When George Michael was filming the documentary “George Michael: Freedom,” he wanted the voiceover to sound a certain way. He called on radio personality Kristy Young to prompt him, and the recording was used as the narration for the documentary. Young stated in one article, “He wanted to sound as if he was speaking more off-the-cuff.”
In November 2017, BBC 2 Radio broadcasted a lengthy interview between Kirsty Young and George Michael, his last interview.
George Michael: The Red Line was broadcast on BBC Radio 2 on November 1 (Part 1) and November 8 (Part 2) at 10 p.m. Listen to the interview and read the transcript of the first part of the Red Line interview with Kristy Young (KY), the last interview of George Michael (GM):
[Music]
KY: He was a fearless artist. He had a voice like no other. His ability to write, produce and perform great music was unrivaled. And so he became one of THE biggest selling artists in the world, earning the status of the legend. This is George Michael’s final interview.
GM: I was never aware just how successful things were going to be
KY: Thankfully recounting his life of wild success and adulation
GM: I was truly enjoying … that stage in my life
KY: Alongside the heartache and tragedy that inspired some of his greatest work
GM: I thought this can’t all be bad I’ve got to do something good in my life and that’s what I tried to do
[Music]
02:03
KY: Just before Christmas 2016, I was asked to interview George Michael. The intention was to use elements of our discussion as part of the soundtrack for the new film he was producing at the time. The film would become Freedom, his final work.
We met at George’s home and I was immediately struck by how comfortable he was talking.
GM: There’s got a nicer wine for you than for me
KY: Why, you’ve got a nice one.
Although we intended to cover a few specific areas of his life and work the conversation ran on for over two hours and very naturally became a much bigger discussion.
GM: I like cheap Italian light
KY: Although it had never been the intention to broadcast a conversation in its entirety. Following George’s untimely death only weeks later it began to feel like something that should happen. In fact, as we parted that day George had said, “You should turn this into a radio program.”
You’re about to hear what was said almost in its entirety with many of the personal asides left as they were. As such, there is some strong language from the beginning.
03:19
KY: I saw the film that would become Freedom before we spoke. One sentence, in particular, stood out – “I genuinely think there’s something very odd about people in my position.” I wondered if George had meant it’s being in that position that makes you odd or he meant that people need to be odd to be in that position.
03:40
GM: I think that people who chase fame – however, they do it – whether it be the way that I have which is somewhat round the houses I guess or whether they go directly for it. I think there is some desperate need in almost all of us who have a gift or who are extremely successful that if you dig hard enough you’ll find out what the reason is. But I think we’re all a bit odd, you know.
I think if I wasn’t odd I wouldn’t be George Michael. If Madonna wasn’t odd or if Michael Jackson bless his soul wasn’t odd then we wouldn’t be where we are or reach the positions we’ve reached. I definitely think it’s the people that are odd; it’s not the fame.
[Music]
05:09
KY: George had found fame at the tender age of 19 teaming up with his school friend Andrew Ridgeley to form Wham!, a pop phenomenon that became global in the early eighties selling over 28 million records in the process.
05:30
KY: So I’ve heard you talk so many times incredibly honestly about this saying “I was totally driven from a very young age to be very, very famous.” But I wonder if that came out of knowing never mind how bad those early bedroom tapes were but it came out of knowing that you had this thing that you wanted to share; that you had the voice and you had the ability to write what you wanted to share — or if it came out of something that’s much more opaque.
06:00
GM: I was absolutely convinced that I had a huge amount to give even though I didn’t really know what it was. Andrew encouraged this idea of fame. And you know Andrew could just have .. when, if he could play football he would have been a footballer. And these days he would have been doing you know he’d been going to play well knowing the times that we were on experiencing our success but a footballer now is a much, much more attractive option for most boys than a pop star.
06:33
GM: But I had an absolute belief that my destiny was in music and it wasn’t to be a shrinking violet.
[Music]
07:13
KY: To do that together; to have it with Andrew strikes me that you know and maybe we’ll come onto set up a bit later but there was a kind of simple joy in knowing you that you are in this crazy whirlwind together cause we both know that you were before.
07:29
GM: Absolutely! What a wonderful joy ride to two eighteen-year-olds until we were young men at 23 whatever. What an amazing adventure!
[Music]
07:53
GM: You know they say youth is wasted on the young. My God! You know I had no idea of what fantastic time we were having because I was working so hard and because I always look to the future. But Wham! itself was an absolute joy. It was joyous as it sounded. You know it really was as joyous as it sound.
