March 30, 2026 • 53 mins
George Michael was more than scandal headlines and tabloid punchlines. He was one of the defining pop artists of his generation. Through rare BBC interviews, Kai and Emmanuel unspool the emotional arc behind the hits: teen heart‑throb, closeted superstar, grieving partner, activist, and ultimately a gay icon who reclaimed the narrative with wit, rage, and dazzling talent. A moving reexamination of fame, queerness, and survival in a decade that preferred not to look too closely.
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
So here's the thing about Big Lives.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
The whole premise here is that everyone, all of us,
think they know the story of some of these folks,
but there's more to it. So when you tell a
friend about this show, don't just say it's podcasts about icons.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Say I heard.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
Something about David Bowie or Jane Fonda that genuinely mess
with my head a little bit. And while you're at it,
leave us a review. Amaniel and I would really really
appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
From BBC Studios and Pushkin Industries, this is Big Lives,
Ami Manuel Jochi, I'm Kairi. We are both journalists and
cultural obsessives, and we just love trying to understand the
world through an individual person's life, and by individual person,
we're talking about folks who are the architects of our culture,
people who have a huge impact on the way we
(01:07):
live now. But often you've been kind of flattened to
this single image or to a single moment. We're diving
into these complicated, big lives of these icons, and to
do it we are using the treasure trove of the
BBC archive. Turns out that BBC had been interviewing and
(01:27):
covering Coultal figures for over one hundred years and we're
still have the tapes. What do you think is the
stock caricature image of George Michael.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
I think most people the stock image is like weird,
washed up pop star. And if you ask most gay men,
you would probably get like fabulous diva.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Yeah, I think that, and honestly, I don't think they're
too mutely exclusive And just to say, like, you know,
George Michael is a massive pop star of the eighties
and nineties. He starts his career in this band called Wham,
which he'd started with his best friend, and that band
and that music was sort of known for this it's
very positive, sort of happy kind of pop, and then
(02:21):
George Michael made a transition to being like this solo artist.
I feel like in the last couple of decades of
his life. Really, when I was growing up, he was
this figure that was just kind of like, I feel
like the diva and ridiculousness parts of him are what
we focused on. He was kind of a joke. Frankly,
it hurts to hear.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Yeah, yeah, that's what y'all thought of Georgie.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
I know, and I hate to say, I think in
some quarters, not all, but I think in some quarters
he is still a little bit of a joke. I
want to talk about that disconnect between the person in
the icon, you know, someone who was sort of like
an icon in the gay community, and the sort of
joke who I grew up kind of knowing and hearing about.
(03:04):
After listening through like year's worth of archival interviews that
he's given, I feel like the jokey version of him
exists just because we actually as a society don't want
to talk about some of the other things that were
impacting his work. Like to see George Michael clearly would
(03:25):
be to acknowledge some things we actually don't really want
to acknowledge about the time period in which he was
really becoming a star.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Oh wow, all right, and I'm ready to talk about this.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
All right, Well, let's do it. And we're just going
to get into his backstory a little bit here. I
have to say, looking through the archive, one of the
things I enjoyed a lot about George Michael is that
he was above or like just this massive showman in
the way that he talks about himself. There's basic facts
that are incontrovertible, right He was born to a Greek
(03:54):
family in the nineteen sixties in London. Giorgio's Kourakos Paniotu.
I've totally messed up that name.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
Well, it's you can see where they did the name
change for the story, you.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Can tell why he ended up becoming George Michael. But
in just looking through the archive and sort of learning
about his origins, there are like sort of these two
different origin stories. The first one is that he always
knew he had this love for music. I'm gonna play
you this first clip. It's him in nineteen eighty six
talking about just kind of his desire to be famous.
Speaker 4 (04:28):
I have very very strong ambitions from a very early age,
but they were totally unfocused.
Speaker 5 (04:33):
Totally unfocused. I mean as far as I was concerned.
Speaker 4 (04:35):
When I was seven years old, I was convinced that
one day I was going to be a pop star.
And I have no idea what I thought I was
going to do, really yeah, because I didn't think I
could sing, and I didn't think I could write or anything.
But I was just convinced somehow that was gonna be
a pop star.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
I don't know how this is my George Michael.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
Okay, like a seven year old who's like, I don't
know about talent or anything, but I'm gonna be famous.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Right you.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Like what you're seeing is the image of a little
boy singing and dancinging in front of mirror, Like that's
the day, air flowing, hairbrush in the hand. Well, okay,
so there's that one, and then there's this completely different
origin story. He tells us a good thirty years after
this first one on a British interview show that's really
famous called Desertland Discs.
Speaker 6 (05:16):
Something strange happened the age of about eight. 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 interests changed. Everything
changed in six months. I had been obsessed with insects
(05:37):
and Creepy Crawley's. 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 they had this whole left brain
right brain thing. Nobody in my family seemed to notice,
(05:59):
but I became absolutely obsessed with music and everything changed
after that.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
It's so ridiculous. A bang on the head is so obsessing.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
And what's funny about it to me is he's definitely
thought about this myth. He's creating the left brain right
brain final scientific justifies.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Looked up stuff.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
I mean, listen, though, you know rule number one for
a diva, amir, I have to do not correct their
origin story right, do not like point out inconsistencies in
their myth making.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
It is your job to nod and smile and say, oh, yes,
that's exactly right. That's how it went down. I know
for sure you're totally right.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
Honestly you are. You're just revealing how few divas I
have in my life. Kai I need more? Anyways, Thanks
for George Michael. So right from the beginning or later,
however you want to believe, he develops his like love exactly,
he develops his love of music, and the time he's
a teenager, he starts a band with one of his
best friends at school, this guy whose name is Andrew Ridgeley,
(07:02):
and it's just for two of them. They get their
first major record deal for two of them, and this
band becomes known as Wham Wam.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
It has an exclamation mark.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Yes, that is very important. And the exclamation mark is
there because I don't know that group was known for
this very very positive quote unquote bubble gum pop.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
I think that is a fair description of it, you know, disposable.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
It's literally a piece of bubble gum minutes.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
You know. The first album I remember seeing it was
Pink with you know, Wham is in like bubble, the
actual bubble letters, you know exactly, so you know, you
think of it as like you dance to it once
and that's the end.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
I feel like the best way to describe is actually
just look at one of the most famous songs, which
is called wake Me Up Before You Go Go, and
I'm just I'm just gonna read the lyrics just just
split up.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
I object to this already, but go.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Ahead, wake me up before you go go. Don't leave
me hanging on like a yo yo.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
This is not fair. It's not fair.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
And I carve out all about by saying, yes, it
is just as ridiculous as it sounds. And yet that
song the certifiable bop.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
It's spectacular, like you can play it today and there
is passion in the voice. You you want to wake
up and go to the go go with him.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
Okay, Well these songs were a bop. They were also
super successful. They were one of the biggest bands of
their day. And I think even besides the music, there's
this other aspect of them. But I feel like it's
such a time capsule of that moment in pop music,
right Like they are putting out this happy, go lucky
pop while also looking pretty effeminate, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Certainly him, Yes, certainly George.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
You know I mean blown out hair with blonde tips,
you know. And all their photos are like airbrushed in
that eighties style where they look like they you know,
they're twinks in today's language, but they look like fim
twists totally totally.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
And the way their images are displayed on their album
covers and stuff like that, it's like they're extras out
of primetime soap Dallas or Days of Our Lives, you
know what I mean. So, like, the hair is big,
the earrings are definitely in It's like a lot of
artists of that era. Frankly, like you have people like
Prince David Bowie, just like these sort of effeminine people.
(09:27):
But I have to say, I don't know that any
of those guys wore short shorts the way that Andrew
originally and George Michael did and some of their music videos,
because they weren't as gay exactly like unlike a lot
of the people in the eighties who were just sort
of being a feminine. George Michael was actually gay, but
(09:47):
around this time he was not fully out, not at all.
Most people listening to his music. I have to say,
watching it now, it was obvious that he was gay,
but at the time it was kind of like its
open question.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
No, I mean, you would have never just the ability
to deny what was insight in front of your face
around sec duality at that stage. I mean I was
really young, so but still in the culture. I mean,
so I grew I didn't know of and someone who
said I am gay, I'm a gay man publicly or privately.
(10:26):
Until I was a late teenager. I was like in college,
you know, so it just wouldn't occurred to you. It
wouldn't have occurred to the average consumer that George Michael
was a gay man. I don't know what adult game is.
We're thinking if it's yeah, you know, but in the
mainstream culture, no way. What if he they would have
thought he was gay?
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Right right, And obviously back then it was not necessarily
good for his life or his career to come out.
Actually just want to play this crip on him talking
about that period and his identity. He did this interview
much later in two thousand and seven.
Speaker 6 (11:01):
Yeah, when I was nineteen, 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 on certain terms that it really wasn't
the best idea who 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 nineteen, that's
(11:22):
as far as you look at your parents' oh 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 parents' life.
I was too young and too immature to know that
I was sacrificing as much as I was.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
That's hard to listen to.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
Honestly, I well, why that I hadn't realized how intentionally
closeted he was and the way I'm era, you know,
for so many people, certainly me, you know, it's a
process of coming out to yourself that is hard. But
to have been intentionally with the collaboration of his friends,
(12:04):
choosing to be.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Closeted while being a pop.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
Star who was considered sexy, right, like young women were
supposed to be into him. Ah, I can't imagine the
weight of carrying that. It's super exhausting. But then yeah,
when you lay the AID stuff over top of it
at the time, just the terror of that virus. And
(12:28):
if he's talking about the early eighties, it's also a
time remember we didn't even know well there.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
Was so much Yeah we didn't.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
I mean literally in a lot of quarters people did
not call it aids, Like we didn't even have a
name for it. And yeah, like in the early eighties,
eight is this thing, right that's just like coming on
the scene. It's exploding, and activists in the US, gay
activists are desperately trying to just like wake up the
public to what's happening. Like just just when I was
(12:57):
looking through the thing I was struck by was like,
take a song like wake Me Up Before You Go Go,
But I just made fun of right, this happy go
lucky song the year wake Me Up Before You Go
comes up. It is activist Bobby Campbell, who's was a
NUS who came forward with this illness that he had
he had complications from AIDS, and that was sort of
(13:19):
like the Sizic moment in the public consciousness about oh
there's disease and gay men are dying from it.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
Well, first off, I'm just connecting the dots like between
the beginning of AIDS activism and WHAM and even in
my own life just thinking about like looking at that
album cover and looking at that bubble gum pile, you know,
alongside this epidemic, and it was a time in certainly
(13:47):
at least in the United States where there was so
much desire for optimism, right, Like, that's what made AIDS
so hard. One of the things that made it so
hard to respond to is everybody, including gay men, were
at a moment politically and culturally where it was like
morning in America, Let's have fun, you know, and along
(14:07):
comes this epidemic, and to think about.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
Him as a nineteen year old boy, it sucks.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
It sucks just a waight of that on someone. You
can hear it, like between the lines of what he's saying,
I just want to pay you just a navigate from
that same interview.
