The audio covers a 2007 Desert Island Discs interview with George Michael, exploring his 25+ year career as an international star who sold over 100 million records. The conversation delves into his personal life, career challenges, and musical journey. Key topics include his early life as the son of a Greek Cypriot immigrant, his rise to fame with Wham!, his struggles with sexuality and coming out, his relationship with Anselmo who died of AIDS, and his recent legal troubles including community service. The interview is interspersed with eight music selections chosen by George Michael, including contemporary artists like Amy Winehouse, Nirvana, and Kanye West. Michael discusses his complex relationship with fame, his battle with Sony Records, and his current contentment despite past struggles.
Table of Contents
Highlights
Introduction and Early Career
George Michael discusses his early life and rise to fame. Born to a Greek Cypriot father and English mother, he experienced a head injury at age 8 that sparked his interest in music. At 18, he signed his first record deal for £500, forming Wham! with Andrew Ridgely. The duo achieved massive success with hits like Wham! Rap, Club Tropicana, and Last Christmas.
Struggles with Identity and Sexuality
Michael reveals his internal struggles with sexuality during his early fame. While projecting a heterosexual image, he had known he was gay since age 19. He delayed coming out due to concerns about AIDS and its impact on his family, particularly his mother. His first real relationship was with Anselmo, whom he met at age 27, who later died of AIDS-related illness in 1993.
Musical Influences and Choices
Throughout the interview, Michael selects contemporary music including Amy Winehouse, Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’, Pet Shop Boys’ ‘Being Boring’, and Kanye West’s ‘Gold Digger’. He explains his admiration for these artists and their impact on music, showing his continued engagement with modern music rather than nostalgia.
Recent Challenges and Current State
The interview concludes with discussion of recent challenges, including his driving offense and subsequent community service. Michael reflects on his current contentment despite past struggles, his relationship with marijuana use, and his perspective on fame. He chooses a DB9 car as his luxury item for the desert island, noting ironically that there would be no driving license restrictions there.
Transcript
Below is the transcript of Kirsty Young’s interview of George Michael in the Desert Island Discs released on September 30, 2007. To download the full audio of the interview, go to the BBC website.
Hello. I’m Kirsty Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we’ve had to shorten the music. The program was originally broadcast in 2007.
Our castaway this week is George Michael. For more than 25 years, he’s been an international star. More than a hundred million records sold, countless number ones, armfuls of prestigious awards, and an army of loyal fans. His ability to write, produce, and perform perfect pop songs is unquestioned.
But along with the career highs, there have been lows, too. He lost a long wrangle with his record company, faced bereavement, and for years his sexuality was a matter of intense newspaper speculation until he was spectacularly outed a decade ago.
Within a few years, he said, he lost his lover, lost his mother, and lost his dignity. “Just because you’re rich and famous,” he once said, “doesn’t mean your life is problem-free. My problems are not any greater or lesser than when I was 17, they’re just different.”
On Touring
So George Michael, we’d about to cast you away on this imaginary desert island. Would you welcome the solitude?
GEORGE MICHAEL: Right now, I would actually. Right now I would because I’ve obviously just done a year’s touring, which was closely followed by some community service. So I’m quite .. I’m quite ready to be on my own for a while.
KRISTI YOUNG: I mean it’s been an extraordinary 12 months. You finished this tour, which was a sellout, was a smash hit, got great reviews. You opened the new Wembley Stadium. The day before that, you were standing in the dock of Brent magistrates getting charged with that driving whilst unfit through drugs. I mean have these 12 months seemed almost unbelievably extreme?
GM: Well yeah .. I mean, it’s been .. um it’s been a bizarre year. It’s been a very bizarre year because you can’t imagine what is like playing to people who’ve been loyal to you for 25 years and haven’t seen you for 15. That’s just been the most life-affirming thing I could have done. I’m so glad I did it.
And yet on the other side, I feel like, you know, it’s been shown to me time and time again and very, very strongly recently that the truth is nothing like as important as a good story, you know.
KY: Do stories matter to you? Given that you have been, as I said in the introduction, very, very famous for quite a long time now, do you still get buffeted by the headlines?
