transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] Hi guys, this is Emmanuel. It has been a very long time. I'm here today because I have a brand new podcast out. It's called Big Lives, and the way it works, each episode, me and my co-host Kai Wright, try to figure out some of the questions and messy feelings that we've always had about some of our biggest cultural icons. And we do so every week by taking you on a journey through the BBC's vast archives. Like, basically anything recorded on TV or radio on the BBC in the last 100 plus years. And we get into all kinds of interesting moments that you might not have seen or heard before, or in some cases some really wild-house stuff that you've never seen because it was never aired. And we just have this unbelievable tape from all kinds of people, from Muhammad Ali to David Bowie to Amy Winehouse. Anyways, I'm going to stop yapping now, and I'm just going to play one of these episodes for you. I really hope you like it, and if you do, head over to the Big Lives feed and subscribe. Okay, let's get to it. From BBC Studios and Pushkin Industries, this is Big Lives. I'm Emmanuel Dzotsi.

Speaker 2:
[01:13] I'm Kai Wright.

Speaker 1:
[01:14] 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 the BBC has been interviewing and covering cultural figures for over a hundred years, and they still have the tapes. What do you think is the stock caricature image of George Michael?

Speaker 2:
[02:06] I think most people the stock image is like weird, washed up pop star. And if you ask most gay men, you would probably get like fabulous diva.

Speaker 1:
[02:21] Yeah, I think that's accurate. 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 80s and 90s. 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, like, 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 of decades of his life, really, when I was growing up, he was this figure that was just kind of like, I feel like the diva and ridiculousness parts of him are what we focused on. He was kind of a joke, frankly.

Speaker 2:
[03:02] It hurts to hear.

Speaker 1:
[03:03] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[03:04] That that's what y'all thought of George.

Speaker 1:
[03:06] I know. And I hate to say it, 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 and 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 years 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.

Speaker 2:
[03:54] Oh, wow. All right. I'm ready to talk about this.

Speaker 1:
[03:56] All right. Well, let's do it. 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 all 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 1960s in London, Georgios Kyriakos Panagiotou. I've totally messed up that name.

Speaker 2:
[04:25] You can see why they did the name change for the star.

Speaker 1:
[04:27] 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 this first clip. It's him in 1986 talking about just kind of his desire to be famous.

Speaker 3:
[04:50] I had very, very strong ambitions from a very early age, but they were totally unfocused, totally unfocused. I mean, as far as I was concerned, when I was seven years old, I was convinced that one day I was going to be a pop star. 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 I was going to be a pop star. I don't know how.

Speaker 2:
[05:10] This is my George Michael, okay, Emmanuel? Like a seven-year-old who's like, I don't know about talent or anything, but I'm going to be famous.

Speaker 1:
[05:17] Right. What you're seeing is the image of a little boy singing and dancing in front of his mirror. Like that's the deal.

Speaker 2:
[05:23] Hair flowing, you know, all of it.

Speaker 1:
[05:25] Hair brushing hand. Well, okay. So there's that one. And then there's this completely different origin story. He tells us a good 30 years after this first one on a British interview show that's really famous called Desert Island Discs.

Speaker 4:
[05:39] Something strange happened the age of about eight. I had a head injury and I know it sounds bizarre and unlikely, but it was quite a bad bang. I had it stitched up and stuff, but all my interests changed. Everything changed in six months. I had been obsessed with insects and creepy crawlies. I used to get up at five o'clock in the morning and go out into this field behind our garden and collect insects before everyone else got up. And suddenly all I wanted to know about was music. It just seemed a very, very strange thing. And I have a theory that maybe it was something to do with this accident because they had this whole left brain, right brain thing. Nobody in my family seemed to notice, but I became absolutely obsessed with music and everything changed after that.

Speaker 2:
[06:25] It's so ridiculous. Like a bang on the head is so absurd.

Speaker 1:
[06:30] And what's funny about it to me is he's definitely thought about this myth he's creating. The left brain, right brain, find a science to justify.

Speaker 2:
[06:39] He's looked up stuff. I mean, listen though, you know, rule number one for a diva, I mean, I know I have to do not correct their origin stories. I just do not like point out inconsistencies in their myth making. It is your job to nod and smile and say, oh yes, that's exactly right. That's how it went down. I know for sure you're totally right.

Speaker 1:
[07:01] Honestly, you are, you're just revealing how few divas I have in my life, Kai. I need more. Anyways, back to George Michael. So right from the beginning or later, however you want to believe, he develops this like love.

