers who represent the kind of stars who are big enough to be known by just one name. Weisner-De Mann would represent Whaml's interests in America for the time being, but George and Andrew returned to London without anything being settled. As a purely stopgap measure, their lawyer, Robert Allan, agreed to act as caretaker manager for a few months, and all enquiries from the media of five continents were temporarily directed to his desk. In the meantime, all this sudden success had done the relationship between Wham! and their record company nothing but harm. After their third hit single, George and Andrew went to see Mark Dean to ask him to reconsider his

the kind of

scrotum-clenching contract with the band. All those penurious,

coming home They had become household faces over the last six months but still had to rely on Innervision handouts before they could walk into a clothes shop or restaurant. Dean consulted CBS to see if they would consider renegotiating their scrotum-clenching contract with him. They declined and so the contract between the little record company and the newly big band remained unchanged. The relationship between George and Mark Dean went downhill fast, swerving from screaming scenes in noisy nightclubs to weeks when they would not talk at all. The pressures of the contract and the demands of recording Whaml's debut album were getting to George. He was smoking himself hoarse, puffing his way through a pack a day, and when he felt that Innervision had left him no other way to turn, when the impasse was starting

chickenshit clauses in their contract were finally to roost.

to suffocate him, he

George:

them

at

I

kidnapped

his music.

took the master tapes of the

home. Mark said he was going

93

first

album and hid

to send the police

EASY GIRLS AND LATE NIGHTS round to get them. I said - what do I have to do? Get my mother to stand in front of them? I felt they were playing dirty. So I just said, okay, took the tapes away with me and hid them.

It

didn't last long because

I

realized

it

was

getting a

by that stage. But it is ridiculous to have no money, to have to keep asking for a little bit of money for childish

bit

clothes

and

stuff,

when you know how much you

are

making

for other people.

Dick Leahy was very constant - Dick has always been very constant, the relationship has always been very constant.

only thing that has changed

in

days there are very few things advice on, because

But back

in

the

I

have

Wham!

I

The

our relationship is that these would need to go to him for

now been through most

situations.

days, there were lots of things

I

needed advice on. If Dick had been my manager it would have meant I had no one who was particularly objective I could go to and ask these things. The fact is that Dick is the only person I ever really listened to — so in that sense he was I would never have wanted Dick as manager. The function of management is to execute my

controlling decisions.

my

will.

Dick Leahy: George and Andrew and Mark were not on particularly well at that time. Mark was very young and he lacked experience when it came to handling people. There are sensitive ways of dealing with things and insensitive ways. I am sure I did the same thing in my early years in the

getting

business.

The

real reason

for the trouble

was

that there

renegotiation of the contract, which George and

they had been promised.

It

was

was no

Andrew

a very difficult time.

felt

There

were no managers involved. At that time it was getting frantic. are signed to a small independent record label. I'm their publisher. And between us we are taking all these calls. I am

They

dealing with the international aspect and

94

management

duties

JANUARY- JUNE

1983

and the record company, CBS, because I know them and I know the way it works. But it was getting out of control. I was saying to George and Andy - Now, You've Got To Get Yourselves A Manager. Because they were being driven crazy. Everybody was coming at them. People were finding their home numbers. And Jazz had been phoning me for a long time.

Summers had been aware of Wham!

Jazz

since their

demo

days and had nursed the urge to manage them ever since. All

boys had been stonewalled by Wham!'s Morrison told him he wasn't big enough to Bryan Morrison, Jazz later conceded, was

his efforts to reach the

protectors. Bryan

manage Wham! right.

Jazz

Summers —

his real

name — was

served twenty-eight years in the

and the military were twelve, he

was put

in

Army

the son of a

man who

as a musician.

Music

Jazz's blood and, at the age of

into a military school that he describes as

same life as and was playing in an Army band, though he soon realized he had signed away the best years of his life to Queen and Country. He wanted out. 'horrific'.

At

his father

fifteen

he seemed destined to

- he had

live the

enlisted for twelve long years

Jazz Summers: I tried very desperately to get out of the I did a lot of things. I pretended I was gay - that didn't

Army.

work. I pretended to be mad and ended up in an Army mental home. It was just like One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest — and it was very frightening. I did panic then and I said to them, listen, I'm really not mad. And they said, that's what they

all say.

Released from his cuckoo's nest but undischarged from the Army, Jazz was shipped out to the Far East where he put together a

band

called Shades of Blue

95

who

belted out

R&B

EASY GIRLS AND LATE NIGHTS Army in 1968 after He came home to a London

numbers. Eventually, he got out of the serving nine of his twelve years. that

swung with

still

make

it

a vengeance,

as a musician.

A

grew

his hair

and

tried to

year later he was broke and coming

had neither the magic nor the an artist. But what he did have was a flair for organization - from now on he would run bands at night while holding on to his day job as a radiographer. The fates seemed to confirm his decision to give up performing when he sliced a finger tendon in a pump during a cardiac sweep. After managing a folk singer called Richard Digance, Jazz

to terms with the fact that he

luck to

lost

make

some of

it

artists until

as

his passion administrating the careers of fickle

he

fell in

love with punk's

wanton energy down

the steamy nether regions of the Vortex in 1977. after a

number of small punk bands

Autographs) but

it

like

He

The Stukas

in

looked

(later

The

wasn't until the post-punk fall-out of the

very early 1980s that he finally decided he could no longer

around a dozen years as a radiographer, gave up his day job. A year later, just as Wham! were enjoying their first hit with 'Young Guns', Jazz was having his finest moment so far - his band Blue Zoo (formerly The Crooks) were also in the top twenty with the excitable 'Cry Boy Cry'. And still he dreamed of managing Wham!, as well as another duo he liked the look of called The hedge

Jazz

his bets. After

Summers

at last

Eurythmics. Jazz Summers:

I

was

at Island

Records talking about some 'Wham Rap!' and I said,

publishing thing and they played

who is it? They said, a band called Wham!, Mark Dean's label, Innervision, going through CBS. I said, fine. I phoned Mark Dean up and said - I've just heard Wham! that's brilliant,

signed to

it?' he said. 'Who's their manager?' I said. 'Nobody,' he said. 'You want to manage them?'