GM: Well I don’t like people thinking that I’ve been done for grass and other drugs, when I’ve been done for sleeping pills. But I can’t do anything about the fact that the story lasts longer than the fact that you’ve told people it didn’t happen, you know. When I realized it was that one-sided, and that really me telling people the truth didn’t .. wasn’t going to make any difference, I just really have managed in the last 18 months to master the art of not reading them — which I should have done 20 years ago, really.
KY: So those have been the low bits of the last 12 months. You said quite a while back when you decided not to tour again, you said, “You know if I wanted adulation I’d tour. I don’t want adulation.” Has a little bit of adulation been quite nice?
GM: Well it’s not the adulation that’s been nice. It’s the absolute warmth, actually. It’s complete generosity. I genuinely believe that you know, the purpose of what I do is a positive one, you know. I really do genuinely believe that most of my songs are life-affirming in some way, you know. And actually, people who don’t care about your music thinking lots of things about you that aren’t true really doesn’t matter, you know. It really doesn’t matter. What’s wonderful is that a lot of them that do think they’re true really don’t care. So you know, I’m such a lucky man. It’s so annoying to have people try and give the impression that the world is a totally screwed up place and I really needed those people in front of me night after night to tell me that it wasn’t, you know. I really needed it so badly, I’m so grateful to them.
I genuinely believe that the purpose of what I do is a positive one. I really do genuinely believe that most of my songs are life-affirming in some way
George Michael
Record Choice: Amy Winehouse
KY: Tell me about your first choice …
GM: This is the best female vocalist I’ve heard in my entire career .. and one of the best writers! So all I can say is please, please understand how brilliant you are and I wish her every, every success in the future and I know she can get past the media. I don’t know she can get past other things but she’s a fantastic talent and we should support her.
KY: This is Amy Winehouse
[Amy Winehouse and “Love is a Losing Game”]
On Childhood and Growing Up
KY: George Michael you were saying .. um, intriguingly when we were listening to that, your great admiration for her talent. And you were talking about the fact that for yourself, you’ve never really been sure about anything in your life apart from the fact that you had the ability to create music that people wanted. Explain more about that because that’s very interesting …
GM: Well I’ll tell you this is a really .. I’ve never said any of this before but it’s odd .. I’m just kind of ridiculously ready to say these things now but .. I have a huge propensity for guilt because I was the boy in a Greek family, who could do what he liked … from a very early age, and did.
KY: Because the culture and the family …
GM: The culture was patriarchal and it was to indulge the boy. I have two wonderful sisters who never got their ways, as young Greek girls, obviously, and I grew up with this terrible feeling of guilt. I had feelings of guilt as a small child, knowing that I was always the one that was going to get the easy ride. And I carried that propensity for guilt in strangest ways.
And I think I finally realized one of the reasons my life has been so extreme and its felt so, in some ways — self-destructive — is that .. it sounds arrogant but I never had any feeling that my talent was going to let me down. I had a feeling that I had a huge advantage over a lot of other people in the industry and a lot of other people in my own life, obviously, that I love and care about very much. And I think in a strange way I’ve spent much of the last 15 or 20 years trying to derail my own career because it never seems to suffer. I suffer like crazy! I suffer all around. I’ve suffered terrible things obviously – bereavements, and public humiliations and blah blah blah — but my career just seems to always right itself like a duck in a bath, like a plastic duck in a bath. And I think in some ways I resent that.
It sounds arrogant but I never had any feeling that my talent was going to let me down.
George Michael
KY: When you were very, very young, you decided you wanted fame. It was a very deliberate strategy …
GM: Absolutely! But by the time I was 22 or 23, I knew that I was chasing something that was making me unhappy.
KY: Can we rewind a little bit then to childhood? Your father was a Greek Cypriot immigrant first generation. Your mother was born in England. As you say, you were the last of three children. What was life like growing up?
GM: My father was the absolute archetypal, you know, 1950s immigrant from Cyprus. Very determined, and every single member of his family made something of themselves in this country, you know. Really they’re typical immigrant family that worked their asses off and reap the rewards.