Speaker 2:
[07:13] At seven or eight.

Speaker 1:
[07:14] Exactly. He develops his love of music. By the time he's a teenager, he starts a band with one of his best friends at school, this guy whose name is Andrew Ridgely, and it's just the two of them. They get their first major record deal, the two of them, and this band becomes known as Wham.

Speaker 2:
[07:33] Wham has an exclamation mark on the end.

Speaker 1:
[07:34] Yes, that is very important. The exclamation mark is there because, I don't know, that group was known for this very, very positive, quote unquote, bubble gum pop.

Speaker 2:
[07:44] I think that is a fair description of it. You know, disposable. It's literally a piece of bubble gum. And it's, you know, the first album I remember seeing, it was pink with, you know, Wham is in like bubble, actual bubble letters, you know.

Speaker 1:
[07:57] Exactly, exactly.

Speaker 2:
[07:58] So, you know, you think of it as like, you dance to it once and that's the end.

Speaker 1:
[08:02] I feel like the best way to describe it is actually just look at one of their most famous songs, which is called Wake Me Up Before You Go Go. And I'm just going to read the lyrics, just straight up.

Speaker 2:
[08:13] I object to this already, but go ahead.

Speaker 1:
[08:17] Wake me up before you go go. Don't leave me hanging on like a yo-yo.

Speaker 2:
[08:24] This is not fair. This is not fair.

Speaker 1:
[08:27] And I caveat all of that by saying, yes, it is just as ridiculous as it sounds, and yet that song is a certifiable bop.

Speaker 2:
[08:34] It's spectacular. Like, you can play it two day and there is passion in the voice. You want to wake up and go to the go-go with him.

Speaker 1:
[08:47] Okay. 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 that I feel like it's such a time capsule of that moment in pop music, right? Like, they are putting out this happy-go-lucky pop while also looking pretty effeminate. You know what I mean?

Speaker 2:
[09:11] Certainly him.

Speaker 1:
[09:12] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[09:12] Certainly George, you know. I mean, blown out hair with blonde tips, you know, and all their photos are like airbrushed in that 80s style where they look like they, you know, they're twinks in today's language, but they look like femme twinks.

Speaker 1:
[09:27] 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? Just 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 effeminate people, but I have to say, I don't know that any of those guys wore short shorts the way that Andrew Ridgely and George Michael did in some of their music videos.

Speaker 2:
[09:59] Because they weren't as gay?

Speaker 1:
[10:01] Exactly. Like, unlike a lot of the people in the 80s who were just sort of being effeminate, 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 an open question.

Speaker 2:
[10:24] No, I mean, you would have never, just the ability to deny what was 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 have occurred to you. It wouldn't have occurred to the average consumer that George Michael was a gay man. I don't know what adult gay men were thinking at the time, but in the mainstream culture, no way. What if they would have thought he was gay?

Speaker 1:
[11:09] Right, right. And obviously back then, it was not necessarily good for his life or his career to come out. I actually just want to play you this clip of him talking about that period and his identity. He did this interview much later, in 2007.

Speaker 4:
[11:24] Yeah, when I was 19, 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. By 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 19, that's as far as you think. You look at your parents and you say, oh, don't tell your dad. My god, your dad will hit the roof, and then very soon after that, everything changed. AIDS was just not something I was prepared to bring into my parents' life. I was too young and too immature to know that I was sacrificing as much as I was.

Speaker 2:
[12:02] That's hard to listen to, honestly. Well, one, I hadn't realized how intentionally closeted he was in 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 AIDS stuff over top of it, at the time, just the terror of that virus.

Speaker 1:
[12:50] A hundred percent.

Speaker 2:
[12:50] And if he's talking about the early 80s, it's also a time, remember, we didn't even know. There was so much, yeah, we didn't know.

Speaker 1:
[12:58] I mean, literally, in a lot of quarters, people did not call it AIDS. Like we didn't even have a name for it. And yeah, like in the early 80s, AIDS is this thing, right? That's just like coming on the scene, it's exploding and activists in the US, gay activists are desperately trying to just like wake up the public to what's happening. Like just when I was looking through the thing I was struck by was like, take a song like Wake Me Up Before You Go Go, that 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 was a nurse, who came forward with this illness that he had. He had complications from AIDS. And that was sort of like this size moment in the public consciousness about, oh, there's this disease and gay men are dying from it.

