George: A Memory of George Michael

3
Black Magic

Georgios was clearly a bit lost. He was carrying his violin case in his left hand and peering through thick-lensed glasses at his unfamiliar surroundings, trying to ignore the playground sniggers that inevitably follow when a new boy faces his first day at a strange school. The golden rule is not to stand out, but with his wild hair he was fighting a losing battle on that score from day one.

Then came the embarrassment of being introduced to his new classmates by a teacher struggling to get her tongue around the name Georgios Panayiotou. He fully expected there to be no takers when the teacher asked for a volunteer to show him around and make sure he knew where to go and what to do. To his surprise, a hand shot up from the back of the class. ‘I’ll do it, Miss. Give him to me.’ It was a tanned, very good-looking boy called Andrew Ridgeley, who chose that day to do something to alter their destinies.

At first, there was no indication that the two would hit it off, until break time, that is, when the lads were playing a juvenile playground game called ‘King of the Wall’. Andrew was the reigning king and goaded the seemingly shy and brooding Georgios to have a go at dislodging him. He got his comeuppance when the stocky new boy pulled him off, clambered over him and established himself as the reigning monarch. It was a simple thing but earned him the glimmer of respect needed to establish a proper friendship. They simply clicked and were a stronger unit together than they were individually.

Jack and Lesley didn’t care for their son’s new pal when he brought him home. They thought him too cocky and sure of himself for someone so young. Jack commented, ‘He was extremely confident.’ Andrew noticed their initial frostiness: ‘His parents didn’t like me for quite a while. There was always a bit of tense air when I went round there.’

Lesley, in particular, was worried he might be a bad influence on her Yogi. Andrew failed to call her ‘Auntie Lesley’, a mark of respect that would have got him on her right side immediately. While he seemed very relaxed, in reality he was very impressed with how much money his new friend’s family had. The house in Oakridge Avenue was undeniably a beautiful home. He also noticed that Georgios seemed very unaffected by his affluent surroundings and certainly didn’t bring any kind of superior attitude to school.

Andrew didn’t appreciate at first that the Panayiotous had dragged themselves up from a humble start to this more opulent lifestyle. Although his parents had had more educational opportunities, they too had worked hard and faced many battles to improve their family’s position. Now they were a well-established and distinctly middle-class family living in Bushey.

Andrew and Georgios were second-generation immigrants and there are some striking similarities in their heritage. Both their fathers came on a ‘banana boat’ to the UK and arrived in the 1950s with nothing, although Albert Mario Ridgeley had received a privileged education at the English school in the ancient Egyptian port of Alexandria, where he was born. His mother was Italian and his father an Egyptian Jew, and from an early age he had to deal with a lot of racially based prejudice.

Andrew has always been appreciative of his father: ‘He is a very liberal man and I grew up under the impression that everyone was equal because I was never taught anything different.’ For his part, Albert considered his family to be the main motivation of his life. He explained, ‘People should realise the family is the basis of all human society and should play an important part in day-to-day lives.’ It’s a view that would always resonate with the Panayiotous.

Albert had a spell in the RAF, studied Russian and German at St Andrews University and married a teacher called Jenny. He was working for a Surrey camera company when their two sons were born: first, Andrew in January 1963 and then Paul a year later. The elder Ridgeley boy was almost six months older than Georgios. The Ridgeleys moved from Windlesham to Bushey when Andrew was five, and became pillars of the local community. Jenny went back to work and became a teacher at the Bushey Heath Primary School, where she also served as a governor.

Albert was a tireless volunteer for good causes. He was at one time treasurer of Bushey Old People’s Welfare Committee and a part-time voluntary ambulance driver as well as working tirelessly on behalf of the local Rotary club. One of Andrew’s school friends and neighbours remarked, ‘Everyone loved Andrew’s dad. He was a really lovely man, a real gentleman. He was one of those people about whom my parents would have said, “He is a nice man, that Mr Ridgeley.”’

Bushey was very much a small world. Andrew Ridgeley grew up in a very solid and respectable family unit, and the subsequent public image he cultivated, as a pleasure-seeking playboy of pop, didn’t reflect his upbringing.

Georgios was always welcome in the Ridgeley household in Bushey and hit it off with younger brother Paul, not least because he too had a drum kit in his bedroom. Georgios had been given drums for Christmas in 1975, a present that Lesley came to regret as she listened daily to the incessant beat of her son playing along to the hits on Radio 1.

