Part of the controversy caused by the song came from people’s misguided reaction to the video. ‘When I released “I Want Your Sex” and the music video, I didn’t think the image would have such a lasting effect,’ said Michael. ‘The image still seems to overshadow the music.’ At face value the video is just a couple of steps away from soft porn. Kathy Jeung struts around in stockings and suspenders, or lies blindfolded on a bed with Michael. There are closeup shots of body parts writhing around the sheets (Michael used a body double), clips of water being poured on to naked flesh and the like. What critics seemed to miss, or ignore, was that Michael is filmed writing on Jeung’s naked body with a stick of red lipstick. The words he writes are ‘Explore’ and ‘Monogamy’, which couldn’t make the point of the song or video any clearer.
The video was nevertheless banned from UK television and the song itself from the radio after 6 am and before 9 pm, thus taking away most of his potential listeners. Michael desperately needed his fans to be able to hear and see his new image and new product and they were being denied the opportunity. Irritated by the media response, (Radio 1’s Trevor Dann dismissed the song as ‘silly’), Michael decided to take control of the situation. He ensured that copies of the video were sent to cafés and bars up and down the country to play on their own in-house TV systems in order to give the clip an airing. He also put a veto on the BBC being sent any more copies of the video, record or CD, justifiably upset that he was being censored for promoting sex in a stable relationship while rap and rock videos showed much worse.
As would become common throughout his career, when faced with a problem, Michael offered himself directly to his audience so as to put his point across without being misquoted or misrepresented. In the wake of ‘I Want Your Sex’ he offered a lengthy interview to Channel 4’s Jonathan Ross Show. Ross had only just broken into television and the slim, impressively quiffed interviewer sat with a clipboard of questions, looking as if he was working on a school project. After a round of mundane questions they cut to the chase and discussed Michael’s new single. The singer explained that he wanted to make a moral statement by being direct. While he had anticipated that the BBC would ban the song because of the use of the word ‘sex’, the fact that the IBA (which governed the UK’s independent radio stations) had also banned it – effectively halting all daytime play – shocked him. He wanted to put the record straight, he explained, because most people had heard things about the song without actually hearing it for themselves. He also said that he was tired of answering questions about the song which, he explained, ‘was my take on just one aspect of relationships’. For a month he felt as if he’d been voted in as the young person’s official spokesman on sex. At the end of the interview Michael told Ross that he’d been offered various film roles, including one part playing a Greek-Jewish revolutionary, but he’d turned them all down and would wait for a few years.
The Ross interview was soon lampooned in the NME, zooming in on the host’s relentless questions about Michael’s sex life and Michael’s holier-than-thou answers. Claiming to be ‘That George Michael Interview By Jonathan Ross In Full’, it opened (Ross has a lisp, making it difficult for him to pronounce his ‘r’s correctly, ‘Jonathan: Well, George, I weckon it’s weasonable to say that you’re a wakish, woguish, waspscallion and a bit of a sexpants to boot. Are you getting enough?’ And it went downhill from there.
Elsewhere the controversy saw Michael grace the cover of the NME on 20 June. Under the prophetic title ‘Decadence! George Michael exposes himself’ he was given a centre spread to talk about his new solo career in an issue otherwise filled with Robert Cray, Genesis and Curiosity Killed The Cat. Inside, beneath the caption ‘Tart with a Heart’, he again discussed the ‘I Want Your Sex’ ban. His main bone of contention was that the record would only be played late at night; if he couldn’t be bothered to listen at that time, he asked, then why would anyone else? He went on to discuss his image in America, which was still very much linked to Wham!. In the UK, however, ‘I Want Your Sex’ had gained him a new audience. It was kept from the top spot only by Whitney Houston’s ‘I Wanna Dance with Somebody’, with Johnny Logan’s ‘Hold Me Now’ at number three.
