Below is Part 2 of the transcript of Mel Everett’s interview with George Michael on the GWR FM 96.3 radio in Bristol on March 30, 1997.
Telephone Question 3:
Mel: “Alright, Tony Hi ! , you’ve got a question for George Michael haven’t you?”
Tony: “I have yes!”
George: “Hi Tony, how are you?”
Tony: “Hi George, I’m fine thanks, how are you?”
George: “I’m very well thank you”
Tony: “Good. Firstly it’s such an honour to speak to you!”
George: “Thank you (embarassed) it’s really not if you know me better! You’d know it’s really not!”
Tony: “Firstly I want to say George if I can is, I’m speaking on behalf of lots of my friends and so do me and my girlfriend..um..we just think you are the best ever singer in the world”
George: “Thank you very much”
Tony: “I really do mean that, keep producing the fantastic music if you can ‘cos it is just first class”
George: “Alright, I intend to”
Tony: “My question really is, when you did your MTV Unplugged fairly recently we’ve obviously taped that as you do when you’re a George Michael fan and the problem is my tape’s wearing out, so when can we see you sing live in concert?”
George: “Um…well that’s a very good question, and the answer is unfortunately not this year, but they were planned for the end of the year, but because of the kind of personal problems I had at the beginning of the year, that we couldn’t actually hold dates we had…I had to put the whole thing back a bit and by the time I was ready to actually get down to work again, those dates had gone… other artists…I think you know, it’s very hard these days to hold certain types of concert dates ‘cos so many people are playing live, it’s so much bigger…when I started in the business it wasn’t that tough really, but so many people are going to see live shows again, which is great, but it means that you really have to get booked up nice and early, and unfortunately I’ve missed the spots that I wanted for the end of the year, so it’s going to have to be next year”
Tony: “Do you think it will be definitely next year, yeah?”
George: “Oh yeah, absolutely”
Freedom 90
Mel: “Have you ever had any singing lessons?”
George: “No, I’ve had lessons when I’ve had problems like surgery…um…I had surgery on my…that was another thing that made me miserable on the Faith Tour was that I was in absolute agony. It was the…I got laryngitis in Australia and I didn’t want to cancel the dates, so I kind of sang way before I was supposed to after I got laryngitis, and that in turn became like the
beginnings of nodules or whatever they call them…er…the horrific thing about it actually was that I saw eight doctors before it was identified and I kept saying you know “I’m really in agony, you know it really hurts”, and my mum actually said she wouldn’t come and see any more shows ‘cos she said she could see me straining away, you know I looked like I was on the toilet (laughter) for an hour and a half every night, and it took eight separate visits in different towns before anyone would say anything other than “Tour fatigue”, that was their favourite you know it’s just “Tour fatigue”. Run down, you know, this and that, and I was going “No, no really I can feel there’s something really wrong” and eventually a doctor in London…um…did a very thorough examination and said “Oh yeah you’ve definitely got to have that…that you’ve got something on…you’ve got two things on your chords, and we have to take them off”
Yeah, and the insurance company still refused to believe, the insurance for the tour obviously…um…they still refused to believe, so we actually had to have an insurance doctor present in the operation to look down this, you know, I was completely unconscious. We actually had to have…uh..uh…can you think?…It’s a joke really, there was my manager, my two managers, there were my lawyer and the insurance doctor, and the tour promoter…or something like that, all staring down this tube!!”
Mel: “No !!!”
George “And me completely unconscious sitting there on this table just to make sure that the doctor could say…point at it… and say “Look – there it is!”
Mel: “Is your voice insured then, well your throat?”
George: “Uh, no I don’t think so actually, no. No otherwise I probably wouldn’t be able to smoke fags”
Mel: “Do you smoke a lot then?”
George: “Uh, I have been, I have been. It’s only developed in the last couple of years really, I never smoked all through the eighties”
Mel: “Did you start smoking later on in life?”
George: “Yes I did, but I have to be honest, it wasn’t cigarettes that I started smoking later on in life!!”
Mel: “No!” (laughter)
George: “But it was one of those things because the things that I was smoking were illegal that situations where you suddenly find…and because I was mixing grass with tobacco, basically you suddenly find “Oh I can’t actually do that here, can I?” So I’ll just have a cigarette and that was it”
Mel: “You wild child!”
George: “Yeah I know. That was the, you know, that’s really my most extreme behaviour really was to get hooked on pot for a couple of years, but I’ve given that up now. I’m a clean living… well relatively clean living”
I Want Your Sex
Mel: “George, where did you get the name for the new record label, Aegean?”
George: “I just wanted…you know, I have this vague, vague desire to keep everything kind of…some element of my heritage in it which is Greek, and even though I’ve always said you know I don’t really feel Greek in the slightest other than the fact that I’m very hairy (laughter) um…it’s just something…I like to acknowledge the fact that I’m not…even though my character is quite English, there are certain things about me which are
very much not English and er…and I liked it…I think it’s interesting to keep that part of my um…my history somewhere in there you know, even down to the fact that in my name I’ve in the last seven years, I’ve always had the A and the E connected. I think it’s called a “Dipthong” “
Mel: “What’s your real name then. I mean George is your real name isn’t it?, but it’s longer”
George: “Yes George, but it’s Greek. In Greek it’s “Georgios.” My real full name is “Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou” “
Mel: “Really?!! – sounds really cool doesn’t it?”
George: “Yeah, really it doesn’t look so cool on paper believe me, and it certainly wouldn’t look very cool spinning around in your record collection so…that’s why I had to change it”
Mel: “So the new song is Waltz Away Dreaming, and that’s with Toby Bourke and yourself. Was Toby Bourke the first person that you signed?”
George: “Yeah..Toby is actually the first person that I was introduced to in terms of…so um…yeah he was the first and in fact this song Waltz Away Dreaming is actually an adaptation of the original demo that I heard, and the B side is actually completely a demo, it’s just a guitar and Toby singing and he just is the most fantastic writer, fantastic singer. The reason for him coming first was simply that I was listening to the original demo a couple of nights after my mum died and it just seemed like a perfect…I knew that if I adapted the lyrics a little and added my own verses, that it would just be, could be a wonderful song”
Mel: “It is a lovely song”
George: “Just in terms of paying tribute to my mum you know, and the way it should be heard really is if you listen to it basically Toby’s voice represents my father’s voice, and I represent myself talking to my father, and I’m very proud of it… I’ve always said it’s the first release partly in tribute to my mother, and secondly, the fact that I’m involved in it obviously is a nice way to start out. But uh…this has not actually been a particularly easy record at radio which I knew it wouldn’t be. You know, if I wasn’t on it the chances are because of its’ tempo, and because of the style of it, that it wouldn’t really get listened to. But regardless of that, I knew it would have to be the first thing…um…simply because I…it’s I think a very high quality song and performance from Toby and I wanted to show people from the out that quality is what the label’s going to be about”
Waltz Away Dreaming