KY: And so he started off as a waiter and ended up having his own restaurant (GM: Absolutely) and run his business successfully
GM: Very successfully, and moved us out of a very working-class environment into a middle-class one. That didn’t seem so incongruous because my mother, strangely enough, found out when her mother died, that her mother had in fact been Jewish. So actually her origins weren’t English but she was incredibly Victorian because her mother had been disowned for marrying a gentile, but her mother came from a very wealthy Jewish family. And my mother carried with her some very Victorian ideas that really did not go at all well with my father’s upwardly mobile ..My mother absolutely had no, no ambition for money — thought money was the root of all evil. So being half my mother and half my father genetically was never going to be an easy ride.
Record Choice: Roxy Music
KY: So much to talk about. Tell me about your second record …
GM: Roxy Music. At both ends of the spectrum, Bryan Ferry made some of the sexiest music of the last 30 years. It’s so original and it’s so sexy and it’s so insistent, I suppose.
[Roxy Music and Do the Strand]
KY: Not particularly chosen George because you were playing that .. I mean you must’ve been 9 or 10 when that came out
GM: Yeah I mean strike that didn’t actually stop me from listening to the best Elton John and the best Queen records … but … something strange happened at the age of about 8. I had a head injury and I know it sounds bizarre and unlikely, but it was quite a bad bang. I had it stitched up and stuff … but all my interest changed. Everything changed in six months. I had been obsessed with insects and creepy crawlies. I used to get up at five o’clock in the morning and go out into this field behind our garden and collect insects before everyone else got up. And suddenly, all I wanted to know about was music. It just seemed a very, very strange thing. And I have a theory that maybe it was something to do with this accident because of this whole left-brain right-brain thing. Nobody in my family seemed to notice but I became absolutely obsessed with music and everything changed after that.
On Wham! Getting Signed
KY: So when you were in your early to mid-teens, you met a friend called Andrew Ridgeley and famously of course you would go on to form Wham! And you were about 17 when Wham! had its first hit which was very, very young indeed.
GM: Well, I think we were 18. I just turned 18 when we got signed. And we were, I think we were still 18 by the time we had the first record out.
KY: And that must’ve been a very big deal getting signed. Can you remember?
GM: Oh my god, I had 500 pounds! I’d never been more flush, and I thought 500 pounds was quite a good deal for 30 years actually. [laughter] No cheering I’m really only just free of that original contract now
KY: So you signed away in essence your creative life in that first deal
GM: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And apparently that’s okay.
KY: Can you remember what you spent that first 500 pounds off?
GM: It took a long time to spend it, that’s the shocking thing. When you’ve just given up your job at the cinema, 500 pounds is like … I went into that office and gave up that job as though I just become a diamond dealer. So, so yeah everything’s relative, isn’t it. It took me a while to spend it yeah.
On His Name
KY: And you were born Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou. Was that okay? Say it for me.
GM: Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou – that was very good. All you have to do is kind of soften all the consonants. If you say Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou – that’s it. And whereas it reads Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou.
KY: Right, that’s sort of what I said.
GM: And there is a very urgent need for a stage name when you’re 18. Yes, that’s your destiny.
KY: So George Michael was … The name was a creation, but was the persona a creation at 17?
GM: Well, I thought it was. At some point I realized, you know, everything you do is you, even if it’s the lies you tell. Even if it’s an act, it’s a part of the real me, isn’t it? Because it’s what I want people to think I am.
Record Choice: Gnarls Barkley
KY: Tell me about your next record.
GM: Number three is Gnarls Barkley. I think it sold 50% of all singles in the first six months of last year and that’s really saying something, you know. An amazing song, an amazing song. Occasionally something left of field comes through and people see it for what it is — which is one of those old classics, you know, the kind of records we used to hear quite often, and it stands head and shoulders above everything else.
KY: All sparkly and crazy. It’s very interesting, your selection as you’ll see as we go through here, George Michael, that you have chosen very contemporary music. You don’t seem to be somebody who’s harking back to the musical past. Is that because you always want to be on top of things or is it because you’re tired of what’s gone before?