'Great, isn't

96

JANUARY -JUNE

1983

'Yeah.'

'Come over and see me.' about having them. And he had a right to. A couple of days later I was in with Bryan Morrison and I saw the record on his turntable and I said, is that the 'Wham Rap!' thing? He said, how do you know about it? I told him I had heard it at Island Music, the publishing adjunct 'So does everybody else,' he said.

He was

feeling real flash

of the record company, which probably helped George and

Andrew get a better publishing deal with Morrison-Leahy. I said - this band are fabulous, I am going to manage them. So I actually met George and Andrew in Innervision's office a couple of days later. Just - this is George, this is Andrew, how are you?

I

couldn't get anywhere near them.

closed ranks. We've got 'em. There's this

No

little

way.

It

was

record com-

pany, they are signed to Dick and Bryan, they didn't have a

manager and I don't think anybody wanted them to. Because managers can be a pain in the ass. These days I'm at the other end - I'm running my record company, Big Life, and managers can come in and cause chaos. So I can understand Morrison-Leahy thinking - bloody hell, managers get in the way. But I persevered. 'Wham Rap!' came out and it didn't happen, did it? But there was a buzz about them. On those early appearances on Top of the Pops they looked like the club that every kid wants to belong to. Then 'Young Guns' took off and I was talking to Morrison-Leahy all the time, because they were doing deals for them and everything, and that's when Bryan Morrison told me that I wasn't big enough to manage Wham! You re not big enough, Jazz - and he was right. I really couldn't have managed Wham! on my own. The way he was looking at it this band are going to be big, this band are going to be huge. I need a manager who's experienced, who can go and talk to them in America, to the Al Tellers of this world Al Teller was head of CBS America then - and he looked at me, almost coming off the street, with punk bands only a

97

EASY GIRLS AND LATE NIGHTS few years ago, had a bit of success ... he didn't see me as an idiot but he wanted to see Wham! with someone who was at the stage I am today. Someone who's already

done

it.

But

I

knew -

really feel this,

this

was the one band where

really

I

understand

this.

I

I

thought, God,

remember

I

seeing

George on Top of the Pops - and I noticed George not Andrew - and thinking, this kid is great. His eyes, his nose, his mouth, his body, went down that camera. He looked like

- this

is

my go.

Despite an abundance of passion and a

Summers knew

modicum

of success,

become the manager of Wham! alone. He needed the punching power of a name that was already known in record company offices on both sides of the Atlantic, some high-profile partner who would need no introduction in London or New York. Lunching with the veteran agent Neil Warnock, a name came up which seemed to fit the bill perfectly - Simon Napier-Bell. Simon Napier-Bell had a long and vivid track record and everyone knew it - because he kept reminding them. Blond

Jazz

was not going

that he

to

and bronzed and looking like a middle-aged beach bum, he had published his memoirs, You Don't Have To Say You Love Me ('A vile item of innuendo and invective' - New Musical Express) in the year that Wham! had their first hit, 1982. Japan, the group he had most recently managed, had disbanded but he was still riding high on a crest of notoriety. He was well known and bored stiff. Just right for Jazz. ,

Napier-Bell's book, an entertaining study of self-promotion, told of a unique style of

management, a breezy combination

of the casual and the calculating: 'If they're meant to be sexy, then you've got to sexy to the point of outraging the decent public.

bananas down stage.

If

make them You shove

on you do the same thing with

their trousers or let their breasts fall out

they're violent then

98

JANUARY- JUNE violence, have

1983

them beat up a few people

or kick an old lady in the High Street.

at a football

And

match

very soon the

about these exploits and they're record with bated breath. But when that record comes out, whether it's outrageous or not, unless it's a trite contemporary tune done in the style of the day it won't be a hit record.' Between managing acts like The Yardbirds, Marc Bolan general public have heard

waiting for the

and the

artist's

delightful

all

first

Fresh

Out of

Borstal,

Napier-Bell had

written a massive hit single for Dusty Springfield in the back

of a cab ('You Don't

Have To Say You Love Me'), he had

been the object of Brian Epstein's undying love at the time of his death and he had been rescued from certain death in a brothel by The Who's mad, cackling drummer, Keith Moon. There was no getting around it - Simon was a card.

Simon Napier-Bell: I met Jazz and told him that I was fed up with management. After Japan broke up, I wanted to quit. Jazz said - don't be stupid! With your name and background? He said that he would do all the hard work and I could just sit around. It sounded like a good idea. I tended to look at the grand design and Jazz was more concerned with the day-today running. As time went on, Jazz became very good at the grand design too. What he later did with Yazz was extremely calculated and worked-out, as good as anything anyone could do in that field. We had both seen Wham! and said - that's absolutely it. It has to be them. I was aware of them from the first time they were on Top of the Pops. I saw something absolutely riveting, I saw the genuine image of Starsky and Hutch, Butch and Sundance, which

I

had never seen

in

pop

before.

And

the

way

with each other! I don't mean in a gay way, but in the way husbands and wives do it. It's not necessarily sexual, it is a tremendous amusement with knowthey looked!

And

flirted

ledge of each other, to the exclusion of other people.

99

And

EASY GIRLS AND LATE NIGHTS around them was a magnificent image, and if they knew what they were doing - because nobody knows what they are doing the first time they do that show. But they seemed to have inner

having the the

way

girls

they played to the camera, as

knowledge. I

felt

that

George had

built himself

and the band on

his

Andrew when he first saw him. When George saw Andrew he was effectively screaming - he later built

reaction to first

a to

band that was going to get exactly the reaction he had had Andrew when he first saw him. Oh, this is fabulous - a

teenage hero.

So we chased them. Or rather Jazz did - because I don't if I wanted to, I just don't have the ability to start phoning up and chasing people. So Jazz got their numbers and he would phone up, leave messages, and there was one meeting we were meant to have with them and they didn't turn up. It was the third meeting we had fixed where they had failed to turn up. Jazz got George's ansaphone and left a really rude message. So I thought that would be the end of it. But George phoned up the next day, we arranged a meeting and they came. They told us they wanted to be the biggest group in the world. I had no problems with

chase people. Even

that.

