March 31, 2026
George Michael: Beyond the Scandal, Beyond the Icon | From Big Lives
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There are a few artists we wish could've come on Broken Record, people who were sometimes misunderstood or hassled by the press and would have had the opportunity to be heard. One such artist is George Michael. Since that's unfortunately not a possibility, we're doing the next best thing—sharing a preview of a new podcast, Big Lives, and a special episode about George Michael. Every week on Big Lives, hosts Kai Wright and Emmanuel Dzotsi dig into the BBC archive to explore the story behind the icons who shape our culture—trailblazers like David Bowie, Amy Winehouse, Muhammed Ali, and Tina Turner—and better understand how each legend set the stage for our contemporary cultural landscape.
George Michael was more than scandal headlines and tabloid punchlines. He was one of the defining pop artists of his generation. Kai and Emmanuel trace his transformation—teen heart‑throb, closeted superstar, grieving partner, activist, and ultimately a gay icon who reclaimed the narrative with wit, rage, and dazzling talent. If you like what you hear, find more episodes of Big Lives wherever you get podcasts.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
00:00:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin.
00:00:18
Speaker 2: There's a handful of artists I really wish could have come on Broken Record, artists who I think were sometimes misunderstood or at least hassled by the press, and would have loved the opportunity to really be heard. Artists like Prince Rita, Tom Petty, and someone who have come to admire a lot in the decade or so. Since it's passing, George Michael. But I guess since we can't have him on the show, the least I could do as a second best of sorts is to bring you an episode of the new podcast Big Lives from the BBC and Pushkin. Host Kai Wright and Emmanuel Josey dig into the decades old BBC archives to find rare interviews and footage that could shed new light on powerful, important cultural figures like Richard Pryor, Allow Cool j, Tina Turner, and in this episode, George Michael. If you like what you hear, find more episodes of Big Lives wherever you get podcasts, and stay tuned for more episodes where Kai and Emmanuel explore the lives of legends like David Bowie, Amy Winehouse, Shinead o'cannor, and more.
00:01:14
Speaker 3: From BBC Studios and Pushkin Industries. This is big lives. Amimnul 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 had a huge impact on the way we 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 has been interviewing and covering cultural 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?
00:02:11
Speaker 1: I think most people the stock image is like.
00:02:17
Speaker 4: Weird, washed up pop star and if you as most gay men, you would probably get like fabulous diva.
00:02:27
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that, and honestly I don't think we're too mutually exclusive. And just to say, like, you know, George Michael is a massive pop star of the eighties and nineties, he started 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 George Michael made a transition to being like this solo artist. I feel like in the last couple 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 refocused on. He was kind of a joke. Frankly, it hurts here.
00:03:09
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, that's what y'all thought of George.
00:03:12
Speaker 3: 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. 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 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.
00:04:00
Speaker 1: Oh wow, all right, I'm ready to talk about this.
00:04:02
Speaker 3: 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 like are incontrovertible. Right, he was born to a Greek family in the nineteen sixties in London. Giorgio's Koreacos Panaeotu. I've totally messed up that name.
00:04:30
Speaker 1: Well, it's you can see where they did the name change. For the story.
00:04:33
Speaker 3: You 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 going to play you with His first clip is him in nineteen eighty six talking about just kind of his desire to be famous. I have very very.
00:04:57
Speaker 5: Strong ambitions from a very early age, but they were totally unfocused.
00:05:02
Speaker 1: Totally unfocused.
00:05:02
Speaker 3: I mean, as far as I was concerned.
00:05:04
Speaker 5: 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 sid.
00:05:15
Speaker 1: Don't know. Hell, this is my George Michael.
00:05:17
Speaker 4: Okay, like a seven year old who's like, I don't know about tality or anything, but I'm gonna be.
00:05:22
Speaker 1: Famous, right you.
00:05:23
Speaker 3: Like what you're seeing is the image of a little boy singing and dancinging in front of.
00:05:28
Speaker 1: His mirror, Like that's the day, hair flowing, hair.
00:05:31
Speaker 3: Brush in hand. Well okay, so there's that one, and then there's this completely different original story. He tells us a good thirty years after this first one on a British interview show that's really famous called Desert Island Discs.
00:05:45
Speaker 6: 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 and I had it stitched up and stuff. But all my interests changed. Everything changed in six months. I had been obsessed with insects and creepy Crawley's. I used to get up at five o'clock in the morning and go out into the 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. But I became absolutely obsessed with music, and everything changed after that.
00:06:31
Speaker 1: It's so ridiculous. A bang on the head is so obsessing.
00:06:36
Speaker 3: And what's funny about it to me is he's definitely thought about miss myth. He's creating the left brain right brain. Final scientific justifies looked up stuff.
00:06:46
Speaker 4: 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.
00:06:58
Speaker 1: In their myth making. It is your job to nod and smile and say, oh, yes, that's exactly right. That's how it whipped out. I know for sure you're totally.
00:07:06
Speaker 3: Right, honestly you are. You're just then how few divas I have in my life? Kay? I need more? Anyway? Thanks to George Michael. So right from the beginning or later, however you want to believe, he develops his like love exactly, he developed 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, 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.
00:07:39
Speaker 1: It has an exclamation mark.
00:07:40
Speaker 3: 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.
00:07:50
Speaker 4: I think that is a fair description of it, you know, disposable.
00:07:53
Speaker 1: It's literally a piece of bubble gum minutes.
00:07:55
Speaker 4: 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.
00:08:08
Speaker 3: 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.
00:08:19
Speaker 1: I object to this already, but go.
00:08:22
Speaker 3: Ahead, wake me Up before you go go. Don't leave me hanging on like a yo yo.
00:08:30
Speaker 1: This is not fair. It's it's not fair.
00:08:33
Speaker 3: And I carve out all of that by saying, yes, it is just as ridiculous as it sounds. And yet that song is a certifiable bop.
00:08:40
Speaker 4: It's spectacular, like you can play it today and there is passion in the voice.
00:08:47
Speaker 1: You you want to wake up and go to the go go with him?
00:08:53
Speaker 3: 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.
00:09:17
Speaker 1: Certainly him, Yes, certainly George.
00:09:19
Speaker 4: 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 film twists.
00:09:33
Speaker 3: Totally, totally. 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. 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 like a lot of the people in the eighties who were just sort of being a feminine. George Michael was actually gay, but 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 it's open question.
00:10:30
Speaker 4: No, I mean, you would have never just the ability to deny what was insight in front of your face around sexuality 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 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.
00:11:07
Speaker 1: I don't know what adult gay man worth it.
00:11:09
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, but in the mainstream culture, no way, if they would have thought.
00:11:14
Speaker 3: He was getting 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 you this clip of him talking about that period and his identity. He did this interview much later in two thousand and seven.
