Once the show was over, though, it was back down to earth with a bump as they all went home on the bus. After the show was aired on Thursday, Michael spent the next few days walking around, disappointed that no one recognised him. Eventually, though, he was asked for his autograph for the first time and he felt that he was getting somewhere.
The Top of the Pops performance worked wonders. The single shot up the UK charts, hitting the number three spot in early December. At the time the group were not seen purely as a pop band – New Musical Express (NME) made ‘Young Guns’ its single of the week – but they agreed to do a photo story for teen favourite My Guy magazine. Michael tried to inject some humour into the piece and camped it up, wearing not one pair of sunglasses as most self-respecting pop stars did, but three pairs. But the humour didn’t translate to the page very well. To end the year the band headed back to Bushey Meads School, where they played at the Christmas party as homecoming heroes.
In 1983 bands such as Duran Duran, Kajagoogoo, Spandau Ballet and Culture Club would all top the charts, a new wave of British pop which would later storm America too. On the back of the success of the ‘Young Guns’ single Innervision decided to re-release ‘Wham Rap!’ in February. This time it soared, peaking at number eight. They had appeared Top of the Pops on 27 January 1983. Under coloured neon lights, surrounded by balloons, the band took to the stage amid a general party atmosphere. This time Ridgeley and Michael wore the matching outfits that were to become their uniforms for the next few months, defining the band’s image in the press, and which combined with the lyric to create a myth of tough street cred: blue jeans, white T-shirt, and the ubiquitous black leather jacket with upturned collar. The girls wore matching black trouser suits. Michael spent most of the performance out front alone while Ridgeley joined the backing singers at the rear of the stage, these three only coming forward occasionally. There was no pretence of instruments on stage this time; George was the star of the show. And again that show was a complete success.
In the early months of the year Ridgeley and Michael came to a decision about the future workload within the band. It was becoming increasingly obvious that George was taking on all of the songwriting responsibility; rather than soldier on under the pretence that Andrew was involved in the creative process, they took the conscious decision that Michael would be left alone to write the songs while Ridgeley went out and enjoyed himself. With this agreed, George started work in February on a new song called ‘Bad Boys’. It was his first solo composition.
While George fleshed out the song a new backing band was recruited. Dreadlocked bassist Deon Estus would play with Wham! for the rest of its career. The American-born musician also added rhythm guitar to complement Andrew Ridgeley’s playing. Other additions were drummer Trevor Morrell, guitarist Robert Ahwai and keyboardist Anne Dudley. The new band worked hard, but the song still took the best part of two months to complete. ‘Bad Boys’ was released in May, with an instrumental version of the same song as the B side, and shot to number two in the UK charts.
‘Bad Boys’ took the being-on-the-dole-and-not-caring attitude a step further. Written in the form of an open letter to the singers’ parents, describing how they were rebelling against the plans that had been made for them since childhood, it hammered home once again the ideals of brotherhood and sticking together no matter what. Essentially it was an exclamation mark (something they were fond of) to their first three singles. (In hindsight George Michael realised that this image was not what he wanted to be remembered for and all but disowned the song; the Twenty Five compilation, which included several Wham! tracks, omitted these early singles.)
The video starts in black and white with a soldier returning home from National Service to a wife and son. The child starts misbehaving, shooting catapults and the like, before morphing into the 19-year-old George Michael, who proclaims himself ‘handsome, tall and strong’. Now in colour, George exchanges words with Mum and Dad before going out along darkened back alleys to meet Andrew Ridgeley, after which they drive around the city streets in a large American open-topped car as steam rises from manhole covers. The final group dance scene in a backlit, smoky city street is a cross between West Side Story and Michael Jackson’s later video, Thriller. George Michael’s recollections of the video are less than rose tinted. ‘We look such a pair of wankers in it,’ he says. ‘How can anybody look at those two people on screen doing what we were doing and think it’s good?’
