George Michael: The biography

by Rob Jovanovic

  Michael also found himself appearing with increasing regularity in the gossip pages of the national press. Private Eye pointed out that his haircut was very similar to that of Princess Diana. ‘The hairdryer was working overtime in autumn 1984,’ Michael admitted to the Daily Mail in 1990. ‘I was sporting the baroque hairdo with the sculpted, blond locks. Some people thought I had the same hairdresser as Princess Diana. Some days I made the covers of the tabloids. Some days Princess Di made the covers of the tabloids. Some days I think they just got us mixed up.’

  The satirical ITV puppet show Spitting Image also poked fun at the duo, depicting them as a pair of walking white pants with a mouth full of shining white teeth on the front. They were portrayed performing a spoof song that seemed to sum up many people’s view of the band: ‘Hair, teeth, lips and a perfect bot’.

  Wham! returned to the charts in the autumn with a new single and album. ‘Freedom’, chosen as the single to promote the new album, duly produced another number one hit. This clap-along anthem had been written during the sessions in France and was recorded there in a single day. The title is somewhat misleading: Michael sings of not wanting freedom but instead preferring a monogamous relationship. The opening horns dissolve into an infectious beat that drives the song along at a fast pace and the fist-pounding chorus is pure George Michael magic, with not a little Motown influence showing through.

  To promote the new material the group appeared on many TV shows including Razzmatazz and Terry Wogan’s early-evening chat show, plus the now customary spot on Top of the Pops. This time DJ Mike Read introduced the band. He looked like he’d been watching the ‘Careless Whisper’ video too much, dressed as he was in shades and a white jacket with the sleeves scuffed up to the elbows. Michael had changed his image again for the performance, letting his highlighted hair grow and wearing a baggy black suit and black T-shirt, while Andrew Ridgeley also wore a suit. While the boys shimmied back to back, the girls looked classy in sparkling red dresses and long black gloves. The backing band, in front of the banks of shaped neon lighting, were clad in tuxedos.

  Make It Big was mixed in Paris and released in November. Again, it exemplified quality over quantity, as once more just eight songs were included. ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go Go’ set the scene, closely followed by the band’s most mature song to date, ‘Everything She Wants’. This was a perfect slice of funk-pop in which Michael sings about a partner who takes everything he earns, money being the mid-Eighties subject of choice. ‘Heartbeat’ sounded like mid-1970s Bruce Springsteen until Michael began to sing and ‘Like A Baby’ was sub-par 10CC with some Spanish guitar. The aforementioned ‘Freedom’ picked up the pace, the Isley Brothers cover ‘If You Were There’ trotting nicely along in its wake before the theme of money returned on ‘Credit Card Baby’. This horn-driven Sixties pastiche again dealt with the topic of George’s girl spending all his money for him. The obvious album closer, ‘Careless Whisper’, proved perfectly suited to that role. Though a couple of the songs now sound dated, overall the album has aged pretty well. And it really did manage to make the band big, especially in America where George’s range of vocal styles – from falsetto to white-boy soul – was lapped up.

  Rolling Stone magazine again reviewed the album. This time Christopher Connelly grasped the band’s appeal perfectly, calling Make It Big ‘an almost flawless pop record, a record that does exactly what it wants to and has a great deal of fun doing it. Sure, it’s slight stuff and too thinly orchestrated at times, but George Michael can write and sing rings around fellow teen dream Simon Le Bon. Everyone has a guilty pleasure. Why not let Wham! be yours?’ American record buyers agreed – the album hit number one in the US charts.

  The album cover was again kept simple, showing the boys lounging in suits, black for Michael, white for Ridgeley. Miami Vice would never look the same again. Make It Big tied in with everything that upwardly mobile Conservative Britain was about in 1984. The album became as much a staple of Eighties culture as Rubik’s Cube, legwarmers and The Breakfast Club.