00:11:29
Speaker 6: 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 mum and dad and was persuaded in no uncertain 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 as far as you look at your parents' oh don't tell your dad, my god, your dad will hit the roof.
00:11:55
Speaker 3: And then very soon.
00:11:56
Speaker 6: 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.
00:12:08
Speaker 4: That's hard to listen to, honestly, I well, one, 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, choosing to be closeted while being a pop star who was considered sexy right like young women were supposed to be into him, 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 if he's talking about the early eighties, it's also a time.
00:13:00
Speaker 1: Remember we didn't even know why there was.
00:13:03
Speaker 3: So much Yeah we didn't, I mean literally in a lot of quarters people did not call it AIDS, Like we didn't I even have a name for it. And yeah, like in the early eighties, ages 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 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 nurse who came forward with this illness that he had he had complications from AIDS, and that was sort of like this sizic moment in the public consciousness about oh, there's a disease and gay men are dying from it.
00:13:55
Speaker 4: Well, first off, I'm just connecting the dots, like between the beginning of AIDS activism and TWEM and even in my own life just thinking about like looking at that album cover and looking at that GUMPI, you.
00:14:10
Speaker 1: Know, alongside this epidemic, and it was a.
00:14:15
Speaker 4: Time in certainly 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, right, and along comes this epidemic, And to think about him as a nineteen year old boy.
00:14:42
Speaker 1: It sucks.
00:14:42
Speaker 3: It sucks just a way of that on someone. You can hear it, like between the lines of what he's saying, I just want to pay you just another bit from that same interview.
00:14:50
Speaker 6: So I try to understand firstly, how much I loved my family, and the AIDS 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 and.
00:15:08
Speaker 1: That's legit, you know.
00:15:09
Speaker 4: And it's interesting when he's saying this stuff to the modern ear, it might sound cowardly to 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 not as just as queer people, but also around HIV and naming your status and fighting the shame that was part of what was killing us. I mean, an act up slogan was silence equals death right. And 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.
00:15:51
Speaker 3: That and so much honestly about his experience in WHAM. And what comes next is his transition from the 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, 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 originally helps co write, but he's not in called Careless Whisper a bona fide classic.
00:16:46
Speaker 1: Yes, which I have to say.
00:16:49
Speaker 3: As someone who grew up playing in the 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 in terms.
00:17:11
Speaker 4: Of fultry and soulful and a little darker, you.
00:17:15
Speaker 3: Know, totally. 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 it's definitely supposed to be the sort of song that someone could picture themselves in, you know what I mean?
00:17:32
Speaker 4: And like where there's loss and hurt, it's not a party, it's a reflection.
00:17:37
Speaker 3: And he keeps that moving right, and all of it builds to this tenth pole of an album like a first major solo album called Faith.
00:17:47
Speaker 1: Absolutely one of the best albums ever.
00:17:49
Speaker 3: Wow, best albums ever?
00:17:51
Speaker 1: Correct?
00:17:52
Speaker 4: Okay, okay, that is what I will stand up.
00:17:54
Speaker 1: Wow, it's it's brilliant, brilliant.
00:17:56
Speaker 4: It's certainly you know, in my life it is one of my favorite albums.
00:18:00
Speaker 3: Can I make a guess as to why that is? Kind?
00:18:03
Speaker 1: Okay?
00:18:03
Speaker 3: Yeah, 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 aesthetic, 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 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.
00:18:34
Speaker 1: The stubble to this day, George Michael snubble.
00:18:37
Speaker 4: Like there 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 in the little cross ear ring to It's it's definitive style.
00:18:55
Speaker 3: 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 lever that is just a little too tight.
00:19:07
Speaker 1: Just an biker dude is a very polite way to put it. This is leather kink.
00:19:12
Speaker 3: This is this is a leather daddy.
00:19:16
Speaker 1: Yes. The other thing is I.
00:19:18
Speaker 4: 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.
00:19:30
Speaker 1: So much more honest and I hadn't. I never really thought about that.
00:19:35
Speaker 4: Like that's part of what's so cool about the look and the music and everything is it is a more honest person and a more honest take.
00:19:44
Speaker 3: Like you're seeing is a man who is really embracing not only like in a way he's own Gainers, 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, which is a complicated song, is a crazy it's a creepy song. But you know some of the lyrics is to do the reading again. You know, let me be your father figure. Put your tiny hand in mind.
00:20:23
Speaker 1: I will be your creature teacher.
00:20:25
Speaker 3: 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.
00:20:47
Speaker 4: This I did that now, So he's he's because I mean, this is and remember this is Michael Jackson.
00:20:54
Speaker 3: Prince is still around.
00:20:55
Speaker 7: Prince is still around, like he sweat like this man is on a man who had once had a radio show called the Sweat Hotel.
00:21:09
Speaker 3: He's beating keep sweat for sex andist among black people.
00:21:12
Speaker 1: Wait back, I don't know about the Keith Sweat Sweater.
00:21:14
Speaker 3: Keeth Sweat Sweat Hotel. That's a discussion for another time. But all you need to know is it is a call in radio show. Is a calling radio show all about sex and people calling in to keep sweat about their problems.
00:21:28
Speaker 1: How is this the first time.
00:21:29
Speaker 3: I don't know, but all you need to know for now is that George Michael beat that guy right right, and yes, it was fun totally. He's in this period where he is totally flying high and then this 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.
00:21:56
Speaker 1: How did you meet your first love?
00:21:59
Speaker 6: 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 have really fallen for anyone, and each time on first site, 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 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? I didn't 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.
00:22:46
Speaker 1: How beautiful he's such a beautiful story he is.
00:22:49
Speaker 3: He is right, he just saw a man across the hotel lobby and like the world stop and but.
00:22:56
Speaker 1: I mean, listen, have you never experienced such a thing.
00:22:58
Speaker 3: 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. But You're all I can focus on in the world, 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 Unselm and Philaper. He is Brazilian. But the version of this story where George Michael's performing a concert in rear to like thousands of people and in the crowd alone face they're not even similar.
00:23:35
Speaker 1: I thought for sure it would still be like an I.
00:23:37
Speaker 3: Mean to be fair to him, 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.
00:23:58
Speaker 1: Again, I don't know this is all inappropriate?
00:24:00
Speaker 3: You do not correct or just 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 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. And the thing about that is Onselmo, he gets sick pretty quickly. And you know, at this point we're now firmly in the nineteen nineties, right early nineties, still so like ninety one, in around ninety in around that there's still no treatment. AIDS is just finally starting 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.
00:25:17
Speaker 8: Pop culture, basketball star Magic Johnson revealed he'd been infected with HIV during heterosexual sex.
00:25:24
Speaker 3: HIV virus that I have attained, I will have to retire from the Lakers.