Speaker 6 (14:21):
So I try to understand firstly, how much I love
my family, and the aides was the predominant feature of
being gay in the eighties and early nineties 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.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
And that's legit, you know.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
And it's interesting when he's saying the stuff to the
modern ear, it might sound cowardly too me, right, because
we went through this whole period, you know, in the
eighties and nineties around coming out not just as gay
men and that is just as queer people, but also
around HIV and naming your status and fighting the shame
(15:02):
that was part of what was killing us.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
I mean, an act up slogan was silence equals death.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Right.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
At the same time, he's a nineteen year old boy,
you know, and being gay and this deadly disease is synonymous,
and I just I have so much sympathy for him carrying.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
That and so much honestly about his experience in Wham.
And what comes next is his transition from this scared
boy at nineteen to the man that he's going to
become and the man that he wants to be given
everything that's happening, and that's what we're going to talk
about after the break. Welcome back to Big Lives. Today,
(15:51):
we're talking about the one and only George Michael. By
the late nineteen eighties, George Michael is kind of done
with the bubblegum poppiness of Wham. Right. He releases sort
of almost like a tester single just to test the
waters of solo stardom that Andrew Ridgeley helps co write,
but he's not in called Careless Whisper a bona fide classic, yes,
(16:20):
which I have to say, as someone who grew up
playing a saxophone, someone has asked me to play that
song almost every time I've ever played in public, like
almost every single time. The whole thing is supposed to
be much more romantic, and it's just like this sort
of indication of where he's going as an artist, right,
he's trying to be a little bit more openly thoughtful
(16:42):
in terms of full.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
Try and soulful and a little darker you totally.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
There's a line in there about how his guilty feet
ain't got no rhythm. I'm never gonna dance again, not
the way I danced with you, like it's it's definitely
supposed to be the sort of song that someone could
picture themselves in, you know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (17:04):
And like where there's loss and hurt. It's not a party,
it's a reflection.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
On and he keeps that moving right, and all of
it builds to this tent pole of an album like
a first major solo album called Faith.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Absolutely one of the best albums ever.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
Wow, best albums ever?
Speaker 2 (17:23):
Correct? Okay, okay, it was what I will stand up. Wow,
it's it's brilliant. It's brilliant.
Speaker 3 (17:28):
It's certainly you know, in my life it is one
of my favorite albums.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
Can I make a guess as to why that is? Kay?
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Okay, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
One, the music is fantastic. It is such a more
mature version of him, and also it is a version
of him just in terms of the esthetic, like his appearance.
If he's been on this journey from boy to man.
He is a man when faith comes out there, he's
a mad man, I'm doing. He goes from sort of
(17:55):
as you said, this kind of twink in the eighties
to a muscled man. He goes from being clean shaven
to having just right amount of stubble.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
The stubble to this day, George Michael snubble, Like are
all of y'all are out here trying to do the
George Michael stubble and the dangling cross ear ring became
like the thing for many generations later, young gay men
of like, can I have the stubble and the little
cross ear ring?
Speaker 2 (18:24):
To me, it's it's definitive.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Style and a lot of the visuals for this album,
he's left the days of our lives soap star look
behind and he looks kind of just like a biker
dude in lev that is just a little too tight.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
Just a biker dude is a very polite way to
put it. This is leather kink.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
This is this is a j leather daddy.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
The other thing is I will say I hadn't thought
about this, but having listened to you, like thinking through him.
It also part of what makes it such a great
album for me, is it feels so much.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
More honest And I hadn't. I never really thought about that.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
Like that's part of what's so cool about the look
and the music and everything is it is a more
honest person in a more honest tape.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
Like in so far as You're seeing is a man
who is really embracing not only like in a way
his own games, which he's still not out at this point.
But you know, there are songs on this album that
when you listen to them, that is the conclusion you
come to, certainly, Like there was a song called Father Figure,
(19:36):
which is a complicated song. It's a creepy song, but
you know some of the lyrics is to do reading again.
You know, let me be your father figure, put your
tiny hand in mind.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
I will be your creature teacher.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
Anything you have in mind, George. And it works like
it is the biggest selling album in America in nineteen
eighty eight, and Faith actually becomes the first album by
a white Solar artist to hit number one on the
Billboard Top Black Albums chart.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
This I did that, now, so he's he's because I
mean this is and remember this is Michael Jackson.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
Prince is still around.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
Prince is still around, like he's sweat.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
Like this man is on a man who once had
a radio show called the Sweat Hotel. He's beating keep
sweat for sexyist among black people.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
Wait, back up, I don't know about the Keith Sweat
Sweater Hotel.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
Keeth Sweat Sweat Hotel. That's a discussion for another time.
But all you need to know is it is a
cooling radio show. Is a cooling radio show all about
sex and people calling in to keep sweat about their problems.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
How is this the first time?
Speaker 1 (21:01):
I don't know, But all you need to know for
now is that George Michael beat that.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
Guy right right.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
And he sweat was totally He's in this period where
he is totally flying high. And then there's other thing happens,
which is that he meets someone. And I'm going to
play just this clip about it again from the interview
show Desert Island Discs. He gave his interview in two
thousand and seven.
Speaker 5 (21:28):
How did you meet your first love?
Speaker 6 (21:30):
Well, what happened was actually it was a strange, strange thing.
I don't know if this if people will relate to this,
but there have only been three times in my life
that I've really fallen for anyone, and each time, on
first sight, I had something as clicked in my head
that told me I was going to know that person.
And it happened with Anselmo across a lobby. So I
(21:57):
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?
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.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
How beautiful he's such a beautiful story he is.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
He is right, he just saw a man across the
hotel lobby and like the world stopped.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
And but I mean, listen, have you never experienced such
a thing?
Speaker 1 (22:30):
I have experienced such a thing. I have experienced sure,
where you're just like, I don't know how you're going
to matter to me, but you are going to matter.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
But You're all I can focus on in the world.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
In true George Michael fashion, there is another variation of
this story, which is that he meets and just to say,
the man he meets his name is Unselming for laper.
He is Brazilian. But the version of this story where
George Michael's performing a concert in Reo to like thousands
of people and in the crowd alone face, they're not
(23:03):
even similar.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
I thought for sure it would still be like an.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
I mean to be fair to him, to be fair
to him, I do think in that version of story
he later sees him again in a hotel lobby, but
the way he tells it isn't that similar kind of way,
where it's like I saw this man in the crowd.
Everyone else is driving to my music, but this man
is serious. Wow, George, Yes, yes again, I don't know if.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
This is all inappropriate. You do not correct.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
I just like both stories, Okay, I just love both stories.
And the main thing you need to take away from
this law is that this was George's first real adult relationship,
Like he was in love, in love, and this relationship
would totally change the trajectory of his life because within
(23:55):
six months of that fateful meeting of them starting to
date and Selma will be diagnosed to dates. Who yeah,
And so this fear right that George Michael and so
many other men like it's come home and maybe it
had come home in other ways before that, but in
this specific way was something that totally rocked his world.
(24:18):
And the thing about that is Enselmo, he gets sick
pretty quickly. And you know, at this point we're now
firming in the nineteen nineties, right, but early early nineties
still so like ninety one in around nineteen in around
that there's still no treatment. AIDS is just finally starting
(24:38):
to be a thing that the government is taking seriously,
not just as it applies to gay people. Partly because
there are two seismic events in pop culture. Basketball star
Magic Johnson revealed he'd been infected with HIV during heterosexual sex.
Speaker 6 (24:56):
HIV virus that I have attained, I will have to
retire from the Lakers.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
AIDS clinics were inundated with calls for days afterwards, which
opens up a whole world for a lot of people,
like massive, massive world changing thing, just just like because
up until then, HIV is known as big gay man's.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
Disease, in the white gay Man's disease.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
One hundred and a lot of people. I don't want
to say okay with it, but there I'll say okay, yeah,
okay with that.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
Absolutely, And also Magic Johnson is probably one of the
most famous people on the planet right in nineteen eighty.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
One, maybe the most famous Pulti person other than Michael Jordan.
And literally that same month, that same November, Freddie Mercury
dies from pneumonia after having battled AIDS.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
The pop star Freddie Mercury died last night in London.
The lead singer with Queen, aged forty five, had announced
on Saturday he was suffering from AIDS. Yeah, another massive celebrity,
I mean, one of the most famous, arguably the most
famous rock star on the planet right then. And as
an aside, now that I think about it, a bit
(26:07):
of a counterpoint to George Mychael, I mean.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
Freddy Murcury was so clearly gay.
Speaker 3 (26:13):
M you know, what George Michael became when Faith came
out was kind of a version of what Freddy Mercury
had been since the.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
Seventh oh so sort of just like sexual, little teething
very much himself without at let saying anything.
Speaker 3 (26:27):
Yeah, and that them masculine like tight clothes and like
really associated with being a gay man of like that
era's gay culture.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
And you know, it's interesting that you point out that
sort of difference in a relationship between the two because
you know how we were talking earlier about that original
story of George Michael where he's sort of, you know,
knows he wants to be a star from the beginning,
and he's singing in front of his barroom mirror, possibly
at seven like the person he's imitating when he does
that is Freddie Mercury. Wow, Freddie Mercury is George Michael's hero.
Speaker 3 (27:02):
That makes total sense, a massive hero of his that
makes total sense.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
And within a year of Freddie Mercury dying, Queen hits
up George Michael like they're band members, hit up George
Michael and they're like, hey, we are going to put
on a massive tribute concert for Freddie Mercury. This thing
is going to be billed basically as up until that point,
one of the largest, if not the largest aid specific
(27:29):
benefit concert and awareness concert in UK history. Do you
want to stand in for Freddie Mercury?
Speaker 3 (27:36):
I didn't know about this, Yeah, did he do it?