The final touches were put to the forthcoming album, to be titled Faith. ‘I had faith in what life was going to deliver,’ said Michael, ‘that I was going to get the things I wanted.’ The bulk of the work had been done at Michael’s favourite London studios, Sarm, and at PUK in Denmark. Close to Portobello Market, the Sarm complex houses four studios and provides a vastly experienced staff who have since worked with Coldplay, Oasis, Radiohead, Doves, Muse and Alicia Keys. George Michael used its comfortable environment when working on Faith, gladly paying the extra fees in order to write in the studio as well as recording there. He played many of the instruments himself, including the drums, but the final mixes were augmented by some familiar helping hands. Hugh Burns, Deon Estus, Andy Duncan and Robert Ahwai from the Wham! days were all present, as was Paul Gomersall who had worked with George on Make It Big, while Chris Cameron added the famous church organ to the title track. ‘On Faith, the musicians were around all day, every day,’ recalled Gomersall. ‘Deon Estus on bass, Chris Cameron on keyboards and Hugh Burns on guitar. But he has always appreciated that his listening audience wants to hear George Michael, so he now tends to do most of the work himself.’
The single ‘Faith’ was released in October to further promote the album. The combination of a musical style very new to the singer and an iconic visual image, promoted via the heavily played video, sealed the track’s place in pop history. With acoustic guitars and a clap-along beat Michael sounded like Elvis at Sun but looked like Elvis on the ’68 Comeback Special. ‘Faith’ opens with a church organ reprising Wham!’s ‘Freedom’; this gives way to light percussion and that guitar part as Michael begins to sing. The organ was a poppier version of the rumbling church organ that had opened U2’s ‘Where The Streets Have No Name’ on The Joshua Tree in the spring of 1987. ‘[It] was inspired by a couple of relationships that didn’t happen,’ recalls Michael. ‘Very soon after the break-up of the group and before I started seeing Kathy, there were people with whom I thought about starting relationships and eventually decided against it. Because I knew I was on the rebound and I wanted to be with someone for a different reason than that.’
The video came prepacked with the new improved George Michael image. The opening shot shows a Wurlitzer jukebox playing a seven-inch record of ‘I Want Your Sex’. Part way through, another record flips down and the organ opening to ‘Faith’ starts to play. Michael appears, shot in black and white except for his blue jeans, which are in colour. The camera starts low down and rises, revolving around him, lingering as it passes his backside, while he stands like a statue in ripped blue jeans, with designer stubble, crucifix earring, BSA leather jacket, metal-tipped boots, shades and a low-slung guitar. This was the George Michael image of 1987–89; he later told Michael Parkinson that at the time he walked around dressed like that almost every day. And the age of 24, this image would bring him a whole host of new female fans, almost eclipsing Wham!-mania.
The Faith album was, and possibly still is, George Michael’s career peak. The variety of song styles, his vocal range and the arrangements were all impressive; containing half a dozen singles, it was almost a greatest hits selection on its own. Even the non-singles are memorable. Opening with the cathedral majesty of ‘Faith’, the sophisticated eastern influenced pop of ‘Father Figure’ and the funk of ‘I Want Your Sex (Parts I & II)’, he’d laid out his new career before the end of side one. ‘One More Try’ is a heartfelt ballad just behind ‘Careless Whisper’, ‘Hard Day’ an archetypal 1980s pop-funk fusion and a US dance hit, while ‘Hand To Mouth’ features one of Michael’s most involved, almost political, lyrics to date. It also contains the line ‘she ran to the arms of America’, eerily similar to the words ‘the women and children who run into the arms of America’ from U2’s song ‘Bullet The Blue Sky�
��, also released in 1987. ‘Look At Your Hands’ laments the state of an ex-girlfriend, while ‘Monkey’ and ‘Kissing A Fool’ were further hit singles, the jazz stylings of the latter being a complete departure from the rest of the album and a pleasant surprise to end with.
Among the album artwork were five symbols denoting ‘faith’, ‘music’, ‘money’, ‘religion’ and ‘love’. The album’s portraits, taken by photographer Russell Young, gave the singer an image which still resonates two decades later. Michael himself set up the studio lighting for the photo shoot and they made several attempts to get a shot for the cover with the singer wearing a suit while a tape of the album played in the background, but it didn’t feel quite right. Young claims he then went and borrowed a leather jacket for Michael to try (though he’d worn a similar BSA jacket around the time of The Final) and the Faith image was born, unshaven and with a large gold cross dangling from his ear. Designer stubble was born in an instant. Apparently it was worth millions to the beard-clipper industry.
