George Michael: The biography Read online

  With four days between shows the band had time to take in the sights and attend more PR events, all their activities being captured on film. The second show, in Canton on 11 April, was played to a more lively crowd, despite warnings from the government – the Minister of Culture had said, ‘Go to the show but don’t learn from it!’ Nevertheless many in the audience did get up and dance in their own way, which was quite unique as they’d never seen a band play live or been able to watch on TV how westerners danced. At the end of the show George Michael returned to sing ‘Careless Whisper’ in a white suit, looking more like Don Johnson by the day.

  Michael said afterwards that the trip had given him a new perspective on communism. He was shocked at the way anything outside the normal, everyday lives of the public seemed to baffle them. On the whole he felt depressed and used by the whole experience.

  The footage of the tour that Lindsay Anderson cut into his edit of the film did not go down well with Wham! or their management. Anderson had skilfully produced an insight into China at a moment when western influence was just starting to become apparent, but Wham! presumably wanted an MTV-friendly edit with more concert footage. Anderson was removed from the film and a second version was prepared by Strathford Hamilton and promo video collaborator Andy Morahan. This new edit, titled Foreign Skies, was issued in 1986, making its debut on the big screen during Wham!’s last show at Wembley Stadium.

  The hour-long Foreign Skies opens with footage of a UK show. The band are then shown arriving at the airport, in scenes overlaid with footage of a Chinese woman picking out notes on a kind of zither and shots of Buddhist temples. So far, so un-MTV. Then it’s a chronological run through the trip. The plane arrives in Peking, using footage later used in a new video for ‘Freedom’, the band passes through passport control amid a ruck of photographers, they rather uncomfortably meet the Chinese welcoming committee, pose like politicians on a walkabout for photos with local women and children and then are bundled into big black cold-war limos and whisked away. Staying at Peking’s best hotel, the band meet more middle-aged Chinese dignitaries; George Michael grins like an embarrassed schoolboy while the Chinese, not for the first time, look quite bemused.

  The band visit the Great Wall, there’s footage of George looking out over the battlements. Overall it’s quite predictable and dry, though one moment of humour arises at a reception garden party at the British embassy where a group of lords and ladies seem to be discussing the embassy’s cricket team. Andrew Ridgeley, on the periphery of the conversation, adds ‘I’m a footballer!’ In fact Ridgeley features quite prominently in the film, buying a jacket from a local store and giving a Wham! tape to a bunch of elders hanging out at the market. There’s also footage of an informal game of football in a local park. The band and crew chase around for a bit, Michael is seen wearing a green peaked cap with a red star on the front, while Ridgeley is in his full Queen’s Park Rangers kit. The film ends with footage of the concerts.

  The fallout from the trip and disagreements over the film continue to this day. The BBC reported that it made a loss of around £1 million. Anderson died in 1994, leaving his archive to Stirling University, and in 2006 his anger at the way the film was handled came to the public’s attention for the first time. In his private paperwork he described George Michael as a ‘shivering aspirant plucked out of the street, who turns almost overnight into a tyrant of fabulous wealth, whose every command his minions must dash to execute’. Whether Michael’s commands were very different to those of any other millionaire pop star is unknown, but Anderson added that he was tied to ‘arbitrary orders from George Michael, who doesn’t know what he’s talking about … a young millionaire with an inflated ego. I was struck by his total disinterest in China. His vision only extends to the Top 10.’ This may well have been true; maybe Anderson’s brief hadn’t been made clear enough and his emphasis was weighted differently.

  The director had also given the university a copy of his 90-minute cut of the film, If You Were There. Having gained permission from Sony, who in the intervening years had bought CBS, Stirling University archivist Karl Magee planned to show the film in 2006. He was ready to go until Michael’s camp got wind of it and pulled the plug. ‘It wasn’t a fast-cut MTV-style video but a slow fly-on-the-wall type of film which had probably more about China in it than it did about Wham!’ says Magee. ‘In Anderson’s version there are only four songs performed by Wham! in China and they happen at the end of the film. After they remade the film there were 12 songs and very little about China.’ Michael’s current manager Andy Stephens was quoted in the Independent as saying ‘It’s a dreadful film. It’s a rogue copy that was supposed to have gone away and we don’t want it to be seen in public. It’s 20 years old and it’s rubbish. Why on earth should we allow it to be shown?’ Obviously Stephens felt that the showing of the film to a group of students would have been harmful to his client. ‘Anderson catches China on that turning point,’ adds Magee. ‘When all the consumerism and Western influences started to make an impact.’

