"He looked a bit of a wimp in those days, because he had these great big glasses. Huge steel rimmed glasses, and lots of curly hair. He was very very plump, and had one eyebrow going right across. He plucks the middle of it now, but it used to go right across like a pair of seagulls wings." ~Andrew, 1975~
"Andy was one of the loud ones. I was put next to him. That was when I stopped being a good student. He looked pretty much the same then. That's one of the ways that he's influenced me; he took a pride in the way that he looked, and I didn't, I was in such a state. Years later when he went to college, he went through that trendy-college-boy-phase. You know, how it was more important what he turned up wearing than what he did when he got there." ~George~
"One of the main reasons we became friends was music. He was far more into it than I was. We used to go through the charts together. Elton John was out favourite then, but we liked Queen too. George had a tape recorder at his house and we used to go over there and thrash things out on his drum kit and an old acoustic guitar" ~Andrew~
"Mum had given me a tape recorder as a present. As I got older dad was against the idea, but mum began to realise that I might just have something and started to sympathize with me. Even when I was young I wanted to be a singer, but mum and dad wanted me to be a lawyer, or something like that. Mums greatest ambition was to see her children do well." ~George~
"I think my parents thought it was all Andrew's fault that I wasn't concerned about school anymore. I don't think that they wanted to come to terms with the fact that it was my decision as much as Andrew's." ~George~
"By the third year we'd obviously given up. My parents gave up trying to exert any influence over me. They knew I was totally disinterested in school. When we first met I used to go round to Yog's (his nickname for George) house, and we used to make tapes from the radio stations. We used to incorporate the agony hour, they they're hysterical. They're like the Monty Phyton tapes." ~Andrew~
"When we started going out it was to discos. We'd always been into funk, and to begin with it was really good, but then it went all jazz funky, everything was mellow and laid back. So we turned to the next thing which was vital, young and energetic, and that was ska." ~Andrew~
"I was a DJ, it was, my, my first, I think my first performances consisted of, well I have to say this, every night just before, because basically it was a dinner-dance restaurant, and it was very very hip. You know, dinner-dance, and I was allowed to play the occasional, ah, vaguely disco records between 17 requests for the Birdie Dance, you know. And... I had to... just when people had finished, and it was kind of winding down the kind of dinner thing, if you’d never been there before you didn’t know there was a DJ. Because I was stuck behind a big post pillar-thing. You weren’t supposed to see me. Which obviously did wonders for my confidence as well. And, and, and every night I would have to say: (makes a funny voice) "Good evening ladies and gentlemen, I hope you’ve enjoyed your meal, ahm, welcome to the Bel Air restaurant... We hope you will party with a little dancing." and it was just so awful! So awful! And, and my hands used to get clammy and sweaty every night before I had to do this because I knew the moment I stopped talking all the restaurant noises, all the clinking of glasses, all the cuts, would just go *shoom! * Cause everyone would be like (George looks around him, pretending to be one of the guests)"what’s that noise?" It was every night, it was the same thing, and I was, and I was absolutely hopeless at it. I have no idea how I’m able, or was almost immediately able to sing to thousands of thousands of people when I literally just used to shudder over the thought of talking to these few dinner-dance people." ~George~
"I was on my way to DJ at the Bel Air when I wrote "Careless Whisper". I have always written on buses, trains and in cars. These days it's planes--but for me writing has always been about boredom and movement. It always happens on journeys. With "Careless Whisper" I remember EXACTLY where it first came to me, where I came up with the sax line. I can remember very vaguely where I was when I wrote things after Wham! got off the ground--but with "Careless Whisper" I remember exactly the time and place. I know it sounds really weird and a kind of romantic thing to say--but I remember exactly where it happened, where I was sitting on the bus, how I continued and everything. I remember I was handing the money over to the guy on the bus and I got this line, the sax line: der-der-der-der, der-der-der-der. Then he moved away and I continued writing it in my head. I wrote it totally in my head. I worked on it for about three months in my head..." ~George~
"Getting up every morning became exciting, because George would come over to my house and we'd spend hours trying out our material. People would tell us that we were attempting the impossible, but it was the only thing that kept us going. When all you've got to do with yourself is wander each week down to the labour exchange or whatever or cash in our cheque, you soon start to feel despondent. We reached the stage where we weren't prepared to sit around on street corners watching the world go by. Yet I can sympathise with young people who do just that." ~Andrew~
"Wham Rap" was a tongue in cheek look at something that the boys knew about from their own experience - unemployment. "There are two very strong standpoints in it", George commented, "One was the chorus which said basically, don't put me down because I haven't got a job, and it doesn't matter anyway as long as I'm being conservative with my time. The other half said in the verses, isn't it marvellous to be on the dole, and made out that it's hip; cool soul guys got no money, but you're still really cool. One half of it takes the piss out of being on the dole, the idea that it's good, when it's not, and the other half is saying you should be on the dole rather than have a s**t job." ~George~
"We weren't telling people not to go out and get jobs, the jobs just aren't there. All we were doing was making a joke about something which happens to be a fact. We didn't set out to write a political song, we did it because it was relevant to what we were going through at the time." ~Andrew~
"This was the time that I changed my name. I knew I was going to have to change it but they started pressing "Wham Rap!" and I still hadn't chosen a name. So there are about twenty-thousand pressings of that first record with my original name on, with Panos on the label. At that stage I knew I would have to choose something. I don't remember how long I had been trying to chose but I was sitting in David Austin's living room and I said - I like your dad's name, Michael Mortimer. I really like Michael and my dad's brother is called Michael. Also I had a friend from school, a Greek kid, whose name was Michael. So - what about George Michael? I thought it was a nice name. It rolled off the tongue and I didn't have to give up the Greekness totally. I didn't drop the Greek thing entirely, although most people ended up thinking that it was a Jewish name. I still get called George Michaels to this day by so many people. It's like Bruce Sprintstein. And David said - I like that name, I want to be... But that was when I decided it and immediately I was convinced it sounded right and I didn't have to think about it at all." ~George~
"My name is Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou. To the outside world I am and always will be known as something else, but it's not my name. As a boy, my biggest fear was that my huge ambitions would stay just out of reach of the child I saw in the mirror. So I created a man (in the image of a great friend), that the world could love if they chose to, someone who would realize my dreams, and make me a star. I called him George Michael, and for almost a decade me worked his arse off for me, and did as he was told. He was very good at his job, perhaps a little too good. Anyway, shortly before I was approached with the idea of this book, I decided that his services were no longer required. He went quickly, he didn't make a fuss. I know many of you will think it was a strange thing for me to do, but believe me, he really had to go. And if you can't think why, then read on.
P.S. I think I may hang on to the name, though." ~George~
