George: A Memory of George Michael

5
Call Me George

Jack Panos never tired of telling his son that he couldn’t sing. His opinion did nothing to shake Yog’s resolve. Now that he’d enjoyed his first taste of real recording, he was more eager than ever to make it work and still keen to win his sceptical father’s approval.

One chilly day after school, he enthusiastically played the demo to his father: ‘Rude Boy’ blared out from the sound system of Jack’s new Rolls-Royce. The atmosphere inside the car was no warmer. Hearing his son incessantly chanting ‘Rude Boy’ didn’t change Jack’s view that his son was being naive and wasting precious time with his musical obsession. Yet again, he was making his well-worn point that this was not a career option.

For Yog, who invariably treated his father with great respect despite being a teenager, this seemed like the final straw, especially when Jack casually observed, ‘All seventeen-year-olds want to be pop stars.’ He exploded: ‘No, Dad! All twelve-year-olds want to be pop stars.’

Michael Burdett was much more confident than Jack Panos that Andrew and Yog would succeed. Over the next month or two he booked meetings with A&R managers at leading record companies in London, including WEA, Virgin, EMI, Chrysalis and Island. They all passed, but he kept trying.

An optimistic Yog, meanwhile, went back to school after the winter break to continue his A-levels. One of the rites of passage for English students in the UK is a coach trip to Stratford-upon-Avon, and the sixth form of Bushey Meads was no exception. In February 1980, Yog dutifully joined the other A-level pupils to see Ronald Eyre’s production of Othello. The anguished Moor of Venice was played by Donald Sinden, who managed successfully to bridge the gap between critical acclaim and being a much-loved comedy and television figure.

Yog did not care much for Shakespeare. He found the Bard a bore and Sinden’s perfectly enunciated performance did not change his mind. The trip wasn’t a complete waste of time, however, because his eye was caught by an older girl from school, who was brunette, slim and statuesque. Her name was Helen Tye and, in Yog’s opinion, she should definitely have been a model. He was delighted, therefore, to discover on his return to school that she would be in his painting class even though she was in the upper sixth.

At first, Yog was taking three subjects at A-level: English, Art and Music Theory, and it was widely assumed that he would go on to university. His parents were keen for him to be the first in the family to make that academic leap forward. He clearly had the intellect, although it never figured in his future plans at all.

He enjoyed the art lessons, particularly because Helen was at the easel next to him. She was struck by his precise eye for detail when painting a landscape, although it was obvious he wasn’t really interested in art as a career subject. His conversation was full of music and his excitement at the prospect of a record deal for The Executive. She observes, ‘He was absolutely clear the whole time I knew him that he was going to have a career in music.’

Helen liked him right from the start. He was not some sort of classroom Adonis but someone who was fun to talk to and much more interesting than the other boys: ‘You could have a lively discussion with him about a lot of different subjects. When you are that age, most boys seemed to be either boring or weird.’ For his part, Yog too liked their conversations. ‘He was an intelligent person and I think he enjoyed being around somebody who had thoughts and opinions,’ she adds.

They both had a social conscience and strong views about fairness and equality. As teenagers, they liked to complain about the views of their parents and would have voted Labour if they had been old enough. Helen explains, ‘We were both at a state school at a time when the prevailing culture was in favour of higher taxation in order to pay for housing and education. The National Health Service, for example, was taken totally for granted. Student loans would have been something a bit American and unthinkable. I think we relished being a bit provocative against our parents. We were spoilt brats, really, because we both came from middle-class, pretty well-to-do families.’

Helen also felt empathy with Yoghurt – the name the majority at school still called him – because they were both partial outsiders. She explains, ‘My mother is Swedish so I have never really felt a hundred per cent English. It’s a ridiculous generalisation but I didn’t feel most of the English people I met were very interesting. At the time Bushey was very white and very suburban. There was no diversity at all really, so even somebody who was Greek was exotic. He spoke with this very North London accent which is a bit different somehow to the Bushey accent. And he was just like an ordinary bloke – except that he wasn’t ordinary at all.’

Yog hadn’t dated anyone since Lesley Bywaters, and that was more than a year before, so it was time to try again. He correctly foresaw that a date with Helen would do wonders for his credibility as a budding pop star and that they would look good together.

‘Do you like dancing?’ he asked her casually, paintbrush in hand. ‘Yeah, of course,’ she answered. He told her that there was a disco close to his dad’s restaurant and wondered if she might like to go with him. She did. ‘Call me George,’ he said.

He had decided that he would start calling himself George Panos, which he thought sounded a lot better than Georgios Panayiotou. He couldn’t opt for Yoghurt or Yog as that made him sound like the bassist in a heavy-metal band.