Reviewers were almost ecstatic over the album. ‘At times he’s almost too good,’ wrote Mark Coleman in Rolling Stone. ‘The concluding number, a pseudo torch song called “Kissing a Fool,” recalls one of Barry Manilow’s forays down Memory Lane with painful accuracy. It’s a sentimental dead end. But the rest of Faith displays Michael’s intuitive understanding of pop music and his increasingly intelligent use of his power to communicate to an ever-growing audience.’ Released in November 1987, Faith would stay in and around the US Top 10 until May 1989, selling nearly 10 million copies, and it was in the UK charts for well over a year.
The launch party for Faith indicated how George Michael’s career had rocketed. In earlier days Wham! had hosted a £10,000 champagne launch; three years later Faith was launched with a £100,000 drinks bill. But the guest list was equally suspect. Apart from Elton John and Bob Geldof, the party was populated by celebrities such as breakfast TV presenter Anne Diamond, Curiosity Killed The Cat and soap actress Anita Dobson. At the end of 1987 the Sun newspaper said that Michael spent £6 million on presents, including cars for his parents, sisters and Kathy Jeung.
No other pop star could touch George Michael in 1988 and he became, briefly, the biggest star on the planet. It all started with the release of ‘Father Figure’ as a single in January, designed to keep the Faith bandwagon rolling in the post-Christmas depression. The new single, an intimate pop ballad with hints of a massed gospel choir, continued to promote his new adult image. The video, co-directed with Andy Morahan, portrays Michael as a hunky yellow-cab driver in New York, unshaven, smoking a lot, in a white vest while driving around a vision of Eighties beauty, a woman with unfeasibly large shoulder pads in a large white coat. Later she appears as a catwalk model and is seen in the bedroom with Michael; as in other videos of the time, the women wear black stockings and suspenders like models out of a mid-1980s lingerie catalogue. Better received in the US than in the UK, ‘Father Figure’ was at number one for two weeks.
While the single was selling well, Michael collected more awards. At the Royal Albert Hall in London he won the award for Best British Male. Nominated for Favorite Male Artist at the American Music Awards, he captured a Grammy for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group for his collaboration with Aretha Franklin.
Though he hadn’t much enjoyed being on tour during Wham!’s later years, Michael realised that to establish his new image with fans around the world he would have to commit to a lengthy jaunt across the globe. With what he hoped was a more mature album to promote, he expected – perhaps naively – that he would have a more mature audience and be able to throw off the shackles of having girls screaming non-stop for the entirety of a show. MTV were invited to film his tour rehearsals. He explained that he wanted to keep the level of excitement high throughout the show as he had with Wham!. He was planning to play all the songs from Faith and add in a few Wham! oldies for good measure, plus ‘Lady Marmalade’ and Stevie Wonder’s ‘Love’s In Need Of Love Today’. Choreographing the show was 25-year-old Paula Abdul. Well known as a dancer, she was about to embark upon a pop career of her own, breaking through in 1988 with the album Forever Your Girl.
‘I hate the process of travelling and being protected,’ Michael said. ‘It’s a 24-hours thing, you can’t just go home and forget what you do for a living. But I am excited about the actual performing.’ If he wanted to put himself up there alongside giants like Michael Jackson, Prince and Madonna, he knew that he had to go through it, if only once. Opening in February in Japan, the tour would work its way down to Australia, then west to North America via Europe. He would perform 160 concerts to millions of fans during the year. With such a large-scale undertaking Michael knew that he wouldn’t be able to retain as much control as normal. Instead he focused on managing things that he could directly influence, for instance taking along a personal trainer and his own chef.