D

That

initial

a palatial

meeting was at Simon Napier-Bell's opulent home, full of grubby white shag and last night's

pad

champagne bottles, only an olive's throw from Marble Arch. The two young musicians and their prospective managers -

who

called themselves Nomis Management (Simon spelt backwards seemed like a good omen for a career in records - no miss!) later met in the Bombay Brasserie, an Indian restaurant done out in colonial style in west London. On the menu that night was what George and Andrew expected from management, a report on their first album, projections for their first tour and, above all, the hated contract with Innervision.

100

JANUARY -JUNE

1983

Simon Napier-Bell suggested that Nomis would manage them for 12 per cent. Jazz Summers remembers thinking the figure was much too low and nearly kicked his partner under the Raj-style table.

He

restrained himself.

Jazz Summers: They were already pretty wanted them.

And now

big.

And we

they had them. Six months after forming his partner-

year after Jazz had first was part of their management team for everywhere in the world apart from the United States, where Ron Weisner and Freddie De Mann would continue to act for the band for the time being. With the deal with Nomis agreed and the first album in the can, an exhausted George Michael flew off to recuperate in Cyprus. The downside of his dreams - the constant, nagging pressure for promotion and product, the endless unwanted approaches from strangers who thought they knew you - was taking its toll. On top of everything else, there had been two unhappy returns to Bushey in the last year. Andrew Leaver, George and Andrew's friend from The Executive, had died of cancer and another friend, Paul Atkins, had been killed in a car crash. Under the Wham! logo - two young men dancing in silhouette - on the band's first album, Fantastic, would be a dedication to Andrew Leaver and Paul Atkins. ship with Napier-Bell

heard the

demo

of

and nearly a

'Wham

full

Rap!', he

George: Paul Atkins was another of our friends from school.

He died we had

a few all

months

left

after

Andrew.

It

was so weird because

school the year before and twice in three

months everybody came back together for those funerals. It was just so strange, because nearly everyone at both of those funerals was still a teenager. It completely freaked me out and what was really horrible about it was that we came back to these funerals as little pop stars. It was sick because we had

101

EASY GIRLS AND LATE NIGHTS that kind of attention.

anything, but

and

we were

People weren't vulgar about

to their parents, to be part of the

help noticing

it

or

there to pay our respects to our friends

when you

mourning, and you can't

get that kind of attention. Little

stars.

102

pop

10

GEORGE UNDERSTANDS THESE THINGS (JULY 1983-APRIL 1984)

'Club Tropicana' was an away day to paradise, a package holiday to the promised land, and period, vintage

Wham!,

it

marked

the start of mid-

that time between the stylized dirty

first three singles and the sullen grace of George Michael when the band held out the promise of a life (or at least a vacation) away from the rain and riots of Merry Olde England. 'Let me take you to the place', George sang, 'where member-

realism of the group's

Faith-era.

ship's a smiling face.'

Like Wham!'s earlier singles, 'Club Tropicana' had an ironic

smirk at

its

core

(a

response to the

smug

clubland), but by the time the record

elitism of

London

had reached number

its attendant video had become a familiar part of the summer's landscape, all the sarcasm had been well and truly buried under a languid celebration of sun, sea and casual cocktails. All this was a terrible disappointment for those who had let 'Wham Rap!' and 'Young Guns' kid them into thinking that George and Andrew were old-style rock and roll rebels. You were going to have to start the revolution without them, they were busy tanning by the pool. This was when their Mediterranean heritage really came in handy. As they lounged under palm trees or sauntered across the Ibiza sands, Wham! at last appeared to be in their natural habitat.

four and

Andrew:

It's in

the blood.

I

only have to look at the sun to

103

GEORGE UNDERSTANDS THESE THINGS get a tan. relative

To me

wealth

it's

-

I

a manifestation of youth, a

always

equate

it

with

symbol of

happiness.

If

someone's got a tan, then they are either naturally dark or they've been on holiday - and most people don't have shit holidays, they have

good ones. Personally,

I

prefer to look

tanned to looking wasted and yellow. It was all about what people aspire to - looking healthy and having a good time.

your football players or your pop it is whatever - you want them to reflect your aspirations.

Whether

'Club Tropicana' was a big holiday, that's successful

-

it

why

stars

it

sold over four-hundred thousand singles.

or

was so

And

it

on the money as far as it said to them about their lives. We filmed the video in Ibiza because that was where we would have gone, that was where my friends were going, though I hadn't had a holiday for God knows how long. It had to be Ibiza. If we had had the money, we would have gone to the Bahamas - and made it look like Ibiza.

was what people wanted and what is

not a brilliant song, but

it

right

George: Andrew and I couldn't have run about in shorts and done the 'Club Tropicana' video if we had been the colour of dead goldfishes. Because there was something vaguely Mediterranean about us we were totally convincing when we went the 'Club Tropicana' route, where two boys who were completely English wouldn't have been. I think that was part of the attraction. At that time I was still taken with the craft of being a songwriter and interested in coming up with something that the public would find irresistible. I was really happy being a singles artist, the whole medium excited me, because it was so short term and you could see an immediate result. These days I just don't have the same objectives. My immediate contemporaries - you're talking about Madonna, Jackson - are much more interested in being entertainers than I am. I now look at an album as an entity before I think about singles;

104

JULY 1983 me

singles don't give

as

-

much

APRIL 1984 pleasure as they used to.

To

be

week with Culture Club and Duran Duran and Frankie Goes To Hollywood was exciting. Every chart counted because what you did and how well you did mattered in relation to what they did. Whereas now I don't care. fighting every

Shirlie:

oh,

I

I

hated

saw you

looked great

in

it

in

when people came up

Wham!

in

said

-

George and Andrew horrific. There that video. Just posing. I was vogueing

that

video.

'Club Tropicana' but

was no dancing

me and

to

I

looked

then.