Speaker 2:
[13:49] Well, first off, I'm just connecting the dots between the beginning of AIDS activism and wham. And even in my own life, just thinking about looking at that album cover and looking at that bubblegum pop alongside this epidemic. And it was a time in certainly at least in the United States where there was so much desire for optimism. 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. And along comes this epidemic. And to think about him as a 19-year-old boy, that sucks.

Speaker 1:
[14:36] It sucks. Just the weight of that on someone, you can hear it like between the lines of like what he's saying. I just want to play you just another clip from that same interview.

Speaker 4:
[14:44] So I'll try to understand firstly, how much I love my family. And that AIDS was the predominant feature of being gay in the 80s and early 90s. As far as any parent was concerned. And my mother was still alive. And every single day would have been a nightmare for her thinking about what I might be subjected to.

Speaker 2:
[15:02] And that's legit. You know, and it's interesting when he's saying this stuff to the modern ear, it might sound cowardly too, right? Because we went through this whole period, you know, in the 80s and 90s 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, act up slogan was silence equals death. Right. And at the same time, he's a 19 year old boy, you know, and being gay and and this deadly disease is synonymous. And I just I have so much empathy for him carrying that.

Speaker 1:
[15:46] And so much honestly about his experience in Wham! and what comes next is his transition from the scared boy at 19 to the man that he's gonna become and the man that he wants to be given everything that's happening. And that's what we're gonna talk about after the break. Welcome back to Big Lives. Today, we're talking about the one and only George Michael. By the late 1980s, George Michael is kind of done with the bubblegum poppiness of Wham.

Speaker 2:
[16:24] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[16:24] Right? He releases sort of almost like a tester single, just to test the waters of solo stardom that Andrew Ridgely helps co-write, but he's not in, called Careless Whisper. A bona fide classic.

Speaker 2:
[16:40] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[16:42] Which I have to say, as someone who grew up playing 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 of like-

Speaker 2:
[17:05] Sultry and soulful and a little darker.

Speaker 1:
[17:09] Totally. There's a line in there about how his guilty feet ain't got no rhythm. Yes. I'm never going to dance again, not the way I danced with you. It's definitely supposed to be the sort of song that someone could picture themselves in. You know what I mean?

Speaker 2:
[17:26] And like where there's loss and hurt, it's not a party, it's a reflection.

Speaker 1:
[17:30] 100%. And he keeps that moving, right? And all of it builds to this tent pole of an album, like a first major solo album called Faith.

Speaker 2:
[17:42] Absolutely one of the best albums ever.

Speaker 1:
[17:43] Wow. Best albums ever.

Speaker 2:
[17:45] Correct.

Speaker 1:
[17:46] Okay. Okay.

Speaker 2:
[17:47] That was what I will stand on.

Speaker 1:
[17:48] Wow.

Speaker 2:
[17:49] It's brilliant. It's brilliant work. And certainly, in my life, it is one of my favorite albums.

Speaker 1:
[17:54] Can I make a guess as to why that is, Kai?

Speaker 2:
[17:57] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[17:57] Yeah. One, the music is fantastic. It is. 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. He is a man. He is a man. I'm talking, he goes from sort of, as you said, this kind of twink in the 80s to a muscle man. He goes from being clean shaven to having just right amount of stubble.

Speaker 2:
[18:29] To this day, the George Michael stubble, all of y'all are out here trying to do the George Michael stubble. And the dangling cross earring became the thing for many generations later, young gay men, of like, can I have the stubble and the little cross earring? It's definitive style.

Speaker 1:
[18:49] 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. And the leather of that is just a little too tight, just enough.

Speaker 2:
[19:01] Biker dude is a very polite way to put it. This is Leather King.

Speaker 5:
[19:06] This is like, he is at the eagle.

Speaker 1:
[19:07] This is a genuine leather daddy.

Speaker 2:
[19:10] Yes. The other thing is, I will say, I hadn't thought about this, but having listened to you, like thinking through him, it also, part of what makes it such a great album for me is it feels so much more honest. And I hadn't, I never really thought about that. 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.

Speaker 1:
[19:38] Like insofar as what you're seeing is a man who is really embracing, not only like in a way, his own gayness, 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.

Speaker 2:
[19:55] Certainly.

Speaker 1:
[19:56] Like there was a song called Father Figure, which is a complicated song. It's a creepy song. But some of the lyrics is to do the reading again. You know, let me be your father figure. Put your tiny hand in mine.

