George Michael: The biography

by Rob Jovanovic

  EIGHT

  GRIEF

  1994–1997

  grief

  keen mental suffering or distress over affliction or loss; sharp sorrow; painful regret.

  a cause or occasion of keen distress or sorrow.

  ‘I thought it was punishment because I turned round at the end of Faith and said, “You know what? I’m going insane, and I know there’s another way to do this”. I thought, is it because I wasn’t grateful enough for my talents? In terms of coming close to saying I don’t want to live, that would have been after my mum died. I had this overwhelming feeling that the best was behind me. I so loved my mum, and respected her. I’d have to be seriously mentally disturbed to even consider suicide because of what it would do to the people who were already devastated from losing my mother.’

  George Michael

  ‘I can’t be bothered with being aloof anymore. I think being aloof served me very well, especially in that period when my life was a f**king nightmare, when Anselmo was ill and my mum died and everything. Not anymore.’

  George Michael

  George Michael wrote ‘Jesus To A Child’ in the autumn of 1994. Within days he’d recorded it and was on stage performing it live. And not just any stage – this one was in front of Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate, he was being backed with an orchestra and the show was being beamed live to millions of European TV viewers. The venue, chosen to host the 1994 MTV Europe Video Music Awards, saw Michael courageously return to form with this stunningly beautiful song about Anselmo Feleppa. His first new song since ‘Too Funky’ in 1992, it showed him at his emotional best.

  This was the first time he’d put his feelings towards Feleppa into a song. As he later explained, even if people didn’t know he was gay, the song’s lyric of the male ‘Jesus’ figure could or should have made it clear that he was singing about a relationship with a man. Listeners might have chosen to think that he was singing in character, but how many straight men have sung in character as being gay?

  It wasn’t as though the press had not given enough away. In interviews published around this time Michael spoke for the first time of his ‘friendship’ with Feleppa. ‘I don’t understand this idea that my sexuality was shrouded in any sort of mystery,’ he said later. ‘I mean, there were three-page articles about Anselmo in the papers. There was one by Tony Parsons, who I thought was a good friend. If Tony Parsons writes an article that I had taken part in about my dead lover, where is the mystery? He outed me. Basically, I told him all this stuff as a mate, because my life had changed so much and I wanted to tell him what I’d gone through. And he put it all into print. But I didn’t deny it, so all those statements stood. So where the fuck was I not out? Until you sit down in front of the press and say “I am gay” you’re not considered to be out. And I wasn’t going to do that.’

  At the Berlin show, Michael’s manager Andy Stephens wondered what Sony’s reaction to the new song would be. There was still no movement on his contract and relations with the label were at stalemate, though tentative background negotiations were to continue into 1995. To confirm his own stance, Michael had also chosen to perform ‘Freedom 90’ that night; before he broke into the song, a selection of supermodels on platforms rose onto the stage wrapped in blankets, then paraded before the TV cameras.

  In February Michael’s compassionate side again came to the fore when he, along with Eric Clapton, helped the family of Nigel Browne win a hefty compensation payout. The two musicians had both previously employed Browne as a bodyguard, Michael during the Faith tour in 1988. Browne had been killed in a helicopter crash and after the court case the family’s lawyers publicly thanked both musicians for their help.

  Despite such acts of kindness, with his career still hanging in limbo Michael was struggling against depression, increasingly turning to cannabis to alleviate the dark mood hanging over him. An offer of a helping hand came from a most unusual source. Michael had first come across Princess Diana when she’d invited him to perform at the World AIDS Day concert in 1993. Michael later revealed that he’d been invited to Buckingham Palace by the Princess on several occasions. He finally agreed to meet, and for a while he and Princess Diana became close friends.

  ‘I think we clicked in way that was a little bit intangible,’ he said. ‘It probably had more to do with our upbringing than anything else. She was very like a lot of women that have been attracted to me in my life because they see something non-threatening. Maybe because I take care of my sisters and I’m so protective of my sisters, women seem to smell that. There were certain things that happened that made it clear she was very attracted to me.’ When asked if they’d slept together he responded, ‘I knew it would have been a disastrous thing to do.’

