George Michael R.I.P.

Wow, love it.

he was definitely much loved in his home village of Goring. My wife and I have been walking the Thames path and found ourselves there a few weeks ago, on what would have been George's 60th birthday. In all the pubs and the village hall they were playing his music and selling T-shirts and other memorabilia bearing his image. I had been in George's local previously, for a work meeting with someone who lived there who said that George was a regular and was treated like any other customer although he was "huge now". When I raised an eyebrow at this, I was told that he now weighed 20st (127kg) and when we left, he pointed down the street to where George's house was and explained that George would always get in his Range Rover and drive the short distance to get there, barely 200 metres. That was in early December 2016. George died at Christmas that year :-(

that demo tape from the wham doc...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRi53xDDgTA

raises so many banal questions... how did andrew learn to play funk guitar? was george operating a drum machine? how'd they afford it? who's on bass? how did george learn to produce on the portastudio? where is the full tape???

The answers to your questions are found here:

https://medium.com/@paulmex/pressing-the-record-button-on-pop-history-4d62b4744410

Incredible! Thanks!

From a Neil Tennant interview:

I first met him in 1982. I interviewed him and Andrew (Ridgley) for Smash Hits and then the last time we saw him it was exactly 30 year later, at the Olympic closing ceremony. We were in these Portakabin-y dressing rooms and the person next to us is playing music unbelievably loudly. I said to our tour manager: ‘Can you go and ask him to turn that down, please?’ And suddenly the door flings open and George, who we hadn’t seen since he’d been in jail, comes in and says: ‘Did you just tell me to turn my music down?’ I said: ‘Yes, I did.’ And he says: ‘Give me a hug.’ And then he went back to his dressing room, put his stereo on and played West End Girls – loudly.”

Ridgley’s RRHOF induction speech for GM was great.

<3

Michael was a massive PSB fan. Chris Heath's first PSB book notes how in 1989 GM hung out by the sound booth pumping his fist in the air to "Left to My Own Devices" singing every word.