To a certain extent, Lesley was correct in worrying that the confident Andrew would exert an influence on her son, although how bad that was is open to doubt. He was a leader. He probably brought out Georgios’ lazy side because he too cared little for school and neither boy would think twice about skipping a day here and there. Even though his mum was a teacher, Andrew was looking forward to leaving school at the earliest opportunity. While Georgios was no school lover either, he didn’t want to upset his parents and resolved to stay and pass his exams, just in case he needed qualifications.

The two boys would just sit around and chat about how they were going to be famous. Their musical taste was very similar and they discovered that they both owned a copy of Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, arguably Elton John’s most celebrated work. It was a double album, so that was practically a whole afternoon taken care of, whichever house they were in.

Andrew didn’t much mind how he made it and would have been perfectly pleased to achieve his ambition through being a footballer. He already looked like a young pop star though, even in his green blazer. Today, he would probably be the youngest competitor on Britain’s Got Talent or The X Factor, charming everyone with his youthful charisma and being told by Simon Cowell that he has a great future.

Georgios wasn’t there yet. He was a work in progress, although, encouraged by Andrew, he did begin to take more care of his appearance. His sister Melanie, who wanted to be a stylist, cut his hair into something more manageable and then he persuaded his parents that he wasn’t too young for contact lenses. They agreed, provided he didn’t wear them all the time.

He now had a nickname. On his first visit to Oakridge Avenue, Andrew heard his sisters refer to their brother as ‘Yorg’. Mischievously, he took the name back to school and told classmates that, at home, Georgios was known as ‘Yoghurt’. It was a bit of schoolboy fun but the name stuck. He was now called Yoghurt, or ‘Yog’ for short, which, unsurprisingly, he preferred. From the start, he called his friend ‘Andy’.

Yog went to his first live gig in May 1976 when he joined his mother and sisters to see Elton John at Earls Court. He thought it was ‘fantastic’. He couldn’t get over the size of the show: ‘He was spot on, brilliant, especially considering how big Earls Court is.’ Elton didn’t perform ‘Crocodile Rock’ on the Louder than Concorde (But Not Quite as Pretty) tour but he did sing a ballad that would have a much greater impact on the career of George Michael. ‘Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me’ was an instant classic and its sad sentiment of rejection perfectly fitted the themes of George’s own more introspective songs. Time and time again in the future George Michael would infuse his slower songs with the melancholy of loss.

Two other more obscure Elton compositions from 1976 would also feature in the future repertoire of George Michael. Again, both ‘Idol’ and the exquisite, elegiac ‘Tonight’ are ballads. It seemed Elton’s songs were particularly suited to George’s pure vocals and sensitive interpretation.

Gradually, Yog was coming out of his shell. It wasn’t easy, joining a school a year after his contemporaries. Cliques had already been formed and if it hadn’t been for Andrew he might have remained an outsider. He was still in his friend’s shadow, however, when the following year they both went to the Watford Empire one Saturday afternoon to see a new film that was receiving plenty of publicity. It was Saturday Night Fever and Yog was transfixed. He was determined to be John Travolta or, more precisely, his character in the film, Tony Manero, who had a dead-end job in a hardware store by day and then was transformed into the strutting, white-suited king of the dance floor at night.

The soundtrack, stacked full of disco classics, became the soundtrack to life in Oakridge Avenue, with George either belting out the beat to ‘Stayin’ Alive’ on his drums or trying to copy some of Travolta’s steps. As ‘Yog Manero’ he felt confident enough to start going to school discos with Andrew, who was in his element.

‘He really was a great dancer,’ observed Andrew. ‘It was then he began to express his physicality and his sexuality.’ In effect, Georgios Panayiotou was able to perform and stand out in the crowd by acting a role. In this case, he was a flamboyant disco champion. They went out and bought trendy clothes, including dungarees, a must-have for any disco dancer. Yog had to earn money for such luxuries by taking on babysitting or doing jobs around the house and garden.

Andrew decided it was time Yoghurt had a girlfriend. He was coming up to fifteen and getting more kisses from his mum and sisters than from any of the teenage girls around school. In class, Georgios had caught the eye of a very pretty girl with a fashionable frizzy perm called Lesley Bywaters, who clearly enjoyed his company. But he was doing nothing to take it any further than the occasional coy glance and tentative smile. It was time his more dynamic buddy took charge.

Andrew got together with Lesley’s friends to engineer a meeting between the two teenagers by the ice cream van in the playground at break time. Andrew was very firm with Yog, saying that this would be the opportunity to make his move and ask Lesley out on a date. He had done his homework and knew that Lesley liked Georgios. She recalls, ‘He just really had the best personality. You wouldn’t have found a wittier, funnier guy. When we were in a group in class, he was always amusing. He was very intelligent and would make us all cry laughing. Yog was hilarious.’