  After their lives had gone their separate ways Michael, along with 20 million others, watched Martin Bashir’s infamous interview with the Princess on the BBC’s Panorama TV show in which she admitted adultery, sowing the seeds of her eventual divorce. Michael recalled that he was upset while watching the show because he thought she seemed unwell and vulnerable. He also felt more than a twinge of guilt, as he’d been keeping his distance from her to the point of avoiding returning her phone calls. Knowing he couldn’t provide what she wanted, he’d assumed that she had lots of help and support around her, that it would be intrusive for him to contact her. After 1995 he never saw her in person again.

  Michael himself was in danger of falling off the map. Finding it almost impossible to write music, he seemed to be living on marijuana and Prozac. Eventually, through a haze of cannabis smoke, he threw himself back into writing songs. He managed to quit the Prozac but found that the weed helped his creative process, and in the state he found himself in he was willing to use whatever he needed to get his writing confidence back. ‘It was quite inspiring,’ he admitted. ‘The album that resulted from it was the most creative I’d made at the time. Unfortunately, it is a writing tool now, which is one of the things that makes it hard to give up.’

  A year after losing his court case with Sony, Michael finally negotiated his release from his contract. He flew to New York, agreed that the contract would be put up for sale and flew home a happy man. There were conditions: one clause bound him to record three new songs for a ‘best of’ collection that would be issued before the end of the decade. In July 1995 he signed a new deal which would see his music distributed by Dreamworks SKG in the USA and by Virgin in the rest of the world. The buyout fee was $40 million and he was offered a very generous 20 per cent royalty rate.

  Plans were put in place for a return to the limelight in 1996, and a new album was pencilled in for May. The only problem was that the new songs were taking a long time to form fully. Engineer Paul Gomersall, who had recorded with George since the Wham! days, worked closely with the singer at Sarm’s Studio Two, Michael’s studio of choice. ‘Compared with what I experienced on the Faith sessions at PUK in Denmark, it was very different this time around,’ recalls Gomersall. ‘George was a lot more in control, and playing most of the keyboards and bass guitar. We’ve used a lot more computers and synths on the album than George was previously accustomed to, and now that the technology has improved so much, along with his grasp of it, he was doing a lot more himself, as opposed to bringing in a lot of musicians.

  ‘He arrived with the songs in his head, and whenever he was ready to lay something down, he would call the guys into the studio and spend a few hours getting a basic backing track on tape, and then they’d leave. After working alongside a producer and an artist on many occasions, I find it very refreshing to work on a purely one-to-one basis, as I have done with George. The artist is effectively producing and I have a direct line to him. It’s always healthy for an artist in George’s position to listen and react to a second artistic opinion, and I do offer such words of wisdom, but because he has always known exactly what he wants, especially in terms of vocal and musical phrasing, he generally ignores me! I think most people would agree that his track record more than suggests Geo
rge is his own best producer.’

  The songs on the resultant album, Older, were more introspective than ever before. As the title suggests, Michael was considering the passing of his life and that of others to the ultimate end, death. The previously debuted ‘Jesus To A Child’ became the first single in January 1996 and went to number one in the UK. The video, which Michael now talked about as being the key way of getting a song remembered, showed various highly symbolic images, including two male models in wooden crates reaching through holes to hold hands. In another scene a male figure was shot down by an arrow. Michael himself was shown in closeup, half his face obscured by shadow, singing with real emotion.

  With the album’s release date fast approaching, a second, upbeat single was given an airing. As suggested by the title, ‘Fastlove’ concerns one-night stands and getting down to it as quickly as possible without any preamble. This highly danceable song was a little out of place on the album, being the only really upbeat track among the 11 included. Three and a half minutes in, the song introduced the same melody sample that Will Smith would later use on the smash hit ‘Men In Black’.