Helen and the new ‘George’ started dating. George’s dancing was getting better all the time and while The Executive were a 2 Tone band, he still liked nothing better than showing off his latest moves to ‘Boogie Wonderland’ by Earth, Wind & Fire or ‘Contact’, a big disco hit for Edwin Starr that had the cheesy chorus hook, ‘Eye to eye, contact’. George proved very adept at the hand movements and the stare.

An evening out would always finish with dinner at the Angus Pride. He told Helen she could order what she liked, although he himself was going through a very picky stage with his eating: ‘He always ordered the same thing. It was like a deep-fried, very thin fillet of pork. He didn’t like green vegetables. So he would have that and then he would have taramasalata with pitta bread. It wasn’t a very healthy diet! I would try different things because the food was excellent there.’

Jack would come out into the restaurant at some point and walk about the tables, saying hello to people and having a friendly word, eventually making his way over to his son and his new girlfriend. ‘He was always very pleasant to me,’ remembers Helen, who was a crucial two years older than his first girlfriend when she met George’s father and less in awe. ‘He was somewhat preoccupied, in the same way that my mother would be. Business owners are always busy and preoccupied and not really “people” people in the same way.’

Jack did cause great excitement in her street on the occasion he drove George round to give them both a lift to the restaurant. He was behind the wheel of his silvery blue Rolls-Royce with its personalised KP number plate, proof indeed that he had become a successful man. The net-curtain-twitchers had a field day. Helen had never been in a Rolls before and felt very grand as they made their way serenely to Edgware.

Most of the time George’s mother Lesley would ferry them about in her less-impressive brown Triumph Herald. Helen got on famously with his mum and enjoyed the times she spent in the kitchen of their Radlett home, chatting away to Lesley and the two sisters, Yioda and Melanie.

Lesley no longer took George to school every day. He was happy to catch the bus. But he was still her boy and she would do anything for him. ‘She was an angel and was devoted to him,’ observes Helen, who thought his mother was wonderful from the first time George invited her over to the house.

‘They had a big open kitchen with a large table in it and she would always say, “Have a cup of tea and are you hungry?” And George would answer, “Yes, can you fry me an egg?” She was just super-nice. She was genuinely interested in having a conversation with George and with me. She treated us like adults and she wanted to know what we thought about things. I think that was a real eye-opener for me. She was very empathetic and just treated us as people she would enjoy having dinner with.’

Helen’s observations about Lesley Panayiotou reveal why her son regarded his mother – and not Andrew, David or Andros – as his best friend: ‘She treated her son with respect. She spoke to him as if he had interesting things to say … and so he did.’

Helen also got on well with his sisters: ‘They were very different. Melanie was more glamorous. She had beautiful long black hair and was very into makeup and hair. Yioda was very sort of natural and didn’t care what she looked like. She was more of a tomboy. Melanie was fun-loving and fashion-conscious whereas Yioda was more thoughtful and intellectual. I really liked both of them and we would have long conversations.’

It was fortunate for George that Melanie was so keen on hair styling, because she was continually asked to practise on her brother. If there was one aspect of his looks that he felt insecure about, it was his hair. Helen observes, ‘His hair was a big saga. He just didn’t like it. He didn’t like the way it was naturally. Melanie was forever styling and changing his hair.’

His unruly mop became more of an issue when for the first time he had to face up to having his picture taken for publicity purposes. To everyone’s excitement, Arista had shown interest in the demo tape and had asked the obvious question: ‘What do The Executive look like?’

Michael Burdett came round to the house in Radlett and took a number of pictures of the six band members inside and out in the garden. He placed them on the stairs in a direct imitation of the well-known Madness picture that had publicised ‘One Step Beyond’. Yog’s hair was moderately wild but he had shaved off the teenage beard he was growing; The Executive was beginning to look like a proper band.

Arista approved of the pictures and still seemed interested. Meanwhile, Michael’s publishing company Sparta Florida wanted to secure publishing rights for the song ‘Rude Boy’ and offered a contract to Andrew and Yog that even Michael, their own employee, thought was embarrassing – especially as they weren’t actually offering a financial advance. Fortunately, Jack, despite his cynicism, knew a record producer who ate in his restaurant and was able to get some proper advice for the boys. They turned it down.

Jack was also there when Michael organised an evening when the band’s parents could be told how things were progressing and what a life in the spotlight might mean. It was a little presumptuous but these were young men swept along by the excitement of it all. Jack was as downbeat as ever about the prospects, although he did promise a celebratory dinner at his restaurant if a deal was ever signed.

Just when a breakthrough seemed within touching distance, Arista cooled – so much so that they stopped taking Michael Burdett’s calls. It was disappointing.