00:25:32
Speaker 8: AIDS clinics were inundated with calls for days afterwards.
00:25:35
Speaker 3: Which opens up a whole world for a lot of people, like massive, massive world changing thing, just because up until then the HIV is known as the gay man's disease in the white gay man's disease one hundred and a lot of people. I don't want to say okay with it, but there, okay, yeah, okay with that absolutely.
00:25:58
Speaker 4: And also Magic Johnson is probably one of the most famous people on the planet.
00:26:01
Speaker 3: Right away, maybe the most famous sports person other than Michael Jordan. And literally that same month, that's say, November, Freddie Mercury dies from pneumonia after having battled AIDS.
00:26:15
Speaker 4: 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, of a counterpoint to George Michael. I mean, Freddy mrcury was so clearly gay. You know, what George Michael became when Faith came out was kind of a version of what Freddy Mercury had been since the.
00:26:49
Speaker 3: Seventh oh so sort of just like sexual, little teething very much himself without at let saying anything.
00:26:56
Speaker 4: Yeah, and that fim masculine, like tight clothes and like really associated with being a gay man of like that era's gay culture.
00:27:06
Speaker 3: And you know, it's interesting that you you point out that's 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 barthroom 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.
00:27:31
Speaker 4: That makes total sense, a massive hero of his that makes total sense.
00:27:37
Speaker 3: 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 a specific benefit concert and awareness concert in UK history. Do you want to stand in for Freddie Mercury?
00:28:04
Speaker 1: I didn't know about this.
00:28:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, did he do it? 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 of it for you here, wheeze. So he's singing this song Somebody to Love, is obviously a song about someone 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 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, 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 he thinks is one of his best performances, and what he says about it, he said, my subconscious knew I was singing a Freddie Mercury song after his passing in front of my lover.
00:30:09
Speaker 1: Oh man, you're gonna make me cry.
00:30:11
Speaker 3: 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, Rosie 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 going to take all that knowledge, all that subconscious, eating enough music from that group and sing one of Freddie Murcury's songs to the world and Selma was there and I was dying inside and my whole 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 that that performance, perhaps the most well known of his career, was sung to his lover he was dying.
00:30:57
Speaker 4: Oh my god, it's so moving, and I mean, one his this is I'm glad that. One of the things about that performance that we could get to in this conversation is.
00:31:09
Speaker 1: George Michael is an in fucking incredible singer.
00:31:11
Speaker 4: Yeah, like even from the beginning that no, when he's like some bad I mean, I'm not even gonna try it.
00:31:18
Speaker 1: Like, it's so beautiful. And if you've ever heard.
00:31:22
Speaker 4: Like cuts, you know of these of his songs where they've stripped everything out and just left it to the vocals.
00:31:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, his his voice is angelic.
00:31:31
Speaker 4: Yes, So it's this angelic prayer that he's describing, you know, while his partner is dying and there's no treatment, you know, it's a certain death at that time.
00:31:45
Speaker 1: What an incredible thing. Yeah, what an incredible thing.
00:31:48
Speaker 3: He's carrying all of that and he feels he's sad, but also seems so free because he's getting miss Arena is packed to the gills with thousands of people. The sort of feedback must have been incredible. I can't imagine.
00:32:04
Speaker 4: I didn't know about this concert, uh and and I didn't know about his love and.
00:32:11
Speaker 1: It's so sad.
00:32:13
Speaker 3: Yeah, but there's a thing that happens next, which I feel like is him working through that sadness in a real way as sadness that you know, as we've talked about, so many people are experiencing at this moment in time, so many of men experiencing. And Someoneo's illness progresses to that concert, and George Michael is not making music, right, He's just sort of like this is the 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 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.
00:33:03
Speaker 1: Make me some money?
00:33:04
Speaker 3: Fucking which, of course pisses George michael Off, And I'm just gonna pay a clip of him talking about that. In two thousand and seven, when you just.
00:33:13
Speaker 6: 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, 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.
00:33:48
Speaker 3: I really did.
00:33:50
Speaker 4: It's really enraging, you know, I couldn't and you kind of hear the region his ways there and I with him. You know, two hundred million dollars, he's major. You can't let this man great totally.
00:34:00
Speaker 3: 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 were calling him like the F word. Of course, so George takes all of that anger and he's looking through his contract and he's like, you know what, these guys are not allowing me enough freedom 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 this time. He makes a comment that I have to say is 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.
00:35:03
Speaker 1: This is a choice.
00:35:04
Speaker 4: I don't know why these artists, how many artists have felt like they.
00:35:07
Speaker 1: Needed you know, I mean, this is a Kaye.
00:35:11
Speaker 3: But the difference is Kanye is at least black bro at least, but it does not that comment does not super go down well for a white guy 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 nobody really knows what he's dealing with behind the scenes. And then, of course, and someone dies inevitably, which is brutal. 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, 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 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 I.
00:36:42
Speaker 1: Barely remember it exactly. I'm a fan, you.
00:36:45
Speaker 3: 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 the case in nineteen ninety eight.
00:37:09
Speaker 1: I know where this is.
00:37:10
Speaker 3: Sclet 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 your face. Yeah yeah, I want you to picture it a ninety 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.
00:37:56
Speaker 1: Oh, come on, a man, Yes it happens to this game.
00:38:00
Speaker 4: But certainly, you know, going for decades cruising cultures right now, like certainly game in But I think where people have also, 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.
00:38:18
Speaker 1: Into a time where that's what you enjoyed to do. They're called public sex environments. Is the public health word for it.
00:38:24
Speaker 3: Wow? Okay?
00:38:26
Speaker 1: And park restrooms.
00:38:28
Speaker 3: Well, in this public sex environment, a man approaches George Michael on kind of like a listen, I'll show you man, 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 massive thing. One headline from the time was 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 in this very yeah, public way, this huge way. Here is how UBC reported it at the time.
00:39:11
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:39:12
Speaker 9: 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.
00:39:25
Speaker 10: Next month, 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 in elude.
00:39:39
Speaker 3: Act, Engaging in elude Act go.
00:39:42
Speaker 1: Right to hell. That so I have to say something, yes, one, you.
00:39:46
Speaker 4: Know, at this time, and it started happening again today. 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 entrap mit stings on gay men in public sex environments, which is obs or.
00:40:09
Speaker 1: Use of public money. And it was a really big deal.
00:40:13
Speaker 4: I mean, because this was it was still illegal period time gay sex.
00:40:17
Speaker 1: Period sodomy was illegal.
00:40:18
Speaker 4: 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, it was an opportunity to sort of rail against gay people.
00:40:31
Speaker 1: Look at how like depraved we are, and so.
00:40:37
Speaker 4: Yes, George became a joke. I have to say for us too, like in this moment, how funny, 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. Who wouldn't want to George's dead, you know, like those kinds of things, but also like.
