George Michael: The biography

by Rob Jovanovic

  Rather than employ a warm-up band the group decided to get the fans in the mood by again reaching back to their clubbing roots. Gary Crowley, who had now graduated to Capital Radio, was taken along as the opening DJ act and a team of body poppers called Eklypse performed their dance routines while Crowley revved up the crowd with an hour’s worth of dance singles. The tour emphasised the growing hysteria that surrounded everything the band did, and the presence of thousands of screaming teenage – and older – girls gave rise to the phrase ‘Wham!-mania’. George and Andrew were loving the attention and played up to it at every opportunity. They would walk out on stage with badminton racquets in hand and shuttlecocks stuffed down the front of their tight white shorts, then pull them out and bat them around before launching them into the seething mass of oestrogen. Sometimes Andrew would play the tease further by running the shuttlecock up and down his sweaty arm before kissing it and dispatching into the crowd. ‘We wanted to put together a show that the fans would really remember,’ said George. ‘We didn’t want to just go out on stage and leap about to the music, but put together a good piece of theatre too. It was all carefully organised, the music, the choreography, the costumes and when we felt we were ready we went out and did it!’

  The first part of the show ended with a rendition of Chic’s party anthem ‘Good Times’, before a short break was taken during which a large screen played childhood movies and old family photos of the band. The first set usually saw the band play most of the Fantastic album before George Michael took the stage alone for moving renditions of the unreleased tracks ‘Careless Whisper’ and ‘Blue’.

  Back at the hotel after the first show the touring party was besieged by fans. Andrew and George were spirited away but Gary Crowley and Andros were mobbed for autographs, just because they were friends of the band. Only 12 dates into the tour, after the first two of three shows at the Hammersmith Odeon, the tour was halted when Ridgeley managed to write off his green Ford Capri in an accident and Michael was struck down with laryngitis. A total of 11 shows were cancelled but they were immediately rescheduled for the restart of the tour on 13 November.

  Innervision struck the next blows in the escalating battle with Nomis, antagonising the band in the process. They took out injunctions that stopped Wham! from talking to other labels and barred them from recording for anyone else. They also issued the ‘Club Fantastic Megamix’ without the band’s approval, a final step which sealed the label’s fate as far as any workable relationship with the band was concerned. Rehashing three of Fantastic’s non-singles (‘A Ray Of Sunshine’, ‘Come On!’ and ‘Love Machine’), it was a blatant attempt by Mark Dean to cash in on the pre-Christmas market. But with little or no support from the band, the single struggled to number 15 in the charts during December 1983.

  Nomis were quick to distance the band from the release, putting out a statement which said: ‘It’s absolutely disgusting. I just hope the radio doesn’t play it. It would be so irritating to hear something you think is so bad.’ It was a sad end to an otherwise triumphant year. The anger George Michael felt at not being in full control would simmer on into the new year – and then things would take a turn for the worse.

  FOUR

  BIG

  1984–1985

  big

  large, as in size, height, width, or amount: a big house; a big quantity.

  of major concern, importance, gravity, or the like: a big problem.

  outstanding for a specified quality: a big liar; a big success.

  important, as in influence, standing, or wealth: a big man in his field.

  grown-up; mature: big enough to know better.

  doing business or conducted on a large scale; major in size or importance: big government.

  magnanimous; generous; kindly: big enough to forgive.

  boastful; pompous; pretentious; haughty: a big talker.

  ‘We were out and out pop. We thought it was the most honest thing to do. We didn’t want to be subversive in any sense. We wanted to be huge stars. I knew that I could do it. I knew that I had the capability, craftwise, to put us ahead of groups like Duran Duran and Culture Club, so I just went for it.’

  George Michael

  ‘He has one of the best voices I’ve ever heard. Technically it’s way ahead of mine. When I first saw George and Andrew Ridgeley together they reminded me of when Bernie Taupin and I first started writing songs together. He’s also a great songwriter. I’d put him up there with Paul McCartney.’