At least George’s relationship with Helen was progressing nicely. He was a romantic boyfriend who enjoyed kissing and holding hands as they waited for the bus. One of the first presents he gave Helen was a cassette of songs by the beautiful country star Crystal Gayle, including her signature hit ‘Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue’ and ‘Talking in Your Sleep’, a plaintiff song of betrayal, which were slower numbers they both enjoyed dancing to when everyone was getting their breath back at the disco.

George’s favourite ballad when he was sixteen was the Don McLean version of the Roy Orbison classic ballad, ‘Crying’. Surprisingly perhaps, it never featured in George Michael’s repertoire, although its melancholic lyric was ideal for his soaring vocal. The sentiment of love and loss is one he would return to many times in his own songwriting.

For the moment he was happy smooching with Helen to the record, which was one of the biggest number ones of 1980. But he never put pressure on her to take their relationship to the next stage, which was one of the things she most liked about him: ‘We were still at school and I felt we were still quite innocent. He would put his arm around me and was affectionate, but he wasn’t pushy the way some boys of that age were.’

She found herself falling for George in a big way. Even her mother liked him and she was, in Helen’s teenage opinion, notoriously hard to please. She ran her own successful import business and had brought Helen and her brother Martin up as a single parent when she divorced. Helen recalls, ‘I wasn’t sure she would like him because she could be critical, but he just had a very easy manner with her.’

One of the great myths about George was that he had low self-esteem. That was absolutely untrue. If it had been the case, he wouldn’t have had the courage to stand up to his father. ‘I don’t know where that came from,’ observes Helen. ‘He was always confident.’ Unassuming modesty perhaps was being mistaken for a poor self-image.

One indication that Helen really liked George was that she always paid for everything. He never had any money. Now that he was dating as well as rehearsing and going to school, he had little time for taking on the small jobs around the neighbourhood that would have given him some spending money. Shelling out money for nothing in a Greek-Cypriot household was not the prescribed way, so he was never going to get a handout from his dad. He would have to get a job and earn his own money – something Jack never tired of telling his son.

Helen had a job working as an usherette at the Watford Palace Theatre: ‘I always had more money than him and used to pay for the bus fare into town. It wasn’t just his parents saying to him, “Why don’t you get a job?” My mum used to complain to me, “He hasn’t got a job”!’

They went to see a couple of shows at the theatre where she worked, and afterwards they would go to the bar and she’d introduce him to her workmates. Everyone thought the teenage couple looked good together.

George seemed to like to keep certain areas of his life separate from others. He never invited Helen to any of the band’s rehearsals. In his mind, that was strictly for the boys in the way it might have been were they a six-a-side football team. That would never happen, though, because George was not at all sporty.

They did socialise with David Mortimer and sometimes with his cousin Andros, two key people who travelled with George through much of his life. They didn’t see much of Andrew, who had his own set of friends from college, so it was rarely a threesome when they went out, as had been the case with his previous girlfriend, Lesley. Helen liked David in particular: ‘He was a sweet person. It seemed to me he was very much in awe of George and wasn’t as confident or as direct in what he wanted to do as George was.’

She may not have been to rehearsals but Helen did see The Executive perform their 2 Tone set at the Scout Hut: ‘It was very kind of stylised. I think people really loved it or didn’t like it that much. But even though I liked it, it didn’t get to me on an emotional level.’ The Executive’s showstopper, ‘Rude Boy’, left her cold: ‘I think there were a bunch of beer-drinking guys who thought it was really cool – much more than the girls.’

By coincidence, The Executive was joined for live gigs by Tony Bywaters, elder brother of Lesley and an accomplished guitarist. He used to help out because, other than Jamie Gould, ‘none of them could play guitar very well’. His involvement was another indication of the small suburban world of Bushey. He was struck by George and Andrew’s ‘schoolboy get-up-and-go’. He recalls, ‘They both just knew they were going to be famous. They just knew it.’

It hadn’t crossed George’s mind at this stage that he might need backing singers, so he never suggested that role for Helen. He did think she had a nice voice when he heard her sing along to things in his room, but she had no desire to perform in public and hated people staring at her. That was a problem for her when she dressed up in the 2 Tone gear George liked her to wear.

They made a striking pair on the number 142. George usually wore a white shirt matched with what his girlfriend thought were old man’s trousers. Helen, 5ft 10in tall, in a black-and-white dress, white tights and white stiletto heels, looked amazing but ‘felt so stupid’. She recalls, ‘I was very self-conscious. I felt it wasn’t really me at all.’

George liked it and encouraged Helen to follow a career in modelling. He persuaded Melanie to give her a makeover and went with her to a modelling agency in Central London to find out what the next step might be. But she planned to go to university, not parade up and down a catwalk.