[Music]
09:31
KY: And so at 20 being an arranger and the producer and the main man, did all of that feel entirely possible, entirely bearable or where there times when you shut yourself away and thought, “Christ! I don’t know if I can do this!”
[Music]
09:55
GM: Wham! never overwhelmed me, probably because of Andrew. And it’s the hardest thing to explain it’s as though there’s always been a red, this red line. I see it like a red line which goes through everything like a staircase to whatever you’re about to do next. And I could feel that at the final concert. I already had one foot in my solo career during Wham! The Final.
[Music]
11:22
GM: It still felt like how I felt when I was a child. It still felt predestined. I was just never aware just how successful things were going to be.
12:13
GM: And then of course with Faith, it did overwhelm me because I was alone. And I was alone, me and my red line were very lonely.
12:33
KY: So under the banner be careful what you wish for. Let’s talk about that next step. Then step into it as you’ve described it before, you know, the Madonna, the Michael Jackson, the Prince, the George Michael — that was pretty much it. Wall to wall for everybody listening to music, watching MTV at that point. The drive that propelled you there partly due to your talent and also to do with just some engine inside of you that’s getting you there.
You said, “I couldn’t control my ego enough to stop me wanting to be the biggest selling artist in the world.” But did you worry about your ego? Did you worry about the implications or again were you just too busy?
13:14
GM: I was enjoying my ego. I was truly enjoying my ego at that stage in my life. I think if you are 24 and you do make the biggest selling record of that year I think you enjoy a lot. I think your ego enjoys it a lot. But just as much as my ego loved having achieved what it set out to achieve and put me on the same level as people I was aiming to stand with, I was terribly lonely.
I was terribly, terribly lonely because not only have I by then you know come out to my best friends and pretty much all the people I care a lot about apart from my family I was so desperately lonely.
[Music]
14:23
GM: The adulation from this huge, huge record put that loneliness into such stark contrast. Being on my own when I went to bed every night, every night, every night, especially on tour.
[Music]
14:58
GM: Believe me, I was not rock-and-rolling on tour. I was taking care of my vocal cords and was in bed by you know 11:30 at night, every night. It was just a horribly lonely experience and the only good part of my day was playing live.
[Music]
15:54
KY: There must have been the opportunity for the rock and roll. And goodness knows, you know, you were the biggest star in the world. You produced this immaculate album that was, you know, beyond your or maybe not your wildest dreams but certainly the people who were listening to it. It was like a smack in the face. You didn’t have to be alone. Were you choosing to put your instrument – your vocal cords – above everything else or were you just not ready to go there yet emotionally?
16:19
GM: No I wasn’t ready to come out. I wasn’t ready to come out. It was in the era of AIDS and I had no concerns about coming out for that reason other than my family.
[Music]
16:43
GM: I come from very close-knit family. When my mother was alive, God bless her, she would have immediately assumed the same paranoias that I did as a gay man about AIDS in the mid-80s. It was not a good time, was not good time for gay community. So for my Mother’s sake and my sisters’ sake, I didn’t want them to kind of look at my life as a dangerous place, you know.
And if I’m really honest, I think some things somebody some entity wasn’t ready to let me have a full life. I still had to make more records. I still had to find the next creative step and it was almost as though it was a choice. It was: do you find your place in life and your place with a partner/lover; or do you just carry on down this road to the next great achievement? And I made the choice eventually for the former.
[Music]
18:15
KY: But at that point, there was a kind of ,,, that, what you describe to me has a kind of monastic purity to it, isn’t there? That there’s the kind of this is what my drive will be; I won’t be distracted. It’s this and it’s this alone
18:34
GM: On an emotional level it was a choice between one or the other. I had a feeling that I couldn’t have both. I felt that I couldn’t have; I couldn’t come out and live a full gay life and still have my devotion to what I did.
[Music]
19:36
KY: George’s devotion to his music paid off. His debut solo album Faith was a huge success on both sites of the Atlantic. To date, it’s sold over 25 million copies and earned George a Grammy for Album of the Year. The now iconic cover cemented his status as sex symbol.
19:53
KY: Thinking about Faith, I’m thinking about the imagery and I’m thinking looking at all again before I came to talk to you just shocked at how fresh it still looks and you said that you’re not somebody who’s comfortable with selling yourself as an image. But I mean goodness knows that was a very strong and powerful image. Was it one that you dreamt up from within or was it one that some highly paid record company stylists came to you and said: “Put on the jacket; put on the boots; stand like this with the sunglasses.”