  This depiction of the lavish lifestyle of the young and successful was hammered home with a £10,000 champagne reception at London’s Xenon Club, attended by representatives of the music industry such as Bob Geldof, Nick Heyward and members of Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet. Make It Big went straight in at number one in the UK, staying on the charts for a year and five months.

  Wham! were now at a stage where each successive album was expected to be accompanied by a worldwide tour. The Big Tour opened at Whitley Bay Ice Rink on 4 December. For what was portrayed as such a prestigious tour, the opening venue was modest to say the least, but with no other large venues available in the northeast they were booked in for three shows sandwiched around trips to Glasgow, Dublin and Leeds. The UK leg of the tour was only just hitting its stride when George Michael hurt his back during an excessively energetic dance sequence at Leeds Queens Hall. For the second UK tour running the band had to cancel some shows, this time five gigs which were put back until February and March the following year. But they did manage to perform dates at Wembley Arena on 23, 24, 26 and 27 December, providing quite a Christmas present for around 50,000 fans. The tour would prove to be hard work and Michael lost an average of five pounds per show due to dehydration. Andrew Ridgeley also gave his all on stage and was a key part of the live show, managing to keep going despite the numerous stories of his excesses that were now regularly popping up in the tabloid press.

  George Michael was also out and about a lot, but he managed to keep any liaisons away from the press. This was quite a feat in itself, for the hysteria had reached even higher levels than that surrounding the 1983 tour. ‘It’s hard for people to appreciate that the screaming,’ Michael explained, ‘although initially very flattering – you feel like you’ve been blessed with something – does eventually make you feel like an object, a sex object. You have to have gone through the initial excitement to relate to it. Then you get terrible guilt feelings when you lose the excitement.’ This feeling of being adored as an object rather than a talented musician and performer was beginning to wear away at Michael.

  The December tour dates coincided with a burst of chart activity for George Michael. The first manifestation came via a charity single. Bob Geldof had been one of millions of Britons moved by BBC newsman Michael Buerk’s reports of the famine sweeping through Ethiopia, and especially by the accompanying images. Geldof and Midge Ure immediately set the wheels in motion to produce the most famous charity record of all time, ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’. On 24 November he had collected together a cast of around 40 performers spanning the whole spectrum of 1984’s pop superstars, including George Michael (Andrew Ridgeley allegedly overslept, which is why he wasn’t on the record). Phil Collins, Tony Hadley of Spandau Ballet, Status Quo, Sting, Bono, Paul Young and Bananarama were just some of the participants in the project, which was given the name Band Aid.

  At the Band Aid sessions Michael felt snubbed by some of the other performers. Within the music industry, he felt, Wham! was becoming something of a teenybopper joke to the more ‘serious’ artists. Paul Weller approached him and had a go about his Arthur Scargill comments. Michael was quite firm in his belief that, in his words, Scargill was a ‘wanker’, and he told him so. And if Michael’s charitable credentials were under the microscope, he passed with flying colours, donating the royalties from his next single, a cool £250,000, to the famine relief fund.

  Band Aid’s ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’ was a surefire bet for the Christmas number one spot. Released on 3 December, it went straight to the top, selling over three million copies. Meanwhile Wham! had issued ‘Last Christmas’, which slotted in nicely behind at number two. In a clever marketing ploy, Epic added ‘Everything She Wants’ to make the release a double A side. Once Christmas had passed they could continue to promote the single, flipping it over to give it a second wind.

  ‘Last Christmas’ was a Phil Spector-ish blast of seasonal pop replete with emine
ntly singable, heartfelt lyrics, sleigh bells and a touch of longing and regret – the perfect Yuletide mix. The accompanying video also followed the perfect Christmas recipe. In it a group of big-haired friends get together for a trip to a remote ski lodge where they dress the tree and all sit down for Christmas dinner together. It has become not just one of the best-remembered videos of the Eighties but possibly the most famous Christmas video of all time. Royalties for repeat plays seem to be secure for ever more.