George’s interest in how Helen looked and, perhaps more importantly, how they looked together, was the first fascinating indication of his professional interest in being seen with models and using them in his videos when he became George Michael. Helen, for her part, thought George might be just as well-suited to being an actor, especially after she saw him perform as Wazir in the school pantomime. But nothing was ever going to deviate him from his music master plan.

A year can be a big age gap in your teens. A month after George turned seventeen in June 1980, Helen celebrated her eighteenth birthday. On the day, she planned to hold a very grown-up dinner party at home for her closest friends and naturally she wanted her boyfriend to be there. George didn’t want to go. Her friends had all sat their A-levels and were now planning the next big step of leaving home for university and he would have felt left out. They never really socialised with Helen’s crowd and he had little to do with them at school. ‘Sometimes he was shy with people he didn’t know,’ she observes.

Instead, he came round during the day and gave her the new Roxy Music album Flesh and Blood as a present. It contained two of their best-known hits, ‘Oh Yeah’, and another imaginative song about yearning, ‘Over You’. Helen was about to go to Sweden to visit family for the summer, so she was pleased she would have the album with her to remind her of George. At least, she would have done if he hadn’t immediately asked her if he could borrow it. ‘I loved the album. I said OK, but I wasn’t at all happy about it because I had just been given it. It really put me out because I wanted to keep it!’

They had been dating for five months when Helen went off to Sweden for five weeks, but things were not the same between them when she got back. She was looking forward to starting a new chapter in her life at university while George was pressing on with The Executive. George had also reconnected with a girl called Jane who he’d first fancied at the age of twelve when he saw her ice-skating at the Queensway rink in London. She didn’t notice him.

Jane, now a buxom teenager, came to one of The Executive gigs in the summer and decided she liked the look of the swarthy singer, with no recollection of their first encounter, five years previously. George would later famously suggest in a song that he two-timed Helen with Jane. That may or may not have been the case, but he told Helen about Jane. Any desire he had to date another girl wasn’t the single reason they split up. They went to The King Stag pub in Bournehall Road, Bushey, for a grown-up conversation. Helen was now eighteen so could enjoy a rum and coke legally, while George was seventeen with stubble and looked, as ever, twenty-five.

Helen remembers it vividly: ‘I was just saying I’m going to university, you’re not. You might want to go out with other people. I might want to go out with other people. I think it was quite realistic and quite mature in that way.’

And that was that, although it was one of those conversations that afterwards made you want to beat your forehead against the wall and wish you hadn’t been so bloomin’ grown-up about things: ‘I knew there were going to be big changes in my life and that our worlds were very different at this point, but I did feel very sad. It was the first break-up of my life. I was very, very fond of him. I was in love with him.’

George now had no girlfriend and he was soon to have no band either. The Executive was falling apart. Niggles and ill feeling began to fester. Helen Tye may have thought David Mortimer sweet, but Jamie Gould found him far too cocky and decided to play full-time with his other band.

Michael Burdett continued to attend rehearsals and even help with songwriting duties, before drifting off to pursue his own musical career. He became a well-known composer for television and co-wrote the theme music for both MasterChef and Homes Under the Hammer. Then Andy Leaver had to leave due to ill health. The Executive soldiered on as a four-piece and even recorded another set of demos that included the Andy Williams hit ‘Can’t Get Used to Losing You’, which would subsequently be recorded by 2 Tone band The Beat.

The Executive’s version was not enough to win them any more attention than their original demo. David and Paul were also getting itchy feet. Andrew’s brother had matured into a brilliant drummer and was much in demand by other bands. David was considering offers of work abroad.

As a four-piece they played a gig at Cassio College with George on bass guitar but it was not a success. He forgot many of the notes and had to sing them instead. Nobody seemed to mind, but the enthusiasm for 2 Tone was waning.

Andrew had one last try at generating some interest when he came across another regular in his favourite local pub, The Three Crowns on the High Road in Bushey. By coincidence, Mark Dean’s mum and dad lived a few doors down from the Ridgeleys in Chiltern Avenue. Their son had made a mercurial start to a career in the music business and had the chat and the sharp suits to show for his initial success. He had quickly become established when he found work with And Son Music Ltd, which handled publishing for The Jam. He had been noticed by the legendary music impresario Bryan Morrison as well as impressing many with his ability to spot talent. Keen to pursue the then fashion for mod revivals, he signed the band Secret Affair, who had a top-twenty hit with a song called ‘Time for Action’.

Mark was definitely on the up when the boy from his street thrust a tape of The Executive into his hand. Grudgingly, he listened to it, declared it to be ‘rubbish’ and dropped it in the bin. It was time for The Executive to pack it in.