‘I’ve no idea who that guy was,’ he continued. ‘I don’t even think the people at Fleet Street think the words “shame” and “depravity” are real. There can’t be any shame in a situation unless the person is ashamed, and I’m certainly not that. I think it’s a very sad thing for young gay people growing up, that words like “depravity” are available to Rupert Murdoch when he wants to have a go at a gay person. I think that should change, I really genuinely do. But from my own point of view, I just don’t want people to think my life is troubled, when it’s not. And I think I should be able to be what I am to young gay people, which is a man that’s managed to succeed in the industry for 25 years. You know, I’ve just had the fastest-selling tour of perhaps all time in Britain. And I’m not allowed to be that to young gay people, I have to be somehow troubled.’
The wedding, he said, hadn’t been called off. They’d simply decided to delay it to avoid the inevitable media circus: ‘We didn’t have our wedding because we knew at this point in time, with me just about to go on tour, with all the rubbish I’ve had to put up with the last six months, we wouldn’t get a nice, private, small wedding; which is what I want. I didn’t want a big, lavish wedding. I wanted something small and quiet. But I don’t even think we’d get away with that. There’d be intrusion. So we postponed it on that basis.
‘There’s never any question of taking anyone for a drink or for dinner,’ he explained about his more casual encounters. ‘There have to be some boundaries somewhere. And those are ours.’ (That is, his and Goss’.) ‘There’s never any question of spending the evening with someone. It’s just sex. I get puzzled by gay men who do lie and cheat one another. OK, with Kenny and I it was harder at the beginning. But I think that was more the fact we didn’t have any experience. I think it’s a wasted opportunity not to be directly honest with one person in your life. Kenny is the one person in my life I can be absolutely honest about absolutely everything with. And you have an opportunity to do that as a gay man that I’m not sure you do as a straight man. Men understand each other better than men and women do.’
In 2004 there had been a very public falling out between Michael and Elton John; John hadn’t been too kind about Patience on its release and was widely reported to have said, ‘George is in a strange place. There appears to be a deep-rooted unhappiness in his life. He needs to get out more.’ Such comments seemed especially curious because Michael was donating his US royalties from the album to the Elton John AIDS Foundation. Michael decided to reply through the press, writing an open letter to Heat magazine to give his side of the story:
Elton John knows very little about George Michael and that’s a fact. Contrary to the public’s impression, we have spoken rarely in the last 10 years and what would probably surprise most people is that we have never discussed my private life. Ever. Sadly, I was always aware that Elton’s circle of friends was the busiest rumour mill in town and that respect for my private life was not exactly guaranteed. So, we never became genuinely close, which is very sad. And to this day, most of what Elton thinks he knows about my life is pretty much limited to the gossip he hears on the ‘gay grapevine’ which is, as you can imagine, lovely stuff. Other than that, he knows I don’t like to tour, I smoke too much pot and my albums still have a habit of going to Number One. In other words, he knows as much as most of my fans. What he doesn’t know is I have rarely been as happy and confident as I am today, thanks to my partner Kenny and the continued support of my fans. If I stay at home too much, if anything it is because I am too contented right now. I have travelled the world many times and at 41, I think I have earned the right to a quiet life, which I truly love, and maybe Elton just can’t relate to that. He makes millions playing those old classics day in and day out, whereas my drive and passion is still about the future and the songs I have yet to write for the public.
Now, in September 2006, it was reported that their disagreement had been resolved. Since their very public dispute the two had made up due to the peacemaking efforts of, of all people, celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay. Michael invited John to his house where Ramsay cooked them a meal, after which they were left to patch things up.
July 2006 had seen the release of ‘An Easier Affair’, one of the new tracks recorded for the multiple CD ‘best of’ compilation about to be issued in celebration of George Michael’s 25 years in the music business. A double DVD and – it was announced – a tour would also be based around this milestone.
