Spending whole days at a time in a tube station, they came across some interesting characters. One afternoon they heard a commotion and looked up the entrance escalator to see a large skinhead in a red jumper running down towards them. As he arrived at the bottom he ran towards Georgios screaming ‘Give us yer fucking jumper!’ Despite a half-hearted defence of ‘But this is my best jumper,’ Georgios swapped with the skinhead who ran off, presumably in order to avoid being spotted by the police. The bemused busker was left with an oversized Fred Perry jersey to wear on the train home.
The Friday routine would usually continue with Georgios and David rushing home with the day’s takings then getting changed and going out for the night to spend their earnings as quickly as they could. The nightclubs opened a whole new world for Georgios. Disco was just making its way on to the radio but in the clubs his ears were opened to whole new genres of music.
The Friday bunk-offs didn’t greatly harm Georgios’s academic results. He cruised to five O-level passes without really trying. The non-busking Andrew Ridgeley made even less effort and passed fewer exams. In accordance with his father’s wishes, Georgios stayed on at Bushey Meads to take A levels in Music Theory, Art and English Literature. ‘It’s only when the kids are in their late twenties that families really face up to what they are,’ said George Michael. ‘You’ve gone out into the world, you’ve probably got a family of your own, and you’re finally in a position to look back and see if your own family was normal. I suppose enough of the damage your parents have done to you has left you by then too. It was at that age I realised how dysfunctional my childhood was.’ Despite his parents’ pressure, Georgios was happy enough to play along with them while he worked out a way into the music business.
Deciding that he needed the ‘adult’ environment of college for his A levels, Andrew Ridgeley enrolled in September 1979 at Cassio Sixth Form College on Langley Road in Watford. Spice Girl Geri Halliwell would also attend a few years later. He managed to stay for the whole two years but admitted that he only ever completed about a week’s worth of work. Ridgeley had the time of his life at college, drinking and trying a few more serious vices. George Michael later told Q magazine that Ridgeley had tried LSD. ‘[Andrew] took acid and had the most awful, awful time. A really bad trip. He never took it again for years and years and years. Just his description of what happened to him really put me off. I’m just too much of a control freak and really couldn’t handle the idea of things coming at me and not being able to stop it. I still hear horrible stories about things happening to people on stuff like acid. It’s just too extreme for me.’
In the autumn of 1979 Ridgeley said he wanted to form a band of his own right away, but Georgios told him he would have to wait until he’d finished his A levels, which were way ahead in the future, in July 1981. Ridgeley simply couldn’t wait that long and badgered his friend until he relented, agreeing to have a band practice that night – at his own parents’ house. Lesley and Jack were not impressed at the racket made in their living room by a gaggle of noisy teenagers. It was decided that in future they would alternate the practice venue between the various parents’ houses to minimise the disruption.
By now punk had run its course in the UK and a wave of ska bands were starting out. Ridgeley and Panos initially aspired to join them. At the very first practice the ad-hoc band put together a song to use as their theme tune, calling it ‘Rude Boy’. They also attempted their own ska version of Beethoven’s ‘Fur Elise’. The ‘band’ had something of a revolving cast of characters. Initially it was a five-piece: Andrew’s brother, Paul Ridgeley, played drums, David Mortimer (who changed his name to David Austin) and school friend Andrew Leaver were on guitars, while Georgios and Andrew sang. They didn’t have a bass player until Tony Bywaters (brother of Georgios’ ex-girlfriend Lesley) arrived. He had shoulder-length ginger hair and was immediately christened ‘Dill the Dog’ after a character from kids’ TV show The Herbs. Georgios recalled that while Bywaters was a nice guy and had some good equipment, he didn’t really fit in and his stay was short-lived. Another friend, Jamie Gould, also had a short tenure with the band.
Having decided to call themselves The Executive – perfect in a country that had voted Margaret Thatcher and an upwardly mobile Tory government into power during May 1979 – the band started practising regularly. Georgios, however, almost made his live debut elsewhere. ‘I had nearly made my stage debut with The Quiffs,’ he told the Daily Mail in 1990. ‘They were some of the people Andrew knew from college. And one night their drummer dropped out. I could play the drums and they knew I could, but they took one look at me and said I couldn’t do it. I didn’t look the part. I just looked too bad. I remember being crushed by that.’