00:41:10
Speaker 1: Just a very relatable outrage, you know. So he's a punchline.
00:41:17
Speaker 4: 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.
00:41:27
Speaker 3: Right in this humiliation right right right. And you know it's interesting to say that because I feel like at this time, right, he spent twenty years in the public eye. 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 he was gay. He could have come out, for examples, that he was gay after his lover died and told the world about him somewhere. He didn't. But he's faced 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 host by this guy, Michael Parkinson. And I'm going to play a clip it's Michael Parkinson just talking about that decision and about the event that led up to George. Michael sort of like meeting this moment you.
00:42:20
Speaker 11: Child the decision. I think twenty four hours after all this was happening with a helicopters and news crews. All I said, you decided to go to a restaurant. Didn't you just make your public declaration? Tell me what happened with you?
00:42:33
Speaker 6: Well, I suppose I just I was. 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 at 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, I react against it. And my reaction to this was I'm not going to be like another one of these people that's peaking out from behind their neck curtains. A month later, 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? What do you want to reconstruction?
00:43:16
Speaker 1: What is it?
00:43:17
Speaker 3: You know?
00:43:18
Speaker 6: 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 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. In fact, someone had said something 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.
00:43:47
Speaker 1: He's just the biggest.
00:43:48
Speaker 6: And I thought, I like that.
00:43:53
Speaker 1: I love it. I love him.
00:43:55
Speaker 3: I love him. He just bodies it right, like yeah.
00:43:59
Speaker 4: Like supposed shame, you know, like even in the middle of telling that story, he was careful supposed shame, yes, you know.
00:44:07
Speaker 3: 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 national television now instant when I think George Michael at this point had gotten to a point where he was sliding a little bit out of a public consciousness, like as 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 happened in the bathroom.
00:44:51
Speaker 1: It's spectacular.
00:44:52
Speaker 3: It's spectacular. Yeah, It's like cop costumes and disco bulls are involved.
00:45:00
Speaker 4: George is in a cop cossume. He is in a cop cop and it's like tight fitted and I mean, there's no more win. Can it be a gay obviously, you know, but like it is full on like cop fetish, you know, which is a great comment on like, well, why you in the bathroom with me this cop? Like if you so put out back penal code twenty fifty seven A or whatever the hell it was, like why are you in here with your dicta exactly?
00:45:27
Speaker 3: But as much as that video and that song generates buzz, you know, and it's almost like nineties reality kind of way lodge in the United States, his biggest market. It's essentially the end of his musical career.
00:45:43
Speaker 4: 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 beg. It's not the beginning of him being a gay kind but it's like a really big moment in the story of him as an icon for our generation 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, right, You're right, it was the end of his music career.
00:46:31
Speaker 1: I don't think about.
00:46:32
Speaker 3: That, right, And I mean, just to be clear, like he's still making music, right. There are literal songs, big songs that 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 duet with Mary J. Blige, and like it really didn't get much radio play in the US. I think it's just like by the early two thousands, I think that gap between the people who like sie 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 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.
00:47:34
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:47:34
Speaker 3: And so he's arrested in two thousand and eight in a public bathroom, but this time not necessarily from loud 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, this over sex, drugged out has been.
00:47:57
Speaker 1: I mean, he ultimately dies of a drug over this.
00:47:59
Speaker 3: 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, the way he's covered, he's not covered as a person who is dealing with probably a decent amount 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 slash as is this thing that no one's really talking about as a thing that happened in America or the UK. It's a thing that is happening somewhere in Africa basically, you know what I mean, And no one's to talk about just talk about it there. We're just kind of ignoring. And I want to be careful about the use of we, but I feel like there are a decent amount of people who are ignoring kind of what's just happened.
00:49:04
Speaker 4: I was at that time spending an enormous amount of my time arguing you're all the nor Is and you need to stop. So I you know, absolutely, I'm also when you describe the caricatured version of you know, this drugged out gay man got drugged out over sext gay man, it's also the caricature of gay.
00:49:30
Speaker 1: Men at that time, totally period, right, And it's interesting to me to think about.
00:49:37
Speaker 4: That's that he becomes emblematic of that idea of a gay man to the broader culture and to me and the queer people in my world. You know, he is emblematic of 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 to 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.
00:50:19
Speaker 1: And for me, all of his.
00:50:25
Speaker 4: 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 he got over all of that 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.
00:50:50
Speaker 3: Yeah, go to hell.
00:50:53
Speaker 4: For me and for us, he's a symbol of our perseverance totally.
00:50:57
Speaker 3: That the sort of law just sort of mena thing 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, guilt about that. Uh.
00:51:10
Speaker 1: I hope that's more optimistic than me. I hope y'all got guilt about it.
00:51:17
Speaker 4: 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.
00:51:29
Speaker 3: Well, thank you, thank you for going on that journey with me I'm taking. So I know what, Johnny, you were baffled, you know what I mean, you know, but I learned.
00:51:38
Speaker 1: So much the 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, of course.
00:51:46
Speaker 3: So now I want to know Office Joey. We've been on. Where we going next week?
00:51:51
Speaker 1: Okay? So what I'm going to do is. I'm going to play you a.
00:51:56
Speaker 4: Few clips, okay, of the person that I'm going to introduce you to.
00:52:00
Speaker 1: I have somebody really fun.
00:52:02
Speaker 3: Okay, and and I think you'll know who this is.
00:52:05
Speaker 1: But let's go. Let's see. Let me start with this clip, right.
00:52:08
Speaker 12: I get up 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 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.
00:52:23
Speaker 4: Okay, so tell people if you know what it is.
00:52:27
Speaker 3: Whoever is loves funny stuff, okay.
00:52:30
Speaker 1: Loves funny stuff. This is a comedian and black was being cool.
00:52:33
Speaker 12: I remember it wasn't black in those days because black.
00:52:35
Speaker 1: Wasn't beautiful yet. Remember you couldn't even say black, you call it do black.
00:52:42
Speaker 4: It's funny, it's funny, and that's the voice is so iconic, like you have to people know this by this play.
00:52:48
Speaker 1: He's a black comedian. Though here's the last one.
00:52:51
Speaker 6: Do you find that the bigger you get, the further way you get from like the street and therefore the hundred it is to be funny.
00:52:58
Speaker 1: Still.
00:53:00
Speaker 12: Yes, well it's not harder, but it's just difficult to be in the streets if you have some money.
00:53:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
00:53:07
Speaker 1: People are rushing up to us.
00:53:09
Speaker 3: Now.
00:53:09
Speaker 1: It's not there. There's no reason to be there anymore.
00:53:11
Speaker 3: I cannot wait for this episode. Oh my god.
00:53:14
Speaker 1: There's no reason to be in the streets. If you got somebody, that's a truth, that is the truth. All right, Well that's next.