‘Bad Boys’ entered the chart on 14 May and remained there for three and a half months, peaking at number two while the epic Police track ‘Every Breath You Take’ held on to number one. Despite the odd dodgy video, things were definitely on the up. Wham! were back on Top of the Pops in early June to promote the single, this time being introduced by Tony Blackburn, in a vinyl blue jacket, and national treasure Jimmy Savile, resplendent in typically understated zebra-print jacket. The band opened the show, Blackburn opining ‘This is a song about Jim and I!’
The usual white T-shirts and black leather biker jackets were given a slight twist this time. Andrew Ridgeley appeared with a guitar and wore shades while the girls wore tight white skirts and also donned shades. It was like watching ‘Leader of the Pack’ with Fifties rockers given an Eighties twist. George spent most of the song out front, Andrew joining him at the end almost as if to remind viewers that Wham! was actually a duo.
Even at this stage Jack Panos felt that his son’s new career might only be short-lived. ‘When the big money came through because we were up to our third single, my father was still saying, “Save your money boy, cos it’s not gonna last”. And I never believed that,’ said Michael. ‘From the moment I got my foot in the door I believed it was gonna stay there. I found it quite amusing actually, it took him a good couple of years before he thought, “Actually I’m totally wrong”.’
George Michael went back into the studio to record the next single and the rest of the songs for Wham!’s debut album. In their typically confident manner, they decided to call their debut album Fantastic. Apart from the three singles to date, the album contained only five more tracks, though later CD versions were padded out with remixes. Despite its brevity it did manage to excite – and also crammed in four exclamation marks and a question mark, not bad for eight songs.
Michael and Steve Brown co-produced the album, neatly book-ending the start and end of each side with the four singles. It opened with the now distinctive ‘Woo-woo!’ of ‘Bad Boys’ but quickly displayed that the band had more to offer than a trio of semi-rap songs about being young and on the dole. The soulful pop of ‘A Ray Of Sunshine’ included the quintessential 1980s pop line ‘Gotta make a lot of money’, while the gang vocals and George Michael’s best Bee Gees impression on the Miracles’ ‘Love Machine’ showed the band in a completely new light. ‘Wham Rap!’ closed side one and the next single, ‘Club Tropicana’, opened side two, its motor-car sound effects leading the listener into the party – as would be evidenced in the video. ‘Nothing Looks The Same In The Light’ showed Michael’s tender side for the first time before ‘Come On!’ and ‘Young Guns (Go For It!)’ brought the album to an end with some uptempo excitement.
The album was dedicated to the memories of ex-Executive member Andrew Leaver, who had recently died, and another old school friend, Paul Atkins, who’d been killed in a car crash. The cover shot of the boys lying back to back and staring moodily into the camera was snapped by Chris Craymer. It showed them wearing the ever-present black leather jackets with nothing underneath, the perfect image for a pair of Young Guns, and was chosen ahead of shots of the pair wearing white T-shirts and fooling around with each other. The jacket worn by Michael on the cover actually belonged to Craymer as the singer couldn’t yet afford one of his own. They liked the photos so much that Craymer was booked as their photographer for the next 18 months. Eventually they went down the route of using fashion photographers for their promo shoots, inspiring Craymer to become a fashion photographer himself: ‘In t
heir own way, they were very important to me,’ he says.
Don Shewey, writing in Rolling Stone magazine, seemed to like the music but wasn’t impressed with the production values or George Michael’s vocals. ‘Probably the biggest problem with Wham! is that the group lacks a really distinctive vocalist,’ he wrote. ‘George Michael’s earnest whine is as synthetic and overly familiar as the cheap keyboards so prevalent nowadays. Turn up Wham! when they come on the car radio, but remember: they won’t sound the same anywhere else.’
In Melody Maker, Lynden Barber slammed the goody-goody nature of the supposed bad boys, their willingness to play the role of fashion models on the album cover and their attempts at rap, but did like the music, even if reluctantly. The review closed: ‘Wham! are a moderate kind of pleasure boat burdened with grossly unwelcome baggage, but I guess you don’t want to know about that. All you want to know is if the LP is worth buying. The only answer to that is: GO FOR IT.’ The album shot to number one on the chart, helped by the latest smash hit single, ‘Club Tropicana’.
