Wham! The inside story
In the ’80s they were one of the most famous bands in the world. In a new book, Andrew Ridgeley tells the inside story of their hit-making music and his friendship with George Michael
IWAITED for George. I always waited for George. This time, I was standing backstage at Wembley Stadium in London, patiently listening for my cue to make my entrance and waiting – waiting, waiting, waiting. The sun had melted below the arena’s grand old twin towers and tens of thousands of people seemed to shimmer in the faraway corners of its bowlshaped terraces. Others were pooled into a swaying, brightly coloured tide on the football pitch below. Teenage girls waved flags and homemade banners; camera flashbulbs popped as kids, couples and groups of families and friends screamed excitedly: 72 000 fans drawn together at The Final, a farewell concert for Wham!, the youthful, hopeful, effervescent pop band George and I had always intended to burn brightly, but briefly.
Four years on from the release of our first record in 1982, Wham! was still a big deal across radio, press and TV. Posters of me and George, pulled from the pages of Smash Hits and Just Seventeen magazine, had become the wallpaper for millions of teenage bedrooms, while showbiz columnists frothed over every snippet of Wham! news and gossip.
But at the peak of our success, and after two studio albums and a portfolio of No 1 singles across the world, we were about to bid farewell to the very people drawn to those songs, those shows and those stories. And all of them were waiting, waiting, waiting for the final show to begin.
I knew the routine backwards. George was onstage, walking towards the crowd, arms outstretched, striding along a catwalk that extended into Wembley’s front rows. This was his moment. Dressed all in black, a blend of leather and denim, his swept-back hair offset by designer stubble, every gesture, every signal, became a call-and-response connection with the audience.
George played to the crowd; they swooned. Flanked by two dancers, he moved and spun to the instrumental backdrop of Everything She Wants, the pulsing soundtrack to a showy, theatrical introduction.
George loved performing this wry observation of married life, even though we’d been young, single and unchained from responsibility at the time of its writing. He waved to fans in the farthest corners of Wembley’s raucous party. He turned his back on the audience, pointing seductively across the stage, the microphone yet to touch his lips.
George hadn’t said a word, let alone sung a note, but still everybody was hanging on his next move, a sensation I knew only too well. Because I’d spent so long waiting for George.
I’d waited for George as he endlessly readied himself for shows, teasing his hair with straighteners, sometimes for hours upon end while I recoiled at the acrid whiff of singed curls and hairspray in a ritual that appeared unnecessarily torturous.
As our fame grew, George’s appearance became a very serious matter. Prior to filming the video to Careless Whisper in 1984, he even complained his curly hair, an uncontrollable mass of wiry frizz in
the humidity, made him look “like Shirley Bassey”.
George’s sister, Mel – a stylist – was then flown halfway around the world, from London to Miami, where the filming was taking place, to sculpt George’s hair just the way he liked it. The bill for her flight and handiwork was reported to have been more than £10 000 (then about R25 000).
I’D ALSO waited for George as he worked through his frequent moments of musical inspiration. In the studio – a place where he toiled with an exacting attention to detail – or at home, when he’d suddenly disappear for hours on end after being struck by some melodic cue or vocal hook. Often it proved to be yet another spark of genius, the most memorable snapshot of this process having taken place in February 1984 as we relaxed one Sunday afternoon in his parents’ living room. Soccer show The Big Match was on the telly but George’s mind was very much on something other than football. “I’ve got to go,” he said, jumping off the sofa and vanishing upstairs for more than an hour. When George returned, he was grinning proudly. “Bloody hell, Andy,” he said. “Come upstairs. You’ve got to hear this . . .” He was excited, aware he’d composed something special, having worked out
the basic arrangement and melody of a song he was loosely calling Last Christmas on a four-track tape recorder – a demo he’d eventually craft into the heartbruised ballad that later became the biggest Christmas single not to make it to No 1. God, that statistic annoyed him.