  After the Christmas buzz had passed – probably by the end of Boxing Day – record buyers started purchasing and playing ‘Everything She Wants’, pushing sales past the one million mark. The video for this track was a mix of black and white concert footage from the December 1984 shows and closeups of George Michael singing directly into the camera lens. ‘Everything She Wants’ was the song used on the first Top of the Pops of the new year, on 3 January 1985. George Michael bounced around with flowing hair, wearing an untucked shirt, grey jacket and jeans, a look that would be trendy in 20 years’ time. Andrew Ridgeley had a massive mullet, and wore mega-loud grey, black and white tartan trousers with matching knee-length coat. In front of a giant neon ‘1985’ sign Pepsi and Shirlie danced in black polo necks and strings of pearls. In the USA, ‘Everything She Wants’ topped the singles chart, while it also made number seven in Australia and number two in Canada.

  After Top of the Pops Wham! set off for shows in Japan, Australia and the United States. This time Jack and Lesley Panos came along for the ride. Like much of the tabloid-reading fan base, they were still unaware of their son’s excesses, especially while on tour. In Japan Michael’s spiralling after-show partying continued. After one show he didn’t manage to make it back to his hotel, even though his parents were staying there. Members of the crew had to go and collect him at noon from another hotel where he’d spent the night with three women he’d just met. He stumbled out into the daylight with a dazed look on his face, clearly still drunk. During the February US tour, according to Andros Georgiou as quoted in Michael’s own book, Bare, Michael was sleeping with anyone and everyone he could, from fans at shows to air hostesses. While Michael claimed that he didn’t like being used as a sex object, it didn’t appear to stop him from sleeping around. In contrast Andrew Ridgeley, having split up with Shirlie Holliman, didn’t complain about it – he enjoyed it to the extreme. But the real Georgios Panos was still insecure about his looks and his sexuality.

  While in Japan George and Andrew were asked to shoot a little TV promo video to a backing track of ‘Freedom’. They used the shoot as a chance to take the mickey, changing the words to ‘It doesn’t matter that you’re slightly porky/Ever since that day we met in Torquay’ and adding ‘You’re the fish face I adore’. When quizzed by the Japanese press, they said this was a British term of endearment.

  In between these overseas dates, the band flew back to the UK to collect a Brit Award for Best Group and a prestigious Ivor Novello Award (named after the gay Welsh singer and composer who’d gained massive fame during the first half of the twentieth century) for Most Performed Song of the Year, presented for ‘Careless Whisper’. At the same ceremony Elton John presented George Michael with the award for Songwriter of the Year 1984, making him the youngest-ever recipient of the award. Finally Michael was seeing some recognition for his songwriting craft and hard work. But he wanted much more – and the rest of the year would seal Wham!’s fate in that regard.

  FIVE

  FREEDOM

  1985–1986

  free•dom

  the state of being free or at liberty rather than in confinement or under physical restraint: he won his freedom after a retrial.

  exemption from external control, interference, regulation, etc.

  the power to determine action without restraint.

  political or national independence.

  personal liberty, as opposed to bondage or slavery: a slave who bought his freedom.

  the absence of or release from ties, obligations, etc.

  ease or facility of movement or action: to enjoy the freedom of living in the country.

  frankness of manner or speech.

  ‘The one person I really wanted, the one I thought my life would revolve around, didn’t want me. It hit me hard. The relationship screwed me up because I am usually the one who does the leaving. It was messy and I am used to being loved. It was unfair. It had nothing to do with me as a person, as an individual with two legs, eyes and dark hair. It had everything to do with me being a pop star. I was spoilt in so many ways, going straight from school into the band, having no money problems, being able to sleep with whoever I wanted whenever I wanted, and my career going exactly as I liked it, then someone pulled the carpet away. I drank myself stupid for months. I was in a very bad way and started losing my temper for the first time in my life. I got into fist fights with friends, threw photographers against walls and acted very macho.’