GM: Not at all, not at all. I’m not on top of things at all. In fact, I was actually just telling you, I mean I am fairly tragic for someone who’s lived for the radio. But since I don’t have a license, I don’t listen to the radio anymore because I listen to the radio in the car. So for the next two years, my radio listening is probably a bit slim.
On Success with Wham!
KY: They still play a lot of you, of course. You are, I understand, the most-played artist on British radio. I mean, those early days of Wham, when you were very, very young and you were pumping out those hits, you know, things like Wham! Rap and Club Tropicana, Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go, Last Christmas — a great big long line of them. What was life like, going from being this boy who wanted fame, to this boy who suddenly got it and then some.
GM: Well for a while it was just absolutely magical. Playing out — and with your best mate, you know! Playing out your fantasies. It was just a dream, obviously. But now I think what I was doing was I was supremely confident that I was writing pop classics, to be honest with you. But I was also supremely aware that if I kind of left the imagery a little bit more to Andrew, kids kind of loved it.
KY: You said also a moment ago that you were living out your fantasies. I mean what were your fantasies that you were living out in Wham!
GM: I won’t tell you all of them.
KY: Go on
GM: But I think the image that stuck in my head of what I wanted to be was, um, David Cassidy came to England for the first time. And there was a shot that stuck with me more than anything else. There was a shot of him in slow motion heading a football around on the top of the LWT building. They then panned over the side of the LWT building. And there were just thousands of these girls screaming obviously, but they couldn’t get to him. There was all that adulation and they couldn’t get to him … and somehow my desire for safety, you know because I was quite an insecure child, and my desire for fame all kind of locked up in that moment.
On His Insecurity
KY: The insecurity that you were talking about there, that did not come from the insecurity about being able to write these platinum-plated pop songs. The insecurity came from what, the way you look?
GM: Just from who I was! It wasn’t like I had found it hard to make friends; I made plenty of friends. I just had no physical confidence whatsoever. And I looked up to Andrew on such a level ‘coz he just oozed confidence out of every pore. And then suddenly, we were massively successful. And I went from being Andrew’s kind of shadow as a sexually confident being to being really in the center of attention. And at that level somehow, I lost all my confidence. I suppose also the realization that bisexuality was no longer a reality for me, and I suddenly felt like a fake. So the whole thing just turned me into someone who really felt the camera was my enemy.
Record Choice: Nirvana
KY: Let’s talk about that in just a moment. For now, though, tell me about your fourth choice.
GM: My fourth choice is Nirvana. This record is THE best produced rock record in the history of rock, I think. It’s not necessarily the greatest song. It’s a phenomenal record. Obviously, it was a music industry changing record; it changed everything in America overnight, you know, because it’s an absolute classic.
KY: Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” came out just in time there, George Michael, you were starting to head-banging. You were saying if you were on an island you’d be angry anyway so that would be that …
GM: If I was on an island I’d be so furious. I think I’d need to vent anger every once in a while, you know what I mean.
On Fame
KY: Oprah Winfrey once said, “If you come to fame not knowing who you are, it will define you.” And I’m wondering that given that Wham! and fame hit you so early, did you begin to be a little disorientated by that magnitude of fame?
GM: There’s a level of deification in America that you just don’t get over here. You get, you know, you get quite the opposite over here, don’t you. For an English boy, that was kind of … I was 24 and and still quite afraid … still not knowing to be honest with you, how to spend money. I was terrified of my lifestyle. Maybe removing my ability to connect to what I did and I …I freaked out. I said I don’t wanna be making more videos; I don’t think I’ll ever tour again; I have to step back.
