If he has any grievances, he keeps them to himself - he got lucky and he knows it. He’s got to be one of the least bitter ex-pop stars you’ll ever see. The main thing Andrew brings might be charm - but his charm goes a long way. (The provenance is not always clear, and more video would have been a good idea.) Andrew is too polite to mention his solo album, 1990’s Son of Albert, and if he’s willing to forget, so should we all.Īctor’s Strike: SAG-AFTRA Releases List of Proposals and Studios’ Counterproposals
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In this case, the surviving member is Ridgeley, though there’s also posthumous audio commentary from George’s interviews. Wham! follows the template of the excellent Spandau Ballet doc, Soul Boys of the Western World, where instead of on-camera interviews, the band members read the narrative voice-overs, which sound slightly scripted. George was a huge Joy Division fan Morrissey wasn’t.
Simon says movie 1998 tv#
And neither do the Smiths, even though George’s best TV appearance of the era was arguing with Morrissey about music, in May 1984, on the BBC chat show Eight Days a Week. Neither do Haircut 100 or ABC or Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Yet as far as the doc is concerned, Wham! were the only act around. New Wave boom - one of the most legendary pop explosions in history. The documentary has no interest in their music, or why people liked them, or what made them different from any other English pop group. In other words, he needed Andrew to take these lies and make them true somehow.
You could hear the agony of the Eighties closet in a hit like “Everything She Wants,” where George pleads, “I don’t know what the hell you want from me!” When he told Rolling Stone that Andrew’s job was to “have a good time,” he meant having the fun for both of them, the fun George was faking. As a closeted pop star in a brutally homophobic era, George felt tormented in the spotlight. George came out to his straight friend in Ibiza, in 1982 on the set of the “Club Tropicana” video. Lewis Capaldi Busts Out the White Speedo and Recreates Wham!'s 'Club Tropicana' Video for 'Forget Me' There’s a great moment where a TV presenter tells the audience, “Let’s check out some social-comment rapping with a dance record from Wham!.” Their first single, “Wham Rap,” began with George declaring, “Hey everybody, take a look at me/I’ve got street credibility!” They styled themselves as protest singers, complaining about the unemployment of the Thatcher era. Andrew still calls him by his boyhood name “Yog.” Hero-worshiping Andrew is what turned a clumsy, shy, self-loathing immigrant kid named Georgios Panayiotou into the pop star “ George Michael,” the ideal of England’s dreaming. Ever since George was 12, a dorky “weird-looking” boy in a new school, Andrew - five months older - was exactly who he aspired to become. As Napier-Bell puts it, Wham! was “the real Andrew and the fake one.”īut that’s how the fake one got so serious about music - it was the only way he had to fabricate himself into the Andrew he wanted to be. As manager Simon Napier-Bell says, “Andrew was Wham!.” What he means is that George built his whole persona (onstage and off) around his charismatic, extroverted, uncomplicated friend. The doc works best when it focuses on that bond. The only time in the song when you can hear him smile is when he sings, “Heaven knows we had some fun, boy/What a kick, just a buddy and me.” But the one person he has nothing negative to say about is Andrew. George slams the music industry, his label, his handlers, the boys at MTV. The best history of Wham! is still George’s “Freedom ’90,” where he’s extremely bitter about the whole experience - in the video, he sets fire to his leather jacket from the “Bad Boys” video. (Their best? You even have to ask? “The Edge of Heaven.”) It’s mostly about their silly clothes - and their strangely touching friendship. Their second-best song, “I’m Your Man,” gets held back until the final credits, which is crazy. It’s a bit of a stretch to call it a music doc, since there’s zero curiosity here about their actual tunes. The doc makes Wham! seem more boring, more wholesome, dumber and less funny than they actually were. As George says in the doc, “The turning point with Wham! was me as I suddenly thought, ‘Oh, my God, I’m a massive star and I’m gay.’ The depression was about that.
He was the emotional support for his high-strung mate, which meant keeping his biggest secret. But Andrew had a crucial job, the “everything people don’t see” part.
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