Speaker 2:
[20:17] I will be your creature teacher.

Speaker 1:
[20:19] Anything you have in mind.

Speaker 2:
[20:21] Woo, chow.

Speaker 6:
[20:24] George.

Speaker 1:
[20:25] It works. It is the biggest selling album in America in 1988. Faith actually becomes the first album by a white solo artist to hit number one on the Billboard Top Black Albums chart.

Speaker 2:
[20:41] This I did not know. And remember, this is Michael Jackson and...

Speaker 1:
[20:48] Prince is Still Around, Whitney's Still Around. Like...

Speaker 2:
[20:52] Keith Sweat. You know, like...

Speaker 1:
[20:55] This man is beating Keith Sweat on the... A man who once had a radio show called The Sweat Hotel. He's beating Keith Sweat for sexiness among black people. Way back up.

Speaker 2:
[21:06] I don't know about the Keith Sweat Sweat Hotel.

Speaker 1:
[21:08] Keith Sweat Sweat Hotel. That's a discussion for another time, but all you need to know is it is a call-in radio show.

Speaker 2:
[21:15] Shut up.

Speaker 1:
[21:15] It's a call-in radio show all about sex and people calling in to Keith Sweat about their problems.

Speaker 2:
[21:22] How is this the first time I've heard of this?

Speaker 1:
[21:24] I don't know, but all you need to know for now is that George Michael beat that guy.

Speaker 2:
[21:29] Right, right. Beat that.

Speaker 1:
[21:31] And yet, 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 2007.

Speaker 7:
[21:50] How did you meet your first love?

Speaker 4:
[21:53] Well, what happened was actually, it was a strange, strange thing. I don't know if people will relate to this, but there have only been three times in my life that I've really fallen for anyone. And each time, on first sight, I had something as clicked in my head that told me I was going to know that person. And it happened with Anselmo across a lobby. So I 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 gonna 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.

Speaker 2:
[22:40] How beautiful. He's such a beautiful storyteller.

Speaker 4:
[22:43] He is.

Speaker 1:
[22:44] He is, right? He just saw a man across the hotel lobby, and the world stopped.

Speaker 2:
[22:50] But, I mean, listen, have you never experienced such a thing?

Speaker 1:
[22:52] I have experienced such a thing.

Speaker 2:
[22:53] I have experienced such a thing.

Speaker 1:
[22:54] For sure, for sure. Where you were just like, I don't know how you're gonna matter to me, but you are gonna matter.

Speaker 2:
[22:59] But you're all I can focus on in the world right now.

Speaker 1:
[23:01] 100%. In true George Michael fashion, there is another variation of this story. Which is that he meets, and just to say, the man he meets, his name is Anselmo Fulepa. He is Brazilian. There's a version of this story where George Michael is performing a concert in Rio to like thousands of people and in the crowd, a lone face.

Speaker 2:
[23:25] They're not even similar.

Speaker 1:
[23:27] Not even similar.

Speaker 2:
[23:28] It's not, I thought for sure it would still be like in a hotel lobby.

Speaker 1:
[23:31] I mean, to be fair to him, to be fair to him, I do think in that version of the story, he later sees him again in a hotel lobby. But the way he tells it is in that similar kind of way where it's like, I saw this man in the crowd, everyone else is jibing to my music, but this man is serious.

Speaker 5:
[23:49] Wow, George.

Speaker 1:
[23:51] Yes, yes.

Speaker 2:
[23:52] Again, this is all inappropriate. You do not correct Adivah's origin story like this.

Speaker 1:
[23:57] I just like both stories, okay? I just love both stories. And the main thing you need to take away from this lore 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, Anselmo will be diagnosed with AIDS. 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 Anselmo, he gets sick pretty quickly. And, you know, at this point, we're now firmly in the 1990s, right?

Speaker 2:
[24:50] But early 90s, right?

Speaker 1:
[24:51] Early 90s still. So like, 91, 99, like in around 90s, 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 pop culture.

Speaker 6:
[25:12] Basketball star Magic Johnson revealed he'd been infected with HIV during heterosexual sex.

Speaker 8:
[25:18] The HIV virus that I have attained, I will have to retire from the Lakers.

Speaker 6:
[25:26] AIDS clinics were inundated with calls for days afterwards.

Speaker 1:
[25:29] Which opens up a whole world for a lot of people.