Speaker 1 (27:39):
So he does it? And I want to talk about
this and just take a moment here because not only
does George Michael do this, I actually think it's the
best most honest performance that George gives in anything in
his entire career, and it is that way because it's
it's the most emotional. We're just going to play some
(28:01):
of it for you here, Wheaz. So he's singing this
song Somebody to Love, is obviously a song about someone
(28:21):
who is yearning, yearning, yearning for companionship, the lyrics of
which kind of speak to the journey that he's been on.
George Michael has found someone to love in Mselmo, but
that person is dying. And there's this moment in this
performance that I don't know, I just think is so
so special. It's towards the end of the song, in
(28:44):
a section of it where they're repeating the main melody
of the song, and this thing happens that's so special,
and there's just like this silence here a little bit,
(29:13):
and then the crowd just actually responds to him the
whole time. George Michael just looks so transported, right, And
you know, he was later asked about this performance. He
acknowledges that E think is one of his best performances,
and he says about it, he said, my subconscious knew
(29:34):
I was singing a Freddie Mercury song after his passing
in front of my lover.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
Oh man, you're gonna make me cry.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
My subconscious knew that this was probably the most important
performance of my life because I had to take all
those years of standing in a bedroom, whether it be
with a mic. I don't think I had a hair rodger,
he says, but I would stand and sing to the
mirror and sing all those queen songs and know them backwards. No,
the harmonies know everything about them. And that child was
(30:04):
going to take all that knowledge, all that subconscious, eating
enough music from that group and sing one of Freddie
Murcury songs to the world. And Selma was there and
I was dying inside, and my whole god, he says,
he just went to another place, and he calls it
the loudest prayer of his life, and he says it's
not an accident. But that performance, perhaps the most well
(30:26):
known of his career, was sung to his lover. He
was dying.
Speaker 3 (30:29):
Oh my god, it's so moving and I mean one
his voice this is I'm glad that One of the
things about that performance that we could get to in
this conversation is.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
George Michael is an in fucking incredible singer.
Speaker 3 (30:43):
Yeah, like even from the beginning that nobody he's like
some bad I mean, I'm not even gonna try.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
Like, it's so beautiful. And if you've ever heard.
Speaker 3 (30:53):
Like cuts, you know of these of his songs where
they've stripped everything out and just left it to the vocals. Yeah,
his his voice is angelic. Yes, So it's this angelic
prayer that he's describing, you know, while his partner has
died and there's no treatment, you know, it's a certain
death at that time.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
What an incredible thing, Yeah, what an incredible thing.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
Is carrying all of that, and he feels he's sad
but also seems so free because he's getting this arena
is packed to the gills with thousands of people that
have that sort of feedback. Must have been incredible. I
can't imagine.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
I didn't know about this concert, and I didn't know
about his lover, and it's so sad.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
Yeah, but there's a thing that happens next, which I
feel like is him working through that sadness in a
real way, a sadness that you know, as we've talked about,
so many people are experiencing at this moment in time,
so many men experiencing and someone's illness progresses to that concert,
(32:05):
and George michael is not making music, right, He's just
sort of like, this is a time and he feels
some sort of guilt about that a little bit. He's
sort of like, I know that this is a moment
where I could be out there talking about this disease.
And don't get me wrong, he was still doing a
lot of these sorts of benefit concerts and things like that,
like Elton John did a couple. He did those, but
(32:26):
he's not making music. And there's trouble actually with his
record company about that because they don't understand. They're like,
where's our music, bro, make me some money, fucking which
of course pisses George Michael off. And I'm just going
to pay a clip of him talking about that in
two thousand and.
Speaker 6 (32:43):
Seven, when you just made two hundred 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. What I was actually going through
personally was dealing with the fact that the person I
cared for most in the world had a terminal illness,
(33:04):
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.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
I really did.
Speaker 3 (33:21):
It's really enraging, you know, I couldn't and you kind
of hear the rage in his ways there, and I'm
with him.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
You know, two hundred million dollars he's made you. You
can't let this man greet totally.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
The whole thing is a mess. He can't write music,
he doesn't want to write music, and he's angry, and
he's angry at these music executives that he says, we're
talking about him in really defamatory ways, and these executives
deny this to this day, but you know, George is
on the record talking about how music executives at Sony
(33:55):
were calling him like the F word. Of course, so
George takes all that anger and he's looking through his
contract and he's like, you know what, these guys are
not allowing me enough for him as an artist so
he decides he's going to sue Sony and try and
get out of his contract. He is so angry in
(34:18):
this time he makes a comment that I have to say,
it's a choice, as a white guy in a have
to say it's a choice. The comment is that he
likens his situation to quote professional slavery, which.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
This is a choice.
Speaker 3 (34:35):
I don't know why these artists, how many artists have
felt like they.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
Need it, you know, I mean, this is a Kaye.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
But the difference is Kanye is at least black broa.
But listen, it does not That comment does not super
go down well for a white guy in music, you
know what I mean. Like ah, and some of the
public perception of him around this time is like, you know,
greedy whatever, especially because they have no idea, they don't
(35:03):
nobody really knows what he's dealing with behind the scenes.
And then, of course on someone dies.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
Inevitably, which is brutal.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
George Michael actually uses that particular moment to reach out
to his own mother and finally come out to her personally,
because it feels like, Okay, there's this one honest thing
I should be doing. But he's still not out publicly
you know, understandably, like on someone's the Great Love of
his life. It plunges him into this massive depression. Sure,
(35:37):
so he sues Sony and he loses, which means he's
spent at this point quite a while without making anything. Yeah,
gone years about releasing new music, nothing to show for it,
and he starts sort of sliding out of the public's eye.
I think around this time as a serious person, around
(35:58):
the mid nineties, where people are just like this guy, maybe, yeah,
should we take him seriously? I don't know. Like, he
makes an album mourning his lover, and it does not
do nearly as well as Faith or his album No.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
I barely remember it.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
I'm a fan, you know, exactly exactly. So this is
the beginning of George Michael as a joke. And I
feel like even just by saying George Michael as a joke,
I'm underplaying it. Like, right, George Michael is going to
become a very very easy punching bag for a lot
of people. And that is really really going to be
(36:38):
the case in nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
I know where this is going.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
All right, let's get to it after the break. Welcome
back to Big Lives Today. We're talking about George Michael
and where we are now at is the year nineteen
ninety eight. Oh this look of recognition just came across
(37:05):
your face.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
Yeh yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
I want you to picture a nine ninety eight Beverly Hills, California.
George Michael is inside a public toilet at a park
and he's there to have sex. Yes, yes, yes, I
don't know what you say. It was the thing that
was happening in the nineties.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
Oh, come on, a man, Yes, it happens to this day.
Speaker 3 (37:32):
But certainly, you know, going for decades cruising cultures right now,
like certainly gave in. But I think where people of
all sorts, you know, go cruising four sex in public places,
and it grew out of a time when that's what
you had to do and expanded into a time where
that's what you enjoyed to do. They're called public sex environments.
(37:55):
Is the public health.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
Word for it?
Speaker 1 (37:56):
Wow? Okay?
Speaker 2 (37:57):
And park restrooms.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
Well, in this public sex environment, a man approaches George
Michael on kind of like a listen, I'll show you mine,
you show mules kind of thing. Only that man is
a cop. And so, of course, as soon as George
Michael interacts with this person, he's arrested, and it's this
(38:20):
massive thing. One headline from the time was called zip
me up before you go go. It is this massive thing.
George Michael. If you didn't know before, you know now
that he's gay because he has been involuntarily outed.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
In this very fucking cups yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
Public way, this huge way he is, how BBC reported
it at the time.
Speaker 2 (38:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (38:43):
While we've been on a police in Beverly Hills have
confirmed that the singer George Michael has been charged with
committing a lewd act in a park toilet. He gave
his real name Georgia's Panutu, and is expected to appear
in court next month.
Speaker 8 (38:57):
Beverly Hills police officers arrested the singer known as George Michaels.
Mister Michaels was arrested for a violation of six forty
seven A of the Penal Code engaging an elude act.
Speaker 1 (39:11):
Engaging in elude act.
Speaker 3 (39:13):
Go right to hell that so I have to say something,
yes one you know at this time.
Speaker 2 (39:20):
Uh, And it started happening again today.
Speaker 3 (39:24):
One of the things that police departments in cities around
the country were doing is when they needed to run
up tickets, were going and doing entrapment stings on gay
men in public sex environments, which is an absurd use
of public money. And it was a really big deal,
I mean, because this was it was still illegal period
(39:47):
to gay sex.
Speaker 2 (39:48):
Period sodomy was illegal.
Speaker 3 (39:50):
The Supreme Court had not thrown out sodomy laws, and
so in many places I was reporting on it down
in DC and Virginia at the time.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
It was an opportunity to sort of rail against gay people.
Look at how I depraved we are. And so.
Speaker 3 (40:08):
Yes, George became a joke. I have to say for
us too.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
Like in this moment, how funny.
Speaker 3 (40:17):
It's funny, you know, Like so on one end, it's funny, right,
like literally caught with your pants down, you know, and
all of that. You know, and he's already a sex symbol,
and so now you know, I mean, who wouldn't of
course the cop really wanted to have sex with George.
Speaker 2 (40:31):
Who wouldn't want to set George's dead?
Speaker 3 (40:33):
You know, like those kinds of things.
Speaker 2 (40:38):
But also like.
Speaker 3 (40:42):
Just a very relatable outrage, you know. So he's a punchline.
But he is also somebody who for me certainly, and
I think for many of us of my generation at
this moment like really felt solidarity with George.
Speaker 2 (40:59):
Right in this humiliation, right right, right.
Speaker 1 (41:02):
And you know it's interesting to say it because I
feel like at this time, right, he spent twenty years
in the public. Yeah, that whole time he's tread this
very careful line, even as he's been carrying so much right,
like so much pain. They are all these different points,
right that he could have come out and said that
(41:22):
he was gay. He could have come out, for example,
said he was gay after his lover died and told
the world about him some one. He didn't, but he's
forced into it here. And what George Michael does is
he decides to go on sort of British TV's version
of the Tonight Show. It's a massive show called Parkinson's
hosted by this guy, Michael Parkinson. And I'm going to
(41:43):
play a clip it's Michael Parkinson just talking about that
decision and about the events that led up to George
Michael sort of like meeting this moment.
Speaker 5 (41:52):
He told the decision.
Speaker 8 (41:53):
I think twenty four hours after all this was happening
with a.
Speaker 5 (41:56):
Helicopters and news crews. All I said, you decided to
go to a restaurant. Didn't you make your public declaration?
Speaker 2 (42:02):
Tell me what happened with you?