To warm up the crowd before each show Janet Jackson’s Control album was played. When the time was ready George Michael took the stage in darkness. He stood still, legs apart, fists clenched, eyes closed and head back as a powerful spotlight beamed down on him from above, looking as if an alien abduction was about to take place. Meanwhile the introductory organ chords of ‘Faith’ rang out across the arena before – surprise, surprise – the band broke into ‘I Want Your Sex’. Michael viewed the tour very much as a work in progress. He would frequently video shows, watching them later with the band to see where improvements and adjustments could be made. In Europe he sang a long, semi-acappella introduction to ‘Everything She Wants’; it was a great fit with the material from Faith, even if the live version was in danger of being spoiled by some over-the-top, disco-tinged bongo drums.
For the first time George Michael, by his own admission, was acting like a diva. He had an entourage wherever he went, his old friends had a hard time even getting to talk to him after shows and he was liable to more tantrums than normal. Andros Georgiou and David Austin flew out at various times to add moral support, but even they had conflicts with the minders about access to their friend. Kathy Jeung travelled with him on tour, though some reports said that they had separate rooms.
‘The more people you employ, the more people you have in your life who can’t be honest with you and that’s what I find most distressing about touring,’ said Michael. ‘You’re responsible for so many people’s livelihoods. I prefer to be with unbiased company, put it that way. People are terrified of me. I don’t know why. I very rarely fire people. They’d have to do something really out of order. Maybe it’s the size of my position. I’m quite distant even from the band, but I find it very distressing to get close to people who can’t really be honest with me. I like to know if I make a joke and the room laughs that it was funny. I’m not saying that anybody really licks my arse but it’s evident, when you really analyse it, that at the end of the day I pay their wages. It frightens me. Being around people who can’t tell you to fuck off. Whereas the people I spend time with in my personal life tell me to fuck off on a very regular basis!’
‘One More Try’ was the next single, released in April to promote the European leg of the tour. Again it went to number one in the USA where it was lapped up alongside the big ballads of the million-selling MOR artists. The video was very MTV-friendly: George sulks around a dusty old house, a backlit stained glass window casting him in silhouette as he walks among dust-covered chairs and writhes against the wall while wailing away in anguish.
For the European dates Michael rented a villa in St Tropez. From here he played the ultimate superstar, flying by helicopter to the local airport and taking a private jet to cities around Europe for the shows, returning ‘home’ each night rather than staying in the city were he had performed. This gave him a semi-stable base from which to work and provided an escape from the endless parties and clubbing.
Andrew Ridgeley tagged along for some of the European shows, staying in St Tropez and even joining his ex-partner on stage at the NEC in Birmingham f
or a rendition of Wham!’s ‘I’m Your Man’. Having Ridgeley along with him emphasised how lonely Michael was as a solo artist.
On 11 June Michael returned to Wembley Stadium, this time performing at the Nelson Mandela tribute concert. Like Live Aid, this effort to pressurise the South African government to release the ANC leader brought out a long list of stars – Michael appeared alongside singers such as the Bee Gees, Eurythmics, Wet Wet Wet, Bryan Adams, Peter Gabriel, Whitney Houston, Youssou N’Dour and Stevie Wonder, and comedians such as Graham Chapman, Stephen Fry, Billy Connolly and Harry Enfield – and reached a massive global audience, with 600 million watching on TV. Keen to avoid being overtly political, but also uneasy about promoting his latest material, Michael decided to sing a trio of cover versions, Marvin Gaye’s ‘Sexual Healing’, Stevie Wonder’s ‘Village Ghetto Land’ and Gladys Knight’s ‘If I Were Your Woman’.
As in the Wham! days, Michael had been struggling with throat problems on tour and gigs were cancelled, no doubt because he was battling to be heard above the constant screaming. He had visited numerous doctors around the world about his throat, but none of them had been able to come up with an answer; he was usually fobbed off with the explanation that it was ‘tour fatigue’. Now, during his prolonged stay in England, he visited a London specialist who found a cyst growing in his throat which would require surgery to remove. The decision was made to get through the Earls Court residency first, then have the surgery in London. Having managed that he decamped back to St Tropez for much-needed rest before heading to North America.
George Michael: The biography Page 11