20:38
GM: No, nobody ever directed me as to how to look and what my image should be.
Strangely enough, the photographer who took that strange picture where I look like I’m smelling my armpit on the front of and I don’t know why I chose that picture but I just love the .. it’s … I think the photographer who probably understand it’s the composition of the picture that I love. But it does look I’m smelling my armpit; it’s a bit strange.
But those were the clothes that had started to wear and no one ever told me to buy this, buy that, look this way, look that way – I chose all of that myself. And to me the vital thing was the sunglasses because the sunglasses then I could hide and sunglasses meant that there was only so much scrutiny that could be paid to my face. And as a 53 year old man, I’m like, my God, you were gorgeous, you know, cuz I didn’t think it at all at the time. I still suffered terribly with insecurity about my looks.
[Music]
22:12
KY: This is something I can never figure out. I’ve heard you say this a hundred times and I still can’t work out.
22:21
GM: I can work it out, but it would it would mean I know why I’ve never had confidence in my looks. And unfortunately it goes back to a very dysfunctional family background where conceit of any kind was considered an absolute sin and that included conceit about the way you look. So no one was ever praised about the way they looked and a few things were said which would probably take your breath away if you if you heard them from a parent to a child. But they were said to me and I never got over them as simple as that.
But now, now, now that I’m aging I’m like, “My God! What a waste! You could have had an ego the size of you know the Taj Mahal. You could have had anyone and I just had no idea of that. I had no idea of that.
[Music]
23:52
KY: Do you think the glasses were the beginning of the retreat? But that was that the beginning of you saying I’m there but I’m not quite there
24:13
GM: I think the glasses were probably very much a first sign that my place in life had begun to become a heavy thing for me to carry. Something I didn’t truly believe in that the the imagery.
This is the real crux of what happened between Faith and Listen Without Prejudice. A young man who was adored by millions, but couldn’t work out why said, If I take away the image, if I take away this face, I’ll see whether they still love me.”
[Music]
25:05
KY: And when they did, how did you feel when they still loved you?
25:12
GM: I felt much stronger when I realized that there was more … but when I when I realized that the musician was still acknowledged even without a face I felt much, much stronger and calmer.
And I also found the first love of my life which I knew was out there. I knew he was out there somewhere. But I also knew that I couldn’t find him without stopping this, you know, roller-coaster ride and getting off and letting my heart rule my head rather than you know the red line. The red line that goes up up up up up.
[Music]
26:08
KY: I think it’s impossible for anybody who lives what could be termed a normal life, a typical life to understand how it was for you at a time to be living inside that life. And it happens to be Oprah Winfrey that said it, “If you don’t know who you are when Fame hits you, Fame will define you.” And she was talking specifically I think about people who are very young when that train runs right over them.
26:38
GM: Absolutely. That’s very powerful. It’s very .. it’s very true and it’s the battle I had with myself probably for the first six or seven years of my career. Because I don’t think that you can know who you are until you express your sexuality properly and you look for love.
[Music]
27:14
GM: I had spent six or seven years of my life working, working, working, writing, music, music, music, music. Like music was my very controlling lover and then I had this desire to escape and find a real one. Not one that would control me but a real one nevertheless. And at the same time, I wanted to keep giving the people who’ve made my life so beautiful in so many ways for five or six years more music. I hadn’t had too much of that.
[Music]
28:11
GM: Selling those records means all those people desire what you want to say or how you want to sing it. Just the sound of it. The number of people who don’t even understand what you’re singing about, but they love it!
[Music]
28:46
GM: It’s such an expression of love to place that music in your life. And I had millions of lovers that I never saw other than in the sense of live work. But I still deserved one just one of them — for me.
[Music]
29:27
GM: I knew that the only way I was gonna find that one person was to jump off of the merry-go-round just for long enough to catch my breath and hopefully find that person and then get back on the merry-go-round truly knowing who I was.
[Music]
29:59
KY: While George considered switching the focus from his career to his personal life, in January 1991 fate stepped in and George met 31 year-old fashion designer Anselmo Feleppa. Their eyes met across the stage as George performed at The Rock in Rio Music Festival in Brazil. An intense but heartbreakingly short relationship began.