00:53:21
Speaker 3: Week, all right, until next time, Until next time. Big Lives is a production of BBC Studios and Pushkin Industries. Is hosted by me Manuel Jochi and Kay Wright. Our team over at BBC Studios includes producer Emma Reverel, archive producer Samir Chowdery, sound design by Melvin Rickerby. 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 Goryardo, producer Daphne Chen. Our legal advisor is Jake Flanagan, and our marketing team includes Morgan Ratner and Jordan McMillan.
Speaker 1: Pushkin.
00:00:18
Speaker 2: There's a handful of artists I really wish could have come on Broken Record, artists who I think were sometimes misunderstood or at least hassled by the press, and would have loved the opportunity to really be heard. Artists like Prince Rita, Tom Petty, and someone who have come to admire a lot in the decade or so. Since it's passing, George Michael. But I guess since we can't have him on the show, the least I could do as a second best of sorts is to bring you an episode of the new podcast Big Lives from the BBC and Pushkin. Host Kai Wright and Emmanuel Josey dig into the decades old BBC archives to find rare interviews and footage that could shed new light on powerful, important cultural figures like Richard Pryor, Allow Cool j, Tina Turner, and in this episode, George Michael. If you like what you hear, find more episodes of Big Lives wherever you get podcasts, and stay tuned for more episodes where Kai and Emmanuel explore the lives of legends like David Bowie, Amy Winehouse, Shinead o'cannor, and more.
00:01:14
Speaker 3: From BBC Studios and Pushkin Industries. This is big lives. Amimnul 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 had a huge impact on the way we 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 has been interviewing and covering cultural 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?
00:02:11
Speaker 1: I think most people the stock image is like.
00:02:17
Speaker 4: Weird, washed up pop star and if you as most gay men, you would probably get like fabulous diva.
00:02:27
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that, and honestly I don't think we're too mutually exclusive. And just to say, like, you know, George Michael is a massive pop star of the eighties and nineties, he started 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 George Michael made a transition to being like this solo artist. I feel like in the last couple 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 refocused on. He was kind of a joke. Frankly, it hurts here.
00:03:09
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, that's what y'all thought of George.
00:03:12
Speaker 3: 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. 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 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.
00:04:00
Speaker 1: Oh wow, all right, I'm ready to talk about this.
00:04:02
Speaker 3: 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 like are incontrovertible. Right, he was born to a Greek family in the nineteen sixties in London. Giorgio's Koreacos Panaeotu. I've totally messed up that name.
00:04:30
Speaker 1: Well, it's you can see where they did the name change. For the story.
00:04:33
Speaker 3: You 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 going to play you with His first clip is him in nineteen eighty six talking about just kind of his desire to be famous. I have very very.
00:04:57
Speaker 5: Strong ambitions from a very early age, but they were totally unfocused.
00:05:02
Speaker 1: Totally unfocused.
00:05:02
Speaker 3: I mean, as far as I was concerned.
00:05:04
Speaker 5: 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 sid.
00:05:15
Speaker 1: Don't know. Hell, this is my George Michael.
00:05:17
Speaker 4: Okay, like a seven year old who's like, I don't know about tality or anything, but I'm gonna be.
00:05:22
Speaker 1: Famous, right you.
00:05:23
Speaker 3: Like what you're seeing is the image of a little boy singing and dancinging in front of.
00:05:28
Speaker 1: His mirror, Like that's the day, hair flowing, hair.
00:05:31
Speaker 3: Brush in hand. Well okay, so there's that one, and then there's this completely different original story. He tells us a good thirty years after this first one on a British interview show that's really famous called Desert Island Discs.
00:05:45
Speaker 6: 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 and I had it stitched up and stuff. But all my interests changed. Everything changed in six months. I had been obsessed with insects and creepy Crawley's. I used to get up at five o'clock in the morning and go out into the 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. But I became absolutely obsessed with music, and everything changed after that.
00:06:31
Speaker 1: It's so ridiculous. A bang on the head is so obsessing.
00:06:36
Speaker 3: And what's funny about it to me is he's definitely thought about miss myth. He's creating the left brain right brain. Final scientific justifies looked up stuff.
00:06:46
Speaker 4: 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.
00:06:58
Speaker 1: In their myth making. It is your job to nod and smile and say, oh, yes, that's exactly right. That's how it whipped out. I know for sure you're totally.
00:07:06
Speaker 3: Right, honestly you are. You're just then how few divas I have in my life? Kay? I need more? Anyway? Thanks to George Michael. So right from the beginning or later, however you want to believe, he develops his like love exactly, he developed 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, 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.
00:07:39
Speaker 1: It has an exclamation mark.
00:07:40
Speaker 3: 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.
00:07:50
Speaker 4: I think that is a fair description of it, you know, disposable.
00:07:53
Speaker 1: It's literally a piece of bubble gum minutes.
00:07:55
Speaker 4: 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.
00:08:08
Speaker 3: 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.
00:08:19
Speaker 1: I object to this already, but go.
00:08:22
Speaker 3: Ahead, wake me Up before you go go. Don't leave me hanging on like a yo yo.
00:08:30
Speaker 1: This is not fair. It's it's not fair.
00:08:33
Speaker 3: And I carve out all of that by saying, yes, it is just as ridiculous as it sounds. And yet that song is a certifiable bop.
00:08:40
Speaker 4: It's spectacular, like you can play it today and there is passion in the voice.
00:08:47
Speaker 1: You you want to wake up and go to the go go with him?
00:08:53
Speaker 3: 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.
00:09:17
Speaker 1: Certainly him, Yes, certainly George.
00:09:19
Speaker 4: 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 film twists.
00:09:33
Speaker 3: Totally, totally. 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. 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 like a lot of the people in the eighties who were just sort of being a feminine. George Michael was actually gay, but 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 it's open question.
00:10:30
Speaker 4: No, I mean, you would have never just the ability to deny what was insight in front of your face around sexuality 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 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.
00:11:07
Speaker 1: I don't know what adult gay man worth it.
00:11:09
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, but in the mainstream culture, no way, if they would have thought.
00:11:14
Speaker 3: He was getting 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 you this clip of him talking about that period and his identity. He did this interview much later in two thousand and seven.
00:11:29
Speaker 6: 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 mum and dad and was persuaded in no uncertain 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 as far as you look at your parents' oh don't tell your dad, my god, your dad will hit the roof.
00:11:55
Speaker 3: And then very soon.
00:11:56
Speaker 6: 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.
00:12:08
Speaker 4: That's hard to listen to, honestly, I well, one, 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, choosing to be closeted while being a pop star who was considered sexy right like young women were supposed to be into him, 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 if he's talking about the early eighties, it's also a time.