Despite its enduring success, the failure of Last Christmas to topple the charity single by Band Aid that year – a musical union comprising, among others, Bob Geldof, U2, Duran Duran, Sting, Paul Weller and George himself – would irk him terribly, although he didn’t begrudge the charity their success. Throughout his life, hit singles were regarded as the only affirmation of George’s songwriting prowess and not being regarded as the best by his audience, or peers, was one of his greatest sources of irritation.
But as we sat in his bedroom that day, the same place where we’d once analysed the Top 40 chart rundown after school as teenagers, I listened to a basic track that had been recorded on his synthesiser, its instantly memorable chorus hummed over the top, and beamed. George had captured the very heartbeat of Christmas, framing its lyrics within the pain of a broken romance.
AND I’D waited for George as he transformed himself from the funny but occasionally introspective teenager Georgios Panayiotou firstly into Yog – the nickname I’d given to him soon after we’d met as classmates at Bushey Meads Comprehensive – and then into George Michael, the singer-songwriter and dearest friend of my formative years and beyond.
As we embarked on an intense and unpredictable journey into the limelight, our bond strengthened further. George evolved into one of the defining voices of his generation. But while he was crafting some of the ’80s biggest singles, there was the sense he was still defining himself. His sexuality remained a secret outside of Wham!’s inner circle and a gulf opened up between the very private life he was leading as a young gay man and his position as a teen pinup and tabloid focus.
He’d later go on record as saying that the gravitational pull between private man and public personality created moments that threatened his sanity.
Through all of this, I was a stable presence for George. He was my best friend and had been for years, but his personal destiny lay beyond the two of us.
With Wham!’s last show at Wembley, the waiting for George was set to be over. Likewise, with my life’s ambitions achieved, it was over for me too.
I stepped down towards the catwalk, our backing singers Helen “Pepsi” DeMacque and Shirlie Holliman alongside me. The screaming was deafening, the roar of Wembley becoming louder, much louder.
As I walked towards the popping lights and surging crowd, I heard scattered voices from the front rows: shouts of “Andrew!”, or “We love you, Wham!” But beyond that there was only white noise. I paused at the edge of the stage as the hysteria ricocheted around me.
Wherever we went in the world, the reaction to our arrival onstage always struck me as extraordinary and I rarely took the fandom surrounding our music for granted, or too seriously. The screaming girls, the autograph-hunters and the paparazzi: all of it was hyper-real and strange. As a result, everything we did was played for laughs.
George and I knew it was a game and we were always determined to play our part in giving our audiences the energy they loved – it was very much Wham!’s brand.
But in the weeks building up to it, The Final had been described as something of a near-religious event. Fans were referred to as acolytes; Wham! as icons. In the early years, our look onstage was playful, cheeky, and our shows had made headlines for our too-short shorts and cropped T-shirts, while promo videos for songs such as Club Tropicana were packed with tongue-in-cheek nods to the joys of youthful hedonism.
But at Wembley we’d decided to create a more dramatic mood to match the fervour, eschewing our usually vibrant stage image for a more severe tone.
George wore skinny black jeans and leather boots. A belt glittered with rhinestones and his jacket, its collar up, had been trimmed with tassels. My all-black look was equally striking: with the help of Pepsi and Shirlie, I shrugged off my
trench coat to reveal a high-cut, fringed, matador-style jacket, complete with bootlace tie and sparkling belt.
I struggled not to laugh as I slowly teased away my gloves, finger by finger, dropping them to the stage. Shirlie handed me my guitar and I pulled it over my shoulder. Showtime.
Both of us had appeared at Wembley before, so our surroundings were at least familiar. But this day had a special, oneoff feel to it, as tens of thousands of people flocked to London from all over the world, marking the end of a very colourful chapter in British music history.
The time for Wham! to say goodbye had arrived. We played through the hits one last time. Club Tropicana, Bad Boys and Edge of Heaven; Wham Rap, Careless Whisper and Freedom.
Stretching into the distance, the Wembley crowd looked as if they were ebbing and flowing, a huge pool of people singing and dancing together. In the buildup to our performance it was decided that we’d sprinkle several surprises throughout the party, one of which was a cameo from Elton John, who joined us for a reworked version of his hit single Candle in the Wind.
