11. Becoming George
It was entirely my fault that I’d split up with Shirlie. After we’d been together for a couple of years I took another girl to Bogart’s behind her back. I’d assumed she was staying in that night and when she walked into the club with Yog, she didn’t need to be a genius to work out what was going on. Understandably enough, she was angry and hurt and it took weeks before she would even talk to me again.
It definitely wasn’t my finest hour. But we were very young. Having lived together, albeit briefly, we’d had one or two serious discussions about our future, but I wasn’t ready for marriage or settling down. I liked having a girlfriend, of course, but was completely focused on getting a band off the ground with Yog, while Shirlie was working as a waitress in a restaurant in Watford and not yet part of our musical project. None of which really explains or justifies my infidelity, but there you are.
The way forward for Wham! was a good deal less messy. By signing with Innervision on such a hastily cobbled-together demo, we’d sidestepped the pitfalls usually encountered by new bands. We never had to slog around pubs and bars, playing to rooms of disinterested drinkers in the hope of getting spotted. Yet we were under no illusion that the route to chart success was going to be smooth and free of disappointment. Yog and I were both up for the challenge, but it was made so much harder by our perilous finances. We were skint, and despite being set up as pop stars, both of us were still living with our parents. The £45 a week each we were getting paid by Innervision wasn’t that much better than signing on. The difference, of course, was that we had a purpose.
As we prepared for what we hoped would be a string of TV performances and personal appearances, we took to rehearsing at Yog’s house. When Jack and Lesley were at home we’d practise dance routines in his bedroom. But if ever they went out for an hour or two, we’d convert their living room into a makeshift dance studio to help us choreograph the moves for the songs.
To build momentum, Innervision had arranged for us to play a series of club gigs: small-scale performances in which we lip-synced the words and performed the routines for one or two songs while the DJ took a break from spinning hit records. Once relations between me and Shirlie had thawed, asking her to be one of our backing dancers seemed like an obvious move. Given the bond we all shared, it would have been weirder had she not been involved. We recruited Mandy Washburn, a good-looking girl I knew from our social circle at the Three Crowns, alongside her. Mandy was only sixteen, but she moved well, was self-confident and good fun. To the demo of ‘Wham Rap’, Mandy learned the dance routines we’d worked on until the four of us were in sync. We were so keen to rehearse that on one occasion, after Yog had been asked to babysit for his neighbour, we all practised together in the living room while their kids slept upstairs.
While we prepared, Innervision’s PR machine was moving into action and our debut single ‘Wham Rap’ was pressed at the factory. The label on the vinyl credited the songwriters as ‘G. Panos/A. Ridgeley’.
Set in print on a record label, ‘G. Panos’ didn’t exactly shout ‘superstar’ and that realisation prompted a swift decision. Like David Jones changing his name to David Bowie, or Farrokh Bulsara becoming Freddie Mercury, Yog understood the importance of getting the name right. Georgios Panayiotou was never going to cut it. If it was beyond his schoolteachers and friends, radio DJs and TV presenters didn’t stand a chance. His pop career required something that was going to be a little easier to pronounce.
George Michael.
Although at first I thought making such a move seemed a little over the top, I had to admit that George Michael had a certain star quality. It had a Hollywood feel to it, like Kirk Douglas or John Wayne, and he’d settled on it easily. George was obviously just the anglicised version of Georgios, but he arrived at Michael because, amongst other reasons, he’d had a Greek friend at primary school with the same name. At the same time, George, as he was now introducing himself, was always keen to point out that he wasn’t ashamed of his Greek heritage – far from it – it was simply that for a life in pop, he needed something that rolled, rather than gurgled, off the tongue. My own dad had pre-empted any possible need for a similar move on my part when he swapped Albert Zacharia for Albert Ridgeley.
George immediately seemed more comfortable going by the new name, but the change was actually much more than a mere cosmetic overhaul. It helped to shape a new identity. Over the years, he would explain how ‘George Michael’ became a persona, one that allowed him to navigate his way through a life in music and the limelight by helping him overcome the insecurities he’d experienced at school. I knew Yog had lacked confidence in his physical appearance, but, only nineteen myself, I was unaware of just how deep-seated the issues really were. As we readied ourselves for the release of Wham!’s first single, we were immersed in the excitement and anticipation of the job in hand and everything around us felt so positive that it just wasn’t a subject of discussion. While it didn’t seem to be hindering our progression during those early days as Wham!, beneath the surface George was still struggling with his looks, his weight and his self-image. The new character gave him a layer of psychological armour.
In his 1990 autobiography, Bare, George famously said that he’d ‘created a man – in the image of a great friend – that the world could love if they chose to, someone who could realise my dreams and make me a star. I called him George Michael.’ He never revealed who that friend was, to me or to anyone else; it’s been speculated that he was referring to me. I honestly don’t know, but it wouldn’t have been a surprise because beyond me and Shirlie there weren’t too many people that he might have taken inspiration from. Others who were close to us also had an inkling of the dynamic within Wham! Our publisher, Dick Leahy, the one-time owner of GTO Records, always said that Wham! was George writing for me and a friend. The friend just happened to be George himself.