  Ultimately the trip failed on almost all fronts apart from that of giving a minuscule portion of the Chinese population a good night out. The film was a disaster, as were relations with Lindsay Anderson, the band lost money hand over fist, the hoped-for record sales never materialised (the Chinese said they would pay in bikes as money was not allowed to leave the country), the band had a dimmer view of the country than before they went and the Chinese government had won a propaganda victory by getting the band to bankroll its own performance without being able to cash in afterwards via record and tape sales.

  Those close to the band were aware that cracks were starting to appear in the Wham! armour. George Michael was increasingly happy to make solo appearances, especially if it freed him from teen adulation and placed him in a light more becoming of a serious writer. In May he accepted an invitation to appear at a Motown anniversary show at the legendary Apollo in Harlem, New York City. Introduced by veteran comedian Bill Cosby, George first sang a solo rendition of ‘Careless Whisper’ dressed in a blue suit and long blond hair. Part way through Smokey Robinson joined him to sing a verse or two, the pair rattling off some impressive harmonies to end the song. George also sang with Stevie Wonder.

  Back in the UK, Wham! then joined Elton John at Live Aid on 13 July 1983. The concerts in London and Philadelphia were the centre of world attention; over a billion people watched the events unfold on TV, putting their hands in their pockets to the tune of £150 million. After The Who finished ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’, John took the Wembley stage shortly before 9 pm and ran through a quartet of hits. Kiki Dee joined him for ‘Don’t Go Breaking My Heart’, after which Wham! came out for ‘Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me’. Andrew Ridgeley, very much in the background, performed backup vocals with Dee. The grand finale of ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’ followed soon afterwards. Like many acts that day, George Michael’s status, even his street credibility, was raised by his performance, though he thought that performance had been decidedly average and he’d been out of tune for the first couple of verses. A seed had been sown in the public mind that Michael was an adult solo performer rather than a member of a teenybopper band.

  In late August Wham! returned to North America for another nine shows in cities that had been passed over in the spring. This time they were supported by large stars in their own right. Chaka Khan, who had been releasing singles for seven years, had recently hit the charts with ‘I Feel For You’ and ‘Eye To Eye’. The Pointer Sisters were even longer established but had hits in 1984 with ‘I’m So Excited’, ‘Jump (For My Love)’ and ‘Neutron Dance’. During these nine massive stadium shows spread over 17 days Wham! played to over 250,000 fans. The band also previewed a new song, ‘The Edge Of Heaven’. Edging slowly towards his later solo look, George had had a sharp new haircut and took the stage heavily stubbled. He was also wearing his most outrageous outfits to date. One of these combined a mustard yellow tasselled jacket and matching hipste
r trousers; as he was bare chested underneath, these slunk right down four or five inches below his belly button, only just leaving his modesty intact.

  The tour was followed across the country by rumours of a romance between Michael and actress Brooke Shields. Shields had begun life as a model, courting controversy when she appeared in a jeans advert with the slogan, ‘Do you want to know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing.’ Eventually the pair met, but it turned out to be little more than a mutual photo opportunity. The predicted romance failed to blossom.

  Another story following the band around was discontent within the camp over the backing band’s treatment on the road. It had become the custom for George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley to be billeted in a different hotel to the rest of the band and tour crew, both for security reasons and because it was felt they were entitled to higher-quality accommodation. But this time the crew felt that the difference was too wide. Before the end of the tour, Tommy Eyre had quit.