00:13:00
Speaker 1: Remember we didn't even know why there was.
00:13:03
Speaker 3: So much Yeah we didn't, I mean literally in a lot of quarters people did not call it AIDS, Like we didn't I even have a name for it. And yeah, like in the early eighties, ages 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 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 nurse who came forward with this illness that he had he had complications from AIDS, and that was sort of like this sizic moment in the public consciousness about oh, there's a disease and gay men are dying from it.
00:13:55
Speaker 4: Well, first off, I'm just connecting the dots, like between the beginning of AIDS activism and TWEM and even in my own life just thinking about like looking at that album cover and looking at that GUMPI, you.
00:14:10
Speaker 1: Know, alongside this epidemic, and it was a.
00:14:15
Speaker 4: Time in certainly 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, right, and along comes this epidemic, And to think about him as a nineteen year old boy.
00:14:42
Speaker 1: It sucks.
00:14:42
Speaker 3: It sucks just a way of that on someone. You can hear it, like between the lines of what he's saying, I just want to pay you just another bit from that same interview.
00:14:50
Speaker 6: So I try to understand firstly, how much I loved my family, and the AIDS 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 and.
00:15:08
Speaker 1: That's legit, you know.
00:15:09
Speaker 4: And it's interesting when he's saying this stuff to the modern ear, it might sound cowardly to 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 not as just as queer people, but also around HIV and naming your status and fighting the shame that was part of what was killing us. I mean, an act up slogan was silence equals death right. And 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.
00:15:51
Speaker 3: That and so much honestly about his experience in WHAM. And what comes next is his transition from the 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, 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 originally helps co write, but he's not in called Careless Whisper a bona fide classic.
00:16:46
Speaker 1: Yes, which I have to say.
00:16:49
Speaker 3: As someone who grew up playing in the 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 in terms.
00:17:11
Speaker 4: Of fultry and soulful and a little darker, you.
00:17:15
Speaker 3: Know, totally. 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 it's definitely supposed to be the sort of song that someone could picture themselves in, you know what I mean?
00:17:32
Speaker 4: And like where there's loss and hurt, it's not a party, it's a reflection.
00:17:37
Speaker 3: And he keeps that moving right, and all of it builds to this tenth pole of an album like a first major solo album called Faith.
00:17:47
Speaker 1: Absolutely one of the best albums ever.
00:17:49
Speaker 3: Wow, best albums ever?
00:17:51
Speaker 1: Correct?
00:17:52
Speaker 4: Okay, okay, that is what I will stand up.
00:17:54
Speaker 1: Wow, it's it's brilliant, brilliant.
00:17:56
Speaker 4: It's certainly you know, in my life it is one of my favorite albums.
00:18:00
Speaker 3: Can I make a guess as to why that is? Kind?
00:18:03
Speaker 1: Okay?
00:18:03
Speaker 3: Yeah, 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 aesthetic, 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 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.
00:18:34
Speaker 1: The stubble to this day, George Michael snubble.
00:18:37
Speaker 4: Like there 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 in the little cross ear ring to It's it's definitive style.
00:18:55
Speaker 3: 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 lever that is just a little too tight.
00:19:07
Speaker 1: Just an biker dude is a very polite way to put it. This is leather kink.
00:19:12
Speaker 3: This is this is a leather daddy.
00:19:16
Speaker 1: Yes. The other thing is I.
00:19:18
Speaker 4: 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.
00:19:30
Speaker 1: So much more honest and I hadn't. I never really thought about that.
00:19:35
Speaker 4: Like that's part of what's so cool about the look and the music and everything is it is a more honest person and a more honest take.
00:19:44
Speaker 3: Like you're seeing is a man who is really embracing not only like in a way he's own Gainers, 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, which is a complicated song, is a crazy it's a creepy song. But you know some of the lyrics is to do the reading again. You know, let me be your father figure. Put your tiny hand in mind.
00:20:23
Speaker 1: I will be your creature teacher.
00:20:25
Speaker 3: 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.
00:20:47
Speaker 4: This I did that now, So he's he's because I mean, this is and remember this is Michael Jackson.
00:20:54
Speaker 3: Prince is still around.
00:20:55
Speaker 7: Prince is still around, like he sweat like this man is on a man who had once had a radio show called the Sweat Hotel.
00:21:09
Speaker 3: He's beating keep sweat for sex andist among black people.
00:21:12
Speaker 1: Wait back, I don't know about the Keith Sweat Sweater.
00:21:14
Speaker 3: Keeth Sweat Sweat Hotel. That's a discussion for another time. But all you need to know is it is a call in radio show. Is a calling radio show all about sex and people calling in to keep sweat about their problems.
00:21:28
Speaker 1: How is this the first time.
00:21:29
Speaker 3: I don't know, but all you need to know for now is that George Michael beat that guy right right, and yes, it was fun totally. He's in this period where he is totally flying high and then this 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.
00:21:56
Speaker 1: How did you meet your first love?
00:21:59
Speaker 6: 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 have really fallen for anyone, and each time on first site, 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 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? I didn't 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.
00:22:46
Speaker 1: How beautiful he's such a beautiful story he is.
00:22:49
Speaker 3: He is right, he just saw a man across the hotel lobby and like the world stop and but.
00:22:56
Speaker 1: I mean, listen, have you never experienced such a thing.
00:22:58
Speaker 3: 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. But You're all I can focus on in the world, 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 Unselm and Philaper. He is Brazilian. But the version of this story where George Michael's performing a concert in rear to like thousands of people and in the crowd alone face they're not even similar.
00:23:35
Speaker 1: I thought for sure it would still be like an I.
00:23:37
Speaker 3: Mean to be fair to him, 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.
00:23:58
Speaker 1: Again, I don't know this is all inappropriate?
00:24:00
Speaker 3: You do not correct or just 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 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. And the thing about that is Onselmo, he gets sick pretty quickly. And you know, at this point we're now firmly in the nineteen nineties, right early nineties, still so like ninety one, in around ninety in around that there's still no treatment. AIDS is just finally starting 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.
00:25:17
Speaker 8: Pop culture, basketball star Magic Johnson revealed he'd been infected with HIV during heterosexual sex.
00:25:24
Speaker 3: HIV virus that I have attained, I will have to retire from the Lakers.
00:25:32
Speaker 8: AIDS clinics were inundated with calls for days afterwards.
00:25:35
Speaker 3: Which opens up a whole world for a lot of people, like massive, massive world changing thing, just because up until then the HIV is known as the gay man's disease in the white gay man's disease one hundred and a lot of people. I don't want to say okay with it, but there, okay, yeah, okay with that absolutely.
00:25:58
Speaker 4: And also Magic Johnson is probably one of the most famous people on the planet.
