13. Freedom
‘Young Guns (Go For It!)’ lit the touch paper and the hits kept coming. ‘Wham Rap’ was rereleased in January 1983, where it surged to number 8 in the UK charts, helped by the momentum generated by our first Top of the Pops appearance (and the fact that it was a bloody great pop song!). It was helped on its way by a promo video that depicted us living the lyrics: George strutting moodily down the street in a leather jacket and white T-shirt; me slumped in a chair at my fictional parents’ house. God knows what Jack Panos must have thought as two actors playing my mum and dad yelled the line he’d inspired his son to write: ‘Get yourself a job!’ The follow-up, ‘Bad Boys’, hit number 2 in the charts and landed us another spot on Top of the Pops as Wham! began to become a household name.
But George was uncomfortable. Under pressure to deliver a repeat hit, he’d written ‘Bad Boys’ to the same formula as ‘Wham Rap’ and ‘Young Guns’, returning to the themes of teenage frustration and parental disappointment.
Dear Mummy, dear Daddy,
Now I’m nineteen as you see,
I’m handsome, tall, and strong.
So what the hell gives you the right to look at me
As if to say, ‘Hell, what went wrong?’
‘Bad Boys’ was undoubtedly slicker and more sophisticated than ‘Wham Rap’ and I thought it was a great single. But George felt its lyrical ideas had been overegged. Even the rugged look of denim and leather we’d adopted for the video annoyed him. And this time I wholeheartedly agreed. The styling didn’t suit the exuberant attitude we were trying to deliver and instead reinforced the ‘social warriors’ label that some in the music press had attached to us. We’d been all for it when Innervision’s press team had gone down this route, but we were learning fast. We had to take ownership of our image and music. And George, having decided he’d written ‘Bad Boys’ to order, distanced himself from the song’s success. Despite the public’s affection for it, it was only reluctantly included on Wham!’s greatest hits compilation The Final, but was omitted from the 1997 release The Best of Wham!: If You Were There. At the time, though, it still meant we now had almost half the debut album we were calling Fantastic.
A fourth song, ‘Club Tropicana’, had been upgraded from its early demos and was worked up in Maison Rouge Studios in London – as was the rest of Fantastic – by producer Steve Brown. Like much of our early material, ‘Club Tropicana’ was a joint effort. The rhythmic bass line played by Deon Estus had a Latin feel to it, and he and I created the grooves that opened the song. As ‘Club Tropicana’ gathered more layers, I wanted to amplify the mood of sun, sex and sangria. ‘What if we started the track with some sound effects?’ I said as we recorded, imagining the noise of a car pulling into the driveway of a luxurious hotel, the click-clack of high heels making their way towards a party, and a pulsing bass and guitar lick that grew louder with every step. After visiting a sound library, I gathered together samples of a party in full flow, some stilettos walking along a pavement and the growl of an MGB GT sports car coming to a stop. The song’s distinctive intro set the tone for the musical good times that followed.
As the album was recorded, George became increasingly at home in the studio. Though Steve, who’d previously worked with Elton John, was charged with the producer’s role, George did a lot of work himself. He was directing the process throughout, and it was clear, even then, that he knew how to make a hit album. We both did. We’d spent our formative years together, developing a musical sensibility that often saw us share the same instincts for what we wanted. And there was a strong sense of how we wanted our debut to sound. Of course, the final arrangements differed in detail from the ideas in our heads, but that was because we now had access to things like live brass sections or sound effects. But throughout the making of Fantastic, George was in charge. He relished being at the helm and it later came as no surprise that he went on to be a capable producer on his own records. He was able to command the entire studio-recording process while I was happy just being part of it.
With our debut album nearing completion, Innervision became increasingly excited about Wham!’s potential, but George and I began to resent the way we’d been treated. Even though we’d now had three hit singles, we were still being paid a measly allowance. With our burgeoning success it felt as if we should be enjoying greater financial reward, but Innervision were having none of it. We were stuck with the original deal. And that turned out, once we were better informed about it, to be a very poor deal indeed. It became a source of considerable friction between us and Mark Dean. With the album nearly done, George’s frustration with Innervision’s refusal to revisit the contract came to a head when he decided to withhold the master tapes. His plan was to take them from the studio and bury them in his back garden. In the end, our publisher, Dick Leahy, talked him out of taking such a nuclear option.