The posing eventually became too much for Shirlie's partner, Dee C. Lee, who was soon to leave the Wham! team to work with The Style Council, coincidentally led by ex-punk mover Paul Weller, one of George Michael's leastest fans (Weller's

The Jam, had had their last hit their first). It was to work out round: Dee C. Lee was to enjoy her own solo

month

old band,

the

Wham! had

for the best all

that

chart success as

and having a baby with Weller, while her replacement in Wham!, Pepsi De Marque, went on to form Pepsi and Shirlie, the thinking man's Bananarama, with Shirlie Holliman. But as the paper sun set on 'Club Tropicana', the Wham! girls - so crucial to the band's initial impact - were to become less prominent. A chorus of voices chanted a mantra of 'cool - cool - cool, cool - cool - cool' at the end of 'Club Tropicana', and all those voices were George Michael's. With his confidence growing daily, the pair dancing days were over. well as marrying

Dick Leahy: The trouble with Innervision had really boiled up when 'Bad Boys' had been a hit. I managed to persuade - or encourage - George and Andrew to put the album out before they did anything. By this time they had told me that Jazz and Simon were going to manage them and that Tony Russell had taken over as their lawyer. I had introduced them to Tony.

105

GEORGE UNDERSTANDS THESE THINGS album out before any litigation for a was ready. Virtually. And if you are going to have a legal fight, then fight with a number-one album. Don't fight with hit singles. Because you are not just going to be fighting Innervision, you are going to be fighting CBS. And George understands these things. The fight was going to take a long time - if the release date of the album went back during that period, it would not be current when it came out - and George recognized the logic of I

them

told

to put the

very simple reason.

And Andrew

all that.

said

-

stuff;

It

recognized the logic of

That's what we'll do.

fine.

It

was

all that.

all

So they

eleventh-hour

those tapes were buried away.

Then

the

album came out and went

in at

number

one.

was an album by singles artists - 'Wham Rap!', 'Young Guns', 'Bad Boys' and 'Club Tropicana' accounted for half the tracks. Apart from the songs that were already familiar to anyone who owned a radio, the band's debut album contained 'Come On!', well and truly the runt of the litter among those earliest Wham! songs, plus a loving and faithful reproduc-

Fantastic

tion of

The

Miracles' 'Love Machine', the

radicals for ever faithful to the cause.

work

of disco

There were also two

strong George Michael originals: the ebullient 'A

Ray Of

bass line

on the image of someone waking up with a running around their head, and 'Nothing Looks The

Same

The

Sunshine', built

In

Light', a breathy love

and wistful as a

song about watching a

and the first recorded example of those ethereal, sweet and sour heartaches that George would later make his own. Apart from 'Nothing Looks The Same In The Light', the album's greatest strengths were those four singles. These were the pillars that the number-one album of July 1983 was built on. It worked, though it did so by relying for the most part on old energies. Fantastic was to spend a total of one hundred lover sleep, soft

106

sigh,

JULY 1983- APRIL 1984 and sixteen weeks in the British album charts and sealed fate as commercial big shots. If the group was about to go into dispute with their record company, if Mark Dean

Whaml's

refused to renegotiate, then they could hardly be brandishing a bigger stick. In the in

meantime, George flew to the Muscle Shoals Studios to record 'Careless Whisper' with the legendary

Alabama

producer Jerry Wexler. Wexler had been born in New York in 1917 and after joining Atlantic in 1953 - ten years before

George was born - had produced Ray Charles and Aretha

many

Franklin and

of the soul greats in between.

The

tyro

torch singer from England and the grand old master of soul

production seemed result

was not

as

like a perfect

combination, but the end

overwhelming as had been anticipated.

George: What was disappointing about it was not that it sounded like an old Atlantic record, but that it sounded too middle of the road. I think Jerry Wexler is a wonderful man and I loved working with him, but the version of 'Careless Whisper' we did had more to do with the recording he was doing at the time than with the stuff that I loved. I had a great time, though, and they were really nice people. It was a strange and alien atmosphere for me - there were all these guys, the musicians there, who ambled in and out of the studio, who always work as a section, always have the same basic feel. But it just didn't have any of my character on it. I wasn't aware of it at the time because I was so in awe of Jerry Wexler. It took everyone back in London to convince me that it wasn't right - Dick Leahy was very instrumental in having

me

record

The

it

again.

remember about working with Jerry Wexler is you do, avoid making a one-note key change - in other words, taking everything up one key at the end of a song. All it means, he said, is that you can't think of anything else to do and you want people to notice thing

I

that he told me, whatever

107

GEORGE UNDERSTANDS THESE THINGS happened

that something else has oldest

and worst

in the song.

cliche in the book.

And

He

said,

it's

since that day

never put a one-key progression at the end of

my

I

the

have

songs. But

you hear it everywhere - you hear it on every Whitney Houston record, all those type of records. While George and Dick Leahy discussed what the perfect 'Careless Whisper' should sound like, the first item on the agenda for Nomis Management could not be clearer - get the contract with Innervision changed. Do it by negotiation or do it by litigation. But do it.

Simon Napier-Bell:

EVER

expressed to

I

me

don't think George has ever, ever,

that he thought there

was any value

our relationship whatsoever. But then George

is

in

not very

feels. At first, he enjoyed having a manager with my reputation. He used to say - what I like about Simon is that he is known as an asshole. I think he meant a tough

demonstrative of anything he

person rather than an

idiot.

But I'm not that tough.

I

am

on behalf of my artists. The whole fight with Innervision - 1 did that. It was a very exciting thing to go through and to work on. Tony Russell was excellent. It was a great battle. And it was fun.

calculating

Dick Leahy: A deal was almost struck with Innervision. We came to a renegotiation of the contract that George and Andrew would have been prepared to accept. And then Mark found he could not accept it. Changed his mind. The album had been out all summer, sold a phenomenal number of units. Mark had been the first guy to say, yes, I love it. The guy who said, I'll invest in it. And George and Andrew were very loyal for that reason. We would not be here today if somebody

had not been prepared

to invest in them. But with a deal

virtually agreed, a reasonable deal for everyone that left all of

us with the chance to get on with

108

it, it

broke down.

JULY 1983 Number-one album. Jazz

Andrew

APRIL 1984

Litigation.

Summers: When we had first met George and they had said, okay, you can manage us but make is

lousy deal. So the

thing

first

Russell because he

we have

renegotiated because

sure that our contract

Tony

-

we

got a

did was to send them off to

was Dick Leahy's lawyer and because

he was the toughest one around and good at this kind of litigation. But before we did that we went to Dick Leahy. We always went to Dick Leahy and Bryan Morrison and the four

of us talked over

Wham!'s

career.