  The crew were also well aware that George Michael’s mood was different to that on previous jaunts. Having been uncharacteristically short-tempered on tour, after the band arrived back in the UK he was involved in an all-out fist fight with David Austin outside a nightclub. Shortly afterwards he was snapped grabbing a member of the paparazzi outside another club. Things were obviously weighing on his mind. He’d been in a short-lived and tortuous relationship (he has never revealed who it was with), and he was losing the buzz that had previously come from the hysteria surrounding his every move.

  Michael decided that he’d had enough and needed to break away. He called Andrew Ridgeley, Jazz Summers, Simon Napier-Bell and lawyers Dick Leahy and Bryan Morrison to Langan’s restaurant in London for a lunchtime meeting. There he told them straight out that he wanted out of Wham!, that the party was over. He explained that he was fed up with the character he was playing, that it wasn’t the real George Michael, and he couldn’t bring himself to write another album of Wham!-type material. It was time to move on.

  It was decided that no announcements would be made yet. The band wanted to go out on top and their last few months were planned carefully. At the age of 22 George and Andrew had achieved everything that they had set out to do as a pair of Bushey Mead teenagers. In three years Michael had gone from feeling unattractive, unhappy with his own reflection, to being a sex symbol admired by millions of girls, and some boys. But already that wasn’t enough. He’d tried to solve his problems via drink and then drugs – in 1990 he admitted to the Daily Mirror that he’d taken ‘loads’ of ecstasy, starting when he first visited Los Angeles with Wham!. ‘I took it when I was really depressed about five years ago. It’s not a great thing to do when you’re depressed, that’s why I stopped taking it. I don’t benefit. I don’t escape with drugs. Pretty well the same as I don’t escape with booze. If I have a problem, it’s there with me and I can’t get rid of it by drinking or taking drugs.’

  But for now things would carry on as normal as far as the outside world was concerned. Wham! headed into a London studio to record ‘I’m Your Man’. This non-album single was released in November 1985 and returned the band to number one. Written in the catchy, anthemic mould of ‘Freedom’, ‘I’m Your Man’ was another stomping singalong classic. Some sources claimed the song had been inspired by Brooke Shields; their brief encounter probably wouldn’t have facilitated such a powerful song, but then again who knows? George Michael certainly isn’t telling. The band were in fine fettle on this track, with horns, bass and soaring backing vocals providing an almost wall-of-sound production quality. The promotional video was also impressive, Ridgeley and Michael acting out little cameos as ticket sellers outside the famous Marquee club in London. When Ridgeley gets fed up and walks off Michael berates him in his campest voice, ‘Sell ’em yerself, sell ’em yerself.’ Michael calls his manager to complain about the gig and in a humorous exchange drives Napier-Bell to tears, leaving Michael trying to console him down the line. The band then take to the stage for a performance. Michael, in black leather fingerless gloves, bangs away on a tambourine and is clearly having fun. With his belt of bullets, open-shirted hairy chest and stubble, he looks more Greek than ever before.

  George Michael’s friendship with Elton John bore further fruit when he sang on ‘Wrap Her Up’ for John’s Fire And Ice album, also appearing in the video and adding backing vocals on the hit single ‘Nikita’. Thanks to the collaborations with Elton John, George spent December with four singles in the UK Top 20. ‘I’m Your Man’ and ‘Wrap Her Up’ were joined by seasonal reissues of ‘Last Christmas’ and Band Aid’s ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’. At Christmas he finally agreed to do a US Diet Coke commercial for a whopping $3.3 million. However, he did insist on certain rules: he wouldn’t be filmed drinking or even holding a can of the product, he wouldn’t let any of his music be used and his face was only seen right at the end of the clip. The ad was pulled from rotation soon after its debut in the USA and was never used in the UK.

  At the end of the year George, Andrew and a couple of male friends took a well-earned holiday in Australia, which was just about as far from the prying British press as they could get. Andrew Ridgeley had been dubbed the ‘vomit fountain’ and ‘Randy Andy’ in the papers. In contrast, for some reason George Michael’s sexual conquests weren’t selling their stories to the press, but Michael was reported in the tabloid press as having been seen taking poppers (amyl nitrate), the gay scene’s drug of choice at the time, in a London club. (Around this time he’d also started using marijuana.) People were beginning to ask questions about his sexual preferences, even if those questions didn’t appear in print. George wanted to guard whatever might be going on and was happy to be snapped out on the town with various women – over the years stories had run about possible relationships with Helen Tennant, Gail Lawson and Kay Beckenham. But he was fed up with having paparazzi living on his doorstep, fed up with being portrayed as little more than a teen idol. He wanted to move into the mature adult world where his music would be taken more seriously.