Maybe George felt that a version of my image and self-confidence was what he needed to make it big. Had he ever asked I’d have laughed and told him he was welcome to help himself to it! It didn’t matter to me what he called himself and he was free to take his inspiration from anywhere he liked. If it worked for him, it was fine by me. I was in Wham! with George Michael, but I was best friends with Yog. And I wasn’t going to deny him anything.
Before the release of ‘Wham Rap’, George, Shirlie, Mandy and I made our first public appearance, or PA, in Level One, a nightspot in Neasden. CBS, the major label behind Innervision, were convinced that a strong following could be built if we performed our songs on the club scene. They were determined for Wham! and their dancers to play as many shows as possible. The four of us piled into a minibus, and when we eventually arrived at Level One the venue was so big it resembled an aircraft hangar. The place was packed, and as the DJ introduced Wham! to the crowd, I noticed a major problem. There was no stage. We were performing in the middle of a large crowd, many of them beery clubbers. As soon as the backing tape kicked in, Shirlie and Mandy received some unwanted attention from some of the blokes that had joined the circle of dancers around us. George and I tried to move around in a way that protected them, but it wasn’t easy. Our first PA wasn’t quite the party we’d hoped for.
This was the road we’d been set upon, though. For the next few months Wham! travelled up and down the motorways, playing gigs to people that either weren’t interested or were too drunk to notice. Regardless of the people watching – and sometimes there were only one or two – we gave every PA our best shot, convinced it was the best way to propel us into the charts. We acted like pros, but it was tough going. Sometimes we played three or four shows a night. Because the venues we were visiting were nightclubs, dressing-room facilities didn’t arrive as standard and we often changed in toilets, or car parks.
Light relief was in short supply, but during a show at Stringfellows in London, I remember looking across to see George executing a particularly vigorous high kick, only for his shoe to fly off into the audience. It narrowly missed the face of somebody in the front row. Without missing a beat, George then kicked away the other, making his blunder part of the act; then he spent the rest of the show skidding across the glassy smooth dance floor in his socks. I don’t think anyone was more relieved than him when the song came to an end.
Unsurprisingly, Innervision were incredibly tight with any expenses we incurred and looking after all the money was delegated to me. This became particularly uncomfortable when paying Shirlie and Mandy, whom the label had miraculously agreed to finance. I’d been given a wage book in which I had to scribble out their meagre earnings on duplicate carbon paper. It was the antithesis of what being in a pop band was supposed to be all about. It was also pretty awkward, reinforcing the fact that while the girls were an important part of our team, they weren’t in Wham!, despite what people watching often assumed. But the four of us stuck with it and, as we drove through the night to our next PA, George and I counted the bigger venues, like Stringfellows, as small steps towards a bigger prize: making Wham! a chart success.
In the end, Mandy’s heart wasn’t really in it. She’d really wanted to focus on a career in the beauty industry, and when she then turned up late to a CBS meeting, George decided it was time for her to go. In her place arrived Diane Sealy, who was also known as D. C. Lee, and our shows became slicker than ever before. When we played the gay club Bolts in London, we were, much to our surprise, given live microphones. Then DJ Norman Scott spun the instrumental B-side to ‘Wham Rap’ and we had no choice but to sing it live. Happily, we pulled it off seamlessly, which only served to reinforce the fact that there was nothing quite like performing live. It had always been a big motivation for us, and was one of the main reasons I was so disappointed when the Executive broke apart.
We’d eventually have plenty of chances to play live, but first we had to embark on a promotional push for ‘Wham Rap’. And Innervision were pitching us to the music press as something like the saviours of British youth:
Wham! A breath of fresh air Britain’s youth are crying out for. Something rare, honest, young. Wham! are here to meet that demand. With all the vitality of London, but none of its recent pretension, George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley will shape the views, ambitions and pleasures of every adolescent and make records that ARE teenage Britain.
This angle had a lot to do with ‘Wham Rap’s socially aware lyrics, but neither of us had any desire to contribute to the political debate – that kind of thing was best left to the likes of the Specials, or Billy Bragg. But we were very keen to sell as many records as possible and if Innervision felt that hyping us like this was the best promotional tack, well, George and I were all for it.
And it worked. We soon received interview requests from music magazines and newspapers, but when it came to promoting our image as a young, vibrant musical brotherhood, Innervision’s meagre resources were a challenge. We certainly had no stylist. The white espadrilles that were a key part of the Wham! look cost £9.99 and came from Dolcis. A few photo shoots in and they were looking decidedly grubby. And George had already lost one pair in Stringfellows. George’s favourite jeans only cost a tenner from Chelsea Girl and they weren’t even his. He had ‘borrowed’ them from Shirlie and refused to give them back. We shared just one printed, short-sleeved shirt between us. I wore it during an interview with the Melody Maker and George took it for a photo shoot and interview with The Face, leaving me to wear a string vest that George had worn during a record company photo shoot in Corfu. Beyond that, I only had about three shirts and one pair of trousers!