With this one song Wham! changed their direction and image completely. They jettisoned the leather jackets, instead flaunting blatantly before the fans the hedonistic young lifestyle to which they aspired. This perfect summer tune was just what the Conservative government ordered – young, tanned, healthy bodies splashing about and enjoying their newfound wealth, a million miles away from life on the dole. The fact that the boys had Mediterranean good looks, perma-tans and teeth from a toothpaste commercial helped. The song’s bouncy bass line, jaunty piano, shakers and soaring vocals conveyed a carnival atmosphere.
For the ‘Club Tropicana’ video the crew flew out to Ibiza, the perfect setting for such a song. The whole production was much more professional than earlier videos with their shoestring budgets. The whole clip was taken as if it were a full-length movie, with a non-musical introduction and credits at the beginning and end. In the opening shot D.C. Lee and Shirlie Holliman are seen driving a jeep down a long dusty road into the tropical wilderness. By nightfall they arrive at a remote villa and walk into the garden. The first thing they, and the camera, see is a middle-aged, bare-chested man with a Mexican bandito moustache, wearing a straw cowboy hat and red neckerchief, looking like a throwback to a 1970s gay porn movie. As the music picks up, they walk past and turn the corner to encounter a pool surrounded by healthy young bodies in swimming briefs and shades. George Michael, in white Speedos, poses by the side of the pool with a pink cocktail. Andrew Ridgeley is on an airbed in the pool talking on the phone. It was the perfect picture of 1980s decadence – splashing money about while splashing in the swimming pool.
Further scenes show the boys (separately) under a shower, high jinks in the pool, lots of people swimming, trumpets in the water, people at the beach. Next we see the girls drive by the boys’ broken-down jeep before, in a stereotypical Spanish touch, George and Andrew ride a couple of donkeys back to the villa. Finally all four are seen getting dressed as airline staff and heading back to work. Andrew, preening in front of the mirror, doesn’t have to act too hard, while George finally fulfils his childhood dream of being an airline captain. The film closes with a shot of their plane taking off into the sunset.
One scene in the video shows George and Andrew in the pool looking up lustily as D.C. Lee and Shirlie walk by. In fact the image this presented was somewhat misleading. During the shoot Michael had already confided in Holliman that he thought he might be gay, though she felt he was just looking for help and might have ‘had an experience’. After later discussions with Andrew it was concluded that George shouldn’t tell his parents yet; if he did he’d find it very difficult to ‘stay in’ professionally.
‘Club Tropicana’ was transported to the BBC, almost literally, for a Top of the Pops appearance on 4 August. Mike Smith was again the presenter, this time along with the late, great John Peel. Once more Wham! opened the show. Smith explained, ‘We’ve got sun, sea and swimming costumes for you tonight!’ to which Peel pulled a face and did a little dance. The studio had been turned into a kitsch, tacky 1980s imitation of a beach with cheap silver palm trees made out of what looked like last year’s fake Christmas trees. George Michael was bare chested in an open Hawaiian shirt and shorts. Fake green cocktails with umbrellas were scattered around the crowd, while couples watched from stageside seats in a low-budget attempt to capture the atmosphere of the video. D.C. Lee and Shirlie Holliman danced around in black one-piece swimsuits and big sun hats. A large grand piano at the centre of the stage sat unused until the very end when George pretended to play it, though his hands weren’t even touching the keyboard at one point.
No matter, the crowd loved it. The boys had to be smuggled out of Television Centre hiding between the crates on the back of a milk float because there was such a mob of girls waiting for them outside. Wham!-mania was just beginning.
‘Club Tropicana’ became the band’s fourth Top 10 hit from Fantastic, but shortly afterwards D.C. Lee jumped ship to marry Paul Weller and join his new band the Style Council. She was quickly replaced by another black singer, Helen DeMacque, known to everyone as ‘Pepsi’. Pepsi was four years older than Shirlie and five years older than George and Andrew, but she fitted in perfectly.