  The video for ‘Fastlove’ gave Michael his strongest visual image for some years, the sharp production and slick performances proving that he now took the medium very seriously. Michael is seen in what has become an iconic ‘speaker chair’, choosing various holographic fantasy figures which cover all kinds of freaks and fetishes. At one point, as he revolves in his chair, he’s seen wearing a pair of headphones with the word ‘Fony’ written on them, a little dig at his old label. The final shots of the video were also the last to be filmed. The various models featured in the shoot were filmed under a shower dancing to the tune, and Michael himself was convinced to give it a go.

  By the time Older was released in May, a full six years after Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1, the American press had clearly grown tired of waiting. Writing for Rolling Stone, Al Weisel quickly dismissed the motives of its writer but had to admit he liked the album. ‘Michael hasn’t lost his talent for writing pop songs as contagious as the Ebola virus, if only slightly more cheery,’ he deadpanned. ‘Michael desperately craves respect, not content with simply being an accomplished writer of silly loathe songs about relationships gone bad. Although he occasionally sounds like the Prozac queen Elizabeth Wurtzel singing “It’s My Party” in an empty karaoke bar, for those who can get past Michael’s pretentious melancholy, Older is a surprisingly enjoyable record.’

  Michael freely admitted to smoking a lot of cannabis during the writing and sessions for the album. ‘Oh yeah,’ he said. ‘It’s the only way to work. I light a joint at the end of “Spinning The Wheel”. You hear a lighter, then you hear it burning and me going [inhales] then, Pahhh, and the next track starts. I don’t want to sing about drugs though, how boring. The media and music industry have been incredibly irresponsible in making drugs essential to youth culture. Look at how the Happy Mondays were written about and Oasis are written about. It’s fine if you’ve got a habit and the money to do it, but it does nobody favours to make out it’s an integral part of making music. I made lots of music before I took drugs that was just as good. I’m a grass and occasional ecstasy man. I wish I’d never taken ecstasy because I wouldn’t know what I was missing. I’ve never thrown up on it. Never had a headache. I’m very good with drugs. But I find cocaine offensive – it’s the new alcohol. It’s fashionable to take heroin again, so you’ve got perfectly intelligent people doing the most stupid thing. It’s looked at as heroic. It doesn’t matter how horrific Trainspotting is if you give it the coolest soundtrack of the last five years. I didn’t take drugs until my fucking bones had stopped growing. At least I was the shape of an adult.’

  The UK music scene was awash with Britpop, guitars were the in thing. Nevertheless Q magazine was impressed. Under the byline ‘George Michael: more thoroughbred than clothes horse’, Paul Du Noyer awarded four stars, writing, ‘He resolutely remains in Anglo-soul mode, and some people just don’t hear anything good in that stuff. But if you recognise a rare talent for fusing truth and beauty in mainstream pop music, then George Michael is still your man.’

  Opening with a strong one-two punch of ‘Jesus To A Child’ and ‘Fastlove’, the album is seemingly filled with singles. ‘Older’ and ‘Spinning The Wheel’ follow, both of which were to climb high in the UK. In fact the album would yield six UK singles, all of which reached at least number three in the charts. Much of the album was mid-tempo and dark, reflecting the singer’s own personal life in the past three years, which was bound to permeate every pore of the songs as Michael was writing, performing and producing almost everything himself. ‘It Doesn’t Really Matter’ was a late-night message to a lover about the benefits of moving on with life, ‘The Strangest Thing’ picked up the pace with an eastern-influenced flavour, and ‘You Have Been Loved’ proved that he could still bring listeners to the brink of tears with a trip to his lover’s grave.

  Older not only put Michael back in the public eye, it gave the award committees something to think about. The ‘Fastlove’ video was nominated for Best Dance Video and Best Choreography by MTV and later in the year Michael won the MTV Europe award for Best Male. After being presented with the award by Björk and Richard E. Grant, Michael said, ‘The first half of the Nineties was pretty crap for me and 1996 has made it all worthwhile.’ He was truly appreciative of the fans’ reaction to Older.