[Music]
30:42
KY: Tell me then if you wouldn’t mind about that night in Rio when you’re on stage and you keep thinking I can’t go over there because he’s over there. Just take me through that moment.
30:56
GM: 23 years on it’s still very hard for me to explain … how finding a companion at that stage in my life changed me. And such a beautiful companion! Such an amazing person.
31:24
KY: Do you want me to ask about Anselmo? Do you want to talk about what …
31:28
GM: Yes I do. I do. I do.
31:31
KY: Okay
GM: I do
31:37
KY: So if I met him ..
GM: If you met him …
31:39
KY: Tell me the night we would have. Tell me what he’d be like. Tell me what his company was like.
31:40
GM: Well, I was so proud of him. I was so proud {tears} … that I was so proud that this was my destiny.
This was … because you have to understand. By the time I met Anselmo, I had made the decision to jump off the merry-go-round. And I was already in the early stages of my confrontation with Sony but for six months I was happier than I’ve ever been in my entire life.
32:23
GM: Fame, money all the things you know. Everything else just kind of paled by comparison. To finally at 27 years old, waking up in bed with someone who loves you, you know, and Anselmo was absolutely that.
[Music]
33:28
GM: I saw him in the crowd. It was the same stadium that just had the 2016 Games and I saw him and I was absolutely distracted. Because he wasn’t jumping up and down. He wasn’t clapping his hands. He wasn’t going wild. He was absolutely static just looking at me, staring at me.
33:59
GM: It was just, so strange! I found myself so attracted to him, which I never do on stage. I don’t notice what people look like on stage. I’m sure lots of gorgeous people look at me on stage and when they jumping up and down and I’m just trying to keep them, all you know. And then there was this angel – that’s the only way I can describe it.
[Music]
35:17
GM: And then the next day as we were leaving our hotel of the Copacabana — which I was reliably informed I was using the same toilet as Princess Di, which I thought was very funny
KY: It was good to know
35:34
GM: Yeah. The next day, as we left the hotel went off to on holiday some 200 miles away, I saw this boy on the opposite side of the hotel lobby. And I saw him with this beautiful blonde girl and I looked at him and I looked at her and I thought, lucky bitch! That’s exactly what I remember thinking — lucky bitch — and I hadn’t made the connection between him and the night before. And the fact was something in my heart told me I was gonna know this person and I didn’t understand why because we were driving 200 miles away.
There was this small island off the coast and it was a hotel called Nas Rocas and about two days after I got there I was eating my breakfast and this same man walked up the hill towards me and the swimming pool and I thought, “My God! I’m right! I’m right!” I’m gonna know this man … you know.
And within five days of that, he was with me in Los Angeles. I won’t tell you all the beautiful details that ran up to that. That he was with me in Los Angeles, and we were looking to find him a job there.
[Music]
37:18
GM: He was the most beautiful, kind-hearted, angelic person I’ve ever met which is sometimes hard for my partners since his death to take on. Because you can’t take on a ghost, you know. You can’t. You can’t rival a ghost. But he’s still … but he’s still, 23 years later brings a tear to my eye. He was my savior, you know. He was my savior.
[Music]
38:24
GM: He was the reason I had the strength to go to battle with Sony and stand alone and be without a central career for the next three years.
[Music]
38:54
KY: By the early 90s, George was under immense pressure in his personal life. His newfound love Anselmo was diagnosed with HIV, a terminal illness at the time. George still hadn’t publicly come out as he was concerned it would upset his family.
With the exhausting demand of his first solo album Faith fresh in his mind, he decided to take a radical step back from the promotion of the follow-up Listen Without Prejudice, opting not to appear personally on the album cover or in any of the future music videos. This inevitably became a pressure point with his record label Sony. George became deeply concerned that the label weren’t prepared to back an approach that he felt he desperately needed to take. Frustrated and with no way out of his contract a legal battle began.
[Music]
39:54
KY: I asked George whether Anselmo gave him the strength to endure this particular fight.
40:03
GM: No. No, if I’m really truly honest, if I’m truly honest and people won’t believe this because this is not the kind of artists that they used to hearing from today. But if I’m truly honest his diagnosis and the fact that I didn’t know how long this terrible death that AIDS was in the early 90s. I saw it as if I’m going to do nothing because I will be able to do nothing but love this man and care for this man for the next, at least few years because he was in the early stages of AIDS.