On His Sexuality
KY: To those of us buying your records at the time and watching the videos it was a very, very heterosexual image. I mean, I remember …
GM: I think so
KY: I really did think so. When I watch the videos …
GM: You women, honestly …
KY: When I watch the video – I Want Your Sex — I thought that man is clearly a very heterosexual man …
GM: I see, yeah, well there wasn’t you know … I was with Kathy in the video and you know this was basically …
KY: And you weren’t having a cup of tea, let’s just …
GM: No, no absolutely not. Absolutely .. and this was you know, it wasn’t as though it was a complete lie, you know. It’s not that I had stopped having sex with women, but I was already fully aware that in itself was a lie because what I really had made a connection to was an emotional part of my sexuality and that was clearly gay. So there was all that feeling fraudulent as well because I’m not … I think what people have to acknowledge if they know my behavior since I’ve come out or since I’ve outed myself accidentally — but probably not accidentally — I think there’s a level of honesty that’s quite obviously natural to me that I’m uncomfortable with anything else. So try to understand firstly how much I love my family and the AIDS was the predominant feature of being gay in the 80s and early 90s, as far as any parent was concerned. And my mother was still alive and every single day would have been a nightmare for her thinking about what I might be subjected to. So yeah, there were all these kinds of reasons and …
It’s not that I had stopped having sex with women, but I was already fully aware that in itself was a lie because what I really had made a connection to was an emotional part of my sexuality and that was clearly gay.
George Michael
KY: Were you out to some people, and not to other people?
GM: Oh yeah, yeah … because I’d been out to some people since I was 19. I wish to God it happened then, I have to be honest. I don’t think I would have had the same career. My ego might not have been satisfied in some areas quite as much, but I think I would have been a happier man.
KY: Did you wrestle with it round about the age of 19?
GM: Yeah, when I was 19, I came out to various friends and one of my sisters. And I said I was going to talk to my mom and dad and was persuaded in no uncertain terms that it really wasn’t the best idea.
KY: By who?
GM: By friends. But they weren’t really … I don’t think they were trying to protect my career or their careers. I think they were literally just thinking of my dad. Because you know, when you’re 19, that’s as far as you look at your parents so don’t tell your dad, “my god your dad will hit the roof.” And then very soon after that everything changed. AIDS was just not something I was prepared to bring into my parent’s life. I was too young and too immature to know that I was sacrificing as much as I was.
Record Choice: Pet Shop Boys
KY: Tell me about your next record.
GM: So the next record, quite appropriately as “Being Boring” by Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe, Pet Shop Boys. Neil Tennant, at a certain point in the 80s, was writing the most beautiful songs no one wants to hear. Frightening, terrifying songs about AIDS. But they do if they’re gay and they’ve lost friends. They do want to hear those people referred to and remembered and honored. And I think some of Neil’s work did that …
KY: Pet Shop Boys and ‘Being Boring” … It’s interesting, George Michael, that you haven’t chosen any of your own songs.
GM: [Laughter] You know … actually, I probably just listen to my own songs on a desert island to remind myself that I was once known and famous because I’d be explaining it to crustaceans wouldn’t it.
On His First Love
KY: One of the most poignant songs I think you’ve written is ‘Jesus to a Child’ and that was written for essentially your first love. How did you meet your first love?
GM: Well, what happened was actually … it was a strange, strange thing. I don’t know if people relate to this, but there are only been three times in my life that I’ve really fallen for anyone. And each time, on first sight, I had something has clicked in my head that told me I was going to know that person. And it happened with Anselmo across a lobby. So I met him in that lobby, and I didn’t understand why the click happened. This is a man in a Brazilian hotel. I’m never going to see him again. Why did that happen? I didn’t understand what was going on. This was the first love of my entire life. This was the first person I ever shared my life with. It was tragic that I lost him, but it was a wonderful, wonderful experience meeting him.
KY: How old were you then?
GM: I was 27, and I just started my first proper relationship, which is pretty old, isn’t really? Unfortunately, within six months I knew that he was terminally ill. So it was a very strange first love, you know. It was very distorted by the situation, but it was also a wonderful experience, you know.
KY: And so he died in that, was it 1993?
GM: 1993
KY: And it was an AIDS related illness?
GM: About three months before, I lost my court case, so it was not a good year. It was AIDS-related, yeah. I mean then, he was a couple of years older than me. He very likely picked it up in New York before people had any inkling that New York was actually a hotbed of this new disease.
KY: One of the signatures of being truly and deeply in love, of course, is that you want to sing about it from the rooftops. You want to tell everyone you know. How open were you about the love affair?
GM: We see unfortunately I wasn’t writing anything. I’ve already just released an album when I met him. And then by the time I actually made another album, he died, which is what the album was about. And to be perfectly honest, I think my best album. I think it probably will always be my best album. And I never want to be that inspired again as I say to people, you know.