  George Michael, Today, 1990

  In March 1985 blood donors in the UK were screened for the AIDS virus for the first time. Health minister Kenneth Clarke announced the move in an effort to calm growing public paranoia about the virus. During 1984 there had been a reported 132 AIDS cases in the UK, up from just four cases in 1981.

  In the spring of 1985 George Michael moved to a flat in Knightsbridge before Wham! set off on tour. He was still keeping a relatively low profile while Andrew Ridgeley filled the tabloid pages with his drinking, love life and love of fast cars. In the USA ‘Everything She Wants’ went to number one, becoming the band’s third consecutive American chart topper with the help of the George Michael-produced black and white concert video, which received a lot of airplay.

  Meanwhile Simon Napier-Bell was working hard on a publicity coup for the band. He had been holding meetings with the Chinese Minister for Culture, Wang Ping Shan, to discuss the possibility of Wham! playing a pair of shows in Peking and Canton. If this came to fruition the band would be the first major western pop group ever to be allowed into the planet’s most populous nation – which of course was also potentially the biggest record-buying market on the planet.

  ‘The basic reason for going to China was not to introduce our wonderful culture. It was to do something,’ said George Michael. ‘How many things does a band do that are of any significance whatsoever? Just for once, it was nice that you were the first and, quite possibly, the last.’ After lengthy negotiations, two dates were agreed, Peking on 7 April and Canton four days later. On the way over the band would also play two shows in Hong Kong on 2 and 3 April. The Wham! organisation paid the bill for everything related to the trip, an estimated £500,000. They hoped to recoup some money by making a film of the tour and securing a deal to sell records and tapes to the Chinese public.

  A large cast and crew were taken along for the shows. Keyboardist Tommy Eyre was given the task of musical director and the regular band signed up: Deon Estus, Trevor Morrell and Hugh Burns, plus percussionist Danny Cummings, a brass section of Dave Baptiste, Raul D’Oliveira and Paul Spong, backing vocalists Leroy Osbourne, Janet Mooney and Janey Hallett and a trio of dancers, Shirlie Holliman, Pepsi DeMacque and Trevor Duncan. George’s sisters were employed as well. Melanie, who now worked as a hairdresser in London, took care of makeup. Yioda, who had been teaching languages at a school in Nottingham, quit her job to take charge of the wardrobe department.

  To finance the making of the tour film, Nomis set up a company called Big Boys Overseas and brought in 23-year-old producer Martin Lewis. Lewis was to go on to greater things, including The Secret Policeman’s Ball for Amnesty International, but his choice of director for the Wham! movie was a misguided one. He gave the job to Lindsay Anderson, a 61-year-old Scotsman known for his work in the Free Cinema movement of the 1960s. Oxford-educated Anderson had cut his teeth as a film critic after the war before making his own films in the 1950s. His documentary Thursday’s Child won an Oscar in 1954 but his most memorable films, This Sporting Life, If and The White Bus, had come in
the 1960s. He was a strange choice to document a pop band such as Wham!.

  The tour party arrived in China for a banquet of honour, to be held on 5 April in Peking. Back home the visit made headlines on the main BBC news programme that night. Throughout the trip Michael and Ridgeley were filmed constantly and followed religiously by a pack of UK pressmen who had been allowed into the country especially to follow the tour. Tickets for the show included a free Wham! cassette with every purchase, many fans queuing all night to ensure a place. However, the Chinese Cultural Ministry was keeping a firm hold on proceedings. The estimated 10,000 fans in attendance for the first show at the Workers’ Gymnasium in Peking were told quite clearly that dancing was not permitted and that they had to stay in their seats. On stage Wham! too were under the scrutiny of the authorities, and had been told that they weren’t allowed to play ‘Love Machine’.

  Backstage George Michael admitted that he was nervous before going on, something which never normally bothered him. At 7.45 pm prompt the show began. After a local introduction the band put on an energetic show which bemused and entertained the crowd in equal measure. The main problem was the language barrier – with most in the crowd not knowing what was being sung about.