00:26:01
Speaker 3: Right away, maybe the most famous sports person other than Michael Jordan. And literally that same month, that's say, November, Freddie Mercury dies from pneumonia after having battled AIDS.
00:26:15
Speaker 4: 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, of a counterpoint to George Michael. I mean, Freddy mrcury was so clearly gay. You know, what George Michael became when Faith came out was kind of a version of what Freddy Mercury had been since the.
00:26:49
Speaker 3: Seventh oh so sort of just like sexual, little teething very much himself without at let saying anything.
00:26:56
Speaker 4: Yeah, and that fim masculine, like tight clothes and like really associated with being a gay man of like that era's gay culture.
00:27:06
Speaker 3: And you know, it's interesting that you you point out that's 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 barthroom 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.
00:27:31
Speaker 4: That makes total sense, a massive hero of his that makes total sense.
00:27:37
Speaker 3: 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 a specific benefit concert and awareness concert in UK history. Do you want to stand in for Freddie Mercury?
00:28:04
Speaker 1: I didn't know about this.
00:28:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, did he do it? 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 of it for you here, wheeze. So he's singing this song Somebody to Love, is obviously a song about someone 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 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, 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 he thinks is one of his best performances, and what he says about it, he said, my subconscious knew I was singing a Freddie Mercury song after his passing in front of my lover.
00:30:09
Speaker 1: Oh man, you're gonna make me cry.
00:30:11
Speaker 3: 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, Rosie 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 going to take all that knowledge, all that subconscious, eating enough music from that group and sing one of Freddie Murcury's songs to the world and Selma was there and I was dying inside and my whole 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 that that performance, perhaps the most well known of his career, was sung to his lover he was dying.
00:30:57
Speaker 4: Oh my god, it's so moving, and I mean, one his this is I'm glad that. One of the things about that performance that we could get to in this conversation is.
00:31:09
Speaker 1: George Michael is an in fucking incredible singer.
00:31:11
Speaker 4: Yeah, like even from the beginning that no, when he's like some bad I mean, I'm not even gonna try it.
00:31:18
Speaker 1: Like, it's so beautiful. And if you've ever heard.
00:31:22
Speaker 4: Like cuts, you know of these of his songs where they've stripped everything out and just left it to the vocals.
00:31:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, his his voice is angelic.
00:31:31
Speaker 4: Yes, So it's this angelic prayer that he's describing, you know, while his partner is dying and there's no treatment, you know, it's a certain death at that time.
00:31:45
Speaker 1: What an incredible thing. Yeah, what an incredible thing.
00:31:48
Speaker 3: He's carrying all of that and he feels he's sad, but also seems so free because he's getting miss Arena is packed to the gills with thousands of people. The sort of feedback must have been incredible. I can't imagine.
00:32:04
Speaker 4: I didn't know about this concert, uh and and I didn't know about his love and.
00:32:11
Speaker 1: It's so sad.
00:32:13
Speaker 3: Yeah, but there's a thing that happens next, which I feel like is him working through that sadness in a real way as sadness that you know, as we've talked about, so many people are experiencing at this moment in time, so many of men experiencing. And Someoneo's illness progresses to that concert, and George Michael is not making music, right, He's just sort of like this is the 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 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.
00:33:03
Speaker 1: Make me some money?
00:33:04
Speaker 3: Fucking which, of course pisses George michael Off, And I'm just gonna pay a clip of him talking about that. In two thousand and seven, when you just.
00:33:13
Speaker 6: 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, 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.
00:33:48
Speaker 3: I really did.
00:33:50
Speaker 4: It's really enraging, you know, I couldn't and you kind of hear the region his ways there and I with him. You know, two hundred million dollars, he's major. You can't let this man great totally.
00:34:00
Speaker 3: 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 were calling him like the F word. Of course, so George takes all of that anger and he's looking through his contract and he's like, you know what, these guys are not allowing me enough freedom 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 this time. He makes a comment that I have to say is 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.
00:35:03
Speaker 1: This is a choice.
00:35:04
Speaker 4: I don't know why these artists, how many artists have felt like they.
00:35:07
Speaker 1: Needed you know, I mean, this is a Kaye.
00:35:11
Speaker 3: But the difference is Kanye is at least black bro at least, but it does not that comment does not super go down well for a white guy 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 nobody really knows what he's dealing with behind the scenes. And then, of course, and someone dies inevitably, which is brutal. 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, 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 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 I.
00:36:42
Speaker 1: Barely remember it exactly. I'm a fan, you.
00:36:45
Speaker 3: 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 the case in nineteen ninety eight.
00:37:09
Speaker 1: I know where this is.
00:37:10
Speaker 3: Sclet 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 your face. Yeah yeah, I want you to picture it a ninety 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.
00:37:56
Speaker 1: Oh, come on, a man, Yes it happens to this game.
00:38:00
Speaker 4: But certainly, you know, going for decades cruising cultures right now, like certainly game in But I think where people have also, 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.
00:38:18
Speaker 1: Into a time where that's what you enjoyed to do. They're called public sex environments. Is the public health word for it.
00:38:24
Speaker 3: Wow? Okay?
00:38:26
Speaker 1: And park restrooms.
00:38:28
Speaker 3: Well, in this public sex environment, a man approaches George Michael on kind of like a listen, I'll show you man, 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 massive thing. One headline from the time was 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 in this very yeah, public way, this huge way. Here is how UBC reported it at the time.
00:39:11
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:39:12
Speaker 9: 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.
00:39:25
Speaker 10: Next month, 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 in elude.
00:39:39
Speaker 3: Act, Engaging in elude Act go.
00:39:42
Speaker 1: Right to hell. That so I have to say something, yes, one, you.
00:39:46
Speaker 4: Know, at this time, and it started happening again today. 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 entrap mit stings on gay men in public sex environments, which is obs or.
00:40:09
Speaker 1: Use of public money. And it was a really big deal.
00:40:13
Speaker 4: I mean, because this was it was still illegal period time gay sex.
00:40:17
Speaker 1: Period sodomy was illegal.
00:40:18
Speaker 4: 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, it was an opportunity to sort of rail against gay people.
00:40:31
Speaker 1: Look at how like depraved we are, and so.
00:40:37
Speaker 4: Yes, George became a joke. I have to say for us too, like in this moment, how funny, 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. Who wouldn't want to George's dead, you know, like those kinds of things, but also like.
00:41:10
Speaker 1: Just a very relatable outrage, you know. So he's a punchline.
00:41:17
Speaker 4: 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.
00:41:27
Speaker 3: Right in this humiliation right right right. And you know it's interesting to say that because I feel like at this time, right, he spent twenty years in the public eye. 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 he was gay. He could have come out, for examples, that he was gay after his lover died and told the world about him somewhere. He didn't. But he's faced 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 host by this guy, Michael Parkinson. And I'm going to play a clip it's Michael Parkinson just talking about that decision and about the event that led up to George. Michael sort of like meeting this moment you.