Speaker 5 (42:04):
Well, I suppose, I just I was.
Speaker 6 (42:08):
There's one recurring theme to my actions as a as
a celebrity or as a person as an adult, and
that is if I'm pressured into anything, or pressured into
a point of view or put a certain position, either
by individuals or by history. I either way that celebrities
normally deal with scandal and shame, you know, or supposed shame,
(42:32):
I react against it. And my reaction to this was
I'm not going to be like another one of these
people that's peeking out from behind their neck curtains. A
month later, you know, trying to get rid of the press.
They were surrounding the house, and I thought, for God's sake,
you know, what is the game here?
Speaker 5 (42:46):
What do you want? A reconstruction? What is it?
Speaker 1 (42:49):
You know?
Speaker 5 (42:49):
Why are you all here? So I thought, I'm just
going to go out for a meal. I know they'll
all chase me. I know they'll just you know, I
know it all cause.
Speaker 6 (42:56):
And it did, Cause Havy, you had all these all
these cars going across red lights, and I was just
ambling down to my local restaurant, you know, and I
just thought that's the only way to deal with it.
Speaker 5 (43:07):
In fact, someone had said something.
Speaker 6 (43:08):
To me earlier in the day that one of my
closest friends said that his mother said he's not the first,
he won't be the last. He's just the biggest.
Speaker 5 (43:20):
And I thought, I like that.
Speaker 2 (43:25):
I love it. I love him, I love him.
Speaker 1 (43:28):
He just bodies it right, like yeah.
Speaker 3 (43:31):
Like supposed shame, you know, like even in the middle
of telling that story, he was careful supposed shame.
Speaker 1 (43:37):
Yes. And by the way, I'm hung totally totally. And
you know, it's interesting because I'd never seen that interview
until like a week ago, and watching it today, my
initial reaction was, oh, so that's the end, right, he
killed it, because if I watched someone be like that
on that's on television now, instant when I think George
(43:58):
Michael at this point had gotten to a point where
he was sliding a little bit out of a public consciousness,
like a very much. He's definitely back in that regard.
Sales on his Greatest Hits album definitely increase, did they really? Yeah? Yeah?
And you know, he puts out a very very wild
kind of music video and a song that parodies what
(44:20):
happened in the ballroom.
Speaker 2 (44:22):
It's spectacular. It's spectacular.
Speaker 1 (44:26):
Yeah, it's like cop costumes and disco bulls are involved.
Speaker 2 (44:31):
George is in a cop copsume, like he is in
a cop.
Speaker 3 (44:34):
Cop and it's like tight fitted and I mean, there's
no more win.
Speaker 2 (44:38):
Can it be a gay obviously, you know, but like
it is full on.
Speaker 3 (44:42):
Like cop fetish, you know, which is a great comment on, like, well,
why are you in the bathroom with me this cop?
Like if you so put out by penal code twenty
fifty seven A or whatever the hell it was, like
why are you in here with your dickens?
Speaker 1 (44:57):
Exactly? But as much as that video and that song
generates buzz, you know, and it's almost like nineties reality
kind of way, writ Large in in the United States,
his biggest market, it's essentially the end of his musical career.
Speaker 3 (45:15):
Well, but I think it's also Emmanuel the start of
Now I'm thinking about what you said at the beginning
of our conversation and like the difference between how we
think about him, because you're right, I almost forget that
it's the end of his musical career because it's the it's.
Speaker 2 (45:34):
Not the beginning of him being a gay icon.
Speaker 3 (45:36):
But it's like a really big moment in the story
of him as an icon.
Speaker 2 (45:42):
For our generation.
Speaker 3 (45:44):
Because he is so bold about it, right, and we
get the joke, but then we also get to punch back,
you know. And so I still see him and think
of him as undefeated, right, you know, you're right. It
was the end of his music career.
Speaker 1 (46:02):
I don't think about that, right, and I mean just
to be great, Like he's still making music. Right. They
are literal songs, big songs that he he did in
the early two thousands that got basically almost no radio
play in the US. Some massive collaborations with huge stars
of the day, like for example, he did a massive
(46:23):
duet with Mary J. Blige and like it really didn't
get much radio player in the US. I think it's
just like by the early two thousands, I think that
gap between the people who like see George Michael as
his icon and the people who see him as a
washed up star. That's kind of a joke that starts
to really widen. And we're into this era where really
(46:45):
a lot of what you're hearing about George Michael, if
you're not on the icon train, is wild stories about
like this kind of out of control over sex guy.
And by the two thousands, what you see in the
headlines is that whatever you know he was doing with
a read in terms of coping, that seems to have
become a drug habit. And so he's arrested in two
(47:07):
thousand and eight in a public bathroom, but this time
not necessarily for lud sex. This time it's because he's
in possession of crack cocaine, marijuana, right, And I don't know.
I think this is where my image of him as
a kid comes from, which is sort of like right,
over sexed, drugged out has been.
Speaker 2 (47:28):
I mean, he ultimately dies of a drug over this.
Speaker 1 (47:30):
Right, No, no, no, actually, and so this is officially, no,
officially he dies in his sleep like anything else's conjecture,
see even me, even me, right, right, And I think
that's the thing. Even if you don't see him as
a drugged out person, his demise feel so connected to that. Yeah,
(47:51):
the way he's covered, he's not covered as a person
who is dealing with probably a decent a man of
survivors guilt, you know what I mean, who's depressed and
trying to cope with it. And I think we don't
want to see that, not just with Jules Michael, but
by the other two thousands. And this is my experience
as someone who's coming of age in this time. HIV
(48:13):
slash as is this thing that no one's really talking
about as a thing that happened in America or the UK,
the thing that is happening someway in Africa bas you
know what I mean, that's right, and no one's to
talk about and talking about it there we're just kind
of ignoring. And I want to be careful about use
of we, but I feel like there are these amount
of people who are ignoring kind of what's just happened.
Speaker 3 (48:35):
I was at that time spending an enormous amount of
my time arguing you're all ignoring this.
Speaker 2 (48:42):
And you need to stop.
Speaker 3 (48:43):
So I you know, absolutely, I'm also when you describe
the caricatured version of you know, this drugged out gay man,
go drugged out over sext gay man, it's.
Speaker 2 (49:00):
Also the caricature of gay men at that time, totally period, right.
Speaker 3 (49:04):
And it's interesting to me to think about that that
he becomes emblematic of that idea of a gay man
to the broader culture and to me and the weird
people in my world. You know, he is emblematic of
(49:29):
being more than that. Yeah, of like an honesty with
and that's what I meant about going back to faith,
you know, like it starts to be honest. One of
the lyrics of that album is like, all we had
to do now is take these lies and say they're true. Right,
Like he's reflecting on like the hypocrisy of the moment,
(49:51):
and for me, all of his honest journey through the epidemic,
through having to bury his partner, the survivor's guilt of
certainly that generation is so definitive, and the fact that
(50:11):
he got over all of that, Yeah, to laugh at
the end while he's supposed to being laughed at, to
stand up and say, what of it, I'm having sex
in the park.
Speaker 1 (50:21):
Yeah, go to hell.
Speaker 2 (50:24):
For me and for us, he's a symbol of our
perseverance totally.
Speaker 1 (50:29):
That's the sort of largest sort of menafing happening here too,
which is like, I think the reason we don't want
to touch it is because we have And I said we,
I think a lot of people we've guilt about that, hmm,
guilt about that era.
Speaker 2 (50:41):
I hope that's more optimistic than me. I hope y'all
got guilt about it.
Speaker 3 (50:48):
I hope some people are guilty, because there is guilt
to be had about the lives that were discarded globally,
but certainly in this country.
Speaker 1 (51:00):
Well, thank you, thank you for going on that journey
with me I'm taking. So I know what journey you
were baffled. You know what I mean, you've.
Speaker 3 (51:09):
Known, but I learned so much that stuff that I
didn't know. I didn't know about this stuff. I have
a better understanding of George, my hero. So thank you,
of course.
Speaker 1 (51:16):
Of course. So now I want to know Office Joe.
We've been on. Where we going next week?
Speaker 3 (51:22):
Okay, So what I'm gonna do is I'm going to
play you a few clips, okay, of the person that
I'm going to introduce you to.
Speaker 2 (51:31):
I have somebody really fun okay, and I think you'll
know who this is. But let's go. Let's see. Let
me start with this clip, right, I get up.
Speaker 9 (51:40):
There and just do it and say what's on my mind,
And over a period of time it develops. I find
something's funny, and then what's not funny I'll leave out,
and I keep building on the funny. I like humor.
I like funny stuff. I don't like not funny stuff.
I don't care who does it.
Speaker 3 (51:55):
Okay, so tell people if you know what it is.
Speaker 1 (51:59):
Whoever is loves funny stuff, okay.
Speaker 2 (52:01):
Loves funny stuff. This is a comedian. Melliam Black was
being cool. I remember it wasn't black in those days,
because black wasn't beautiful yet.
Speaker 9 (52:08):
I remember, you couldn't even say that you can't do.
Speaker 1 (52:13):
Funny.
Speaker 3 (52:15):
It's funny, and that's the voice is so iconic, like
you have to people know this by this point.
Speaker 2 (52:19):
He's a black comedian. Though, here's the last one.
Speaker 6 (52:22):
Do you find that the bigger you get, the further
away you get from like.
Speaker 5 (52:27):
The street, and therefore the hard it is to be funny?
Speaker 9 (52:30):
Still, yes, well it's not hard, but it's just difficult
to be in the streets if you have some money.
Speaker 2 (52:38):
Yeah, exactly, people are rushing up to you. No, it's
not there. There's no reason to be there anymore.
Speaker 1 (52:43):
I cannot wait for this episode.
Speaker 2 (52:44):
Oh my god, there's no reason to be in the streets.
If you got somebody, that's the truth. That is the truth.
All right, Well that's.
Speaker 1 (52:53):
Next week, all right, until next time, Until next time,
Big Lives is a production of BBC Studios and Pushkin Industries.
It's hosted by me Manuel Jochi and Kai Writ. Our
team over at BBC Studios includes a producer and a
reverel ARC producer Samir Chowdery, sound design by Melvin Rickerby.
(53:13):
Our executive producer is Annie Brown, Our production coordinator is
Galen Davis Connolly, and our production manager is Mabel Vinegan Wright.
The team over at Pushkin Industries includes executive producer Constanza Goyardo,
producer Daphney Chen. Our legal advisor is Jake Flanagan, and
our marketing team includes Morgan Ratner and Jordan McMillan.
