Wham!’s final week was unsurprisingly very busy. Two warm-up shows, last-minute preparations for Wembley and a Top of the Pops recording all had to be fitted in. They visited the BBC with ‘The Edge Of Heaven’ predictably sitting at number one, and their last appearance, like their first three and a half years earlier, was presented by Mike Smith. He introduced them not as Wham! but as George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley. George wore a BSA leather jacket with ‘Rockers Revenge’ written across the back. The full band appeared, but without Pepsi and Shirlie. In all there were four guitars on stage, none of them actually being played.
The Final show took place at a sunny Wembley Stadium on Saturday 28 June 1986. During one of the many interviews he gave before the show George Michael explained that they’d done everything they wanted to in just four years and he needed the challenge of a solo career: ‘How can you end Wham! any more perfectly than in front of 72,000 people, still good friends, with a record at number one?’
In the United States, the compilation album Music From The Edge Of Heaven and the single ‘The Edge Of Heaven’ both reached the Top 10 in the weeks after The Final. An extra song recorded for The Final was a cover of ‘Where Did Your Heart Go?’ by Was Not Was. Filmed for Top of the Pops at the same time as ‘The Edge Of Heaven’, the performance was screened in early July. But after the euphoria of The Final show it was rather weak, an uninspired last representation of Wham’s creative output.
In the aftermath of The Final show Andrew Ridgeley wanted to throw himself into motor racing. Having eased into the sport by taking part in celebrity events where the participants simply had to make sure they got around the circuit in one piece, after Wham! – and once lingering insurance issues had been resolved – he could step up to try Formula Three racing. He would later move to Monte Carlo to avoid a hefty tax bill and pursue his new interest. But he had been unable to race from the start of the season in March until after Wham!’s last show in July, and the French Formula Renault series was a serious business, used by young drivers as a stepping stone to a possible Formula One career. The likes of Alain Prost and Kimi Raikkonen had graduated from its ranks in the past. These drivers were focused 100 per cent on their goal while for Ridgeley it was merely a way of enjoying himself. He himself later admitted that he didn’t have the concentration necessary to make the grade.
With Andrew Ridgeley away in France, George Michael was hit with the reality that he was alone in the music world. Though he’d been the musical brains behind Wham!, he was well aware that Ridgeley was a crutch for his worries and insecurities. Michael took time in the press to pay tribute to his friend, saying he couldn’t think of anyone else he’d ever met who could have filled the role so well. The luckiest moment of his life had been when he met Ridgeley and in hindsight he felt that it had all been part of some master plan.
Michael was at a turning point, suffering emotionally and losing his confidence. When he later talked about this period of his life, he explained that in the weeks before The Final show he’d been coping with the end of a short relationship that had hurt him severely. In true George Michael fashion he’d chosen not to kiss and tell; instead he’d kept it all in and suffered in silence. The relationship hadn’t worked, he said, because of the situation he lived in as a pop star. It was like being shown that he couldn’t have everything – the relationship and the position of fame.
The experience would stay in the back of his mind for some time, shaping his career choices in the early 1990s. ‘Wham! were dead,’ he told the Daily Mail, ‘but my problems hadn’t disappeared with the band’s demise. Andrew and I were still good friends, but broken relationships, a bout of heavy boozing and a fair bit of drugs hadn’t made my life any easier. Somewhere along the line I had to make a radical change.’
PART TWO
•
1986–Present
SIX
TOUR
1986–1989
tour
a traveling around from place to place.
a long journey including the visiting of a number of places in sequence, esp. with an organised group led by a guide.
a brief trip through a place, as a building or a site, in order to view or inspect it: the visiting prime minister was given a tour of the chemical plant.
a journey from town to town to fulfil engagements, as by a theatrical company or an entertainer: to go on tour; a European concert tour.
a period of duty at one place or in one job.
‘I think at that age – I was only 25 when I did the Faith tour – there was such a feeling of emptiness about the level of fame that I’d achieved that I couldn’t see the good things about it. I couldn’t really experience the highs because I was too busy wondering what was going to make me happy, if this incredible luck was not going to make me happy. And I guess loneliness is really intensified if you are being admired by thousands of people every night very loudly, and then going back to your hotel room alone. I guess really it was the loneliness of the experience that, when I look back, I mistook for genuine unhappiness with the touring.’
George Michael
‘At the end of Wham! I needed a new challenge. So I set myself the challenge of getting up there on the American level with Madonna and Jackson, that circle of people. That was my goal. And then having got into that position I realised that it wasn’t really going to do anything for me. I can honestly say most of 1988 was a complete nightmare for me.’
George Michael
George Michael was not Madonna, he was not Michael Jackson, nor was he Prince. He couldn’t live in the public eye by putting on an act as they did, both on and off the stage. He’d quickly tired of being ‘George Michael’ for the sake of the media. ‘I didn’t know how much longer I could stand losing my privacy. But it is all gone now. It is like having your life documented for approval or disapproval, down to the minutest detail. We would understand if we were royalty, but we are not. It makes you feel trivial. It can be a little embarrassing.’ The Wham! persona, all teenage fun and juvenile humour, was not the ‘real’ George Michael, or at least it was only a small part. Having yearned for fame all of his life, once he had it he didn’t want it any more. He wanted his real life back.
