FORMER WHAM! MANAGER’S THEORY ON STAR’S DEATH
I believe a secret childhood trauma drove George’s creativity and his suicidal drug use
WHILE George Michael’s sudden death aged 53 sent shockwaves through the music world, it came as no surprise to one of his oldest pals.
Former Wham! manager Simon Napier-Bell believes the singer was using drugs “semi-suicidally” and a secret childhood trauma had fuelled his creativity while tearing him apart.
While studying the tragic trend of musicians dying young for a new documentary, Simon, 78, noticed parallels between many of the stars.
And he thinks a dark secret from George’s past led him to make his finest work – something that happened years before the death of mum Lesley and his partner Anselmo Feleppa in the 1990s.
“He was very open about the fact that he was upset by his mother dying and Anselmo dying,” says Simon, adding that he suspects the “real upset” was triggered many years earlier.
Record producer and music manager Simon had just overseen the split of Japan when he took on Wham! in 1983, co-managing them with Jazz Summers.
It was Simon who took the duo – George and best pal Andrew Ridgeley – to China two years later, making them the first Western band to perform in the country and cementing them as the biggest pop group in the world.
He insists George did not use drugs while in Wham! and even reprimanded him for drink-driving once.
But George was arrested for possession of Class A drugs including crack in 2008 and once revealed he smoked 25 marijuana joints a day. His former partner, Kenny Goss, said he used to flush George’s drugs down the loo.
Simon said: “I knew there were a lot of drugs about and if somebody is doing drugs at a level which could kill them, I suppose it is semi-suicidal. You’re flirting with it.
“It’s like somebody who drives at 130mph when they’re drunk. They’re not trying to commit suicide but if they thought
logically for a minute they would have to say they don’t really care much for life if they are doing that.”
Referencing a horrific incident on the M1 in which George was airlifted to hospital after plunging from his moving car, Simon went on: “You don’t fall out a Ranger Rover going 80mph by accident. “It might be an accident but you must have been doing something damn to make the accident happen. You knew there was an instability there that one day would go just an inch further in the wrong direction and something would happen. Which is probably what did happen.”
But he stressed: “I don’t for one second think it’s suicide in the conventional idea of what suicide is.”
George was found dead at his home in Goring-upon-Thames, Oxon, on Christmas Day 2016 and a coroner ruled he died of heart and liver disease. “I was upset and disappointed,” Simon said. “But surprised isn’t the word.”
Simon has been studying premature deaths in the music world for a documentary focusing on the “27 club” of stars who died at that age.
He cites a study of deaths among 1,064 pop stars which found musicians are 1.7 times more likely to die young than others of the same generation. “Very few people of that status get beyond 55,” he said, noting Prince’s death in 2016 aged 57 and George’s passing. “Of all the artists I’ve managed, there’s a lot of mental health issues.”
Last year, George was heard saying in the Channel 4 documentary Freedom, which he was working on right before he died, that his 1996 album Older was his “greatest moment”.
The record told of his grief at losing lover Anselmo, who died of an Aids-related illness in 1993, just two years after they met at a Rock in Rio concert.
Mother Lesley died in 1997, leaving the singer “spiritually crushed”, as he put it in the film.
But Simon believes George’s creativity was born out of an even earlier trauma, well before his Wham! days.
“That wasn’t the problem, that didn’t cause George Michael’s creasilly tivity,” Simon said of Anselmo’s death. “It was childhood trauma that happens well before you’re 12 or 13.
“He obviously looked very much inside himself but he never told anybody whatever it was that triggered it. He didn’t tell the public and he may not have even told himself, because that’s another thing that happens to people, they feel a huge disquiet and they want to not look at it.”
Simon’s film explores the deaths of stars including Amy Winehouse, Kurt Cobain, Brian Jones, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix, who all died at 27 – and all of whom suffered some form of psychological trauma as a child.
He looks into research on how the brain’s cerebral cortex matures at this age and asks whether the music industry has a responsibility to safeguard an artist’s mental health. He also explores whether troubled individuals gravitate towards the industry.
Referencing George and other tragic stars, Simon said: “They’re so acutely aware of how painful it is they don’t want to even think about it for themselves but they all know something’s happened which has upset them.
“He was very open about the fact he was further upset by his mother and Anselmo dying. But one suspects the real upset was the connection between that and whatever triggered the whole thing in the first place.”
He said George would have panic attacks in his 20s ahead of gigs.
“I was with George when he had panic attacks, saying he couldn’t go on stage,” Simon goes on, adding of musicians in general: “What they project and how they are inside are different.
“They’re not going on stage because they’re super-confident. They’re going on stage because they totally lack selfesteem and they want to be loved.”
The documentary 27: Gone Too Soon is out now on DVD.
You don’t fall out of a Range Rover at 80mph by accident SIMON NAPIER-BELL (LEFT) ON PAL’S ANTICS