And we

said, let's get

Mark

him about doing something. We had a big meeting at Simon's flat and we said, well Mark, we might have to go to court with you over this. And he said, Yve got a contract and the contract stands. He was cocky. Later I said to him - look, don't be an idiot. What you should do is come hand-in-hand with us to CBS and we'll say - look, this guy wants a million pounds to run his record company. These guys want a million pounds or half a million pounds because they are broke. And then everyone would

Dean

in, let's

have lunch and

have been happy.

No

let's

lawyers' fees.

talk to

We

could have been off

and going. But no. Don't be ridiculous, Mark

says. I've got a

contract.

And you

I

said

from

- Mark,

the

top

if it

ever goes wrong,

of

Soho

Square.

CBS

And

on what

will crap

that's

happened.

The law wars began in October. A twenty-four page letter from Russell's, Whaml's lawyers, to Mark Dean documented George and Andrew's complaints against Innervision,

prin-

was grossly unfair, unreasonable and that it had been signed - in that greasy spoon cafe around the corner from the Holloway recording studio - in circumstances of unequal bargaining power and without proper legal counsel for two teenage musicians whose signatures had been cipally that their contract

109

GEORGE UNDERSTANDS THESE THINGS It was pointed out number-one album should be enjoying more significant rewards for their labour than the £40 a week pocket money that Innervision allowed George and Andrew. The letter concluded that Wham! were now free to find a recording contract with another label and that they owned all the master recordings of the product they had recorded for Innervision. Dean's lawyers immediately responded with an injunction that prevented Wham! from signing with another record company. A court hearing was set for November. The writs had hit the fan.

obtained by fraudulent misrepresentation. that a

band with

a

Andrew: Litigation is the abyss. You see it yawning before you and you think - oh God, oh God, I have read about this. It is

a time of massive lawyers' bills, a frustrating, anxious time,

and George and

I

were ratty with each other

at that point.

With WhamJ's recording career stuck in a twilight zone that would last until well into next year, the band hit the road for a tour that Simon Napier-Bell had financed through a sponsorship deal with Fila, the sportswear manufacturers. This was the time of 'the casuals', when dressing for the track was just about the trendiest fashion statement possible, the days when the tabloid newspapers were full of stories of 'taxing'. 'Taxing'

was when you were mugged but they didn't steal your wallet - they stole the trousers of your Adidas tracksuit. Defiantly mass market of screaming George and Andrew pranced around on stage in

steering their career towards a

young

girls,

shorts, their tanned, hairy thighs glinting in the blinking stagelights,

when

playing a

game

of badminton that reached

they shoved shuttlecocks

down

their shorts.

its

climax

These antics

were derided by critics who had liked the leather rebels of Wham! George defended the fun and ball games. 'What does anyone expect us to do on stage?' he said. 'Recite the Gormenghast trilogy?'

early

110

JULY 1983- APRIL 1984 George was probably the first pop idol to put a shuttlecock his trousers who was cognizant with the work of M. L.

down

Peake.

George and Andrew let their audiences into their lives by showing old home movies and snapshots of their childhood (a cockles-of-the-heart warming device also used on the inner sleeve of Fantastic). Melanie and Yioda, George's sisters, were on the tour, helping with hair and make-up, and his cousin was there adding to the strong family presence. Andros remembers the hysteria that broke on the 'Club Fantastic' tour. Andros:

It

There were no fans

started in Scotland.

at the

London but when we arrived in Scotland there were a thousand kids. After the show at the Glasgow Apollo, we jumped into a limo - which was outrageous to me - and as we were going back to the Holiday Inn there were all these kids running down these alleyways as we drove through this one-way system. They were trying to beat us back to the hotel. I went down to the bar with Gary Crowley, the DJ, and we were mobbed. All these girls asked us for our autographs and I said - why us? And they said - you know them. We couldn't get anything to eat at the hotel - they wouldn't do anything, it was too late. We were all starving so I said I would go to the chip shop. I had to have three bodyguards with me. That's when I knew they were due for a serious amount of success. I was always proud of George. I always hoped the best for him, I always wanted him to be the biggest thing in the world. airport

But

I

tour.

when we

left

never really believed

Then

it

until

I

went on that

first

Wham!

there were five thousand kids outside the hotel

screaming for him.

And

he's

my

mate. That was quite weird

to handle.

Desperate for

Wham!

product to capitalize on the roaring

success of the album, Innervision cobbled together an insipid

111

GEORGE UNDERSTANDS THESE THINGS medley of three Fantastic tracks for the next single, a segue of 'Come On!*, 'Love Machine' and 'A Ray Of Sunshine', which was entitled by Mark Dean, 'Club Fantastic Megamix'. George and Andrew denounced the release but their hard-core fans could not be dissuaded from sending it to number fifteen in the run-up to Christmas.

It

was

to be

Whaml's

last release for

and though the 'Club Fantastic Megamix' was, it could have been a lot worse. For what Mark Dean would have liked was a premature ejaculation of 'Careless Whisper'. Innervision, a suitably sour note to end on. Embarrassing infuriating

Dick Leahy: Innervision put out that remix, which material.

I

Then

couldn't stop because the real killer

it

terrible three-track

was already recorded

came - they scheduled

the Jerry

Wexler recording of 'Careless Whisper' for release in 1983. I had persuaded George that it was too early, much too early, for a solo record. That was for later. And anyway - you can do it better. I didn't think there had been a particularly warm fusion between George and Jerry Wexler. You ask what a publisher can do - we were able to stop that record coming out. Because a publisher has one great weapon: he has the right to grant the first licence of the recording of a tune of which he controls the copyright. So I stopped it. I couldn't do that with the 'Club Tropicana Megamix' because the songs had already been out. But we could with 'Careless Whisper' because it had never been out. We knew how big that song could be so it was necessary to upset a few people to stop it. The best thing about the time that George and Andrew had to take off was it gave George the confidence and knowledge that he could make the classic version of 'Careless Whisper' himself.