KY: That’s a very bittersweet situation, isn’t it? That your most creative period … something that … and also one of your most popular albums ‘Older’ is something that came out of such, such pain. Can you reconcile those two feelings or will they always be a degree of dissonance between them?
GM: No, I think I’m absolutely that … I think the album is a beautiful reminder of him. I wouldn’t go through it again to make a great album, don’t get me wrong you know. This man’s life was much more important to me than entertaining people. I never want to feel that loss. I’d never want to feel that depth of emotion again. I hope he’s very, very proud of it somewhere.
Record Choice: Goldfrapp
KY: Tell me about your next record.
GM: Next record Goldfrapp. That first Goldfrapp album ‘Felt Mountain’ is a great, great album you know. It’s amazingly elegant production. I’m a real admirer of her voice.
KY: And ‘Paper-Bag’. You mentioned just a moment ago and indeed it’s been something of a theme. It was at the beginning that over the derision with which you talked about record companies and record executives who had this big nasty high court battle with Sony that lasted about six months, I think it was. And were you propelled by anger about different things into that? Was it actually all about the record company?
On His Fight with Sony
GM: Well, I mean I did sign a piece of paper age 18 that effectively — considering I’ve only been able to be sold rather than be free — effectively the results of that deal I’ve only just ended. I’m just free.
KY: You called it at the time “professional slavery,” which of course was a beautifully calculated, well-turned phrase. But if at the same time which may have been the contention of your record company, you didn’t particularly want to put yourself out there. You didn’t want to go on the radio shows, and go on the TV shows and make the videos in the sharp suit looking great. You don’t want to do any of that. They might reasonably have been expected to respond by saying, “Well we won’t really play the game either.”
GM: Well, actually, if they’ve been … if what they really reasonably could have expected was when you just made 200 million dollars for a company you expect them to have a little bit of patience with you, you know.
It was very obvious that I was going through something personal; that meant I couldn’t face the world. But I was actually going through personally was dealing with the fact the person I cared for most in the world had a terminal illness, and I didn’t know how long that terminal illness would be. I didn’t know when I would ever be happy enough to write another song. I was terrified. I was absolutely terrified. At that point in time, I had no idea what to do.
And it was such a dark period of my life, and I thought it was just going to continue that way. I really did. I struggled with a huge depression, especially after my mother died. I struggled with huge depression. And there’s a bad combination here — there’s someone who doesn’t take bereavement very well (I don’t think any of us do, but some of us I think it take longer to recover than others) and there’s a situation where you’re your own boss so no one’s kicking you up the ass to get out there and live again and see the positive, you know. But two bereavements — losing a lover and your mother within the space of three years is a tough one.
Record Choice: Kanye West
KY: Let’s take a break for your seventh record. (29:55)
GM: There are two reasons I’ve chosen this record. There are certain records that literally I just can’t not move to and this is one of them. The lyric makes me laugh — is completely brutal, completely sexist. Surprise, surprise coming from American hip-hop record. But it’s funny; it is funny.
KY: That was Kanye West and ‘Gold Digger.”
On Getting Outed
And did you come to a point … after you were .. in treating the … you said not really forcibly outed but you know they’re happening. Everybody knows about wasn’t just on every front page, was on every front page for about ten days. And you were in the park in LA, as everybody knows, and in the toilet you were busted by a policeman undercover because of sexual advances you made to him. You were forced to come out.
GM: Yeah, well I am. What you gonna do, say it was a one-off?
KY: Right.
GM: In my case, you know, I always knew it was gonna happen sometime. I was going to get outed one way or another. And the reason … the reason I .. it took me a good year to admit to myself that it was subconsciously deliberate.
KY: I read that you said .. of course because I read it, I don’t necessarily know if it’s true … but it would not have happened if your mother had been alive.