Speaker 3 (53:43):
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Speaker 2 (54:03):
Thanks for your support.
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
So here's the thing about Big Lives.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
The whole premise here is that everyone, all of us,
think they know the story of some of these folks,
but there's more to it. So when you tell a
friend about this show, don't just say it's podcasts about icons.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Say I heard.
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Something about David Bowie or Jane Fonda that genuinely mess
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leave us a review. Amaniel and I would really really
appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
From BBC Studios and Pushkin Industries, this is Big Lives,
Ami Manuel Jochi, I'm Kairi. We are both journalists and
cultural obsessives, and we just love trying to understand the
world through an individual person's life, and by individual person,
we're talking about folks who are the architects of our culture,
people who have a huge impact on the way we
(01:07):
live now. But often you've been kind of flattened to
this single image or to a single moment. We're diving
into these complicated, big lives of these icons, and to
do it we are using the treasure trove of the
BBC archive. Turns out that BBC had been interviewing and
(01:27):
covering Coultal figures for over one hundred years and we're
still have the tapes. What do you think is the
stock caricature image of George Michael.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
I think most people the stock image is like weird,
washed up pop star. And if you ask most gay men,
you would probably get like fabulous diva.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Yeah, I think that, and honestly, I don't think they're
too mutely exclusive And just to say, like, you know,
George Michael is a massive pop star of the eighties
and nineties. He starts his career in this band called Wham,
which he'd started with his best friend, and that band
and that music was sort of known for this it's
very positive, sort of happy kind of pop, and then
(02:21):
George Michael made a transition to being like this solo artist.
I feel like in the last couple of decades of
his life. Really, when I was growing up, he was
this figure that was just kind of like, I feel
like the diva and ridiculousness parts of him are what
we focused on. He was kind of a joke. Frankly,
it hurts to hear.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Yeah, yeah, that's what y'all thought of Georgie.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
I know, and I hate to say, I think in
some quarters, not all, but I think in some quarters
he is still a little bit of a joke. I
want to talk about that disconnect between the person in
the icon, you know, someone who was sort of like
an icon in the gay community, and the sort of
joke who I grew up kind of knowing and hearing about.
(03:04):
After listening through like year's worth of archival interviews that
he's given, I feel like the jokey version of him
exists just because we actually as a society don't want
to talk about some of the other things that were
impacting his work. Like to see George Michael clearly would
(03:25):
be to acknowledge some things we actually don't really want
to acknowledge about the time period in which he was
really becoming a star.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Oh wow, all right, and I'm ready to talk about this.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
All right, Well, let's do it. And we're just going
to get into his backstory a little bit here. I
have to say, looking through the archive, one of the
things I enjoyed a lot about George Michael is that
he was above or like just this massive showman in
the way that he talks about himself. There's basic facts
that are incontrovertible, right He was born to a Greek
(03:54):
family in the nineteen sixties in London. Giorgio's Kourakos Paniotu.
I've totally messed up that name.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
Well, it's you can see where they did the name
change for the story, you.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Can tell why he ended up becoming George Michael. But
in just looking through the archive and sort of learning
about his origins, there are like sort of these two
different origin stories. The first one is that he always
knew he had this love for music. I'm gonna play
you this first clip. It's him in nineteen eighty six
talking about just kind of his desire to be famous.
Speaker 4 (04:28):
I have very very strong ambitions from a very early age,
but they were totally unfocused.
Speaker 5 (04:33):
Totally unfocused. I mean as far as I was concerned.
Speaker 4 (04:35):
When I was seven years old, I was convinced that
one day I was going to be a pop star.
And I have no idea what I thought I was
going to do, really yeah, because I didn't think I
could sing, and I didn't think I could write or anything.
But I was just convinced somehow that was gonna be
a pop star.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
I don't know how this is my George Michael.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
Okay, like a seven year old who's like, I don't
know about talent or anything, but I'm gonna be famous.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Right you.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Like what you're seeing is the image of a little
boy singing and dancinging in front of mirror, Like that's
the day, air flowing, hairbrush in the hand. Well, okay,
so there's that one, and then there's this completely different
origin story. He tells us a good thirty years after
this first one on a British interview show that's really
famous called Desertland Discs.
Speaker 6 (05:16):
Something strange happened the age of about eight. 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 interests changed. Everything
changed in six months. I had been obsessed with insects
(05:37):
and Creepy Crawley's. 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 they had this whole left brain
right brain thing. Nobody in my family seemed to notice,
(05:59):
but I became absolutely obsessed with music and everything changed
after that.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
It's so ridiculous. A bang on the head is so obsessing.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
And what's funny about it to me is he's definitely
thought about this myth. He's creating the left brain right
brain final scientific justifies.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Looked up stuff.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
I mean, listen, though, you know rule number one for
a diva, amir, I have to do not correct their
origin story right, do not like point out inconsistencies in
their myth making.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
It is your job to nod and smile and say, oh, yes,
that's exactly right. That's how it went down. I know
for sure you're totally right.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
Honestly you are. You're just revealing how few divas I
have in my life. Kai I need more? Anyways, Thanks
for George Michael. So right from the beginning or later,
however you want to believe, he develops his like love exactly,
he develops his love of music, and the time he's
a teenager, he starts a band with one of his
best friends at school, this guy whose name is Andrew Ridgeley,
(07:02):
and it's just for two of them. They get their
first major record deal for two of them, and this
band becomes known as Wham Wam.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
It has an exclamation mark.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Yes, that is very important. And the exclamation mark is
there because I don't know that group was known for
this very very positive quote unquote bubble gum pop.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
I think that is a fair description of it, you know, disposable.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
It's literally a piece of bubble gum minutes.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
You know. The first album I remember seeing it was
Pink with you know, Wham is in like bubble, the
actual bubble letters, you know exactly, so you know, you
think of it as like you dance to it once
and that's the end.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
I feel like the best way to describe is actually
just look at one of the most famous songs, which
is called wake Me Up Before You Go Go, and
I'm just I'm just gonna read the lyrics just just
split up.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
I object to this already, but go.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Ahead, wake me up before you go go. Don't leave
me hanging on like a yo yo.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
This is not fair. It's not fair.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
And I carve out all about by saying, yes, it
is just as ridiculous as it sounds. And yet that
song the certifiable bop.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
It's spectacular, like you can play it today and there
is passion in the voice. You you want to wake
up and go to the go go with him.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
Okay, Well these songs were a bop. They were also
super successful. They were one of the biggest bands of
their day. And I think even besides the music, there's
this other aspect of them. But I feel like it's
such a time capsule of that moment in pop music,
right Like they are putting out this happy, go lucky
pop while also looking pretty effeminate, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Certainly him, Yes, certainly George.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
You know I mean blown out hair with blonde tips,
you know. And all their photos are like airbrushed in
that eighties style where they look like they you know,
they're twinks in today's language, but they look like fim
twists totally totally.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
And the way their images are displayed on their album
covers and stuff like that, it's like they're extras out
of primetime soap Dallas or Days of Our Lives, you
know what I mean. So, like, the hair is big,
the earrings are definitely in It's like a lot of
artists of that era. Frankly, like you have people like
Prince David Bowie, just like these sort of effeminine people.
(09:27):
But I have to say, I don't know that any
of those guys wore short shorts the way that Andrew
originally and George Michael did and some of their music videos,
because they weren't as gay exactly like unlike a lot
of the people in the eighties who were just sort
of being a feminine. George Michael was actually gay, but
(09:47):
around this time he was not fully out, not at all.
Most people listening to his music. I have to say,
watching it now, it was obvious that he was gay,
but at the time it was kind of like its
open question.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
No, I mean, you would have never just the ability
to deny what was insight in front of your face
around sec duality at that stage. I mean I was
really young, so but still in the culture. I mean,
so I grew I didn't know of and someone who
said I am gay, I'm a gay man publicly or privately.
(10:26):
Until I was a late teenager. I was like in college,
you know, so it just wouldn't occurred to you. It
wouldn't have occurred to the average consumer that George Michael
was a gay man. I don't know what adult game is.
We're thinking if it's yeah, you know, but in the
mainstream culture, no way. What if he they would have
thought he was gay?
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Right right, And obviously back then it was not necessarily
good for his life or his career to come out.
Actually just want to play this crip on him talking
about that period and his identity. He did this interview
much later in two thousand and seven.
Speaker 6 (11:01):
Yeah, when I was nineteen, 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 on certain terms that it really wasn't
the best idea who 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 nineteen, that's
(11:22):
as far as you look at your parents' oh 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 parents' life.
I was too young and too immature to know that
I was sacrificing as much as I was.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
That's hard to listen to.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
Honestly, I well, why that I hadn't realized how intentionally
closeted he was and the way I'm era, you know,
for so many people, certainly me, you know, it's a
process of coming out to yourself that is hard. But
to have been intentionally with the collaboration of his friends,
(12:04):
choosing to be.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Closeted while being a pop.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
Star who was considered sexy, right, like young women were
supposed to be into him. Ah, I can't imagine the
weight of carrying that. It's super exhausting. But then yeah,
when you lay the AID stuff over top of it
at the time, just the terror of that virus. And
(12:28):
if he's talking about the early eighties, it's also a
time remember we didn't even know well there.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
Was so much Yeah we didn't.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
I mean literally in a lot of quarters people did
not call it aids, Like we didn't even have a
name for it. And yeah, like in the early eighties,
eight is this thing, right that's just like coming on
the scene. It's exploding, and activists in the US, gay
activists are desperately trying to just like wake up the
public to what's happening. Like just just when I was
(12:57):
looking through the thing I was struck by was like,
take a song like wake Me Up Before You Go Go,
But I just made fun of right, this happy go
lucky song the year wake Me Up Before You Go
comes up. It is activist Bobby Campbell, who's was a
NUS who came forward with this illness that he had
he had complications from AIDS, and that was sort of
(13:19):
like the Sizic moment in the public consciousness about oh
there's disease and gay men are dying from it.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
Well, first off, I'm just connecting the dots like between
the beginning of AIDS activism and WHAM and even in
my own life just thinking about like looking at that
album cover and looking at that bubble gum pile, you know,
alongside this epidemic, and it was a time in certainly
(13:47):
at least in the United States where there was so
much desire for optimism, right, Like, that's what made AIDS
so hard. One of the things that made it so
hard to respond to is everybody, including gay men, were
at a moment politically and culturally where it was like
morning in America, Let's have fun, you know, and along
(14:07):
comes this epidemic, and to think about.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
Him as a nineteen year old boy, it sucks.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
It sucks just a waight of that on someone. You
can hear it, like between the lines of what he's saying,
I just want to pay you just a navigate from
that same interview.