  As 1986 began some industry sources were gossiping that the end was nigh for Wham!. It was already clear that George Michael had what it took to be a star in his own right, while Andrew Ridgeley seemed to be more interested in motor racing and felt his future lay there rather than in the music industry. Wham! fans didn’t realise it, but the group’s final show was only a matter of months away.

  Again the band collected a number of awards early in the year. At the 13th Annual American Music Awards in Los Angeles they won Favorite Video and weeks later at the Brit Awards they were given an award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music. For a band that had only released two albums this smacked of an end-of-career tribute, and the rumours intensified.

  Amid the speculation George Michael flew out to Paris to record a new song, one which he saw as the beginning of his solo career proper. Like his previous solo effort, ‘Careless Whisper’, ‘A Different Corner’ was a mournful ballad about lost love. Michael said that the story behind this song was drawn from his own personal experience but he never revealed the identity of the person on whom his affection was focused. (In 2006 American photographer Brad Branson claimed that ‘A Different Corner’ had been written about him, and that Michael had played him an early demo version of the song.) Michael himself explained, ‘I had to write something. I had to get it out and I did it in a couple of days. It was the first time I used my own experience and emotions for a song. The pain comes back when I perform or hear it. At first I couldn’t even listen to it, especially when I was trying to get over the emotions I was singing about.’ The lines in the song about ‘fear of being used’ certainly chimed with his interviews, where he had bemoaned being seen purely as a sex object and not a feeling person.

  Heavy synth rhythms open the song and recur throughout, while Michael’s vocals range from almost whispered desperation to soaring anguish. The promo video was also quite dramatic, but very simple. Dressed all in white, Michael lounge
s around in a white room filled with white furniture, white bean bags and a white telephone. Michael ditched the all-white look for his performance of the song on Top of the Pops, going instead for a rough look in battered leather jacket and jeans tucked into brown cowboy boots. He sang the song at the microphone in front of some of the BBC’s best backlit white plastic tubes, the kind that might still be in place in some small-town nightclubs. And with the end of Wham! in sight, fans lapped up this single, giving him his second solo number one in as many attempts.

  In late February Michael was a guest on Michael Aspel’s TV talk show Aspel & Company. He announced on the show that Wham! were splitting up, that they would play one last show and then that was it. He went on to explain that while he loved making the music, he was growing to hate everything else around it. A perfect example of what he wanted to escape from came via the Sunday People on 6 April. The newspaper claimed that ex-Executive members Tony Bywaters and Jamie Gould, no doubt in order to promote their unknown band Ego, had revealed that George Michael had been married as a teenager to a Greek Cypriot, a marriage which was not legal in the UK. It was poppycock, of course.

  Like the tongue-in-cheek titles Fantastic and Make It Big, the final Wham! trio of EP, album and show came under the simple moniker of The Final. The show was scheduled for 28 June at Wembley Stadium. It was back to what really mattered, the music, and Michael was working hard on a new song. ‘The Edge Of Heaven’ was chosen as Wham!’s goodbye present to their fans. The lyric contained plenty of sexual references but because the word ‘sex’ wasn’t actually used the censors didn’t seem to care, even if those references seemed to be sado-masochistic, and heavy breathing greeted each chorus. Talk about leaving millions of fans wanting more. A finger-clicking intro was the prelude to a rough George Michael vocal with a hard-hitting bass line. Saxophones cried out as Elton John on piano and David Austin on guitar joined the going-away party. The video was similar to that for ‘I’m Your Man’, but this time large screens behind the stage showed old videos and clips of the band, giving a mini summary of their short career. As the song faded out, the words ‘Goodbye’ and ‘Thank You’ flashed up on the screens.