Here is my chance to do something truly special and altruistic and change the path of artists’ lives. If I could do nothing beneficial as a musician for the next few years at least then maybe I could do something spectacular as an altruist and people will not understand that now.
[Music]
42:11
GM: I come from a generation that was just on the tail end of the 60s early 70s where people were political, where people were altruistic. They tried to stop wars. They tried to .. to ban the bomb. They did all these things, but these musicians were still slaves. And I thought maybe in this period where my destiny is not to make great music, because I cannot even think of a note, maybe I have a chance to do something truly special. And I was totally wrong and I regret it to this day.
42:58
KY: You were wrong that you could do it or you were wrong that people would understand what you were trying to do?
43:05
GM: I was wrong in that an artist without my incredible success would have changed the standard contract forever. An artist who everyone thinks is just that bit too lucky anyway is gonna get nowhere.
43:26
KY: I get you: some people think what’s that spoiled bastard complaining about; but he’s making a fortune.
43:47
GM: Absolutely
43:51
KY: I think, however .. I think from the outside people looking in might easily have had that judgment. I think it’s very significant the fact that Prince gets up on stage with slaver at night his face and says “Peace, George Michael … Peace to George Michael.” People within the industry go exactly what you were doing. Don’t you think? I think they knew exactly that you were trying to not only move the goalposts but rip up the bloody pitch.
44:11
GM: I hope people understood that. I hope they did because the other way of looking at it is just think that I was spoilt, wanted more and more and more and God forbid, wanted freedom. But actually the truth was my life was the most … I was in the most terrifying place that I’d ever been. I was madly in love with someone with a terminal disease and I truly believed, no this is not part of the plan that I just drop out of life. If I have to be in pain, then I have to do something good with some other part of my being. Some other part of the person that my mother brought up.
[Music]
45:33
KY: You have said that you know court number one was a good place to put your pain. Do you view that the same way now? Do you … would you concur with that
46:02
GM: I can honestly say I would do it again. Now, had Anselmo not been diagnosed with HIV I don’t think I would have had the anger to take Sony to court for treating me badly. I was too happy in that six months before he was diagnosed! I would never really have considered it. I was too happy!
Once I was terrified .. and angry … angry .. about my beautiful boy being taken from me, there was the part of my personality that could say, “Okay, fuck this!” This can’t all be bad I’ve got to do something good with this time in my life and that’s why I tried to do. I mean, people can say what they want. They thought I was going to win. I promise you the people in the industry at that time thought, “Of course he’s gonna win!” The contracts of the 1980s had been got rid of in the film industry in the 1950s. So why were they still there in the 1980s? It’s the only industry on earth which has no free agency!
[Music]
47:57
KY: On the 30th of October in 1992, George Michael filed a suit against Sony Music Entertainment arguing that his record contract constituted an unreasonable restraint of trade. During the court hearing, George would publicly describe his situation as professional slavery, leaving him with little control of his own career. The court case created a public discussion around the concept of artistic freedom, money and ego.
On the 1st of June 1994, George lost his case, with the court wholly rejecting his claims. I asked George to take me through the meeting which caused the dispute.
48:37
GM: What they all seem to forget, which to me is a major point, is that there were executives that came to London in 1989 and we played them the record. Then we all went for a nice little lunch at which I said, by the way, guys, regardless of what you think of the album itself, I will not be promoting it.
I explained to them that Faith had taken me to the edge of madness; that I wanted to be a long-term player in this business and that for the moment I would not be appearing in my videos. Now any logical CEOs I think would have thought, Okay he’s gonna do this. He’ll get it out of his system coz there’s no way he’s gonna sell the kind of records without videos that Faith sold and he’ll get back on board. It’s a great album we can still sell a lot of records; this lets just wait for him to come around. Let’s wait for him to mature a little bit and he’ll be fine.
That’s what I think I would have thought as a CEO. He’s obviously under pressure. They didn’t know quite which pressures I was under. But I.. I think I would have given someone who had given them Faith a little respect and a little time to sort out my life. It would only have been a couple of years.
[Music]
50:31
GM: And then we signed a little bit of paper about this next period of time. And the American team as it were went back to America, and by all accounts, I heard they said. “The album’s shit and he’s not promoting it. Let’s just let it go.”
And that’s what transpired in terms of their attitude, but no one seems to remember that. And it’s like well I wasn’t just … okay so I was altruistic about it. I was angry about it, but I was also angry at having been lied to. They told me they were okay.