Speaker 2:
[25:33] Yeah, yeah. Massive world changing event.

Speaker 1:
[25:35] Massive world changing thing. Because up until then, HIV is known as the Gay Man's Disease.

Speaker 2:
[25:40] And the White Gay Man's Disease.

Speaker 1:
[25:42] 100%. And a lot of people, I don't want to say OK with it, but it feels OK with that.

Speaker 2:
[25:51] Absolutely. And also, Magic Johnson is probably one of the most famous people on the planet in 1991.

Speaker 1:
[25:57] Maybe the most famous sports person other than Michael Jordan. And literally that same month, that same November, Freddie Mercury dies from pneumonia after having battle AIDS.

Speaker 9:
[26:09] The pop star, Freddie Mercury, died last night in London. The lead singer with Queen, aged 45, had announced on Saturday he was suffering from AIDS.

Speaker 2:
[26:17] 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, Freddie Mercury was so clearly gay. You know, what George Michael became when Faith came out was kind of a version of what Freddie Mercury had been since the 70s.

Speaker 1:
[26:44] Oh, so sort of just like sexual, a little teasing, very much himself without actually saying anything.

Speaker 2:
[26:50] Yeah, and that thin masculine, like tight clothes, and like really associated with being a gay man of like that era's gay culture.

Speaker 1:
[27:00] And, you know, it's interesting that you point out that sort of difference in the relationship between the two, because you know how we were talking earlier about that origin story of George Michael, where he sort of, you know, knows he wants to be a star from the beginning, and he's singing in front of his bathroom mirror, possibly at seven. Like, the person he's imitating when he does that is Freddie Mercury. Wow. Freddie Mercury is George Michael's hero.

Speaker 2:
[27:25] That makes total sense.

Speaker 1:
[27:27] A massive hero of his.

Speaker 2:
[27:29] That makes total sense.

Speaker 1:
[27:31] 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, an awareness concert in UK history. Do you want to stand in for Freddie Mercury?

Speaker 2:
[27:58] I didn't know about this.

Speaker 1:
[28:00] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[28:01] Did he do it?

Speaker 1:
[28:02] 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 the most emotional. We're just going to play some of it for you here.

Speaker 2:
[28:24] Please.

Speaker 1:
[28:38] 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 Enselmo, 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 it's one of his best performances. And he says about it, he said, My subconscious knew I was singing a Freddie Mercury song after his passing in front of my lover.

Speaker 2:
[30:03] Oh, man, you're gonna make me cry.

Speaker 1:
[30:05] 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 hairbrush, he says. But I would stand and sing to the mirror and sing all those Queen songs and know them backwards, know 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 Mercury's songs to the world. And Selma was there and I was dying inside. And my whole-

Speaker 2:
[30:37] Oh my God.

Speaker 1:
[30:38] 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.

Speaker 2:
[30:52] Oh my God. It's so moving. And I mean, one, his voice, this is, I'm glad that one of the things about that performance that we could get to in this conversation is George Michael is an incredible singer.

Speaker 1:
[31:05] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[31:06] Like even from the beginning, that note, when he's like somebody, I mean, I'm not even gonna try. Like it's so beautiful. And if you've ever heard like cuts, you know, of these of his songs where they stripped everything out and just left it to the vocals.

Speaker 1:
[31:23] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[31:23] His voice is angelic. Yeah. 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. What an incredible thing.

Speaker 1:
[31:41] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[31:41] What an incredible thing.

Speaker 1:
[31:42] He's carrying all of that. And he feels he's sad but also seems so free. Because he's getting this arena is packed to the gills with thousands of people that have that sort of feedback must have been incredible. I can't imagine.

Speaker 2:
[31:58] I didn't know about this concert and I didn't know about his lover and it's so sad.

Speaker 1:
[32:07] Yeah. But there's a thing that happens next, which I feel like is him working through that sadness in a real way. A sadness that, as we've talked about, so many people are experiencing at this moment in time. So many of them are experiencing. Anselmo's illness progresses after that concert. George Michael is not making music. He's just like, this is a time and he feels some guilt about that a little bit. He's like, I know that this is a moment where I could be out there talking about this disease. Don't get me wrong, he was still doing a lot of these sorts of benefit concerts and things like that. 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?

Speaker 2:
[32:57] Make me some money, fuck you.

Speaker 1:
[32:59] Which of course pisses George Michael off. And I'm just going to play a clip of him talking about that in 2007.