Despite his tentative makeover, at this time in his life the teenage Georgios was not blessed with the natural good looks and charm of Andrew Ridgeley. ‘He was certainly a bit chubby,’ observes Lesley. ‘He didn’t like that and could get very upset about it. He was never huge but he was uncomfortable about being a little bit portly.’

That didn’t bother her as she nervously made her way towards their assignation. It was not a dazzling conversation in the manner of a Hollywood rom-com: ‘We kind of muttered and mumbled. He sort of said let’s go out on a date and that was it and we kind of shuffled off. Obviously he liked me and I liked him.’

On the evening of their first date, Georgios arrived at the door with a box of Black Magic chocolates. They weren’t for Lesley, however; they were for her mother, Joyce: ‘He gave them to my mum and she was so delighted. He was a real gentleman. And I remember her saying to me later, “Oh, what a lovely boy!” It was very grown up. His mum had so obviously said that he had to make a good impression and should take the mother a box of something.’

For their first date, Yog took her for dinner to the Angus Pride, where she was introduced to his mother and father: ‘We walked in and they were both there. His mum was so lovely to me. She was really friendly and smiley and so excited that her son had brought a girl. She was chuffed because her name was Lesley and, of course, that was my name as well: the two Lesleys. I remember warming to her more than his dad, who seemed terribly scary. He wasn’t really, but I was fifteen and he seemed old.’

The family restaurant may have been a surprising and mature choice for a first date, but at least the food was far better than burger and chips in a fast-food chain. This was a proper date. They both had steak, which was delicious, but Lesley was ill at ease throughout the meal: ‘I felt very self-conscious,’ she recalls.

The evening went well enough though for them to start dating properly – although, more often than not, Andrew would tag along as well. Lesley didn’t mind this, not seeing three as being a crowd. She was one of the Bushey Meads group who had grown up together and she had known Andrew since primary-school days. She didn’t find him cocky or brash: ‘He was just a nice lad – always a good laugh.’

Both boys looked older than they were and had little trouble getting into discos. Teenage girls like Lesley would be let in as a matter of course. So the three musketeers were happy to jump onto the number 142 bus and head down the Edgware Road and into town for a night of dancing at Cherry’s nightclub.

Lesley, who had no idea that her slightly overweight boyfriend could shake some moves, was astonished: ‘He was a very good dancer and I was very surprised. Him and Andrew went mad and I was just hanging back, thinking, “Blimey!”’

Yog had moved on from ‘Stayin’ Alive’ and his favourite dancing track now was the timeless classic ‘You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)’ by Sylvester. ‘He loved that,’ recalls Lesley. ‘He was absolutely mad on that.’ The song, which featured Sylvester’s distinctive light falsetto gospel voice, became one of the great anthems of disco when it was released in 1978, reaching the top ten in the UK in October. Every club played it at least once a night.

Sylvester James Jr, known affectionately as the Queen of Disco, was at the forefront of many cataclysmic events that hit society in the twentieth century – racial discrimination, gay rights and a truly sad demise from AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome). He was from a comfortably-off, middle-class black family in Los Angeles and, from a young age, was open about his sexuality, celebrating his feminine androgynous side in the Castro area of San Francisco, where he settled. The author Vince Aletti memorably described him as ‘gay in a fuck you way’. Sylvester became friends with Harvey Milk, the ‘Mayor of Castro’, who was the first openly gay man to be elected to public office and was portrayed so memorably by Sean Penn in the film Milk.

Sylvester’s life and career had some interesting similarities to the one that George Michael would later lead. He sued his record company, he was arrested by police and his partner, an architect, contracted the HIV virus and died from complications associated with AIDS in 1987.

A year later, Sylvester too succumbed to the condition at the age of forty-one. The freedom and joie de vivre of the seventies in the gay community had given way to fear and sadness as so many friends and family were buried, and society and in particular the media sought to come to terms with what was happening. Sylvester left his estate to be split between two charities, the AIDS Emergency Fund and Project Open Hand, which was founded in the mid-eighties to serve nutritious meals with love and a smile to those living with the condition.

Such matters were far removed from the suburban world of Georgios Panayiotou and his friends at Bushey Meads. George Michael would later say that he had his first homosexual stirrings when he was fourteen, but he told no one and was happy to be dating Lesley. He would invite her back to the house in Oakridge Avenue; on the first occasion it was much to the surprise of his elder sisters. ‘I remember the first time, walking casually past his sisters and Yog saying to them, “Oh, this is Lesley”. I think they were quite interested that he had actually managed to hook a girlfriend. I was so worried that I would run into his parents, because you are at that age. So we shuffled off to his bedroom, which sounds really suspect but it wasn’t at all. We listened to music and there was a bit of kissing but that was it.’