Speaker 6 (14:21):
So I try to understand firstly, how much I love
my family, and the aides was the predominant feature of
being gay in the eighties and early nineties 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.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
And that's legit, you know.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
And it's interesting when he's saying the stuff to the
modern ear, it might sound cowardly too me, right, because
we went through this whole period, you know, in the
eighties and nineties around coming out not just as gay
men and that is just as queer people, but also
around HIV and naming your status and fighting the shame
(15:02):
that was part of what was killing us.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
I mean, an act up slogan was silence equals death.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Right.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
At the same time, he's a nineteen year old boy,
you know, and being gay and this deadly disease is synonymous,
and I just I have so much sympathy for him carrying.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
That and so much honestly about his experience in Wham.
And what comes next is his transition from this scared
boy at nineteen to the man that he's going to
become and the man that he wants to be given
everything that's happening, and that's what we're going to talk
about after the break. Welcome back to Big Lives. Today,
(15:51):
we're talking about the one and only George Michael. By
the late nineteen eighties, George Michael is kind of done
with the bubblegum poppiness of Wham. Right. He releases sort
of almost like a tester single just to test the
waters of solo stardom that Andrew Ridgeley helps co write,
but he's not in called Careless Whisper a bona fide classic, yes,
(16:20):
which I have to say, as someone who grew up
playing a saxophone, someone has asked me to play that
song almost every time I've ever played in public, like
almost every single time. The whole thing is supposed to
be much more romantic, and it's just like this sort
of indication of where he's going as an artist, right,
he's trying to be a little bit more openly thoughtful
(16:42):
in terms of full.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
Try and soulful and a little darker you totally.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
There's a line in there about how his guilty feet
ain't got no rhythm. I'm never gonna dance again, not
the way I danced with you, like it's it's definitely
supposed to be the sort of song that someone could
picture themselves in, you know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (17:04):
And like where there's loss and hurt. It's not a party,
it's a reflection.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
On and he keeps that moving right, and all of
it builds to this tent pole of an album like
a first major solo album called Faith.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Absolutely one of the best albums ever.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
Wow, best albums ever?
Speaker 2 (17:23):
Correct? Okay, okay, it was what I will stand up. Wow,
it's it's brilliant. It's brilliant.
Speaker 3 (17:28):
It's certainly you know, in my life it is one
of my favorite albums.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
Can I make a guess as to why that is? Kay?
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Okay, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
One, the music is fantastic. It is such a more
mature version of him, and also it is a version
of him just in terms of the esthetic, like his appearance.
If he's been on this journey from boy to man.
He is a man when faith comes out there, he's
a mad man, I'm doing. He goes from sort of
(17:55):
as you said, this kind of twink in the eighties
to a muscled man. He goes from being clean shaven
to having just right amount of stubble.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
The stubble to this day, George Michael snubble, Like are
all of y'all are out here trying to do the
George Michael stubble and the dangling cross ear ring became
like the thing for many generations later, young gay men
of like, can I have the stubble and the little
cross ear ring?
Speaker 2 (18:24):
To me, it's it's definitive.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Style and a lot of the visuals for this album,
he's left the days of our lives soap star look
behind and he looks kind of just like a biker
dude in lev that is just a little too tight.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
Just a biker dude is a very polite way to
put it. This is leather kink.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
This is this is a j leather daddy.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
The other thing is I will say I hadn't thought
about this, but having listened to you, like thinking through him.
It also part of what makes it such a great
album for me, is it feels so much.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
More honest And I hadn't. I never really thought about that.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
Like that's part of what's so cool about the look
and the music and everything is it is a more
honest person in a more honest tape.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
Like in so far as You're seeing is a man
who is really embracing not only like in a way
his own games, which he's still not out at this point.
But you know, there are songs on this album that
when you listen to them, that is the conclusion you
come to, certainly, Like there was a song called Father Figure,
(19:36):
which is a complicated song. It's a creepy song, but
you know some of the lyrics is to do reading again.
You know, let me be your father figure, put your
tiny hand in mind.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
I will be your creature teacher.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
Anything you have in mind, George. And it works like
it is the biggest selling album in America in nineteen
eighty eight, and Faith actually becomes the first album by
a white Solar artist to hit number one on the
Billboard Top Black Albums chart.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
This I did that, now, so he's he's because I
mean this is and remember this is Michael Jackson.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
Prince is still around.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
Prince is still around, like he's sweat.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
Like this man is on a man who once had
a radio show called the Sweat Hotel. He's beating keep
sweat for sexyist among black people.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
Wait, back up, I don't know about the Keith Sweat
Sweater Hotel.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
Keeth Sweat Sweat Hotel. That's a discussion for another time.
But all you need to know is it is a
cooling radio show. Is a cooling radio show all about
sex and people calling in to keep sweat about their problems.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
How is this the first time?
Speaker 1 (21:01):
I don't know, But all you need to know for
now is that George Michael beat that.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
Guy right right.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
And he sweat was totally He's in this period where
he is totally flying high. And then there's other thing happens,
which is that he meets someone. And I'm going to
play just this clip about it again from the interview
show Desert Island Discs. He gave his interview in two
thousand and seven.
Speaker 5 (21:28):
How did you meet your first love?
Speaker 6 (21:30):
Well, what happened was actually it was a strange, strange thing.
I don't know if this if people will relate to this,
but there have only been three times in my life
that I've really fallen for anyone, and each time, on
first sight, I had something as clicked in my head
that told me I was going to know that person.
And it happened with Anselmo across a lobby. So I
(21:57):
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?
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.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
How beautiful he's such a beautiful story he is.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
He is right, he just saw a man across the
hotel lobby and like the world stopped.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
And but I mean, listen, have you never experienced such
a thing?
Speaker 1 (22:30):
I have experienced such a thing. I have experienced sure,
where you're just like, I don't know how you're going
to matter to me, but you are going to matter.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
But You're all I can focus on in the world.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
In true George Michael fashion, there is another variation of
this story, which is that he meets and just to say,
the man he meets his name is Unselming for laper.
He is Brazilian. But the version of this story where
George Michael's performing a concert in Reo to like thousands
of people and in the crowd alone face, they're not
(23:03):
even similar.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
I thought for sure it would still be like an.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
I mean to be fair to him, to be fair
to him, I do think in that version of story
he later sees him again in a hotel lobby, but
the way he tells it isn't that similar kind of way,
where it's like I saw this man in the crowd.
Everyone else is driving to my music, but this man
is serious. Wow, George, Yes, yes again, I don't know if.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
This is all inappropriate. You do not correct.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
I just like both stories, Okay, I just love both stories.
And the main thing you need to take away from
this law is that this was George's first real adult relationship,
Like he was in love, in love, and this relationship
would totally change the trajectory of his life because within
(23:55):
six months of that fateful meeting of them starting to
date and Selma will be diagnosed to dates. Who yeah,
And so this fear right that George Michael and so
many other men like it's come home and maybe it
had come home in other ways before that, but in
this specific way was something that totally rocked his world.
(24:18):
And the thing about that is Enselmo, he gets sick
pretty quickly. And you know, at this point we're now
firming in the nineteen nineties, right, but early early nineties
still so like ninety one in around nineteen in around
that there's still no treatment. AIDS is just finally starting
(24:38):
to be a thing that the government is taking seriously,
not just as it applies to gay people. Partly because
there are two seismic events in pop culture. Basketball star
Magic Johnson revealed he'd been infected with HIV during heterosexual sex.
Speaker 6 (24:56):
HIV virus that I have attained, I will have to
retire from the Lakers.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
AIDS clinics were inundated with calls for days afterwards, which
opens up a whole world for a lot of people,
like massive, massive world changing thing, just just like because
up until then, HIV is known as big gay man's.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
Disease, in the white gay Man's disease.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
One hundred and a lot of people. I don't want
to say okay with it, but there I'll say okay, yeah,
okay with that.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
Absolutely, And also Magic Johnson is probably one of the
most famous people on the planet right in nineteen eighty.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
One, maybe the most famous Pulti person other than Michael Jordan.
And literally that same month, that same November, Freddie Mercury
dies from pneumonia after having battled AIDS.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
The pop star Freddie Mercury died last night in London.
The lead singer with Queen, aged forty five, had announced
on Saturday he was suffering from AIDS. Yeah, another massive celebrity,
I mean, one of the most famous, arguably the most
famous rock star on the planet right then. And as
an aside, now that I think about it, a bit
(26:07):
of a counterpoint to George Mychael, I mean.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
Freddy Murcury was so clearly gay.
Speaker 3 (26:13):
M you know, what George Michael became when Faith came
out was kind of a version of what Freddy Mercury
had been since the.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
Seventh oh so sort of just like sexual, little teething
very much himself without at let saying anything.
Speaker 3 (26:27):
Yeah, and that them masculine like tight clothes and like
really associated with being a gay man of like that
era's gay culture.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
And you know, it's interesting that you point out that
sort of difference in a relationship between the two because
you know how we were talking earlier about that original
story of George Michael where he's sort of, you know,
knows he wants to be a star from the beginning,
and he's singing in front of his barroom mirror, possibly
at seven like the person he's imitating when he does
that is Freddie Mercury. Wow, Freddie Mercury is George Michael's hero.
Speaker 3 (27:02):
That makes total sense, a massive hero of his that
makes total sense.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
And within a year of Freddie Mercury dying, Queen hits
up George Michael like they're band members, hit up George
Michael and they're like, hey, we are going to put
on a massive tribute concert for Freddie Mercury. This thing
is going to be billed basically as up until that point,
one of the largest, if not the largest aid specific
(27:29):
benefit concert and awareness concert in UK history. Do you
want to stand in for Freddie Mercury?
Speaker 3 (27:36):
I didn't know about this, Yeah, did he do it?
Speaker 1 (27:39):
So he does it? And I want to talk about
this and just take a moment here because not only
does George Michael do this, I actually think it's the
best most honest performance that George gives in anything in
his entire career, and it is that way because it's
it's the most emotional. We're just going to play some
(28:01):
of it for you here, Wheaz. So he's singing this
song Somebody to Love, is obviously a song about someone
(28:21):
who is yearning, yearning, yearning for companionship, the lyrics of
which kind of speak to the journey that he's been on.