Speaker 4:
[33:06] When you just made $200 million 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.

Speaker 8:
[33:43] I really did.

Speaker 2:
[33:44] It's really enraging. You know, I can... And you kind of hear the rage in his voice there. And I'm with him, you know.

Speaker 1:
[33:50] 100%.

Speaker 2:
[33:51] $200 million he's made you. You can't let this man grieve.

Speaker 1:
[33:53] Totally. 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, I have to say is a choice. The comment is that he likens his situation to quote professional slavery.

Speaker 2:
[34:56] Which this is a choice. I don't know why these artists, how many artists have felt like they needed. You know, I mean, this is a Kanye remark.

Speaker 1:
[35:04] I know. But the difference is Kanye is at least black, bro.

Speaker 2:
[35:08] At least those two are black.

Speaker 1:
[35:09] But listen, it does not, that comment does not super go down well for a white guy in music. You know what I mean? Like, ah. And some of the public perception of him around this time is like, you know, greedy, whatever. Especially because they have no idea. They don't know. Nobody really knows what he's dealing with behind the scenes. And then of course, Anselmo 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 Anselmo is 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.

Speaker 5:
[36:09] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[36:10] Gone years without 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-90s, where people are just like, this guy maybe, should we take him seriously? I don't know.

Speaker 5:
[36:27] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[36:29] Like he makes an album, Mourning His Lover, and it does not do nearly as well as Faith or Reeves' album.

Speaker 2:
[36:36] No, I barely remember it.

Speaker 1:
[36:38] Exactly.

Speaker 2:
[36:38] And I'm a fan.

Speaker 1:
[36:40] 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. 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 1998.

Speaker 2:
[37:03] I know where this is going.

Speaker 1:
[37:04] 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 1998.

Speaker 8:
[37:24] Ooh.

Speaker 1:
[37:25] This look of recognition just came across your face.

Speaker 2:
[37:28] Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[37:31] I want you to picture 1998, Beverly Hills, California. George Michael is inside a public toilet at a park, and he's there to have sex.

Speaker 5:
[37:45] Yes, yes, he is.

Speaker 1:
[37:48] I don't know what you say was the thing that was happening in the 90s.

Speaker 2:
[37:50] Oh, come on, Emmanuel. Yes, it happens to this day. But certainly, you know, going for decades, cruising cultures, you know, like certainly gay men, but I think we're people of all sorts, you know, go cruising for sex in public places, and it grew out of a time when that's what you had to do and expanded into a time where that's what you enjoy to do. They're called public sex environments, is the public health word for it, and park restrooms.

Speaker 1:
[38:22] Well, in this public sex environment, man approaches George Michael on kind of like a, listen, I'll show you mine, you show me yours 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 called, zip me up before you go go. It is this massive thing. George Michael, if you didn't know before, you know now that he's gay because he has been involuntarily outed in this very public way, this huge way. Here's how he reported it at the time.

Speaker 10:
[39:05] Yeah.

Speaker 7:
[39:06] While we've been on air, 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, Giorgio Spagnuoto, and is expected to appear in court next month.

Speaker 10:
[39:20] Beverly Hills police officers arrested the singer known as George Michaels. Mr. Michaels was arrested for a violation of 647A of the penal code, engaging in a lewd act.

Speaker 1:
[39:34] Engaging in a lewd act.

Speaker 2:
[39:36] Go right to hell. I have to say some things. One, at this time, and it's 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 entrapment stings on gay men in public sex environments, which is an absurd use of public money. And it was a really big deal. I mean, because this was, it was still illegal, period, to have gay sex, period. Sodomy was illegal. 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. Look at how like depraved we are. And so, yes, George became a joke, I have to say, for us too, like in this moment.

Speaker 1:
[40:37] How does that play out for you guys?

Speaker 2:
[40:39] It is funny, you know? Like, so on one hand, it's funny, right? Like, oh, 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 suck George's dick, you know? Like, those kinds of things. But also, like, just a very relatable outrage, you know? So he's a punchline, but he is also somebody who, for me, certainly, and I think for many of us of my generation at this moment, like, really felt solidarity with George in this humiliation.