Mark Dean won

the first round in the fight that the Royal Courts of Justice billed as Innervision Limited versus George Panos and Andrew Ridgeley. Mr Justice Harman maintained

112

JULY 1983

APRIL

-

1984

the status quo, granting Innervision their injunction to stop

Wham! rider

setting

that

if

up shop with another label, hut adding the allegations by George and Andrew were

the

The

correct, then the contract should be dissolved.

dispute

go to trial. Vicious accusations and bitter affidavits flew between Innervision and the Wham! camp like poisoned arrows. As the lawyers' fees spiralled into six figures, both sides dug in for a long, drawn-out battle, the legal

would have

to

equivalent of trench warfare.

Marble Arch home, trying very own mustard gas. his

Simon Napier-Bell brooded in to come up with some of his

Z Simon

Napier-BdL The fight with Innervision was absowent to every possible means to make sure we won. There were lots of dirty tricks and they were instigated deliberately to create the situation which would let us win. provoked Mark Dean into doing something that I felt was a possibility he might do. had a phone conversation in which was rude to him and then he wrote me a threatening letter. A threatening letter in abysmal handwriting. It was delivered to my front door by bike and put it in a safe and when we went to court there it was ready to pull out and show what sort of lutely dirty.

I

I

I

I

I

person

Mark Dean

was.

a

It's

tough game. But

I

think that

if

you started playing this tough game with ordinary individuals who just have a job and go out to work every day, then that's another matter. But when people are setting themselves up in business to try and make themselves very rich and they are taking advantage people are

in business,

it

is

because the contract stank, are playing the

to enjoy playing

it

enough.

was

If

a lousy contract

game. And the game

is

-

let's

- then they

get rich,

let's

who

can be the toughest and the game. Sometimes I lose it too - but you have

argy-bargy around, cleverest. It's a

fair

let's

see

it.

Innervision were stuck in the middle - completely screwed.

Because they couldn't

let

us

go even

113

if

they wanted to as

CBS

GEORGE UNDERSTANDS THESE THINGS would then sue them

for letting us go.

So Innervision were

absolutely screwed up.

had to get George and Andrew out of that contract.

I

I

am

not going to do anything genuinely hurtful or harmful to anybody but I will do anything I can which is legal to win this

my

case for

clients. It

was

it

The

dispute never went to

.

.

a great battle. Nice to

do

it,

nice to

D

win

.

trial.

CBS - their patience exhausted

new act inactive on one — broke the costly deadlock in coming down firmly on the side of Wham!, and

by long months of seeing

their biggest

of their minor, subsidiary labels

March

1984,

threatening to send the receivers to Innervision's offices on

swanky South Molton

Mark Dean had He received an

Street

if

the dispute

was not and

the choice between surrender

undisclosed,

out-of-court

resolved.

oblivion.

settlement

and,

though his label struggled on gamely for a little while longer, once he had lost his golden boys Innervision was doomed in the United States). (today Mark Dean works for As for Wham!, they signed a contract with the major CBS subsidiary Epic in April for a vastly improved deal and prepared themselves to put into effect the plans for world domination that had been drawn up during their enforced hiatus. The songs were written. The world was waiting.

MCA

George: optimist.

I

I

try to salvage the

think

my

was given a kind of take

me

good from any

situation. I'm

strength has always been that gift,

a very strong core that

through any situation:

I

I

is

an

believe

I

going to

have to be perfectly honest:

band had its foot in the door I never once believed that I was going to be anywhere else other than where I am today. I don't mean The Top - but I never believed that I was after the

going to be anything

less

than a very successful musician.

I'm not an arrogant person, conceited, but

I

have a

I

don't think I'm particularly

real inner confidence that this

114

is

what

I

JULY 1983- APRIL 1984 was meant to do and that, whatever other failings I have, I am someone who has a craft, an ability, which has incredible by-products. Because of that, I never let situations get on

me

top of

and

for

any length of time.

believe that

I

what

I

do

is

a

I

really

good

am

an optimist a positive

thing,

influence. It's

true that

because

it

I

thought

was so bad

it

that,

was good we had a lousy contract from the day we signed it, we were

it. Somehow. And when we took was a positive thing because I had been working very hard and I knew I needed to sit back and collect

probably going to get out of the break

my

knew

I

that

thoughts, as a person and creatively, so that

I

could write

It would most bands but I never doubted that the material I came up with would be good enough for us to come back up. Mark Dean told Dick Leahy that it took him a long time not to want to smash the radio every time he heard a record by Wham! or me. Most people's mistakes don't follow them around so loudly, do they? I'm sure that I was a real thorn in his side, especially when he went over to America. And I do feel sorry for him in the sense that he was so young too — and the deal that he had with CBS was quite punitive, he wasn't skimming a huge lot of cream off. But he came into the music business with too extreme a view, that you have to step on people before they step on you, he was in a hurry and he was paranoid about what other people would do with his band. In other words, if he had been a little more human and a little less businesslike, we would never have been able to get away from him. Although by this stage, if we had stayed with him there would have been some disasters along the line and we would probably be enemies.

the second album.

have

needed that breathing space.

killed

It's

very tough. Purely for pragmatic business reasons,

sided with

with

I

it

Wham!

but

I

CBS

instead of Innervision. I'm not comfortable

can be distant from

affected by something like that

it.

It's

very easy not to be

when you know

115

that you're

GEORGE UNDERSTANDS THESE THINGS not going to be the underdog.

A

business that generally treats

seems to have been quite reasonable to me - probably because I always had what they wanted. In all its history, CBS has never lost a band. Not through a subsidiary or any other way. We would have been a precedent. And when it looked as if it was possibly going to happen, they artists disgustingly

we hadn't had a single out in album was no real indication of what was about to happen. There wasn't such a gaping difference between Mark Dean and us at the time. It was the comeback stepped

in. It

a long time.

that

has to be said that

The

first

changed everything.

D

116

I

got the jeans from Woodhouse. the T-shirt

and socks from Marks and

Spencer (Innervision wardrobe allowance, remember), and the red cheeks

from an

over- zealous

make-up

artist.

Bad

Boys.

Mean and moody George and Andy, who were,

starting to believe in their

'What was that you C

I

said,

said,

suck those cheeks

own Press.

Andy?' in,

you

fat bastard.'

it

has to be said,

The Great Escape. headed

Just before the legal battle began,

for the beach.

goodbye NME.

we came clean and

Rich and famous here we come. Hello

(Actually,

make

Smash

Hits.

that fuck off NME.)