  Sir Elton John

  In the seemingly ever-spinning revolving door at the top of the UK charts, Frankie Goes To Hollywood made the biggest impression during early 1984. Their controversial song ‘Relax’ went to number one on 28 January and stayed there until March. Once again the gauntlet had been laid down. Duran Duran also held top spot before Wham! knocked them off in June. Frankie then returned to knock Wham! from the perch. This seemed to go on for the whole year. But at the end of the 12 months one group was king – 1984 was the year of Wham!.

  Coming down from the touring high, there were serious business matters to iron out before the band could capitalise on their status. The pop world moved notoriously fast. Wham! might have been a successful brand in 1983, but they would have to work extra hard to keep their fan base growing in 1984. So it was even more frustrating that instead of cashing in, the band were made to wait in limbo while a five-month legal stalemate ensued.

  For the various members of Wham!’s cast, the break had quite different effects. Because Shirlie Holliman was paid per performance, the long spell without work meant she had no money coming in. Andrew Ridgeley was less than sympathetic to her situation and suggested that she go and get a job. It was around this time that the pair split up, though Holliman continued to work with the band until the end.

  Ridgeley himself used the time as he had previously, in partying as hard and as often as he could. George Michael on the other hand carried on writing, in order to ensure that everyone else could keep earning when the legal dispute was over. During this period he wrote what would become one of Wham!’s most famous songs, ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go Go’, and one that would ensure Christmastime royalties for the next two decades and beyond, ‘Last Christmas’.

  By now the early ideas for songs had all but dried up. ‘We’ve now completely exhausted all of that early material,’ said George at the time. ‘We only worked carefully on a few songs which we felt would help us get the recording deal. A few we held back and did later, but “Careless Whisper” was really the last of that early output. It’s now down to the tough work of producing a steady stream of new material, and it isn’t easy. But we both love the whole process of writing songs. It’s exciting to come up with an idea and then go into the studio and watch the whole thing come together. When people then go out and buy that song in their hundreds of thousands it’s a rewarding experience.’

  One Saturday night in early 1984 inspiration struck. ‘[Sometimes] you think of someone sitting down at a piano or with a guitar and tape machine and really working hard at it,’ recalled George. ‘In this instance, Andy and I were sitting together at my house and we were watching Match of the Day in the evening. We’d just been chatting and cheering on the teams, when suddenly I yelled out and ran upstairs.’

  ‘I wondered what on earth he was up to,’ said Andrew Ridgeley. ‘He seemed to be up there ages and I went to see what was going on. When I found him, he was singing into his tape recorder and when he’d finished he just turned and told me that he’d had a marvellous song come into his head whilst he’d been watching television and that if he hadn’t rushed upstairs to put the ideas down then he’d probably have forgotten it.’ The song was ‘Last Christmas’.

  During March the miners went on strike in the UK. It would become a bitter war of attrition which would last for just under a year and effectively spell the end of the country’s coal-mining industry. In the same month that the strike began, Innervision reached the end of the road. With Mark Dea
n’s mounting legal bills seriously threatening to bankrupt his company, CBS, rightfully mindful of their initial investment, stepped in and took Wham! off the label’s hands. CBS moved the band to their Epic subsidiary, loaning more money to Innervision at a low interest rate to compensate Mark Dean for the loss of his prize asset. It was a sad end to the association between Dean and the band. Dean had got in too deep with CBS, but if he hadn’t had faith in Wham! when he did George Michael would quite likely have missed his father’s deadline of getting a deal or getting a job. He might have been lost to the industry altogether.

  As soon as the new deal was in place Nomis wasted no time in getting Wham! back in the public eye. ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go Go’ was released in May, with a re-recording of ‘Careless Whisper’ ready for release later in the summer of 1984. Before these latest potential hit singles could be pressed the band had to film videos for each. The importance of a good video had been growing ever since the 1982 launch of MTV. From a marketing standpoint, the video was becoming almost as important as the song – and especially in America, where Nomis really wanted to break the band.