Speaker 1:
[41:23] Right, right, right. And, you know, it's interesting, because I feel like at this time, right, he spent 20 years in the public eye. That whole time he's tread this very careful line. Even as he's been carrying so much, right, like, so much pain, there are all these different points, right, that he could have come out and said that he was gay. He could have come out, for example, and said he was gay after his lover died and told the world about himself. He didn't. But he's forced into it here. And what George Michael does is he decides to go on sort of British TV's version of The Tonight Show. It's a massive show called Parkinson's, hosted by this guy, Michael Parkinson. And I'm just gonna play a clip. It's Michael Parkinson just talking about that decision and about the events that led up to George Michael sort of like meeting this moment.

Speaker 11:
[42:14] You took the decision, I think, 24 hours after all this was happening with the helicopters and news crews, all that. You decided to go to a restaurant, didn't you? Just to make your public declaration. Tell me what happened with you.

Speaker 4:
[42:27] Well, I suppose I just, I was, there's one recurring theme to my actions 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 a certain position, either by individuals or by history, i.e. the 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 gonna be like another one of these people that's peeking out from behind their net curtains a month later, you know, trying to get rid of the press. They were surrounding the house and I thought, for God's sake, you know, what is the game here? What do you want? A reconstruction? What is it, you know? Why are you all here? So I thought, I'm just gonna go out for a meal. I know they'll all chase me. I know they'll just, you know, I know it will cause, and it did cause havoc. You had all these, all these cars going across red lights and this. 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. He's just the biggest. And I thought, I like that.

Speaker 2:
[43:47] I love it. I love him. I love him.

Speaker 1:
[43:50] He just bodies it, right?

Speaker 2:
[43:53] Yeah, like supposed shame, you know? Even in the middle of telling that story, he was careful. Supposed shame, you know? And by the way, I'm hung.

Speaker 1:
[44:03] 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 watch someone be like that on national television now, instant win. I think George Michael at this point had gotten to a point where he was sliding a little bit out of the public consciousness, like, because there's a-

Speaker 2:
[44:25] He did very much, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[44:27] He's definitely back in that regard. Sales on his greatest hit album, definitely increased.

Speaker 2:
[44:34] Did they really?

Speaker 1:
[44:35] 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.

Speaker 2:
[44:45] It's spectacular.

Speaker 1:
[44:46] It is unreal.

Speaker 2:
[44:47] It is absolutely spectacular.

Speaker 1:
[44:49] Yeah. It's like cop costumes and disco balls are involved.

Speaker 2:
[44:54] George is in a cop costume. He is in a cop costume and it's like tight fitted and I mean, there's no more winking at being gay, obviously. You know, but like it is full on like cop fetish, you know, which is a great comment on like, well, why are you in the bathroom with me, Mr. Cop? Like if you so put out by penal code 2057A or whatever the hell it was.

Speaker 1:
[45:18] Exactly.

Speaker 2:
[45:18] Why are you in here with your dick out?

Speaker 1:
[45:20] Exactly. But as much as that video and that song generates buzz, you know, in a sort of almost like 90s reality kind of way, writ large in the United States, his biggest market, it's essentially the end of his musical career.

Speaker 2:
[45:37] 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 not the beginning of him being a gay icon 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 and we get the joke but then we also get to punch back. And so I still see him and think of him as undefeated. You're right, it was the end of his music career. I don't think about that.

Speaker 1:
[46:26] Right. And I mean just to be clear, he's still making music. There are literal songs, big songs that he did in the early 2000s that got basically almost no radio play in the US. Some massive collaborations with huge stars of the day. For example, he did a massive duet with Mary J. Blige and it really didn't get much radio play in the US. I think it's just like by the early 2000s, I think that gap between the people who see George Michael as his icon and the people who see him as a washed up star, that's kind of a joke, that starts to really widen. 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 this out of control, over sexed guy and by the 2000s, what you see in the headlines is that whatever he was doing with a read in terms of coping, that seems to have become a drug habit. So he's arrested in 2008 in a public bathroom, but this time not necessarily for nude sex, this time it's because he's in possession of crack cocaine in Marijuana. And I think this is where my image of him as a kid comes from, which is sort of like, right, this over sexed, drugged out has been.

Speaker 2:
[47:51] I mean, he ultimately dies of a drug overdose, right?

Speaker 1:
[47:53] No, no, no. And so this is officially no. Officially he dies in his sleep. Like anything else is conjecture.

Speaker 2:
[48:00] See? Even me. Even me.

Speaker 1:
[48:03] Right. Right. And I think that's the thing. Even if you don't see him as a drugged out person, his demise feels so connected to that.

