The Big Issue March 2004
Keeping The Faith
By Dorian Lynskey
Keeping The Faith
By Dorian Lynskey
Ask George Michael how the last six years have been and he'll reply, without any hesitation whatsoever: "It's been hell. It's been absolute hell really." But later on he'll say that he can't
remember the last time he was this happy. Both statements are true (the hell ended about a year ago) and it's hard to imagine him existing between those two extremes because he's
so emphatic about everything. When he means "yes" he says "absolutely", or "abso-bloody-lutely". No shades of grey.
Michael walks into the meeting room of his airy north-London office, followed by his new labrador puppy Abby. Wearing jeans and a black V-neck, he looks tanned and healthy, with just a
few flecks of grey in his stubbly goatee. He sits down, rolls a joint, and talks, and he doesn't stop talking (or indeed rolling joints) for the next two and a half hours. It's funny the way he
speaks so frankly while still maintaining his defences. He likes The Big Issue, hence this exclusive, but he doesn't like journalists per se. You can hardly blame him.
Eight years have elapsed since Older, Michael's last album of original material, and most of that time he's been struggling: against grief, depression, a crisis of faith, writer's block, the
tabloids, the music industry and, famously, the LAPD, Finally, he has finished his fourth proper solo record, Patience, and has returned to Sony, the label he took to court a decade ago,
with what he grinningly assures me was "a fucking phenomenal deal". But it wasn't easy."I really spent a couple of years thinking, shit this is it. This is what happens to everyone. My
favourite writers seem to have had a sell-by date and for the last 22 years that's always been my terror, that I wouldnt know when that sell-by date was."
Then, a year ago, his depression lifted, and with it his songwriting. "God gave me my ball back. I just can't remember kicking it over the fence in the first place." Did he think that his
songwriting skills might never return? "It sounds incredibly arrogant of me, but I have always believed that I would choose my own time of leaving the business. I always believed I would
outlast everyone else, with the possible exception of Madonna."
Michael has always played the long game. Twenty years ago, when he and his Wham! partner Andrew Ridgeley were derided as airbrushed airheads, they waited years before releasing
Careless Whisper and proving their detractors wrong. "I knew that I was writing great songs but not getting the credit for it because I was poncing about in shorts. I knew that I would have to
wait before I was given my due. And I honestly believe that with this record, I will finally be on the same page with everybody else. I think it will be undeniable this year."
Do you have any doubt that it will be... "A big record? Nah. Not in the slightest. Not unless I go and murder somebody." He grins slyly, because we both know what he's referring to: the day
that could have finished his career.
On April 7 1998, the men's toilet in Los Angeles' Wilt Rogers Memorial Park suddenly became the world's most famous public convenience when George Michael was arrested for exposing
himself to an undercover policeman. Back then, he simply believed he had been set up by the police and press; now he's not sure that's the full story. On some level, he says, he wanted
it to happen; but why would anyone want that?
"Subconsciously I had to find some way of coming out that didn't give one grinning journalist what they wanted. God knows I'd done everything else, hadn't I? I'd written a whole album
[Older] about my ex-partner. At one point I had a fucking handlebar moustache, for Christ's sake! Deep down it had to be part of my motivation and yet at the time I said to Michael
Parkinson I'd rather have run down Oxford Street naked. I thought it was true. I genuinely did. It was years later that I worked out that everybody else was right." He inhales thoughtfully
on his joint. "It is a weird one."
So you wanted to be arrested? "I was getting exactly what my heart wanted. It was a secret I wasn't prepared to admit was damaging me. As long as my friends and family knew, why should
I give a fuck whether the average man on the street knew? But actually, for someone like me that's a massive compromise. I wanted people to understand that I was gay and I didn't have
any problem with it. Somehow this was my way out." He laughs. "Talk about showbiz!"
Michael says there was another subconscious reason too (busy old subconscious). He spent most of the 1990s either mourning or preparing to mourn. In 1991 he found out that his
boyfriend, Brazilian designer Anselmo Felipa, was HIV positive. Feleppa's death in 1993 inspired the sombre tone of Older and left him unwilling to have a relationship for years afterwards.
The day in 1996 that he rang his mum to tell her he had fallen in love again, with current boyfriend Kenny Goss, she broke the news that she had cancer. "I didn't get even a day off." When
she died the following year, Michael's world collapsed. The arrest and
remember the last time he was this happy. Both statements are true (the hell ended about a year ago) and it's hard to imagine him existing between those two extremes because he's
so emphatic about everything. When he means "yes" he says "absolutely", or "abso-bloody-lutely". No shades of grey.
Michael walks into the meeting room of his airy north-London office, followed by his new labrador puppy Abby. Wearing jeans and a black V-neck, he looks tanned and healthy, with just a
few flecks of grey in his stubbly goatee. He sits down, rolls a joint, and talks, and he doesn't stop talking (or indeed rolling joints) for the next two and a half hours. It's funny the way he
speaks so frankly while still maintaining his defences. He likes The Big Issue, hence this exclusive, but he doesn't like journalists per se. You can hardly blame him.
Eight years have elapsed since Older, Michael's last album of original material, and most of that time he's been struggling: against grief, depression, a crisis of faith, writer's block, the
tabloids, the music industry and, famously, the LAPD, Finally, he has finished his fourth proper solo record, Patience, and has returned to Sony, the label he took to court a decade ago,
with what he grinningly assures me was "a fucking phenomenal deal". But it wasn't easy."I really spent a couple of years thinking, shit this is it. This is what happens to everyone. My
favourite writers seem to have had a sell-by date and for the last 22 years that's always been my terror, that I wouldnt know when that sell-by date was."