Even with our limited sartorial resources, the reaction to ‘Wham Rap’ was positive. Sounds described us as ‘socially aware funk’. The Watford Observer told its readers ‘Wham! are a band to watch out for.’ And then, despite glowing reviews, ‘Wham Rap’ barely made the top 100, getting no further than number 91. It was a bitter disappointment. Concerned, our publishers called around various record shops asking why such a well-received single had performed so underwhelmingly. It quickly transpired that ‘Wham Rap’ hadn’t been widely distributed. Anyone wanting to buy a copy would have been hard pushed to find one. This revelation sparked something of a reaction in George. While he had an artist’s sensibility, he also had a hard-nosed business acumen about him; in that respect, at least, he was cut from the same cloth as his father. Following the failure of our debut, he became obsessed with the distribution, regional sales and chart data for every Wham! release from then on. He was that desperate to build on our brand. It also hadn’t helped that the single was embroiled in something of a controversy. Some critics claimed we’d glorified life on the dole, which wasn’t the case at all, but we sensed it might have contributed to our modest radio play. We at least had a fan in Radio 1’s legendary John Peel, but given his show aired close to midnight, he was unlikely to be hitting our target audience.
Annoyingly, the money Innervision did spend often missed the mark. Prior to the release of ‘Wham Rap’, George and I were sent to New York to remix the single with studio producer François Kevorkian. He was famous for working with the US duo D-Train, the band responsible for the 1981 hit ‘You’re The One For Me’, and both of us were thrilled. New York was a city we’d dreamt of visiting ever since watching Saturday Night Fever, but the whole trip proved troublesome from the get-go. Innervision failed to secure our work visas in time so we were forced to visit the US Embassy on the day of the flight. After a breakneck drive to Heathrow, we arrived with minutes to spare. Ordinarily this wouldn’t have presented too many problems, but I’d fractured a metatarsal during a game of football in Regent’s Park. I was in agony, running for a plane was impossible, and as I hopped and grimaced through the airport, the crutches burning my armpits, it didn’t go down well with George.
‘Bloody hell, Andrew!’ he yelled. ‘Can’t you go any faster?’
I flashed him a look. ‘I didn’t do this on purpose, you know . . .’
This type of exchange wasn’t unusual for me and George. Neither of us was very keen on conceding points and contentious issues were usually picked over at length. Nor would either of us let the other have the final word too easily and so we sniped over the small things. We lived in each other’s pockets and knew each other so well that most of the time we felt like brothers. So we bickered like brothers too. There were never any irreconcilable fallings-out, though, musical or otherwise. We wouldn’t let them escalate. It was just as well because as we reached the departure gates, they were already pulling the jetway in. We begged the airline staff to let us on, but to no avail.
When we finally landed in the Big Apple, twenty-four hours late, we went straight to the Mayflower Hotel on Central Park West – an old 1920s building that was understated but comfortable enough. Or would have been, if Innervision hadn’t booked us into a double room instead of a twin, which meant we had to stuff pillows down the middle of the bed to ensure respectable sleeping arrangements. For some reason the thought that George and I were going to share bothered the hotel staff. Successfully persuading them it would be OK didn’t mark the end of our troubles. Halfway through the trip two burly security guards knocked on our door in the middle of the night.
‘Gentlemen, we’ve checked the records and your bill hasn’t been paid,’ said one.
I was confused. ‘What do you mean it hasn’t been paid? Our record label have sorted the payments.’
Both men shook their heads. We had to leave. Despite Mark Dean’s assurances that everything ‘had been taken care of’, it evidently hadn’t. A frantic call to CBS in New York later that morning eventually saved us from an ignominious eviction. And thankfully, we weren’t in the hotel enough to care.
After Saturday Night Fever, experiencing the city’s best clubs was our priority and we were curious to discover the beating heart of Manhattan’s dance scene. Surprisingly, the more cutting-edge venues were no more than vast spaces, old warehouses or commercial buildings. Most of them were stark and uncomfortable, but everywhere was uncomfortable for me given I was moving around on crutches. To make matters worse, jet lag had worn me down and I spent one night sleeping next to a gigantic speaker as George befriended a group of young New Yorkers. When I woke up, I found they were considering going on somewhere else and he wanted to go with them. I was a little worried at first. We were at the arse end of town and New York had a reputation for being a pretty sketchy city at that time. But George had seen good times ahead and wasn’t going to think twice about my concerns.
Fortunately the night eventually played out without incident. It’s more than can be said for François Kevorkian’s remix. When it was sent to us after our return to London, it was nothing like we’d hoped.
Both of us hated it.
If our first trip to America had taught Wham! anything, it was that the life of a pop star could be very curious indeed.