  Around this time Michael was keeping himself busy setting up his own record label, Aegean, with Andros Georgiou. Their main hope of breaking into the pop market came via a 32-year-old Irishman by the name of Toby Bourke. Michael was supportive enough to introduce him on Top of the Pops, but Bourke didn’t take part in radio or TV interviews, perhaps because he might let the cat out of the bag about Michael’s sexuality. However, keen readers would have already known Michael was gay from the articles about the death of Anselmo Feleppa, though until Michael spelled it out, the press wouldn’t actually ‘out’ him for good. The day-to-day running of the label seems to have been in Georgiou’s hands, but after copies of Bourke’s debut single dried up and the shops ran out, the writing was on the wall. The label ceased trading soon after the millennium with losses amounting to over £100,000.

  In June 1996, 33-year-old George Michael met 38-year-old Texan Kenny Goss at the Beverly Hot Springs Spa, just off North Western Avenue in Los Angeles. ‘Actually, we have two stories,’ says Goss. ‘There’s the one that we tell people and the one in which we actually met. There’s a really posh spa called the Beverly Hot Springs. It’s a very straight, above-board spa but, you know, if we tell people we met in a spa they always get the wrong idea. So we often tell people that we met at Fred Segal [a favourite store for celebrities in Los Angeles], but that sounds really camp.’ Goss was a self-made millionaire in the sports equipment business. The singer asked him to dinner, though he wasn’t sure if Goss was gay. In fact he wasn’t completely sure until they had a second date at the Maple Drive in Beverly Hills. On that night Michael managed to trip down some stairs and tore a ligament – but it didn’t keep him from the romantic enagagement.

  Goss’ family lived in Coleman, Texas, just over 100 miles southwest of Dallas. His mother, Ozzell, was a housewife (she passed away in 2000), his father, Earl (who died in 2003), sold fire protection equipment. He shared a love of expensive cars with Michael, but said his greatest fear was ‘living in the shadow’. Whether that applied to the shadow of being the partner of a rich and successful international pop star is uncertain. But either way, the pair hit it off.

  Chart momentum was kept up with the August release of ‘Spinning The Wheel’, which reached number two. This was a chugging piece of mid-tempo pop with an urban intro, pan pipes, funky beats and horns all over the place. The song talks of a lover putting the singer in danger through his sexual activities with others. Having lost a partner to AIDS, this was a subject that Michael felt was close to home. The black and white video was set in a kind of downmarket 19
20s ‘cotton club’. Michael and the band sit around on stools, intercut with images of trapeze artists and dancers.

  To end the cycle of promotion for the album, George Michael was able to fulfil a musical ambition by playing a set for MTV’s Unplugged series. For ‘pop’ performers the setting, without electric instruments or gadgets, often sorted the wheat from the chaff; only the truly great could strip down their songs to the basics and prove that they could stand alone. Filming took place on 11 October at Three Mills Island Studios in East London, and Michael proved that he could still produce a mean live show, even if it now meant wearing a suit and tie and sitting on a stool rather than racing around a stage in leather jacket and jeans. ‘Freedom 90’ opened the show to the packed audience of a few hundred. ‘Fastlove’, stripped of the dance accoutrements of the album version, was performed with a saxophone treatment that gave it new life.

  Such an intimate setting allowed Michael’s charisma to come through. He joked with the crowd at one break that he would rather have stayed at home to watch the Liverpool-set soap opera Brookside. When a couple of technical hitches occurred and his earpiece wire came loose he declared ‘I’m not plugged in.’

  ‘Father Figure’, ‘Hand To Mouth’, ‘Star People’, ‘One More Try’ and ‘Waiting For That Day’ all made the acoustic transition. He even proved that Wham! could work in an acoustic setting with ‘Everything She Wants’. The whole evening seemed to have a magical aura. It was the only show in which he ever paused to say hello to his mother, who was in the audience with the rest of his family. ‘I just lost myself in singing that night,’ Michael said. ‘I have great affection for that evening because I know she was so proud of me.’ It would be the last time she ever saw him play.