  For ‘Careless Whisper’, Epic gave Wham! a relatively massive budget, £30,000 for two days’ shooting in Miami. Michael, Ridgeley and David Austin flew out with Melanie Panayiotou to work with Carina Camamile, a seemingly inexperienced music video producer. It was during the shoot that Michael had his first real ‘diva moment’. His hair kept going frizzy in the humidity of mid-spring Florida, and his sister Melanie had to give him an on-the-spot haircut after he said they’d have to discard the early takes because of his unruly hair. The extra day of shooting required to replace the ditched footage cost a further £17,000. It must go down as one of the world’s most expensive haircuts.

  With £47,000 – which could have bought a very nice house in 1984 – spent on the ‘Careless Whisper’ video, the video for ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go Go’ would have to be made on a shoestring budget. Carina Camamile was again the producer for the clip, which was filmed at the Brixton Academy in south London. The costs were kept down by shooting a performance piece, for which invited Wham! fans filled the audience free of charge. The video’s opening shots were to provide the band, and indeed the decade, with one of its most enduring images. They wore all-white outfits, including the famous baggy T-shirts with the slogan ‘Choose Life’ printed on the front in enormous black letters. These T-shirts would become the ultimate teenage fashion accessory of 1984. The band, at the back of the bright white stage, wore similar T-shirts but with ‘Go-Go’ printed on the front. In the second half of the video, the band appeared on stage wearing an assortment of day-glo outfits, while George, in pink sweatshirt, tight shorts and bright yellow fingerless gloves, rolled his eyes at the camera. It was a routine, he later admitted, that should have given viewers a good idea about his sexuality.

  The song itself had been titled after George spied a note that Andrew Ridgeley had left for his parents. Having by mistake written ‘Wake me up up’, he had added the jokey ending ‘before you go go’. Michael turned this into an insanely catchy and uplifting chorus and the band had another major hit. Michael’s vocals were his most assured to date, while the progression of the musical craft and lyrics from the songs on Fantastic was striking. The big band horn section, coupled with references to pre-war dance the Jitterbug and 1950s sweetheart Doris Day, gave this squeaky-clean pop a timeless feel. ‘I think “Go Go” is undoubtedly the most remembered Wham! song because it is that much more stupid than anything else,’ laughed George Michael. ‘I still look at that video and think it worked really 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. 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.’

  There had always been a party air about Wham!’s appearances on Top of the Pops but when ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go Go’ reached number one it was an all-out celebration. Balloons floated down from the rafters as the band partied their way through the song in all-white outfits, the boys’ T-shirts this time reading ‘Number One’ instead of ‘Choose Life’. George’s shirt had been further modified by his mum and sisters, who had spent the previous night sewing hundreds of little silver buttons over the lettering. ‘How annoying must we have been,’ asked Michael years later, ‘to be so tacky and cheesy. But we just thought it was being funny.’ Michael played out his hip-swinging, big-clapping dance while Pepsi and Shirlie backed him up in white T-shirts, pleated white mini-skirts and white boots. The song became the feelgood hit of the summer, spending 16 weeks in the charts.

  Wham! were still not completely shunned by the ‘serious’ music press. In late July the cover of Melody Maker blared ‘Wham! In The Flesh’ while the boys smouldered, topless, from the front page. Inside the band were given a two-page spread and space for George Michael to talk candidly to Helen FitzGerald about his suspicion of the music press. He defended the band’s live shows, pointing out that the audience had its fair share of the male population and that they weren’t all 16 to 18 years old. He spoke of the backlash that had begun against the band because they dared to say what other bands kept to themselves – that they unashamedly wanted to be big, wanted to sell lots of records. But he also showed the first signs of frustration at not being taken seriously. ‘Here I am, 21 years old, I’ve written six Top 10 singles, written, sung, produced and arranged a number one, I’ve just released a solo single and what do people want to ask me? Where I buy my shirts from and what my favourite food is!’ He finished, emphatically, ‘We both vote Labour, we’re not sexist, racist, bigoted in any way and oh, we’re not gay either.’