He took her to see the another disco classic of 1978, Thank God It’s Friday, at the Odeon, Edgware Road, which featured the incomparable Donna Summer singing the Oscar-winning ‘Last Dance’ and the Commodores performing ‘Too Hot Ta Trot’. Whenever the film was showing, cinemas around the country would turn into disco halls for the night. Lesley observes, ‘Literally, everyone was dancing in the aisles – including us.’

Yog loved all the cheesiest tunes of the time. He liked the hits of ELO and would sing along to ‘Evil Woman’ and ‘Mr Blue Sky’. One of his party pieces in the common room at school was singing ‘When You’re in Love with a Beautiful Woman’, a UK number one for Dr. Hook. There was nothing cool about his tastes and he was not going to surprise everyone by putting Lou Reed or Iggy Pop on the turntable.

Classmates got used to seeing Yog and Lesley together. ‘We were quite excited about it. I think people thought it was rather sweet because he hadn’t dated anyone before and I hadn’t dated anyone in school,’ she remembers. They would walk down to the baker’s at the end of the road during lunch periods or share tuck-shop duties. They were happy times for Lesley because her boyfriend was always entertaining, quite often unintentionally: ‘We were singing along in the tuck room and Yog was giving it the full treatment when a big box of Crunchie bars fell on his head and knocked him to the floor.’

He liked nothing better than playing along to his favourite tracks on the drum kit in his bedroom at Oakridge Avenue. Lesley recalls, ‘He was very into the drums. We did a summer concert at school – something they did every year – and Yog did a drum solo. To be honest, it was very boring.’

He was listed in the programme for the concert in the school’s main hall in July 1978 under his name, Georgios Panayiotou. He was performing his ‘own composition’. Afterwards he inscribed Lesley’s programme in his distinctive left-handed scrawl: ‘nominated for an Oscar for his marvellous contribution to the Bushey Meads Musical Appreciation Society for the old, blind and deaf all over the world’. He signed it with the Greek version of his name, spelt out in capitals.

Lesley was thrilled and went off on her summer holidays happy to be his girlfriend. That is, until she met Mark from Chipping Sodbury: ‘I was on my summer holiday with my parents and my cousin and I met this bloke. I really had a bit of a crush on him. It was never going anywhere. We didn’t have any mobiles or computers or anything. There was no way we would be in contact again. But I came back to Bushey and my heart was full of Mark.’

Poor Yog had no idea he was about to be thrown over until he received a phone call from Joyce Bywaters. Lesley recalls, ‘It’s very funny, looking back. I got my mum to phone him and dump him. Isn’t that awful! It was a nightmare really because I didn’t know what to do. I don’t think there was any particular bad feeling because I still saw him on occasion after that and we got on all right. I don’t think he was heartbroken.’

Lesley was the first girlfriend of Georgios Panayiotou. They were young teenagers and sex was not on the agenda. Bizarrely, he later said that he had lost his virginity before he even had a girlfriend. He claimed he was just twelve when an older girl jumped on him. ‘She was a right old dog,’ he said, ungallantly. He hated the whole thing and told no one, not even to win bragging rights over classmates at school. A subsequent girlfriend observed that she could well believe that he had experienced something he found traumatic. He certainly didn’t want to try sex again for a very long time.

Georgios was prone to sudden bursts of moodiness. In an interview with Chris Evans in 1996, George Michael said he had been at a party with Lesley and was sitting between her legs when she leaned forward, took off his thick glasses and told him, ‘Haven’t you got beautiful eyes.’ He thought she was taking the ‘piss out of me’ and, so he said, he got up, left the party immediately and went straight home. The incident was an early indication of just how quickly Georgios Panayiotou could switch moods, a characteristic he took with him when he became George Michael superstar. His future manager, Simon Napier-Bell, described it memorably: ‘He could shoot mistrust from his eyes like fire from a flamethrower.’

For her part, Lesley can remember the party but hasn’t a clue what he was talking about. Sometimes it happens like that, especially as teenagers. Georgios, egged on by Andrew, had his revenge of sorts at Lesley’s sixteenth birthday party at her house the following April. The drink was flowing and everyone was having a great time. Lesley glanced out the window and there in the garden were the two future stars of Wham! They were peeing into the fishpond.