‘I woke up one morning, and I realised that there had been a period in Wham! when I had actually completely forgotten who I was,’ he told Q magazine. ‘I had this depression for about eight months. For a time I thought I really didn’t want to get back into the music business when we finished Wham!. The problem was just that I had developed a character for the outside world that wasn’t me, and I was having to deal with people all the time who thought it was.’ Hence the decision to unravel the ‘monster’ he’d created and start from scratch.
The yearning for a normal life included disentangling himself from the dependence on other people that had built up over the last three years. One of these tasks, trivial to some but important to Michael, was learning to drive. Having only passed his driving test just before The Final, in another show of independence he went out and bought his first car – a Mercedes. Now he could do away with the chauffeurs who’d been ferrying him around.
Michael continued his purging of the past by parting company with the Nomis management team. This, though, he hadn’t planned in advance. While in Los Angeles, where he spent much of the second half of 1986, he was informed that the Hollywood Reporter was running a story headlined ‘Wham! Sold to Sun City’. Michael exploded. Without telling his major client, Simon Napier-Bell had been looking to float or sell the business while it was still on a high from Wham!’s success. Napier-Bell had lined up a £5 million deal with a South African company called Kunick Leisure, who would own the company while Napier-Bell and Jazz Summers were retained as consultants. The key feature of the deal was that the new company would continue to manage George Michael’s and Andrew Ridgeley’s (if he had one) solo careers.
The problem as far as Michael was concerned was twofold. One, he hadn’t been told at any stage about what w
as going on. And two, Kunick Leisure was partly owned by Sol Kerzner, the man behind Sun City. This South African holiday resort had been the centre of controversy concerning western artists and the country’s apartheid government as it offered large sums to attract world-famous acts to break sanctions against apartheid. In 1985 the star-studded Artists Against Apartheid group (Bono, Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan were among the many artists involved) had recorded the song ‘Sun City’, saying they would never play there while apartheid was in place.
When Michael saw the report he immediately called Nomis and flew back for a meeting in London with Napier-Bell and Summers. The singer was almost beside himself. How could they do this? he asked. He felt he had a good ten years left as a solo artist. The managers soon realised that they’d made a big mistake – if they lost their prime asset, the deal would undoubtedly be called off. Napier-Bell tried to pull out of the South African arrangement but it was too late. Michael left the meeting and never spoke to the pair again, ignoring their calls and communicating only via his lawyer. With no George Michael to manage, the South Africans pulled out. Nomis collapsed, Napier-Bell and Summers going their separate ways.
Simon Napier-Bell had always known that George Michael didn’t entirely trust him – Michael openly said that Napier-Bell was an ‘asshole’ – but he was an asshole he’d rather have on his side. Make no mistake, Nomis had done a lot for Wham!, especially in America. But ultimately Michael needed to hold power over his own decisions and Nomis had stepped over the line. Like Innervision before, the arrangements had been useful for George Michael for a while, but as soon as things went astray he cut all ties with no chance of a reconciliation. But now he was adrift on a sea of uncertainty. Ridgeley, Wham! and Nomis were all out of his life and he was living in the USA. It was a difficult time.
Michael spent most of the rest of 1986 in Los Angeles, drinking, spending time with model and friend Kathy Jeung when she was in town, but generally he was unsure about his future and depressed. He’d always worked hard to keep his weight under control, but he didn’t seem to care so much now he was taking ecstasy. Then, when it wore off, he’d have massive down periods. When he saw his parents and family he put on a brave face as usual and said everything was OK, but families usually have a way of knowing that something is wrong even if it’s not brought up in conversation.
Pre-dating the sexual controversy that would involve him in the summer of 1987, Michael appeared on Channel 4’s unusual chat show, Sex with Paula, in which Paula Yates interviewed her guests about intimate matters while lying on a bed. George appeared in a turquoise jumper with a garish white pattern on the front, while Paula was dressed in a black shoulderless ball dress. Michael was quizzed about his preferences and writing songs about girls. When asked about his fantasies he skirted around the subject, claiming his mother would be watching. But he did say, ‘I couldn’t possibly tell you, but ask me for a demonstration later!’
Later in the year Andrew Ridgeley flew to Los Angeles to visit his old pal. Even when talking to Ridgeley, Michael had been keeping things bottled up and when Ridgeley arrived at Michael’s house he was shocked at both the singer’s appearance and mood. During Ridgeley’s visit the pair had a heart-to-heart in which Michael poured out all his insecurities and worries. The next day he felt like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. The old Ridgeley optimism had worked wonders yet again. Life suddenly seemed much better, and Michael decided to start work on his first solo album.
In November CBS-Epic took up their option for George Michael’s solo career, which was to last for the next five albums. At Christmas George flew home to be with his parents and seemed fitter and happier than he had in months. Early in 1987 he decided to sort out his lack of management and employed Rob Kahane, his booking agent and promoter in the United States, to take on the role. They had first worked together when Michael had sung at the Motown show in New York. Now that Nomis was out of the picture, he approached Michael offering to manage him. Hired initially to take care of Michael’s North American interests, his responsibilities were soon extended to the entire globe.