‘It’s amazing,’ said Michael. ‘I think I had a clue that things would last, probably from about two or three years into it, but I would never have dreamed of anything like this as a child. I saw as far as Top of the Pops, and didn’t really see beyond that. I thought about being a star and never thought about the possibility of being in that position for 25 years. Because in 1980 so few people were in that position, whereas there are quite a few of us now. Just the numbers, just being able to round it off to a quarter of a century, feels like an achievement to me. And it feels like the right number to put on what I think of as my real mainstream commercial career. Because I definitely want things to go off in another direction after this. I want to explore things differently.’
The announcement of a tour had taken most people by surprise, especially after the singer’s troubled news headlines and the lack of a new album. It was his first tour of any kind since the Cover to Cover dates 15 years before, and the first tour on which he would sing his own material for 18 years, since the Faith tour in 1988. Now, secure in his relationship with Kenny and having served his grieving time for his mother and lover, he felt that it was time to play shows again.
But he wasn’t quite ready to jump into a worldwide year-long jaunt. ‘The tour is going to be all over Europe. To be honest I’m still a bit nervous about a world tour, so I thought what I’d do was a European tour which allows me to come home if I need to,’ he admitted. ‘It’s about fifty dates over the course of about three months. I always said I’d never do it again. But I have a feeling I’m going to enjoy it this time and actually it’s an alternative to the career I have now. In other words, if I can establish a live rapport with an audience again I might not have to worry about releasing singles and putting myself in the way of the media the whole time.
‘I think any real artist has that doubt. I don’t think you can keep going for 25 years if you’re not full of self-doubt. What would motivate you? You have to keep proving yourself. Now, in terms of making records and writing songs, I don’t feel a need to prove myself any more. But I do feel a need to prove that I’m still alive and well.’
On 15 September, the opening night of the 25Live tour in Barcelona was packed with 18,000 fans and masses of the world’s press. There was intense anticipation. After such a long absence from the stage, could George Michael still pull it off? The answer was a resounding yes.
‘I must have been crapping myself really, but it didn’t feel like that,’ he explained. ‘When I’m ready to go onstage, something else takes over. It’s not fear, it’s another frame of mind. The fear was all in the anticipation, I think, months before. Until halfway through the rehearsals I was truly, truly scared. Once I realised my voice was going to be great, that it sounded the same way it did before, then from that point on I started to relax. And after three or four shows, its just been a breeze.’
Musically and visually it was a spectacular production. Dressed in a figure-hugging shiny grey suit, Michael looked a little heavier, his beard and temples speckled with grey. But he was 43 years old now. Either side of the stage were large video screens and a three-tiered scaffolding arrangement which held the large band and backing singers. Running down from high behind the stage, across the floor and over the lip into the audience was a massive state-of-the-art video screen, in front of which Michael performed and over which he walked during the course of the lengthy show. This screen pulsed and shone with colour and sparkle as well as showing photos, movie clips and cartoons. Opening night ran for almost two and a half ho
urs and included over 20 songs, but then Michael had a lot of material he’d never toured with before. ‘Flawless’ got the place up and dancing, and was quickly followed by ‘Fastlove’, accompanied on the gigantic screen by a giant mirror ball. But the set piece that understandably grabbed the headlines took place during ‘Shoot The Dog’. The screen showed the cartoon video clip as the song was performed, before a giant inflatable George W. Bush emerged from an opening in the screen. The plastic president stood with a glass in one hand and a cigar in the other for a minute or so before Michael strode purposefully up to him, took hold of the front of his trousers and ripped them open, to hoots of delight from the crowd. In doing so he caused a second inflatable to burst out, this one a bulldog wearing a Union flag waistcoat and simulating oral sex on Bush. Alongside the video’s less than flattering depiction of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, there could be little doubt who the dog was supposed to be.
There were other highlights during the show. For ‘Father Figure’, six backing singers stepped forward to provide a glorious vocal arrangement of the old Wham! song. During ‘Too Funky’ 40-foot images of the supermodels from the video were shown, while ‘Faith’, ‘I’m Your Man’, ‘Careless Whisper’ and ‘Outside’ all brought the house down as the show progressed. The show ended with ‘Freedom 90’ as cinema-style credits rolled up the screen. People left the arena thinking, why hasn’t he been doing that for the last 18 years?
