This George Michael interview by Judy Wieder that appeared in the November 28, 1987 edition of Record Mirror magazine was originally published (with some modifications) by Rock Express magazine in their October-November 1987 edition.
As George Michael releases his first solo LP to mixed reviews, Judy Wieder finds that inside that tanned superstar exterior, a fat, bespectacled 18-year-old still lurks.
George Michael squints’ behind his Ray-Ban sunglasses and murmurs soft sounds of stoic disappointment at the afternoon California sun as it plays hide and seek with the splendor of the Benedict Canyon home he’s retreated to.
Taking a quick holiday to “clean his ears” after completing his first solo album ‘Faith’, George stretches his blue jean-clad and tank-topped body across a nearby lawn chair and waits – as only the English can – for the return of the Californian sun.
At the resoundingly young age of 24, George Panayiotou (his father’s surname, dropped for the equally Greek but more accessible Michael) now stands at the kind of identity-wrenching crossroads usually reserved for rock stars twice his age. With more than 36 million records sold worldwide with Wham! George is currently fashioning himself as a new man, free at last from the claustrophobic demands of trying to maintain the whimsical Wham! Peter Pan image and tres wacky, often empty, music.
“I don’t think that people really understand about Wham!,” George understates earnestly. “For a group with so little music credibility, people’s views of the way Wham! happened are so cynical. I don’t think they understand that I really totally believed in what we were doing. We stopped because I felt an air of dishonesty coming in, because I was getting older and Andrew Ridgeley was getting older.
“I honestly didn’t want to project this image of two guys who were having a great time and who were totally optimistic and naive. That was the Wham! image and that’s why we were so successful. But because that was starting to feel false, I wanted to finish it. I didn’t want Wham! to be a lie. Today, the relief for me is to be able to step out of all that happy-go-lucky kind of thing, and just be an adult.”
Faced with questions about why Wham! couldn’t grow and go forward as a team – in much the same way the Beatles evolved from ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ to ’Sgt. Pepper’ – George’s handsome face mirrors the emotional modulations of his halting voice.
“To grow and go forward, we would have had to have been moving in the same direction – and we weren’t,” he sighs, with more than a little pain lingering from 1985’s split with Ridgeley. “Andrew is still far more that whole Wham! thing than I am. We were moving differently – he was out of the country for tax reasons, and I was still in the country, so it was becoming much more of a thing of us actually getting together for work. He had his girlfriend; I had mine. We were in different parts of the world. It wasn’t ‘two mates having a laugh, working and playing together’ all the time anymore.
George had (and still has) enormous ambiguities about his looks. The stabilizing factor for George all along has been his indestructible songwriting evolution. A 17, he had already written what would four years later become his most acutely revealing number one hit single, ‘Careless Whisper.’ Admitting that what he thinks drives most successful stars is that determination to overcome an emotional/physical imperfection – George says he has become aware that he writes “from a position of weakness.”
He continues, “I very rarely write from a position of strength. Someone once told me that maybe that was why people – women especially – were attracted to my writing. I write from the position of someone who wants more emotionally. Madonna, in contrast, always writes from a position of strength, which on her is very attractive.
“There are a huge number of people who look at what I do as very narcissistic, ” he continues. “I understand that in my presentation, but when you look at the presentation and line it up with the lyrical content of my songs, then it doesn’t really add up to narcissism, People who like what I do and people who dislike what I do are people who have either noticed the vulnerability of my lyrics or who have not.”
After acting as the star, singer, producer, writer, arranger and session player on ‘Faith’, George Michael has avoided selling tickets to his own nervous breakdown by leaving his favourite studio in Denmark – where he was holed up for over six months – to just let himself hang out with friends in America.
With a far happier personal life these days (he is still with his regular girlfriend, Kathy Jung, who appeared with him in the video for ‘I Want Your Sex’) and the ordeal of leaving Wham! solidly in the past, George feels he has been released to explore some of the less-than-happy things he has experienced in the past without being totally overwhelmed by the sadness of the feelings.
“The album has become more introverted than I originally thought it would be. I think it’s because I’m more relaxed and happy now. If I have been more unsettled during the whole recording process, then maybe I would have been less inclined to introversion.
“It’s very, very much more of an adult album than I originally thought. I’ve been working on in a long time, and in that time my life has changed. As a writer, I definitely change very quickly. It’s not the album I thought it was going to be. I thought it was going to be more aggressive, more ‘I Want You Sex’ aggressive. But now, because, I’m quite happy, I’ve started writing about other things.
“I’m not someone who wants to make a terribly significant social comment or anything, but there are certain things… just spending a lot of time in America is bound to come out in a song.”
The ballad George is hoping will replace Careless Whisper in people’s minds when they think of his best work, is called One More Try. “I’m very proud of Careless Whisper, but when you wrote something eight years ago, you worry when people are still calling it your best piece of work,” he reveals with typical integrity and angst. “And it is! There’s no doubt that Careless Whisper connected with more people than anything I’ve ever written – so far.”
“The album will also include a jazz ballad called ‘Kissing a Fool’, which will definitely be a single. There will be songs with reggae and gospel influence in them,” he adds. “I really don’t think that I can be accused of repeating myself. I’ve really never tried to be interesting to other people; I’ve just always tried to make sure that I’m never bored with what I’m doing. My career is still only ruled by my songwriting. The songs have always got to be the things I am most proud of.”
As for any future plans outside of music – like the somewhat obvious call of the silver screen – George appears to be shaken by supernatural disturbances. Once more the ghost of bedraggled hang-ups haunts him.
“I hate watching myself on film!” he confides with a shiver. “I just don’t like it, even if I’m the one who chooses the shots in my videos. I still see … well I guess I think I’m phoney in a way. I would to be playing a very interesting person, because if it was a film based on glamour and action, I would be stuck sitting there looking at myself thinking of the way I look. I would just see this 13-year-old kid that I still remember being. But if I could be proud of the performance, then it wouldn’t care particularly.. Maybe I could get past the looks thing.”
So, for the time being anyway, we will just have to be content with enjoying the extremely potent complexities of George Michael the only way he can currently deliver – in the sensually inviting overabundance of his songwriting.
Similar Posts:
- George Michael Interview with Capital FM Radio with Dr. Fox (Dec 1998)
- An Audience with George Michael: Interview with Chris Evans (1996)
- ‘Souled Out: George Michael’ Published in Interview Magazine (1988)
- A Year in the Life of Wham! as Told by George Michael (Smash Hits Yearbook, 1986)
- George Michael in Q Magazine Interview (October 1990)