And you know, I have to say I’m very impressed with the rest of the world. The rest of the world did a really good job. We sold a lot of albums considering that the only real video was Freedom, you know, the supermodel video. But as far as the Americans are concerned, it’s like I was just so naïve I thought if I told them the truth and I was transparent with them, it would pay dividends and they would be patient with me. But they just shat on me, you know.
[Music]
52:03
KY: I’m glad you used the word naive because I think people would listen to that and think CEOs or Record Chiefs running a big label treat artists very badly. No shit Sherlock! I mean that is kind of the way it goes isn’t it? That’s kind of what they do, these people.
52:24
GM: Well, one thing that’s very sad to me is that you know, 20 years on artists are in an even worse position. Robbie Williams came up after me ten years later and said, “I’m richer than my wildest dreams!” I’m sorry but whipped up something for this 80 million pounds that totally, totally robbed everyone that came after in terms of signing new deals.
Of any fairness, they’re called 360 deals and those deals say — whatever the record company puts in at the front of the project, the artist doesn’t get paid until every single penny of that is grabbed back in. Not with record sales, just partially with record sales, mainly with their live work and their merchandise.
So when you sign to a record company now, they not only take the money for your records but they take the money for your touring and all your merchandising. Artists are now gradually also making their own deals, if they’re lucky, they’re making deals that are about streaming because the public doesn’t want to pay for their records anymore.
So young bands have to play gigs. They have to build up a live, you know live which is not a bad thing. They have to be good enough to build up a live audience and if they’re lucky they do deals — independent streaming deals — that can get them some money. But the days of artists being paid for their recordings are over.
[Music]
54:22
KY: The first half of my conversation with George Michael had only covered the first 13 years of his career. In those 13 short years, he had achieved world fame, superstar status and the adulation of millions.
He had come to terms with his sexuality privately whilst having to deal with the grief of losing his first love Anselmo. A failed attempt at standing up to what he saw as draconian recording contracts meant that the future of his music career played out across the world’s media.
Although George’s life and career had been widely documented, I was taken by his honesty and by how much he’d obviously benefited from the opportunity to reflect on his past. It was quite obvious he still felt anger and frustration around the failed court case. But that anger appeared to genuinely come from an altruistic passion to make recording contracts fairer for fellow artists.
As I discovered during a break in our interview, he still managed to keep his unique sense of humor.
55:22
KY: I left some necklaces on that ..
GM: On that bag. He’s nicked them already. Camden Market with them next week. Kristy Young’s jewelry!
55:37
KY: In part two of the redline George Michael’s final interview, he shares the story behind that phenomenal live performance with Queen.
[Music]
55:52
GM: It’s not an accident that the performance, probably most well-known in my career, was sung to my lover who was dying.
56:03
KY: How the grieving process led to his most treasured songs
56:07
GM: For anyone who had a clue about any kind of symbolism, I was coming out.
56:13
KY: And how his self-deprecating humor allowed him to take that control.
56:21
GM: James’s little excursion with me in the Volvo has turned to something world-conquering.
George Michael the Red Line was an EBI media production for BBC Radio 2. This is BBC Radio 2 online on digital radio and on 88 and 91 FM.
LISTEN TO RED LINE INTERVIEW PART 2
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- ‘Souled Out: George Michael’ Published in Interview Magazine (1988)
I love this. I enjoy anything he has to say. So sensitive and intelligent. ❤️ Miss him.
Kirsty young…Thank You for this fantastic interview with George Michael it was so raw and beautiful right through your bones you can feel every ounce of his life right up until his death it had sorrow laughter anger all the above George was feeling inside of himself even it cost George the life he wanted when he was younger to feel happy loving someone early on in his career but the love of his family was more important than him finding true love as his younger self wow that’s a lot of years too caring around not being who you are as a person what strength George had all those years keeping that Secret of him being Gay it’s sad in a way but I understand it but the thing is as a fan of his I already knew that back in the 80 he was gay and it never cross my mind there’s something different I was going to feel no way because George was gay I fell in love with George back than and still do for the rest of my life that’s a true fan what George calls lovelies ha!!! …What got me was he talk about his true love Anselmo and finally getting that love he always wanted all his life Touch my heart huh so much for him even it cost him too lost his boyfriend it gave George the most happiness he ever had in his lifetime now they will forever be together among the stars ✨💞✨….Thank you my beloved George for giving us great joy happiness knowing you my friend 😘🙋🏽🙏🏼💞✨