Georgios rebounded from the disappointment by concentrating on his own band. The Executive borrowed heavily from ska’s leading lights. Madness had achieved Top 20 placings with ‘The Prince’ in September and ‘One Step Beyond’ in November, while The Specials had also broken into the scene with Top 10 hits ‘Gangsters’ and ‘A Message To You Rudy’ during the year. Although rooted in the hardcore Jamaican beats dating back to the 1950s, the ska music played by these bands was a UK version. Known as ‘two tone’, it fused elements of punk into the equation while pushing the envelope of racial harmony in the face of tensions that were to culminate in riots in major cities up and down the country during 1981, in Toxteth, Liverpool and Handsworth, Birmingham, and closer to home in Brixton, south London.
The Executive managed to swing their first public performance on Bonfire Night 1979 at Bushey Methodist Hall as part of the local cub scouts’ fireworks show. With their next show pencilled in for December, the band had some promo photos taken to go along with a demo tape they were preparing. Georgios features in the pictures as a tousle-haired youth with an almost Amish beard, dressed in a cream-coloured cotton suit and slip-on shoes. Andrew is snapped lounging in a chair, wearing a stripy top and white waistcoat.
The Executive’s eight-track demo tape included ‘Rude Boy’ and their fast version of the Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman tune ‘Can’t Get Used To Losing You’, made famous by Andy Williams back in 1963. They tried hawking it around a few record labels but had no luck. The tape wasn’t as bad as George Michael and David Austin now make out: the labels thought it was too derivative but at least they were on to something. ‘Rude Boy’ was dismissed as sounding like Bad Manners’ ‘Special Brew’, while four years later The Beat released their own ska version of ‘Can’t Get Used To Losing You’, reaching number three in the charts with it.
Tension was once again developing between Jack Panos and his son. Georgios dropped out of his Music Theory course and was now pursuing only two A levels. As far as Jack could see, Georgios had little talent for music and he thought his son was wasting his time. One day Georgios put on a copy of The Executive’s demo tape in his father’s car. Jack started giving him another lecture about how this wasn’t going to lead anywhere and the normally placid Georgios finally snapped. He told his father in no uncertain terms that he was going to have a career in music, that he was sick of being told he wasn’t good enough, that the least his father could do was give him moral support. On another occasion his mother tried to get him to give up the band: Georgios threatened to quit school if she made him.
Andrew Ridgeley thought he might have found a way in for the band when he heard that his neighbour from down the street, Mark Dean, was working in the record industry. Dean, a couple of years older than Ridgeley, had signed Secret Affair, who had a minor hit with ‘Time For Action’. But he wasn’t interested in this kids’ band from down the road. He refused to even listen to the tape. Ridgeley persevered and passed a copy to Dean’s mother. She made sure her son listened to it, but his feedback was that they were rubbish.
In the summer of 1980, between years one and two of their A level courses, Georgios and Andrew were in danger of drifting apart. Ridgeley was spending more and more time with his new college pals at Cassio and the o
nly time he and Georgios really got together was at band practice. Even that was falling apart. During the autumn more and more members dropped out until only Panos and Ridgeley remained. After a failed demo tape and about ten live shows, including at least one at Cassio College, The Executive was no more.
The remaining duo faced a music industry twisting and turning from the departing punk and disco scenes, while increasingly keen to take on the so-called new wave and new pop bands. The way was opening for the New Romantics, Adam and the Ants et al, artists who embraced a culture in which dressing up to have a good time was no longer frowned on. They wanted to create their own audience rather than try and fit in with an existing one, and they would succeed. But could Ridgeley and Panos find their own niche in this ever-changing musical climate?
In January 1981 Andrew Ridgeley met Shirlie Holliman at a local pub. Like Ridgeley and Panos, Holliman had attended Bushey Meads school but the two had never spoken. They started going out together and she soon became a close friend of both Georgios and Andrew. Though they were now 18 they still worked out dance routines in their bedrooms and Holliman was eager to join in. She thought the boys made a good pair because Ridgeley was so flashy and Panos so sensible: ‘Andrew was the funny charming one and George would be, “You go first, I’ll be right behind you”.’