1

At a party in Dad's restaurant

number one

in Britain.

to celebrate

Happy men

indeed.

'Go

Go becoming

our

first

At Chateau Minerva] in the South of France, recording

September 1984. The

hair- dryer

the covers of the tabloids. tabloids.

Some days I think

Make It Big.

was working overtime. Some days I made

Some days

Princess Di

made

they just got us mixed up.

the covers of the

The Big

tour.

1984. Did we look stupid? Yes we did. Did we

looked stupid? Yes we did.

The

far side of the

bamboo

I

rest

my ease. Thank

curtain.

A

know we

you and good night.

fascinating but frustrating experi-

ence for me. Supposedly some kind of cultural milestone, in retrospect a

sham.

February 1984. Miami.

Andy came

I

was shooting the video

over with David Austin and

because we were

still

unknown

in the

US.

for "Careless Whisper'.

we had a

great laugh, probably

)

A shot

from the "Careless ^Tiisper' video. 'You're asking

me to kiss a man

with a wig on?'

"I'm Your Man'.

November 1985. Probably

'Edge of Heaven came pretty bloody happy.

I

close.

was depressed

finalized at this point.

I

don't

my

favourite video, although

know how I managed to look so

as hell. (By the

way

the split

had been

Backstage at The Final. day.

It

was a strange

feeling.

The proudest and saddest

11

MAKING

IT BIG

(MAY 1984-MARCH

'Wake

Me Up

1985)

You Go Go' proved

Before

that the fluor-

no aber'Go Go', the song, the video, the concept, was Wham! as pure, unadulterated pop band, its litany of life-affirming baby talk - boom-boom, bang-bang-bang, go-go, yo-yo, jitterbug-jitterbug - delivered with a finger-snapping, infectious

escent posing pouches of 'Club Tropicana' had been ration.

panache.

It

song that

dumped

was

a Day-glo extravaganza of mindless joy, the

Wham! had

been working towards ever since they

their leather jackets,

and

it

put the band's career into

overdrive.

May release it became Wham!'s first and would go to the top slot in nine other charts worldwide. Between now and the band's demise, every single they released would go to number one in Britain - with the exception of when they were up against the Band Aid project - and between now and November, every other number-one single in the British chart would be by Wham! or George Michael. 'Go Go' was inspired by a foggy Andrew Ridgeley message to one of his parents. 'Wake Me Up Up Before You Go Go' wrote the comatose son, compounding the accident of writing 'up' twice by adding an extra 'go' as a joke. George saw the note and thought it was a great line, the combination of two short, punchy, positive words sounding like a green light to good things, ringing a loud bell in his pop sensibility. Three weeks

number one

after

its

in Britain

117

MAKING

IT BIG

Filmed at the Brixton Academy with an army of

Wham!

'Go Go' video featured the poppiest moment of George Michael's career. Hugging himself in a storm of dry ice, glowing inside his fluorescent gloves and T-shirt, George sighed, 'It's cold out there but it's warm in bed\ and rolled his eyes to the heavens, swooning in a paroxysm of passion. It the

fans,

was

a

moment

experimental

because

it

fate as a

that

outfit.

made The Still,

was impossible

Partridge Family look like an

'Go Go' was easy to to forget.

It

like

mainly

sealed the band's glossy

scream band, adored by legions of overexcited young it kicked off made George and

females, and the global success

faces in their own land, hounded by a mass media hungry for celebrity flesh. This was the period when George and Andrew jostled Her Royal Highness Princess Diana for the front pages of national newspapers. Wham! shared headline mileage with Diana and - with the baroque, sculpted, frozen blond locks that George was currently sporting - it often seemed that they also shared a hairdresser.

Andrew household

George:

I

think

'Go Go'

is

undoubtedly the most

membered Wham! song — because

STUPID

it

is

that

re-

much more

than anything else! I still look at that video and worked perfectly for that song. Really poppy, really colourful - it totally captures that whole period. But although I see it working as a video, it makes me cringe for myself. Because what I was then and what I am now - one of them has to be a fake! I just hope people realize that the old one was the fake. But I was completely into the idea of being screamed at - I was very young and I can't pretend my ego didn't need that. I was so into it that I didn't realize how hard it would be to come out the other side, because it has never been easy to make the transition from being screamed at to being listened to. What I thought was, you can have your cake and eat it too. You are just going to have to wait for some of think

it

the other stuff.

118

MAY

1984

-MARCH

1985

That year was great for competition. I enjoyed the competimore than any other. We knocked off Duran Duran from number one, then Frankie Goes To Hollywood knocked us off, then 'Careless Whisper' knocked them off. I really loved all that. To tell you the truth, I never felt threatened. I must admit I never thought The Frankies would be around for very long. All the English bands were dependent on other people for songwriting, production, you name it. Nobody else was self-contained and I always realized that. It wasn't as though I thought the stuff they were coming out with wasn't any good - I was a big fan of Culture Club records, and of Frankie and Duran Duran records - and I enjoyed having to come up with something commercial. That was the point at which I really believed in myself as a craftsman and I believed in the idea of three- or four-minute pop singles that people couldn't resist. And I had perfect sparring partners all through that year. I never felt - fuck you, you tion that year

I enjoyed it. But I know they felt that way towards me because I was that bit newer. 'Go Go' is what people think of when they think of Wham! It sold roughly half of what 'Freedom' sold, which is one of the least remembered Wham! songs, and that's simply because

bastards, because

by the time 'Freedom' came out we had been whipping up the had been whipping up the public for nearly six months. By the time 'Last Christmas' came out, it was at the level where we sold one and a half million copies. There is no doubt that when you become the kind of family

Press or the Press

item that

we became

it is

chiefly

because of the Press and, in

those cases, the Press really does

sell

records.