‘Get a hit record first, George,’ said Dick. ‘Then you’ll be in a better position to renegotiate a good deal for yourself.’
With Simon Napier-Bell.
It was clear that Wham! needed some form of management to try to sort it out and make sure we steered clear of any further business pitfalls. It came in the form of Jazz Summers, a former army musician turned manager, and the pop impresario Simon Napier-Bell – a figure famous for previously managing the Yardbirds, Marc Bolan and Ultravox, as well as co-writing Dusty Springfield’s first number 1 single, ‘You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me’. Together they called themselves Nomis – Simon backwards. George and I met them at Simon’s elegant London home in Bryanston Square, which he shared with his two boyfriends, around the time of Fantastic’s completion. I liked Simon, he was a charismatic character whose attitude to life wasn’t half full, but overflowing. He was engaging, ebullient and quick-witted. And very good company, as every good music manager should be. There was also an appealingly mischievous and anti-establishment edge to Simon. He chimed with Wham!’s unique image.
Jazz was the perfect foil. While Simon was full of big ideas and grand plans, Jazz dealt with the fine details and minutiae required to actually execute them. He was the bridge between concept and reality. I liked him a lot too, but I had a stronger connection with Simon. Mum and Dad had never put limits or constraints around me and my brother and so, like Simon, I was always inclined to follow a dream or take a leap of faith.
George’s stricter upbringing, and the expectations of his parents when he was a school kid, perhaps made him more cautious. That might have been why he was more unsure of Jazz and Simon’s management style during our first meeting or two. But he was getting to be like that with everybody who worked in the business or financial aspects of our lives. Managers, agents, lawyers and accountants: all of them were treated with a level of scepticism until that particular person had proved themselves sufficiently competent and committed, sometimes several times over. Failure, or a misunderstanding of the smaller details, often resulted in a scathing reproach. And from the off, Simon and Jazz had a very big job on their hands.
As far as we were concerned, it was down to them to free us from Innervision. And they had to do it fast.
As Fantastic slowly took shape throughout 1982 and 1983, there were other decisions to be made. Wham! was a band big on ambition and George and I were clear on our objective. Top of the list was a number 1 album, both in the UK and America – the latter being essential if we were to become the biggest pop band on the planet. (Another thing on the ‘to do’ list . . .) We wanted to tour the world and play shows as far away as Australia and the Far East. And it was also important to us that we were playing arenas and maybe even headlining stadiums. Adding pressure to this was a self-imposed deadline. Both George and I knew that the music we were making was driven by teenage exuberance; it distilled the energy of youth and optimism. Wham! wasn’t a band we ever intended to evolve or mature. We wanted to be a short-term sensation, a name that burned brightly and briefly – a few years, maybe – before leaving with a bang. Neither of us wanted Wham! to overstay its welcome and we’d decided that once our targets had been achieved we would bring it to an end. No encores, no comebacks.
But there had been another decision made behind the scenes, of much greater immediate significance for me: in an attempt to accelerate the effort to achieve our goals, George was to take over all songwriting duties. I’d loved making music and sketching out songs with my best friend, but there was a marked difference between the two of us. I was able to craft chord structures, compose melodies and develop lyrical ideas, as was evidenced by ‘Wham Rap’, ‘Careless Whisper’ and ‘Club Tropicana’, but George was suddenly moving at light speeds. As the great Steve Martin said: ‘Some people have a way with words, and other people . . . oh, uh, not have way.’ George was firmly in the former camp. Despite his dislike for ‘Bad Boys’, the way he’d shaped its lyrics and hooks had been impressive. I clearly couldn’t match him. Both of us sensed that if Wham! was to have a shot at hitting our targets I’d have to step aside. Neither of us discussed it at first and George later admitted he hadn’t wanted to shut me out of the creative process entirely. But a tension was slowly building in and out of the studio to the point where it was clear we needed to talk. One day, we met at my parents’ house and, after discussing it, decided that he should write everything. I could only agree that it was the best way for Wham! to make that number 1 record we wanted, and it was a relief to get it out in the open and to have made a decision. The pressure was undoubtedly now heaped upon his shoulders, but we both knew it was for the best.