In the summer of 1981 the country had been captivated by the royal wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer, the defeat of Björn Borg by John McEnroe at Wimbledon after five straight titles, and the courage of Bob Champion, who beat cancer to win the Grand National at Aintree. In the USA, President Ronald Reagan appointed the first female Supreme Court Justice, Sandra Day O’Connor, and the baseball season resumed on 9 August after a players’ strike. The news was not all positive, though. Later, just down the road from the Peckham flat into which Ridgeley and Holliman had recently moved, riots left Brixton burning. Unemployment was rising and the youth of the country were growing dissatisfied. One young man went so far as to fire blank shots from a pistol at the Queen as she rode down the Mall on a horse during the Trooping of the Colour.
That summer, despite by his own admission only attending about one lesson out of every seven, Georgios passed his A levels. But he had no wish to go to university, and a summit meeting with his parents followed. They insisted that he find a job and gave him six months to get a record deal; otherwise he’d have to give music up for good or he’d be out on his ear. So he took on a series of low-paid jobs to keep his parents happy. He washed pots and served drinks at his father’s restaurant, but one drinks order after another was mis-measured and he moved on. He worked as a building site labourer, but he was never cut out for manual labour and that didn’t last even for a week. He worked in the stock room of a branch of British Home Stores, but was fired when his boss found him working without wearing the company shirt and tie. Longer periods of employment included a job as a cinema usher at the now defunct Empire cinema on Merton Road, Watford. This was fine apart from the tedium of seeing the same films over and over.
David Austin worked through the summer as a local swimming pool attendant and the trio of Panos, Ridgeley and Holliman would visit him at the pool, go swimming and then troop off for ice cream and drinks. Shirlie had a car, so she could drive them all around. Ridgeley had worked briefly as a cleaner and then in a warehouse but he’d packed it in and signed on the dole instead. ‘It was OK for Andrew to be on the dole because he was still living at home and he was a lazy bastard who just didn’t want to go out to work,’ said Georgios. ‘I worked on a building site, I was a DJ in a restaurant, I was a cinema usher.’
Finally he landed a job as a DJ at the Bel Air dinner-dance restaurant in Bushey. For someone who had been in a ska band and before that had been a hardcore disco fan it was heartbreaking work. The customers would come and eat their meal to a background of suitably relaxing lounge music; then, as the tables were being cleared, Georgios, who was stationed out of sight behind a pillar, would announce that he hoped the diners would partake of some dancing. It was usually the first time they actually knew a DJ was present; he would get sweaty palms just thinking about having to make the announcement, as everyone would instantly turn and look to see who was talking into the microphone. But he was taking home £70 a week. Though he gave some to his mum for board, he had plenty of spending money left over.
Georgios travelled to work each night at the Bel Air by bus. On these journeys his mind could wander away from the drudgery and he started dreaming up tunes in his head. This started a lifelong trait of being able to compose songs in his head while travelling, at first on public transport but later in cars and eventually in planes. One night he was hit by a flash of inspiration as he stepped on board the bus. By the time he arrived at the restaurant he’d come up with the basis of a song called ‘Careless Whisper’.
Meanwhile, Ridgeley and Holliman were living in a rundown flat in Peckham, south London. The south London flat was a long journey for Panos to make when he wanted to visit his friends or work on songs, but on one such trip he told Ridgeley about his new song. Ridgeley added some guitar chords to Panos’ melody and they were off and running. The words had come to him when thinking back to Jane, the girl he’d met at the ice rink years earlier. He’d met her again since and they’d gone out for a while, but at the same time he’d also been seeing another girl called Helen. Though neither of the two girls had known about the other, he imagined the situation if they ever had and wrote the lyric accordingly.
Even though Georgios’ sister Melanie memorably called it ‘Tuneless Whisper’, he knew he had a good song on his hands. He and Ridgeley recorded a demo version and Panos carried around a tape of it. After finishing his stint at the Bel Air, Georgios briefly worked as a DJ at a health club. On his last night there he played the demo tape of ‘Careless Whisper’, not caring what happened or if he got into trouble. To his amazement the dance floor filled, even though no one had ever heard the song before. This success filled Panos with the confidence that he could make it as a songwriter. He wasn’t sure whether he was a strong enough singer or whether he’d spend his life writing songs for others to perform, but buoyed by this little triumph he set to work on more new songs.