Less than a year into their career, Wham! were big-time pop stars. They were also young, inexperienced kids with suffocating adulation being piled on them at every turn. Everything was starting to happen too fast and things were in danger of running out of control. Andrew Ridgeley was becoming a tabloid regular with his very public drunken nights out, and although George Michael kept a lower profile in clubland he too was drinking and smoking to excess.
With an exponential rise in requests for their time as offers and endorsement opportunities flooded in, Wham! decided that now was the time to take on a manager. The prospect of setting up their first-ever tour was looming on the horizon, and they were also concerned that despite massive sales they weren’t seeing much of a financial return. The band agreed to work with Nomis Management, a partnership between Simon Napier-Bell and Jazz Summers. Summers had first heard a Wham! demo tape at Island Records, while Napier-Bell had been in the music industry since the 1960s, when he had managed the Yardbirds.
The security of having managers paid immediate rewards. Soon after Wham! signed up, an American band put forward a claim for $20 million because they’d taken the name first. Other English bands have had to change their nomenclature to avoid such problems: The Beat became known as The English Beat and the Charlatans became Charlatans UK. But this case was soon dropped.
While the legal side of things was being taken care of, Andrew and George took a holiday in Cyprus. Their fame had reached the island ahead of them and as soon as George arrived he was being asked for autographs. Back home Fantastic became the number one album in July and stayed in the Top 100 for the next two years, though in the US it peaked at only number 83. During the break there were discussions about what should happen next. George thought that ‘Careless Whisper’ should be recorded properly. It was agreed that, though the band was just finding its feet, the song didn’t fit the current Wham! image and should be a George Michael solo release.
In August it was arranged for Michael to make his first trip to the States to record the song with legendary producer Jerry Wexler. A walking embodiment of the history of American popular music, after serving in the navy during the Second World War Wexler had worked at MGM before joining the fledgling Atlantic Records label in the early 1950s. His list of production credits bore comparison with anyone in the business – Ray Charles, the Drifters, Dusty Springfield, Wilson Pickett, Bob Dylan and most famously, Aretha Franklin. And he had turned the town of Muscle Shoals, in the northwestern corner of Alabama, into a musical mecca. Michael flew in to meet the producer at his Texas home and the pair travelled to Muscle Shoals together to meet the Swampers, Muscle Shoals’ regular house band – Barry Beckett (keyboards), Peter Carr (guitar), Roger Hawkins (drums), David Hood (bass) and Jimmy Johnson (
guitar). These were seasoned veterans who had played on a host of hits.
During the first sessions Michael was beset with nerves. It was his first time recording overseas, without the moral support of Andrew Ridgeley, with a world famous producer and an experienced band. That night Wexler showed his experience by taking Michael and the band out on a bar crawl. This broke the ice and dispersed any lingering tensions and the next morning the sessions went well, but Michael was critical of his own performance. When he’d first signed the record deal, he had it in his head that everyone in the music business ran the industry from a set of carefully planned blueprints and that artists’ careers followed a set path to stardom. He was sharp enough to realise before long that this notion was wide of the mark – everything was pretty much made up as they went along. So he decided that he’d do exactly as he wanted for the rest of his career because the so-called experts knew little more than he did himself. With that in mind he decided to ignore all ‘official’ advice and shelve the tapes from the Wexler sessions.
Back in the UK the Nomis management team had embarked on a war of the minds with Innervision. Nomis informed the label that until things were sorted to their satisfaction, meaning a breaking of the Innervision contract, there would be no new Wham! recordings. Instead the group prepared for their first tour, for which Nomis secured a lucrative sponsorship deal with sports clothing giant Fila to the tune of £50,000.
The tour party included several relatives and old friends. George’s sisters Melanie and Yioda were put in charge of hair and makeup. Cousin Andros also joined the entourage, with David Austin on guitar, Deon Estus on bass and the rest of the album’s backing band along too. Pepsi and Shirlie made up an important part of the visual presentation. The sold-out Club Fantastic tour opened in Scotland with two nights at the Aberdeen Capitol. Though the band’s departure from London was low key, the airport was mobbed with fans on arrival north of the border.
George Michael: The biography Page 6