Young Guns (Go For It!), our first hit, and Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go, George’s incomparable call to the dance floor, was followed by an anarchic encore of I’m Your Man, with Duran Duran’s Simon Le Bon joining us onstage for backing vocals.
As the music faded out, the din of 72 000 voices echoing around us, we enjoyed the clamour together one last time. The two of us had shared experiences that were unimaginable when we’d first left school. Ever since that day, we’d been reliant upon each other.
In that regard, Wembley was both brilliant and bittersweet. Part of me was happy to escape the limelight that accompanied life in a stadium-sized pop band. I was tired of the circus that surrounded Wham! at all times. The hype and hysteria had become too much and my relationship with the national press was hostile.
Saying goodbye to the tumult and the palaver that surrounded George and me wasn’t a hardship, but the knowledge that we’d not perform alongside one another as Wham! again was tinged with melancholy. We’d grown up together and this sense of union had pulled us even closer to the hearts of our fans. We were an inseparably tight-knit duo – a brotherhood.
But that friendship wasn’t without its lows at times. My best friend was really one of two people throughout our close relationship – before Wham! and after.
The schoolboy I’d first met as a 13-yearold who’d go on to be my best friend, the boy I’d wanted by my side during those first strides towards musical superstardom and beyond, became George Michael, the character he created to propel his career from singer in a No 1 pop duo to a solo star brimming with ambition and creative wanderlust.
By the time of that final concert the second incarnation was well on its way to completion. George shot to even greater stardom when he released Faith in 1987. But he was beset by confusion, a consequence of his sexuality and the struggles to define the reality beneath his public image. The tension only seemed to play out more publicly later on.
Throughout Wham! and beyond, the bond between us was both real and heartfelt. The British public seemed to find our easy relationship a joyful thing during a period of British history that’s now recalled as being pretty tough.
From then on, our music became a soundtrack to the country’s newfound optimism and self-confidence.
Everything looked effortlessly fun for us because it was effortlessly fun, and that natural exuberance translated into huge commercial success. The early demos George and I recorded in my parents’ front room nudged us towards a record deal and eventually sales of more than 30 million records.
Our debut album, Fantastic, went to No 1 in 1983. Its follow-up, Make It Big, repeated the achievement on a global scale a year later. We sold out stadium shows in Britain and America, drawing fans to our music until Whamania became a global phenomenon.
Our union drew to a close in 1986, in part because Wham! was unable to outlive our youth. Continuing to distil the very essence of teenage emotion once we grew up was a pop alchemy beyond even George’s prodigious songwriting talents.
During the first flush of success we’d decided that Wham!’s creative reins should rest solely with George if we were to achieve the scale of success we believed was in our reach. I’d long recognised his ability, and my sole ambition had been simply to be in a band and play music. The decision still smarted a little, but it was the right one: George was so clearly developing into a writer of rare ability.
Now, after four thrilling years, our time together was over.
George shouted in my ear. From within the noise and the chaos I wasn’t able to catch any words. Our musicians and backing singers, most of them long-term collaborators, had left the stage to allow us our last moments together as Wham!. The Wembley crowd was swaying ever faster, singing even louder in a sea of sound and colour, banners and flags dotted the view ahead.
“What? Come again!” I yelled over the din, sensing that what he had to say was important.
George smiled and embraced me, resting his head upon my shoulder one last time before we took our final bows.
“I couldn’t have done this without you, Andy,” he said.
Following the break-up of Wham! Andrew had a short-lived career as a Formula Three racing driver. In 1990 he released a solo album, Son of Albert, but it didn’t perform well in the charts, prompting him to bow out of the music business for good. He now focuses on charity work.
With the release of Faith in 1987, George became the solo star he’d always wanted to be. On Christmas Day of 2016 fans were stunned by the news that George had been found dead at his mansion in Oxfordshire. It later emerged he’d died of heart failure.