Kahane’s first job as Michael’s manager was to accompany the singer to Detroit, where a collaboration with soul legend Aretha Franklin was planned. Franklin’s management had approached Michael to suggest an arrangement that the two camps knew would be mutually beneficial: Michael would provide her with an entry to UK fans while she would add credibility to his adult marketing in America. The song they would be recording had been supplied by Climie Fisher, the songwriting duo of Simon Climie and Rob Fisher. Best remembered for their own 1987 hit ‘Love Changes Everything’, they had already supplied songs to Franklin, Smokey Robinson and Pat Benatar.
The song, ‘I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)’, and the accompanying video were completed during two days in December, ready for a January 1987 release. Michael knew he was a white boy who’d walked into a hotbed of black soul music when he and Kahane arrived at the studio and realised they were the only white people around. The producer was Narada Michael Walden, another legend in his own field. The winner of Grammys for Best Album, Best Song and Best Producer, Walden had worked in genres as diverse as soul, country, rap and jazz and produced for Stevie Wonder, Tom Jones and the Temptations. And Billboard magazine had named him one of the ten best producers of all time. If George Michael had felt nervous at Muscle Shoals, here the pressure was intensified tenfold. ‘Standing in a studio looking across at Aretha trading lines was something that I would never, even a couple of years ago, have dreamed of,’ said Michael.
But he carried it off superbly. When ‘I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)’ was released in January 1987 it was an instant sensation. The mix of pop, soul and R&B and the two very distinctive yet compatible voices was a powerful one. Franklin’s vocal gymnastics at the song’s climax outshone Michael’s performance, but then they would have outshone almost anyone.
Before Michael flew home the couple filmed a video at a nearby soundstage. One of the massive video screens used during The Final at Wembley was again utilised, adding a new and interesting dimension but pushing the cost for what was basically a film of the two singing in a studio up to a staggering £150,000. George enters what looks like a warehouse where the giant screen shows Aretha singing her lines. Then the roles are reversed, with Michael on the big screen and Aretha singing in the ‘warehouse’, before they are brought together, bouncing their lines back and forth while footage of famous old duets from the past is shown behind them in black and white.
The single was a blinding success, providing Franklin with her first American number one single for exactly 20 years and her first ever in the UK. In the UK charts at the same time was Pepsi & Shirlie’s ‘Heartache’. ‘Our manager called to say that “Heartache” was number two in the UK,’ recalled Holliman. ‘Guess who kept us off the number one spot? George and Aretha! Oh well. But we made number one in a lot of other countries.’
Buoyed by yet another success, Michael bought his first property in north London, among the old money in Hampstead. He reportedly paid cash for the house, a cool £2 million. It was a further sign that he was gaining some stability in his life. Happier than he had been for many months, Michael was writing new material with renewed vigour and with the aim of releasing his debut solo album before the year was out. He was determined to show the world his ‘real’ music. ‘Some people just thought we were prats,’ he said, reminiscing about Wham! ‘They thought that bloke poncing around in the pretty blond hair with the shorts and the teeth was me. They couldn’t understand that it was me trying to be the ultimate performer. In fact, we were the first group since the days of The Beatles who didn’t relate their personalities to their music.’
The first post-Wham! George Michael solo single was released in June 1987, and if this was music which represented his personality it surprised a lot of people. ‘I Want Your Sex’ would give many casual listeners the wrong impression. Just as Bruce Springsteen’s anthem ‘Born In The USA
’ had sounded to some like a patriotic call-to-arms when it was actually a damning indictment of the Vietnam war, many people decided that George Michael was promoting promiscuity with his new single when it was in fact a simple message about keeping one sexual partner. In the UK it caused the biggest pop music outcry since Frankie had said ‘Relax’ three years earlier. And all this with a song which Michael had almost donated to David Austin to help him launch a solo career of his own.
The reaction was due in part to mounting hysteria in the UK about the AIDS virus, which was becoming a hot topic in the press due to poor education on the subject. It was reported that morticians were refusing to embalm the bodies of AIDS victims, that the police were wearing protective equipment due to the fear of being contaminated on the street, while the term ‘gay plague’ was regularly bandied about. Paranoia was rife and being gay was more stigmatised than ever. Promoting sleeping around, as Michael was apparently doing with this song, must be both irresponsible and dangerous.
But if he wanted to move into more adult territory, he certainly succeeded with ‘I Want Your Sex’. Musically it was funky and carried a typically 1980s upfront drum sound, with staccato keyboards coming in and out of the mix. Vocally he switched between low-down, dirty provocation and a semi-breathless Prince imitation. The track was completed before the rest of the album, Michael playing all the instruments himself and providing all the vocals. The album version, ‘I Want Your Sex (Parts I & II)’, lasted over nine minutes, Part II opening with a strident horn section which, though uncredited, was highly unlikely to have been played by Michael. Despite, or perhaps because of, the controversy, the single hit number two in America and number three in the UK.
George Michael: The biography Page 10