00:42:20
Speaker 11: Child the decision. I think twenty four hours after all this was happening with a helicopters and news crews. All I said, you decided to go to a restaurant. Didn't you just make your public declaration? Tell me what happened with you?
00:42:33
Speaker 6: Well, I suppose I just I was. 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 at 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, I react against it. And my reaction to this was I'm not going to be like another one of these people that's peaking out from behind their neck curtains. A month later, 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? What do you want to reconstruction?
00:43:16
Speaker 1: What is it?
00:43:17
Speaker 3: You know?
00:43:18
Speaker 6: 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 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. In fact, someone had said something 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.
00:43:47
Speaker 1: He's just the biggest.
00:43:48
Speaker 6: And I thought, I like that.
00:43:53
Speaker 1: I love it. I love him.
00:43:55
Speaker 3: I love him. He just bodies it right, like yeah.
00:43:59
Speaker 4: Like supposed shame, you know, like even in the middle of telling that story, he was careful supposed shame, yes, you know.
00:44:07
Speaker 3: 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 national television now instant when I think George Michael at this point had gotten to a point where he was sliding a little bit out of a public consciousness, like as 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 happened in the bathroom.
00:44:51
Speaker 1: It's spectacular.
00:44:52
Speaker 3: It's spectacular. Yeah, It's like cop costumes and disco bulls are involved.
00:45:00
Speaker 4: George is in a cop cossume. He is in a cop cop and it's like tight fitted and I mean, there's no more win. Can it be a gay obviously, you know, but like it is full on like cop fetish, you know, which is a great comment on like, well, why you in the bathroom with me this cop? Like if you so put out back penal code twenty fifty seven A or whatever the hell it was, like why are you in here with your dicta exactly?
00:45:27
Speaker 3: But as much as that video and that song generates buzz, you know, and it's almost like nineties reality kind of way lodge in the United States, his biggest market. It's essentially the end of his musical career.
00:45:43
Speaker 4: 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 beg. It's not the beginning of him being a gay kind but it's like a really big moment in the story of him as an icon for our generation 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, right, You're right, it was the end of his music career.
00:46:31
Speaker 1: I don't think about.
00:46:32
Speaker 3: That, right, And I mean, just to be clear, like he's still making music, right. There are literal songs, big songs that 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 duet with Mary J. Blige, and like it really didn't get much radio play in the US. I think it's just like by the early two thousands, I think that gap between the people who like sie 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 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.
00:47:34
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:47:34
Speaker 3: And so he's arrested in two thousand and eight in a public bathroom, but this time not necessarily from loud 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, this over sex, drugged out has been.
00:47:57
Speaker 1: I mean, he ultimately dies of a drug over this.
00:47:59
Speaker 3: 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, the way he's covered, he's not covered as a person who is dealing with probably a decent amount 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 slash as is this thing that no one's really talking about as a thing that happened in America or the UK. It's a thing that is happening somewhere in Africa basically, you know what I mean, And no one's to talk about just talk about it there. We're just kind of ignoring. And I want to be careful about the use of we, but I feel like there are a decent amount of people who are ignoring kind of what's just happened.
00:49:04
Speaker 4: I was at that time spending an enormous amount of my time arguing you're all the nor Is and you need to stop. So I you know, absolutely, I'm also when you describe the caricatured version of you know, this drugged out gay man got drugged out over sext gay man, it's also the caricature of gay.
00:49:30
Speaker 1: Men at that time, totally period, right, And it's interesting to me to think about.
00:49:37
Speaker 4: That's that he becomes emblematic of that idea of a gay man to the broader culture and to me and the queer people in my world. You know, he is emblematic of 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 to 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.
00:50:19
Speaker 1: And for me, all of his.
00:50:25
Speaker 4: 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 he got over all of that 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.
00:50:50
Speaker 3: Yeah, go to hell.
00:50:53
Speaker 4: For me and for us, he's a symbol of our perseverance totally.
00:50:57
Speaker 3: That the sort of law just sort of mena thing 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, guilt about that. Uh.
00:51:10
Speaker 1: I hope that's more optimistic than me. I hope y'all got guilt about it.
00:51:17
Speaker 4: 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.
00:51:29
Speaker 3: Well, thank you, thank you for going on that journey with me I'm taking. So I know what, Johnny, you were baffled, you know what I mean, you know, but I learned.
00:51:38
Speaker 1: So much the 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, of course.
00:51:46
Speaker 3: So now I want to know Office Joey. We've been on. Where we going next week?
00:51:51
Speaker 1: Okay? So what I'm going to do is. I'm going to play you a.
00:51:56
Speaker 4: Few clips, okay, of the person that I'm going to introduce you to.
00:52:00
Speaker 1: I have somebody really fun.
00:52:02
Speaker 3: Okay, and and I think you'll know who this is.
00:52:05
Speaker 1: But let's go. Let's see. Let me start with this clip, right.
00:52:08
Speaker 12: I get up 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 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.
00:52:23
Speaker 4: Okay, so tell people if you know what it is.
00:52:27
Speaker 3: Whoever is loves funny stuff, okay.
00:52:30
Speaker 1: Loves funny stuff. This is a comedian and black was being cool.
00:52:33
Speaker 12: I remember it wasn't black in those days because black.
00:52:35
Speaker 1: Wasn't beautiful yet. Remember you couldn't even say black, you call it do black.
00:52:42
Speaker 4: It's funny, it's funny, and that's the voice is so iconic, like you have to people know this by this play.
00:52:48
Speaker 1: He's a black comedian. Though here's the last one.
00:52:51
Speaker 6: Do you find that the bigger you get, the further way you get from like the street and therefore the hundred it is to be funny.
00:52:58
Speaker 1: Still.
00:53:00
Speaker 12: Yes, well it's not harder, but it's just difficult to be in the streets if you have some money.
00:53:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
00:53:07
Speaker 1: People are rushing up to us.
00:53:09
Speaker 3: Now.
00:53:09
Speaker 1: It's not there. There's no reason to be there anymore.
00:53:11
Speaker 3: I cannot wait for this episode. Oh my god.
00:53:14
Speaker 1: There's no reason to be in the streets. If you got somebody, that's a truth, that is the truth. All right, Well that's next.
00:53:21
Speaker 3: Week, all right, until next time, Until next time. Big Lives is a production of BBC Studios and Pushkin Industries. Is hosted by me Manuel Jochi and Kay Wright. Our team over at BBC Studios includes producer Emma Reverel, archive producer Samir Chowdery, sound design by Melvin Rickerby. 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 Goryardo, producer Daphne Chen. Our legal advisor is Jake Flanagan, and our marketing team includes Morgan Ratner and Jordan McMillan.