  For the revamped version of ‘Careless Whisper’ Michael brought in the much sought-after session keyboardist Andy Richards to synthesise parts of the backing track. ‘Careless Whisper’ proved to everyone, the singer included, that George Michael would be a viable solo artist in the years to come. Though it was written when he was still a teenager, Michael demonstrated a grasp of music and lyrics in the song that belied his years. This was adult music, though that didn’t stop it also becoming a massive hit at school discos up and down the land. After an opening of soaring synth melodies and acoustic guitars, the first verses give way to the most famous saxophone solo of the decade, played by Steve Gregory. This tender ballad, piled high with melancholy, was a complete departure from the fun of ‘Go Go’. In later years Michael was almost unhappy that the song had done so well, saying that to write something so flippantly and see it become so loved was disheartening, but on the other hand it proved that he had the talent without having to think too hard about it. He’d unwittingly provided the closing song to be played at every disco and club for years to come; it’s perfect for that late night/early morning smooch, even if the lyric is talking about betrayal.

  In the video the sax solo plays over a night-time cityscape straight out of Moonlighting. Michael, dressed in lounge suit, sings directly into the camera while clips are interspersed showing him romping around with his first girl; in some of these shots he wears a baseball cap to hide his frizzy hair. Then a second woman arrives in a classy Eighties sports car before luring George on to a yacht in her bathing costume. The two women meet, the first girl flies away and George is left standing on a balcony, looking wistfully at the Miami sunset as he rues his mistakes.

  When it was released in August, ‘Careless Whisper’ bounded up the charts, knocking Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s ‘Two Tribes’ from number one where it had been lodged for the past five weeks. ‘Careless Whisper’ spent 17 weeks on the chart, providing Epic with its first million-selling single while pocketing George Michael something in the region of £300,000. The 12-inch single version also included the Jerry Wexler version of the song. George had now achieved number one singles in the same calendar year as both a solo artist and a member of a band. Meanwhile, in the USA the single went to the top of the Billboard
chart on the back of some heavy CBS promotion. At the age of 21 George had topped the charts on both sides of the Atlantic. He appeared alone on Top of the Pops in late August wearing a collarless white shirt, rolled up to the elbows and tucked into his jeans. With his hair growing to full ‘Princess Di’ effect and looking very tanned, he was the vision of Greek masculinity, 1984 style.

  Michael was clearly enjoying the competition with the likes of Duran Duran, Culture Club and Frankie Goes To Hollywood. He liked the challenge of writing and producing something that would be commercially successful as they sought in turn to knock each other off the top of the charts. By the end of the summer he had written enough new material for the band to record their second album. Following on from the tongue-in-cheek title Fantastic, they called their sophomore effort Make It Big – which was their aim for America. The album was recorded in just six weeks at Chateau Minerval, the southern French studio where Duran Duran had recorded Seven And The Ragged Tiger and which had also played host to Pink Floyd. With a band comprised of old stalwarts Deon Estus (bass), and Trevor Morrell (drums), along with Hugh Burns (guitar) and Tommy Eyre (keyboards), Michael took over all the main duties for the album, while much of the time Andrew Ridgeley was absent. Michael not only wrote, sang and played on the album, this time he produced it as well. Despite having no training, he was able by sheer instinct to come up with highly radio-friendly arrangements that people loved to hear.

  During the sessions Michael was invited to meet Elton John and his wife Renate in St Tropez. He also flew back to London for a benefit show with Wham! in support of the families of coal miners caught up in the long-running strike. Wham! were to appear in the last of a series of shows hosted at the Royal Festival Hall, but when the rest of the group weren’t available Michael and Ridgeley agreed to appear alone, deciding to mime their parts. It was a misguided decision – when Michael introduced one song, a different backing tape started playing. The press hounded them for it, and to make matters worse Michael was quoted as having made unsavoury comments about the National Union of Mineworkers’ boss, Arthur Scargill. Michael had met Scargill at the show and thought the union man was enjoying the attention and the strike a little too much, while thousands of his members needed financial help – hence this show – just to be able to buy food.