GM: No, no, no … it would never have happened. I’m not saying I’m not cruising; I’m saying I would never have put myself in the stupid position of doing it in America where I knew the level of homophobia. I think for me to do that I was absolutely tempting fate. I think I was sick of the secret. Now that there wasn’t any reason to be quiet, now that my mother was no longer in this world and I was proud of my sexuality. Strange way of going about telling the world, but I think it was almost like it had to be there. The battle I’d played with the press was so much one of privacy and I felt so loathe to actually sit and say, “I am gay” — the three white words they’d wanted for years. It really wasn’t something that needed holding onto anymore but I just couldn’t do it in the room in the regular way. I think I had to do it and for myself. I had to fool myself that had been dragged out of me.
KY: Did you .. did you feel that a burden had been lifted?
GM: Oh God, yeah! Because I’m not a liar. I’m too honest to dye my hair. I’m too embarrassed to dye my hair. I’m not a liar! You know, but this was one lie I’ve been kind of trying to tell people in my own way for years and years. And I don’t know if something in me picked the most difficult way to do it.
KY: When you were talking to me about your mother at the very beginning of this conversation, you said that she was very Victorian in her values. How did she react when you had come out to her?
GM: Oh you see when … when I came out to my mother um uh I wrote her a letter the day after Anselmo died because it seemed absolutely simple. It seemed like if there was a message at the moment of his death, it was, well this is when you tell your parents because this is the only part of yourself that you haven’t opened up.
On His Legal Troubles
KY: And what about the recent pain then? As you mentioned, you no longer have a driving license and for two years, you won’t be able to drive because you were found … no it’s reported. And you do take issue with a lot of the reporting on this — that you were found slumped at the wheel of your car you’re incapable of driving and that you were found guilty of that. You’ve done community service for that. How long did you do for community service?
GM: I’ve done half of my community service. I did some very interesting work with people with mental health problems and with people with drug addiction. I also, you know, scrubbed down some very dirty rooms and made chicken fajitas for some homeless people, which was nice. I was quite good apparently, that was my first time with chicken feeders.
KY: Do you think you have a problem with drugs?
GM: Um, it depends what you call the problem really. I’m a happy man, and I can afford my marijuana so that’s not a problem. I mean, I’m constantly trying to smoke less, really. I would like to take, absolutely I’d like to take less, no question into that. To that degree, it’s a problem, yeah. Is it a problem in my life? Is it getting in the way of my life in any way? I don’t think so. Really, I don’t think so.
KY: You said a little earlier that this is a time in your life when probably unlike any other you found peace and a degree of contentment. And you know, you’ve been back on the road with all the attention that that has garnered. What do you think it is that essentially brought you that peace?
GM: I think, well, in all honesty, nobody died on me, in years. You know, it took years for me to believe that these blows weren’t going to keep coming.
Record Choice: Rufus Wainwright
KY: Tell me about your final record.
GM: Actually this is the heaviest lyrical record on this list. And it’s from a gay artist called Rufus Wainwright. And he’s written this song called ‘Going to Town” really laying into the Bush administration talking about America. You know, “soaking the body of Jesus Christ in blood” — you know, fantastic lyrics all over this record. And someone that people should definitely check out.
KY: You’re right and “Going to Town.” And so at this point on the island, I will give you, George Michael, the Bible, the complete works of Shakespeare and you are allowed to take another book. What would you like to take?
GM: Um I take any book of … if I’m getting the Bible, yes, right, I’m getting Shakespeare which I won’t read by the way. I’m not going to take a jolly book. But I think I would take a book of short stories by Doris Lessing.
KY: You may have that then. And of course, you’re allowed a luxury on this island to make things more bearable. What would your luxury be?
GM: Well, I thought about this and obviously you’re not allowed to have a partner so I couldn’t take Kenny.
KY: No.
GM: So that’s out. But on a desert island, who is going to know I’ve not got a driving license? So I can drive around in a DB9. I’ll just drive around and around my little desert island on my DB9 because I’m obsessed with cars, and you know the next two years I’m not going to get to drive one.
KY: It’s yours. And if the waves were to crash to the shore and threaten to wash away these eight disks that you’ve chosen, what’s the one you would run to save?
GM: Oh my god, I think I’d have to say Amy Winehouse.
KY: You can have it.
George Michael, thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island.
GM: Thank You Kirsty, thank you so much.