The tour ended back in the UK with shows in Manchester, Glasgow, Birmingham and two residencies in London, at Earls Court and Wembley Arena. Issued to tie in with the UK dates, the compilation Twenty Five became Michael’s eighth UK number one album ahead of a deluge of ‘best of’ collections. Along with Jamiroquai’s High Times collection, the Sugababes’ Singles Collection, and Girls Aloud’s The Sound of …, the top four were all compilations. Who said new music was dead?
‘Just looking at people having such a good time, with the world we live in today, I look at that and I get this incredible reaction every night when I go out on stage. People go away really having had a good night. And you understand somehow as you get older how much of a privilege it is to be able to do that; to be able to change many people’s evening into a great evening. I don’t think I appreciated that when I was younger, so I really have this time. But apart from that I think I’ve just realised that I must have been a very lonely man. That’s all I can think of because this hasn’t been frightening or difficult at all. This has actually been a kind of worry-free experience. Kenny and I have had a great time … the whole thing’s been really pleasant, so I have no doubt I’ll be up for doing it again quite soon.’
George Michael’s final musical act of 2006 was an emotional one. On 20 December he played a special free concert for NHS workers at the Roundhouse in London as a thank you to the staff who had nursed his mother during her final months. Members of NHS staff were entered into a draw, the 2,000 lucky winners getting free tickets: it was by far the smallest venue that he’d played in for many years. Comedienne Catherine Tate opened the proceedings in full costume as her Irish nurse character, while Michael introduced the show, saying, ‘Tonight is all about my mother. This room is full of heroes. Society calls what you do a vocation, and that means you don’t fucking get paid properly. This evening is me saying thank you to you. Thank you for everything you do, some people appreciate it. Now if we can only get the government to do the same thing.’ The show was another greatest hits set and brought the house down, especially when fake snow fell from the rafters during the appropriately seasonal ‘Last Christmas’.
During the autumn, George Michael featured in more TV shows. Channel 5 screened the infamous ‘profile’ Careless Whiskers, marketed around the co-operation by Michael’s former confidant Andros Georgiou. On a more substantial note, Michael allowed Melvyn Bragg and the South Bank Show crew to film his tour preparations at AIR Studios in August. At the start of the broadcast a message appeared on screen for several seconds: ‘George Michael wishes to inform viewers that he has never tested positive for drink or drugs whilst driving.’ Though he’d grown afraid of living in the eyestorm as he’d done in the Eighties, he didn’t want to grow old and regret not touring one more time. He needed to get back to George Michael being about music. The media perception of him was that he was a man on the brink. What better way of demonstrating that he was alive and well than getting out there in person and showing people?
The show nevertheless caused another newspaper storm. ‘I should learn to shut my mouth,’ he quipped on the show, but he obviously wasn’t taking his own advice. He openly talked during the programme about how much marijuana he smoked, and he was filmed smoking a joint. ‘If I’d drunk as much as I’ve smoked I’d look like Keith Richards,’ he added. ‘This stuff keeps me sane and happy.’ The next day it was all over the newspapers. While the Guardian pointed out that he had been filmed smoking in Madrid, and that in Spain smoking cannabis was legal, a spokesman for mental health charity Rethink commented, ‘As a huge international star any public comments will draw enormous attention. His comments are stupid and naive. Cannabis is not a risk-free drug. For a significant minority of people it is a trigger for developing a severe long-term mental illness like schizophrenia.’
Michael ended the year with a triumphant and very lucrative gig in Moscow on New Year’s Eve. Russian billionaire Vladimir Potanin paid a staggering £1.7 million for a 75-minute greatest hits performance, the Daily Mail calculating this to be a salary of £23,823 per minute. Michael then flew straight back to London on a private jet.