We

benefited

and then Andrew got his comeuppance - mine came later. But I wouldn't change it. For a lot of people, they don't get that much benefit out of that kind of Press attention. But there was for us. For most people, it's not worth it. A good example is what the Press did to George - Boy George. George, I remember, used to phone them up with

119

MAKING stories

about himself. And

it

IT BIG

was no big

fantastic relationship with the Press. But

it

secret

- he had

doesn't matter

a

how

good your relationship with them is, sooner or later they will decide to turn around and fuck you over - because they think that that is what the public want to see. Andrew got more bad Press than me because he wanted that kind of publicity. When it all started the publicity he was getting was mainly that he was a bit of a lad, a lovable villain - Randy Andy. He didn't mind any of that, in fact he loved it. So he would actually go to places where he knew that he would be smashed out of his brains by the end of the evening and that they would get their pictures. He thought it was a laugh - it was only later that they tried to make him look like a real idiot. I was going out to places where the Press wouldn't be. They didn't particularly want to be at those places either because they didn't want Andrew and me to be the same. They wanted their readers to side with one or the other of us. You can't win with the mass media because they don't have a healthy interest in anyone. You play the game, you get that initial excitement of being on the front page, and you pay for it later. And the whole Press explosion happened around the time of 'Go Go'. At

first

Wham! were

Andrew decided

willing victims of the

to have his

Roman

mass media.

When

nose reshaped by cosmetic

throw a smokescreen over the operaconk had been broken by David Austin in a tragic champagne-bucket throwing incident. This was the start of the notorious Hootergate affair. Andrew's face - crisscrossed with bandages - appeared on a rash of front pages, amid speculation that his handsome visage had been destroyed for life. When it was revealed that it had all been a scam, and that the Ridgeley snout had been altered by a highly-paid cosmetic surgeon and not by a drunken crony, then that made the front pages too. It was all a bit of a laugh surgery, he attempted to

tion by declaring that his

120

MAY 1984-MARCH

1985

and, as Warhol said, 'You don't read your Press clippings

you weigh them.' An avalanche of dumb headlines was follow in the coming years.

to

pop shows chop George's naughty bits! - Star's Is Too Raunchy', 'baron's swipe at george Rumours About Tania And This Michael Character Are Rubbish', 'no respect for george - His Songs Are Too Dirty, Says Aretha', 'wham girl's stolen night of love - My Sexy Antics With Andrew', 'sexy wiggle flattens george - Pop Idol Injured'. After the Hootergate affair had blown over, it soon became *tv

New

Video

fun to be in the lurid limelight. Girls they had never met

less

turned up on centre spreads revealing drip-by-drip details of

- on one memorable occasion, a cardboard Andrew was produced for the photo session as conclusive proof of intimacy. George and Andrew had a price on their heads - or at least on their sexual peccadillos. They 'nights of love'

cut-out of

began to despise the flashbulb glare and prurient, prying eyes of the media - though,

Andrew who seemed

all

through the

Wham!

years,

it

was

to bear the brunt of the tabloid shitstorm,

if compensating his partner for the burden of creativity, always acting as the lightning rod for the band's bad publicity.

as

And

Andrew began to Randy Andy, the naughty but nice boy about town (kind of a commoner version of the other so-called Randy Andy, Prince and Playboy) to Randy Andy, the violent slob, the puking pig, George Michael's useless other half - the Vomit Fountain in full effect. slowly the popular, public image of

change: from

Shirlie: I think Andrew got more caught up in the lifestyle than George did. Andrew believed in the Press too much - and then he wanted to rebel against them, to make even more of

an

idiot of himself.

started to think he

am

I

think in the end he

was

really like that

wild.

121

felt it

- oh,

was I

am

all true.

He

a drunk.

I

MAKING

IT BIG

Andrew was very lazy. We never used to stop telling him he lazy. You lazy git, Andrew! Me and George always used

was

to pick

on him. But he

is

the

most generous person

in the

What always shocked me about Andrew was that - he really does care about people. He never forgets, he always cares. But me and George used to nag him all the time - he used to get up at one in the afternoon. You

world. His heart

is

so big.

would see it on George's face sometimes - what's he up to now? Andrew could be very childish. But I don't think George was ever young. He has always had an older mind, he has always seemed too mature for his age. I can't imagine what he will be like at forty. George was never young. Andrew: Being seen

as the useless part of the

because there was just so

much

of

it. It

band niggled

niggled because people

seem to grasp the whole thing. Face time - in - we were very much a duo, and people found it a bit galling that it wasn't like that in the musical sense. But it wasn't just about Wham! — it was also about our friendship. It was a trade-off. George did it in our professional lives and I did it in our private lives. It's all a balance. But people aren't very bright so you just try to ride with it and ignore the bullshit. I had the freedom to romp. I enjoyed the lifestyle, but I also enjoyed the music and I took pride in what we did on stage. We always gave a great show. Well, not always - most people didn't notice but we had a couple of shitters. The band never had a bad night but there were times when you had a cold or you felt sick, you had honked up beforehand - you just didn't feel up to it. You were going through the motions and what you were giving was fake, even though people didn't notice it. I used to lose four or five pounds every show we did. Just body fluid, you put it on the next day. It was a very energetic show and we used to give everything. But most of the pressure is on the songwriter - if you are just a player then you have a

just didn't

videos and in the Press

122

MAY 1984-MARCH

1985

George's position, you never have free you are always thinking, always in the process of creating - which is why a lot of the time, he seems so lot

more

free time. In

time, because

distracted. He's a natural player

but his musical touch

is

-

was always the one. But he never in

our private

lives.

he's not technically brilliant

fabulous. In our professional lives, he tried to

have the upper hand

Friends don't do that to each other.

on me in a big way. I guess I had was in town a lot, getting banned from various clubs, and that's what they wanted. You hear about the rave-ups of The Beatles or Bolan but there was nobody doing it at that time. But I wasn't going out to do the rock and roll thing - I was just doing what I'd always done. So it was always there waiting for them. I didn't give a shit really — I was just having a good time. I didn't mind being called a Vomit Fountain - things like that are just amusing. I

The

Press thing backfired

a high profile because

can stand 'the girl

I

with green knickers' and 'andy pissed me off - left me

gets ten out of ten' but what stunned, speechless - was when that

girl posed with a lifesize, cardboard cut-out of me. And the photographers annoyed me: when there were fifteen of them between a restaurant door and me or when they came up to you and, without asking,

- bang! That incensed me. It was fun for a while but that doesn't last. It was never so bad for George. He seemed to be working most of the time and he doesn't get as drunk as I do.

stuck their cameras in your face

;