George Michael has found someone to love in Mselmo, but
that person is dying. And there's this moment in this
performance that I don't know, I just think is so
so special. It's towards the end of the song, in
(28:44):
a section of it where they're repeating the main melody
of the song, and this thing happens that's so special,
and there's just like this silence here a little bit,
(29:13):
and then the crowd just actually responds to him the
whole time. George Michael just looks so transported, right, And
you know, he was later asked about this performance. He
acknowledges that E think is one of his best performances,
and he says about it, he said, my subconscious knew
(29:34):
I was singing a Freddie Mercury song after his passing
in front of my lover.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
Oh man, you're gonna make me cry.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
My subconscious knew that this was probably the most important
performance of my life because I had to take all
those years of standing in a bedroom, whether it be
with a mic. I don't think I had a hair rodger,
he says, but I would stand and sing to the
mirror and sing all those queen songs and know them backwards. No,
the harmonies know everything about them. And that child was
(30:04):
going to take all that knowledge, all that subconscious, eating
enough music from that group and sing one of Freddie
Murcury songs to the world. And Selma was there and
I was dying inside, and my whole god, he says,
he just went to another place, and he calls it
the loudest prayer of his life, and he says it's
not an accident. But that performance, perhaps the most well
(30:26):
known of his career, was sung to his lover. He
was dying.
Speaker 3 (30:29):
Oh my god, it's so moving and I mean one
his voice this is I'm glad that One of the
things about that performance that we could get to in
this conversation is.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
George Michael is an in fucking incredible singer.
Speaker 3 (30:43):
Yeah, like even from the beginning that nobody he's like
some bad I mean, I'm not even gonna try.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
Like, it's so beautiful. And if you've ever heard.
Speaker 3 (30:53):
Like cuts, you know of these of his songs where
they've stripped everything out and just left it to the vocals. Yeah,
his his voice is angelic. Yes, So it's this angelic
prayer that he's describing, you know, while his partner has
died and there's no treatment, you know, it's a certain
death at that time.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
What an incredible thing, Yeah, what an incredible thing.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
Is carrying all of that, and he feels he's sad
but also seems so free because he's getting this arena
is packed to the gills with thousands of people that
have that sort of feedback. Must have been incredible. I
can't imagine.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
I didn't know about this concert, and I didn't know
about his lover, and it's so sad.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
Yeah, but there's a thing that happens next, which I
feel like is him working through that sadness in a
real way, a sadness that you know, as we've talked about,
so many people are experiencing at this moment in time,
so many men experiencing and someone's illness progresses to that concert,
(32:05):
and George michael is not making music, right, He's just
sort of like, this is a time and he feels
some sort of guilt about that a little bit. He's
sort of like, I know that this is a moment
where I could be out there talking about this disease.
And don't get me wrong, he was still doing a
lot of these sorts of benefit concerts and things like that,
like Elton John did a couple. He did those, but
(32:26):
he's not making music. And there's trouble actually with his
record company about that because they don't understand. They're like,
where's our music, bro, make me some money, fucking which
of course pisses George Michael off. And I'm just going
to pay a clip of him talking about that in
two thousand and.
Speaker 6 (32:43):
Seven, when you just made two hundred 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. What I was actually going through
personally was dealing with the fact that the person I
cared for most in the world had a terminal illness,
(33:04):
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.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
I really did.
Speaker 3 (33:21):
It's really enraging, you know, I couldn't and you kind
of hear the rage in his ways there, and I'm
with him.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
You know, two hundred million dollars he's made you. You
can't let this man greet totally.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
The whole thing is a mess. He can't write music,
he doesn't want to write music, and he's angry, and
he's angry at these music executives that he says, we're
talking about him in really defamatory ways, and these executives
deny this to this day, but you know, George is
on the record talking about how music executives at Sony
(33:55):
were calling him like the F word. Of course, so
George takes all that anger and he's looking through his
contract and he's like, you know what, these guys are
not allowing me enough for him as an artist so
he decides he's going to sue Sony and try and
get out of his contract. He is so angry in
(34:18):
this time he makes a comment that I have to say,
it's a choice, as a white guy in a have
to say it's a choice. The comment is that he
likens his situation to quote professional slavery, which.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
This is a choice.
Speaker 3 (34:35):
I don't know why these artists, how many artists have
felt like they.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
Need it, you know, I mean, this is a Kaye.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
But the difference is Kanye is at least black broa.
But listen, it does not That comment does not super
go down well for a white guy in music, you
know what I mean. Like ah, and some of the
public perception of him around this time is like, you know,
greedy whatever, especially because they have no idea, they don't
(35:03):
nobody really knows what he's dealing with behind the scenes.
And then, of course on someone dies.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
Inevitably, which is brutal.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
George Michael actually uses that particular moment to reach out
to his own mother and finally come out to her personally,
because it feels like, Okay, there's this one honest thing
I should be doing. But he's still not out publicly
you know, understandably, like on someone's the Great Love of
his life. It plunges him into this massive depression. Sure,
(35:37):
so he sues Sony and he loses, which means he's
spent at this point quite a while without making anything. Yeah,
gone years about releasing new music, nothing to show for it,
and he starts sort of sliding out of the public's eye.
I think around this time as a serious person, around
(35:58):
the mid nineties, where people are just like this guy, maybe, yeah,
should we take him seriously? I don't know. Like, he
makes an album mourning his lover, and it does not
do nearly as well as Faith or his album No.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
I barely remember it.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
I'm a fan, you know, exactly exactly. So this is
the beginning of George Michael as a joke. And I
feel like even just by saying George Michael as a joke,
I'm underplaying it. Like, right, George Michael is going to
become a very very easy punching bag for a lot
of people. And that is really really going to be
(36:38):
the case in nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
I know where this is going.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
All right, let's get to it after the break. Welcome
back to Big Lives Today. We're talking about George Michael
and where we are now at is the year nineteen
ninety eight. Oh this look of recognition just came across
(37:05):
your face.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
Yeh yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
I want you to picture a nine ninety eight Beverly Hills, California.
George Michael is inside a public toilet at a park
and he's there to have sex. Yes, yes, yes, I
don't know what you say. It was the thing that
was happening in the nineties.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
Oh, come on, a man, Yes, it happens to this day.
Speaker 3 (37:32):
But certainly, you know, going for decades cruising cultures right now,
like certainly gave in. But I think where people of
all sorts, you know, go cruising four sex in public places,
and it grew out of a time when that's what
you had to do and expanded into a time where
that's what you enjoyed to do. They're called public sex environments.
(37:55):
Is the public health.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
Word for it?
Speaker 1 (37:56):
Wow? Okay?
Speaker 2 (37:57):
And park restrooms.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
Well, in this public sex environment, a man approaches George
Michael on kind of like a listen, I'll show you mine,
you show mules kind of thing. Only that man is
a cop. And so, of course, as soon as George
Michael interacts with this person, he's arrested, and it's this
(38:20):
massive thing. One headline from the time was called zip
me up before you go go. It is this massive thing.
George Michael. If you didn't know before, you know now
that he's gay because he has been involuntarily outed.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
In this very fucking cups yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
Public way, this huge way he is, how BBC reported
it at the time.
Speaker 2 (38:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (38:43):
While we've been on a police in Beverly Hills have
confirmed that the singer George Michael has been charged with
committing a lewd act in a park toilet. He gave
his real name Georgia's Panutu, and is expected to appear
in court next month.
Speaker 8 (38:57):
Beverly Hills police officers arrested the singer known as George Michaels.
Mister Michaels was arrested for a violation of six forty
seven A of the Penal Code engaging an elude act.
Speaker 1 (39:11):
Engaging in elude act.
Speaker 3 (39:13):
Go right to hell that so I have to say something,
yes one you know at this time.
Speaker 2 (39:20):
Uh, And it started happening again today.
Speaker 3 (39:24):
One of the things that police departments in cities around
the country were doing is when they needed to run
up tickets, were going and doing entrapment stings on gay
men in public sex environments, which is an absurd use
of public money. And it was a really big deal,
I mean, because this was it was still illegal period
(39:47):
to gay sex.
Speaker 2 (39:48):
Period sodomy was illegal.
Speaker 3 (39:50):
The Supreme Court had not thrown out sodomy laws, and
so in many places I was reporting on it down
in DC and Virginia at the time.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
It was an opportunity to sort of rail against gay people.
Look at how I depraved we are. And so.
Speaker 3 (40:08):
Yes, George became a joke. I have to say for
us too.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
Like in this moment, how funny.
Speaker 3 (40:17):
It's funny, you know, Like so on one end, it's funny, right,
like literally caught with your pants down, you know, and
all of that. You know, and he's already a sex symbol,
and so now you know, I mean, who wouldn't of
course the cop really wanted to have sex with George.
Speaker 2 (40:31):
Who wouldn't want to set George's dead?
Speaker 3 (40:33):
You know, like those kinds of things.
Speaker 2 (40:38):
But also like.
Speaker 3 (40:42):
Just a very relatable outrage, you know. So he's a punchline.
But he is also somebody who for me certainly, and
I think for many of us of my generation at
this moment like really felt solidarity with George.
Speaker 2 (40:59):
Right in this humiliation, right right, right.
Speaker 1 (41:02):
And you know it's interesting to say it because I
feel like at this time, right, he spent twenty years
in the public. Yeah, that whole time he's tread this
very careful line, even as he's been carrying so much right,
like so much pain. They are all these different points,
right that he could have come out and said that
(41:22):
he was gay. He could have come out, for example,
said he was gay after his lover died and told
the world about him some one. He didn't, but he's
forced into it here. And what George Michael does is
he decides to go on sort of British TV's version
of the Tonight Show. It's a massive show called Parkinson's
hosted by this guy, Michael Parkinson. And I'm going to
(41:43):
play a clip it's Michael Parkinson just talking about that
decision and about the events that led up to George
Michael sort of like meeting this moment.
Speaker 5 (41:52):
He told the decision.
Speaker 8 (41:53):
I think twenty four hours after all this was happening
with a.
Speaker 5 (41:56):
Helicopters and news crews. All I said, you decided to
go to a restaurant. Didn't you make your public declaration?
Speaker 2 (42:02):
Tell me what happened with you?
Speaker 5 (42:04):
Well, I suppose, I just I was.
Speaker 6 (42:08):
There's one recurring theme to my actions as a as
a celebrity or as a person as an adult, and
that is if I'm pressured into anything, or pressured into
a point of view or put a certain position, either
by individuals or by history. I either way that celebrities
normally deal with scandal and shame, you know, or supposed shame,
(42:32):
I react against it. And my reaction to this was
I'm not going to be like another one of these
people that's peeking out from behind their neck curtains. A
month later, you know, trying to get rid of the press.