‘Club Tropicana’ was going to be our next single. It was a massive departure from everything we’d released before, in terms of style and content, but continuing down the ‘Wham Rap’, ‘Young Guns’ route felt like a dead end to us, as George’s frustration with ‘Bad Boys’ illustrated. Beyond that, though, we were unsure of what to record next. We’d been working on two tracks called ‘Golden Boy’ and ‘Soul Boy’, but neither of them were any good. With George free to work alone, those choices could happen more freely. Sadly my time as a songwriter was over.
It was the right decision for the band, but I couldn’t help but have some second thoughts about it later.
It’s a moot point whether or not, at the age of twenty, retirement from making music had been a little too hasty. After all, it wasn’t as if I’d been a complete dunce when it came to making records. I’d co-written ‘Club Tropicana’, ‘Wham Rap’ and ‘Careless Whisper’, all of which were huge hits. I also enjoyed the creative process. There was real satisfaction and pleasure to be had in bringing a pop song to life. In retrospect, perhaps what I should have done was step back when the pressure was on in the studio, while working away on my own material in the background. My writing had been integral at the outset; there was no real reason I couldn’t have made a contribution again. Nevertheless, I took the view that my prospects of writing a song that would merit inclusion on a Wham! album were pretty slim, and consequently gave up on songwriting completely. I just felt there was absolutely no point in offering up anything to George when he was producing such exceptional material. George was already a very good songwriter and would go on to become a great one. That didn’t stop our decision being one that I found hard.
With the writing duties handed over, I can’t pretend that my focus on Wham! didn’t start to wane. Not to the point where I lost heart in the band, but it wasn’t the same. And yet while I was frustrated for sure, songwriting was never the calling for me as it now so clearly was for George. It seemed to have become the vehicle through which he could draw out the person he wanted to be. I knew exactly who I was. I’d set a goal for myself, which was to make a worldwide success of our band, and I was living that ambition. Nevertheless, I still felt envious of George’s prodigious talent – I was amazed by it and I admired him immensely for his creative ability. Sure, it would have been fabulous to have some of that stardust sprinkled upon me, but he was also my friend and it was a pleasure and a privilege to see him begin to make the most of his abilities.
Free of any creative pressure, I started to enjoy my new life in the limelight more and more. I partied fairly hard, though not as hard as some people would later suggest. George sometimes painted me as a hellraiser, a sex machine lurching from nightclub to nightclub who slept with any woman. And while I can’t deny that there was a little truth in that, I was a lot more restrained than the larger-than-life character exaggerated by George. After the success of our early singles, when we went to the Camden Palace and the Wag Club we were usually photographed drinking and dancing with the likes of Spandau Ballet, Duran Duran and Bananarama. We were afforded entry into the coolest places because of our reputation alone, skipping the long queues whenever we arrived. I got drunk and sometimes messed around but there were never any stories of us getting into bar brawls or trashing hotel rooms. I was just having a good time, but I also knew there was a time and a place for hedonism. We had an album to finish and promotion to do. None of that was going to be completed if I was rolling out of bars at five in the morning.
When Fantastic was eventually finished and released on 9 July 1983 it was everything we’d hoped for. The album went to number 1 and stayed there for a fortnight, eventually remaining in the charts for 116 weeks. Ultimately it was a record of four singles. It’s impossible not to admit that the rest was filler. So unmemorable were some of the other tracks on the album that even I struggle to recall their names! But as an opening-shot release it had served its purpose. Fantastic had placed the songwriting talents of George Michael on the map while showcasing Wham! as a pop phenomenon in the making. And with our next single, we were planning a makeover that we hoped would strike a chord around the world. ‘Club Tropicana’ was set for release and with it a video that would redefine the band.
From now on, we would be impossible to ignore.