At the end of the 2006 tour, Michael had been so happy about the decision to tour again that he wanted more. ‘I thought, you know what, bite the bullet and do it. I don’t remember it being inspired by anything in particular. I remember just thinking to myself, sitting here on my little bouncy ball that I use to keep my back adjusted, and having this understanding about the fear of regrets. I’ve always planned for the future in a strange kind of way, and don’t live in the moment, because I’m always terrified of regret. And it occurred to me that I was going to regret not playing before a certain age at least. I don’t remember why that kind of epiphany actually came to me, but as soon as it did it seemed very clear that what I should do is plan to take it on again. I wasn’t sure at that point that I wanted to do it at this level, but I can’t think of anything that will stop me taking it to stadiums now. It was quite a revelation.’
In the new year the news of a stadium tour brought fresh joy to millions of European fans, with Wembley Stadium being the centrepiece of his UK dates. The new dates would start at the Aarhus Stadium in Denmark on the 18 May and proceed to five British stadia and then France, Italy, Belgium, Germany, Denmark, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Sweden, Holland and Hungary. Confounding the popular press, he was emerging stronger than he had been in years.
In early 2007 the spectre of police action still hovered over Michael. At the tail end of the previous year he had been charged by the Metropolitan Police with being ‘unfit to drive’ after falling asleep at the wheel of his car, and was cautioned at the same time for possessing cannabis. The BBC revealed that he would be appearing at Brent Magistrates’ Court on 11 January 2007 to answer the charge. In March 2007 a preliminary court case was heard, at which Michael’s defence team pointed out that it was difficult to arrange a trial date because of his upcoming tour commitments. They also sought to argue that the prosecution should be thrown out due to an ‘abuse of process’, as no blood sample had been taken from him at the scene of the incident. The judge said, ‘He is playing Wembley on 9 June, isn’t he? So he is in the area anyway. I’m going to treat him as being at work and he may have to take a day off work.’ And an additional charge was added, that of being in charge of a motor vehicle while being unfit to drive through drugs.
In another twist to the story, the sentencing hearing was scheduled for Friday 8 June, just one day before the momentous Wembley gig was due to take place. Advance reports indicated tha
t such a case could carry a custodial sentence – something that would not only scupper the Wembley gig, but the rest of the summer stadium tour. Fans needn’t have worried though. Judge Katherine Marshall explained that she had considered both jail and a curfew order, both of which would have been disastrous. Finally she decided that 100 hours of community service and a two-year driving ban would be sufficient punishment. Michael emerged from the Brent Magistrates’ Court in north London looking happy and relived. He read a short statement to the massed ranks of the press in which he said he accepted full responsibility for his actions before adding that he was off to do the biggest show of his life.
Despite some changeable weather leading up to the weekend, the 9 of June was warm and dry for the first pop concert at the new Wembley Stadium. The show was seen as such an important event that Channel 4 carried live coverage of part of the show built around an interview with Chris Evans and some archival footage. The gig proved that the George Michael stage show could comfortably transfer from large arenas to stadia with ease. A couple more monstrous video screens were added and a catwalk that lead out from the stage into the audience in a large semi-circle helped to make the quieter moments more intimate. It was another greatest hits set with the songs being carefully chosen for live TV broadcast in light of the previous day’s news, including ‘Outside’ (for which the singer donned a US police uniform) and ‘Freedom 90’. There were inflatables including a Statute of Liberty with Tony Blair’s face and a missile instead of the torch.
Still blessed with the set of principles instilled by his mother and a sense of autonomy embedded from the battle of wills with his father as a teenager, George Michael finds it hard to live with these traits as a media figure. ‘It’s almost like I’m the same about my relationship with the media as I am with my music. When you look back on my career, I don’t want it, musically or in terms of ethics, to be a bumpy ride. I want to be consistent. I want to be able to say that I stood up for myself as an individual and as a gay man – and as a musician, the way I did against Sony. I want these things to be remembered consistently.
George Michael: The biography Page 19