They were surrounding the house, and I thought, for God's sake,
you know, what is the game here?
Speaker 5 (42:46):
What do you want? A reconstruction? What is it?
Speaker 1 (42:49):
You know?
Speaker 5 (42:49):
Why are you all here? So I thought, I'm just
going to go out for a meal. I know they'll
all chase me. I know they'll just you know, I
know it all cause.
Speaker 6 (42:56):
And it did, Cause Havy, you had all these all
these cars going across red lights, and I was just
ambling down to my local restaurant, you know, and I
just thought that's the only way to deal with it.
Speaker 5 (43:07):
In fact, someone had said something.
Speaker 6 (43:08):
To me earlier in the day that one of my
closest friends said that his mother said he's not the first,
he won't be the last. He's just the biggest.
Speaker 5 (43:20):
And I thought, I like that.
Speaker 2 (43:25):
I love it. I love him, I love him.
Speaker 1 (43:28):
He just bodies it right, like yeah.
Speaker 3 (43:31):
Like supposed shame, you know, like even in the middle
of telling that story, he was careful supposed shame.
Speaker 1 (43:37):
Yes. And by the way, I'm hung totally totally. And
you know, it's interesting because I'd never seen that interview
until like a week ago, and watching it today, my
initial reaction was, oh, so that's the end, right, he
killed it, because if I watched someone be like that
on that's on television now, instant when I think George
(43:58):
Michael at this point had gotten to a point where
he was sliding a little bit out of a public consciousness,
like a very much. He's definitely back in that regard.
Sales on his Greatest Hits album definitely increase, did they really? Yeah? Yeah?
And you know, he puts out a very very wild
kind of music video and a song that parodies what
(44:20):
happened in the ballroom.
Speaker 2 (44:22):
It's spectacular. It's spectacular.
Speaker 1 (44:26):
Yeah, it's like cop costumes and disco bulls are involved.
Speaker 2 (44:31):
George is in a cop copsume, like he is in
a cop.
Speaker 3 (44:34):
Cop and it's like tight fitted and I mean, there's
no more win.
Speaker 2 (44:38):
Can it be a gay obviously, you know, but like
it is full on.
Speaker 3 (44:42):
Like cop fetish, you know, which is a great comment on, like, well,
why are you in the bathroom with me this cop?
Like if you so put out by penal code twenty
fifty seven A or whatever the hell it was, like
why are you in here with your dickens?
Speaker 1 (44:57):
Exactly? But as much as that video and that song
generates buzz, you know, and it's almost like nineties reality
kind of way, writ Large in in the United States,
his biggest market, it's essentially the end of his musical career.
Speaker 3 (45:15):
Well, but I think it's also Emmanuel the start of
Now I'm thinking about what you said at the beginning
of our conversation and like the difference between how we
think about him, because you're right, I almost forget that
it's the end of his musical career because it's the it's.
Speaker 2 (45:34):
Not the beginning of him being a gay icon.
Speaker 3 (45:36):
But it's like a really big moment in the story
of him as an icon.
Speaker 2 (45:42):
For our generation.
Speaker 3 (45:44):
Because he is so bold about it, right, and we
get the joke, but then we also get to punch back,
you know. And so I still see him and think
of him as undefeated, right, you know, you're right. It
was the end of his music career.
Speaker 1 (46:02):
I don't think about that, right, and I mean just
to be great, Like he's still making music. Right. They
are literal songs, big songs that he he did in
the early two thousands that got basically almost no radio
play in the US. Some massive collaborations with huge stars
of the day, like for example, he did a massive
(46:23):
duet with Mary J. Blige and like it really didn't
get much radio player in the US. I think it's
just like by the early two thousands, I think that
gap between the people who like see George Michael as
his icon and the people who see him as a
washed up star. That's kind of a joke that starts
to really widen. And we're into this era where really
(46:45):
a lot of what you're hearing about George Michael, if
you're not on the icon train, is wild stories about
like this kind of out of control over sex guy.
And by the two thousands, what you see in the
headlines is that whatever you know he was doing with
a read in terms of coping, that seems to have
become a drug habit. And so he's arrested in two
(47:07):
thousand and eight in a public bathroom, but this time
not necessarily for lud sex. This time it's because he's
in possession of crack cocaine, marijuana, right, And I don't know.
I think this is where my image of him as
a kid comes from, which is sort of like right,
over sexed, drugged out has been.
Speaker 2 (47:28):
I mean, he ultimately dies of a drug over this.
Speaker 1 (47:30):
Right, No, no, no, actually, and so this is officially, no,
officially he dies in his sleep like anything else's conjecture,
see even me, even me, right, right, And I think
that's the thing. Even if you don't see him as
a drugged out person, his demise feel so connected to that. Yeah,
(47:51):
the way he's covered, he's not covered as a person
who is dealing with probably a decent a man of
survivors guilt, you know what I mean, who's depressed and
trying to cope with it. And I think we don't
want to see that, not just with Jules Michael, but
by the other two thousands. And this is my experience
as someone who's coming of age in this time. HIV
(48:13):
slash as is this thing that no one's really talking
about as a thing that happened in America or the UK,
the thing that is happening someway in Africa bas you
know what I mean, that's right, and no one's to
talk about and talking about it there we're just kind
of ignoring. And I want to be careful about use
of we, but I feel like there are these amount
of people who are ignoring kind of what's just happened.
Speaker 3 (48:35):
I was at that time spending an enormous amount of
my time arguing you're all ignoring this.
Speaker 2 (48:42):
And you need to stop.
Speaker 3 (48:43):
So I you know, absolutely, I'm also when you describe
the caricatured version of you know, this drugged out gay man,
go drugged out over sext gay man, it's.
Speaker 2 (49:00):
Also the caricature of gay men at that time, totally period, right.
Speaker 3 (49:04):
And it's interesting to me to think about that that
he becomes emblematic of that idea of a gay man
to the broader culture and to me and the weird
people in my world. You know, he is emblematic of
(49:29):
being more than that. Yeah, of like an honesty with
and that's what I meant about going back to faith,
you know, like it starts to be honest. One of
the lyrics of that album is like, all we had
to do now is take these lies and say they're true. Right,
Like he's reflecting on like the hypocrisy of the moment,
(49:51):
and for me, all of his honest journey through the epidemic,
through having to bury his partner, the survivor's guilt of
certainly that generation is so definitive, and the fact that
(50:11):
he got over all of that, Yeah, to laugh at
the end while he's supposed to being laughed at, to
stand up and say, what of it, I'm having sex
in the park.
Speaker 1 (50:21):
Yeah, go to hell.
Speaker 2 (50:24):
For me and for us, he's a symbol of our
perseverance totally.
Speaker 1 (50:29):
That's the sort of largest sort of menafing happening here too,
which is like, I think the reason we don't want
to touch it is because we have And I said we,
I think a lot of people we've guilt about that, hmm,
guilt about that era.
Speaker 2 (50:41):
I hope that's more optimistic than me. I hope y'all
got guilt about it.
Speaker 3 (50:48):
I hope some people are guilty, because there is guilt
to be had about the lives that were discarded globally,
but certainly in this country.
Speaker 1 (51:00):
Well, thank you, thank you for going on that journey
with me I'm taking. So I know what journey you
were baffled. You know what I mean, you've.
Speaker 3 (51:09):
Known, but I learned so much that stuff that I
didn't know. I didn't know about this stuff. I have
a better understanding of George, my hero. So thank you,
of course.
Speaker 1 (51:16):
Of course. So now I want to know Office Joe.
We've been on. Where we going next week?
Speaker 3 (51:22):
Okay, So what I'm gonna do is I'm going to
play you a few clips, okay, of the person that
I'm going to introduce you to.
Speaker 2 (51:31):
I have somebody really fun okay, and I think you'll
know who this is. But let's go. Let's see. Let
me start with this clip, right, I get up.
Speaker 9 (51:40):
There and just do it and say what's on my mind,
And over a period of time it develops. I find
something's funny, and then what's not funny I'll leave out,
and I keep building on the funny. I like humor.
I like funny stuff. I don't like not funny stuff.
I don't care who does it.
Speaker 3 (51:55):
Okay, so tell people if you know what it is.
Speaker 1 (51:59):
Whoever is loves funny stuff, okay.
Speaker 2 (52:01):
Loves funny stuff. This is a comedian. Melliam Black was
being cool. I remember it wasn't black in those days,
because black wasn't beautiful yet.
Speaker 9 (52:08):
I remember, you couldn't even say that you can't do.
Speaker 1 (52:13):
Funny.
Speaker 3 (52:15):
It's funny, and that's the voice is so iconic, like
you have to people know this by this point.
Speaker 2 (52:19):
He's a black comedian. Though, here's the last one.
Speaker 6 (52:22):
Do you find that the bigger you get, the further
away you get from like.
Speaker 5 (52:27):
The street, and therefore the hard it is to be funny?
Speaker 9 (52:30):
Still, yes, well it's not hard, but it's just difficult
to be in the streets if you have some money.
Speaker 2 (52:38):
Yeah, exactly, people are rushing up to you. No, it's
not there. There's no reason to be there anymore.
Speaker 1 (52:43):
I cannot wait for this episode.
Speaker 2 (52:44):
Oh my god, there's no reason to be in the streets.
If you got somebody, that's the truth. That is the truth.
All right, Well that's.
Speaker 1 (52:53):
Next week, all right, until next time, Until next time,
Big Lives is a production of BBC Studios and Pushkin Industries.
It's hosted by me Manuel Jochi and Kai Writ. Our
team over at BBC Studios includes a producer and a
reverel ARC producer Samir Chowdery, sound design by Melvin Rickerby.
(53:13):
Our executive producer is Annie Brown, Our production coordinator is
Galen Davis Connolly, and our production manager is Mabel Vinegan Wright.
The team over at Pushkin Industries includes executive producer Constanza Goyardo,
producer Daphney Chen. Our legal advisor is Jake Flanagan, and
our marketing team includes Morgan Ratner and Jordan McMillan.
Speaker 3 (53:43):
Get add free episodes of Big Lives by subscribing to
Pushkin Plus. Subscribers also get ad free episodes of all
Pushkin shows, full audio books, series binges to shows like
Deep Cover and Revision Is History, and more. Sign up
on the Big Live Show page on Apple Podcasts or
at pushkin dot fm, slash plus.
Speaker 2 (54:03):
Thanks for your support.
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