The practice space at the south London flat didn’t last long. Fed up with poor heating and having to use an outside toilet, Ridgeley and Holliman decided that the romance of living together didn’t overcome the need for basic necessities and went back to live with their respective parents, though they remained a couple. Panos and Ridgeley knew that time was running out. If they were going to make a go of it they would need to get some record label interest. To do this they needed more tunes of the quality of ‘Careless Whisper’. So Georgios Panos set to work.
THREE
FANTASTIC
1982–1983
fan•tas•tic
conceived or appearing as if conceived by an unrestrained imagination; odd and remarkable; bizarre; grotesque: fantastic rock formations; fantastic designs.
imaginary or groundless in not being based on reality; foolish or irrational: fantastic fears.
extravagantly fanciful; marvellous.
incredibly great or extreme; exorbitant: to spend fantastic sums of money.
highly unrealistic or impractical; outlandish: a fantastic scheme to make a million dollars betting on horse races.
‘So I created a man that the world could love if they chose to, someone who could realise my dreams and make me a star.’
George Michael
‘When I was 19 or 20 there were any number of fairly ordinary up to quite good-looking people I could take home. Now, if I chose to, I could walk into a room and leave with people who are much better looking or think a lot more of themselves. It’s ironic really, now that I don’t choose to, a lot of people are available to me. I find the idea of being that much of a catch for someone a very masculine and very castrating position to be in. There’s no chase, you don’t have to do anything.’
George Micha
el
When 1982 opened, unemployment was still at the centre of the political and social agenda, hitting the three million mark for the first time since the 1930s. Sheffield’s Human League topped the first chart of the year with ‘Don’t You Want Me’, which held the number one spot for five weeks. Synth pop and pure guitar pop were making waves in the UK. Haircut 100 had started the swing towards guitar pop with their hit single ‘Favourite Shirts (Boy Meets Girl)’, which wasn’t a million miles away from what was being brewed up in Bushey.
So for Georgios Panos and Andrew Ridgeley the year started with a sense of optimism and excitement. They were working on new songs and enjoying the nightlife of an expanding London club scene. These new movements were the antithesis of punk: while in the 1970s credibility had been gained by making serious music, the 1980s already seemed to take the selling of records and making money as the measure of success. Andrew and Georgios became a reflection of the times that they were living in. Middle-class kids were on the dole for the first time ever, but rather than worry about it, they still wanted to have fun.
By 1982 the London club scene was beginning to take off as the likes of Grandmaster Flash brought hip-hop to UK dancers. At Le Beat Route club on Greek Street Ridgeley and Panos would mix with Steve Strange and members of Spandau Ballet while displaying their sometimes sexy, sometimes camp routines on the dance floor. They started messing around with simple raps and catchphrases that they’d utter while parading their moves. One such phrase was ‘Wham! Bam! I’m the man!’ Initially this was little more than the latest in their long history of in-jokes, but it seemed to stick. Changing it to ‘Wham! Bam! I am a man!’ they had the basis of a rap. They added lyrics about what they knew, having fun and being unemployed, themes captured in the line ‘I’m a soul boy/I’m a dole boy’ and the final refrain ‘D-H-S-S’ (aka the Department of Health and Social Security, where the unemployed had to go each week to sign on in order to receive their dole money). They decided that the ‘Wham!’ part of the rap sounded so good they’d take it as the name of their band. The new tune became ‘Wham Rap!’, their very own theme tune. ‘We didn’t sit down and consciously write the song the way that it was,’ says Ridgeley. ‘It just came out that way. The rapping style wasn’t “current” then, as a lot of people seem to think. It had been going in America for ages. Besides, to try and cash in on a craze is a bit ridiculous because no matter how much you plan something to coincide with a fashion, you’ve probably missed the boat by the time the record is released. So we never tried to manipulate the market in that sense.’
George Michael: The biography Page 4