Speaker 10:
[48:12] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[48:13] The way he's covered, he's not covered as a person who is dealing with probably a decent amount of survivor's guilt. You know what I mean? He was depressed and trying to cope with it. And I think we don't want to see that, not just with George Michael, but by the other 2000s, and this is my experience as someone who's coming of age in this time, HIV-AIDS 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.

Speaker 2:
[48:45] In sub-Saharan Africa. That's right.

Speaker 1:
[48:46] You know what I mean? That's right. No one's talking 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 what's just happened.

Speaker 2:
[48:58] I was at that time spending an enormous amount of my time arguing you're all ignoring this 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, drugged out, over sexed gay man, it's also the caricature of gay men at that time.

Speaker 1:
[49:25] Totally.

Speaker 2:
[49:25] Period. Right? And it's interesting to me to think about 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.

Speaker 1:
[49:53] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[49:54] Of like, an honesty with, and that's what I meant about going back to faith, you know, like it starts to be honest. One of the lyrics of that album is like, all we gotta do now is take these lies and say they're true, right? Like he's reflecting on like the hypocrisy of the moment. And for me, all of his honest journey through the epidemic, through having to bury his partner, the survivor's guilt of certainly that generation, Ike 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, go to hell. For me and for us, he's a symbol of our perseverance.

Speaker 1:
[50:50] Totally. There's a sort of larger sort of meta-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 have guilt about that. Guilt about that era.

Speaker 2:
[51:04] I hope. That's more optimistic than me. I hope y'all got guilt about it. I hope some people are guilty because there is guilt to be had about the lives that were discarded globally, but certainly in this country.

Speaker 1:
[51:21] Yeah, 100%. Well, thank you. Thank you for going on that journey with me. Thank you for taking me on that journey. Also, I know a journey you were there for. You know what I mean? You've lived that.

Speaker 2:
[51:31] No, but I learned so much. There's 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.

Speaker 1:
[51:38] Of course, of course. So, now I want to know, after this journey, we've been on, where are we going next week?

Speaker 2:
[51:45] Okay. So, what I'm going to do is, I'm going to play you a few clips.

Speaker 1:
[51:50] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[51:51] Of the person that I'm going to introduce you to. I have somebody really fun.

Speaker 1:
[51:56] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[51:57] And I think you'll know who this is, but let's go. Let's see. Let me start with this clip.

Speaker 1:
[52:01] All right.

Speaker 12:
[52:02] 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.

Speaker 1:
[52:17] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[52:20] Don't tell people if you know what it is.

Speaker 1:
[52:21] Whoever loves funny stuff. Okay.

Speaker 2:
[52:24] Loves funny stuff. This is a comedian.

Speaker 12:
[52:25] Me and Black was being cool. I remember it wasn't Black in those days because Black wasn't beautiful yet. Remember, you couldn't even say Black. You called a dude Black. I don't play that.

Speaker 1:
[52:35] And he is funny.

Speaker 2:
[52:37] He is funny. And the voice is so iconic. You have to, people know this by this play. He's a Black comedian though. And here's the last one.

Speaker 5:
[52:45] Do you find that the bigger you get, the further away you get from the street, and therefore the harder it is to be funny still?

Speaker 12:
[52:54] Yes. Well, it's not harder, but it's just difficult to be in the streets if you got some money.

Speaker 5:
[53:00] Yeah, exactly. And people are rushing up to you and asking for money.

Speaker 12:
[53:03] No, it's not that. There's no reason to be there anymore.

Speaker 1:
[53:05] I cannot wait for this episode.

Speaker 5:
[53:07] Oh my God.

Speaker 2:
[53:08] There's no reason to be in the streets if you got somebody. That's the truth. That is the truth. All right. Well, that's next week.

Speaker 1:
[53:16] All right. Until next time.

Speaker 2:
[53:17] Until next time.

Speaker 1:
[53:20] Big Lives is a production of BBC Studios and Pushkin Industries. It's hosted by me, Emmanuel Dzotsi and Kai Wright. Our team over at BBC Studios includes producer, Emma Reverell, archive producer, Samira Chowdhury, sound design by Melvin Rickaby. Our executive producer is Annie Brown. Our production coordinator is Galen Davis Connolly, and our production manager is Mabel Finnegan Wright. The team over at Pushkin Industries includes executive producer, Constanza Goyardo, producer Daphne Chen, our legal advisor is Jake Flanagan, and our marketing team includes Morgan Ratner and Jordan McMillan.