Then, a year ago, his depression lifted, and with it his songwriting. "God gave me my ball back. I just can't remember kicking it over the fence in the first place." Did he think that his
songwriting skills might never return? "It sounds incredibly arrogant of me, but I have always believed that I would choose my own time of leaving the business. I always believed I would
outlast everyone else, with the possible exception of Madonna."
Michael has always played the long game. Twenty years ago, when he and his Wham! partner Andrew Ridgeley were derided as airbrushed airheads, they waited years before releasing
Careless Whisper and proving their detractors wrong. "I knew that I was writing great songs but not getting the credit for it because I was poncing about in shorts. I knew that I would have to
wait before I was given my due. And I honestly believe that with this record, I will finally be on the same page with everybody else. I think it will be undeniable this year."
Do you have any doubt that it will be... "A big record? Nah. Not in the slightest. Not unless I go and murder somebody." He grins slyly, because we both know what he's referring to: the day
that could have finished his career.
On April 7 1998, the men's toilet in Los Angeles' Wilt Rogers Memorial Park suddenly became the world's most famous public convenience when George Michael was arrested for exposing
himself to an undercover policeman. Back then, he simply believed he had been set up by the police and press; now he's not sure that's the full story. On some level, he says, he wanted
it to happen; but why would anyone want that?
"Subconsciously I had to find some way of coming out that didn't give one grinning journalist what they wanted. God knows I'd done everything else, hadn't I? I'd written a whole album
[Older] about my ex-partner. At one point I had a fucking handlebar moustache, for Christ's sake! Deep down it had to be part of my motivation and yet at the time I said to Michael
Parkinson I'd rather have run down Oxford Street naked. I thought it was true. I genuinely did. It was years later that I worked out that everybody else was right." He inhales thoughtfully
on his joint. "It is a weird one."
So you wanted to be arrested? "I was getting exactly what my heart wanted. It was a secret I wasn't prepared to admit was damaging me. As long as my friends and family knew, why should
I give a fuck whether the average man on the street knew? But actually, for someone like me that's a massive compromise. I wanted people to understand that I was gay and I didn't have
any problem with it. Somehow this was my way out." He laughs. "Talk about showbiz!"
Michael says there was another subconscious reason too (busy old subconscious). He spent most of the 1990s either mourning or preparing to mourn. In 1991 he found out that his
boyfriend, Brazilian designer Anselmo Felipa, was HIV positive. Feleppa's death in 1993 inspired the sombre tone of Older and left him unwilling to have a relationship for years afterwards.
The day in 1996 that he rang his mum to tell her he had fallen in love again, with current boyfriend Kenny Goss, she broke the news that she had cancer. "I didn't get even a day off." When
she died the following year, Michael's world collapsed. The arrest and
subsequent public humiliation were somehow a welcome distraction.
"For six months my life was about me - it wasn't about missing my mum or feeling persecuted because
I'd gone through two bereavements, one after another. It was just about surviving. I felt that if I'm going
to be this scared all the time, it might as well be something I can have some say in the outcome of."
It's hard to know what to make of this retrospective justification - was he fooling himself then or is he fooling
himself now? - but Michael clearly believes it. Anyway, it worked. He believes that certain tabloids wanted to
destroy his career but, if anything, it won him fans. He cracked funny and clever jokes on Parkinson and
set the video for Outside in a toilet complete with dancing policemen. "You'd think I'd done something really
heroic by getting my knob out and then admitting to it. When you're caught with your pants down, tell the fucking
truth, you know?"
But then he had no way to avoid grieving for his mother, and depression swallowed him whole. He stayed
at home smoking joints and watching too much television news, getting angrier and angrier. He couldn't write
so he released a low-key album of jazz standards, Songs From The Last Century, which was critically
savaged. When he reappeared in 2002 his critics smelt blood. "Ah, but I knew that it wasn't blood," he
says triumphantly. "It was tomato ketchup."
That year he released two one-off singles: Freeek!, about the influence of pornography on mainstream TV;
and Shoot The Dog, which controversially attacked Bush and Blair's foreign policy, particularly on Iraq,
long before the likes of Ms Dynamite and Chris Martin. Why take that risk? "This sounds very strange but
at the same time as I wanted to be famous for doing something special, I've always wanted to be normal. I
think the way my coming out happened let me know that there was no point in trying to be like other people
. Also, when you have a secret that people want to expose, you're less inclined to shout about anything."
He has no regrets but still feels wounded. He's furious that no musicians, not even anti-war I ones, came to
his support. "I read the interviews with Damon Albarn and he was horribly simplistic and uninformed. And
you know they thought they were too good to give me a ring."
The funny thing is that, two years on, his representation of Blair as Bush's poodle seems rather tame.
Clearly, this lifelong Labour voter (until 2001, when he voted Lib Dem) has lost whatever faith he had in
the prime minister. "I can't imagine what it feels like for people who lost their kids to hear Tony Blair's
pathetic little bleatings that he still thinks the world is a safer place. It's so disrespectful." Louder, angrier. "I
wish to God that the Labour party had the guts to get rid of Blair, because it could survive another election
without him. I think it's too important for world affairs that he's gone. I think globally he is a dangerous man.
He is an altruist who thinks he's doing everything for the best but he cannot face up to his own ego."
Of course, the same thing has often been said about pop stars who try dabbling in politics, but Michael
genuinely knows his stuff. He is particularly cogent about the lack of understanding between the Muslim
and non- Muslim worlds. It's one of Patience's themes: "The only people who can reconcile this are the
next generation, because this one's doing a horrific job."
"For six months my life was about me - it wasn't about missing my mum or feeling persecuted because
I'd gone through two bereavements, one after another. It was just about surviving. I felt that if I'm going
to be this scared all the time, it might as well be something I can have some say in the outcome of."
It's hard to know what to make of this retrospective justification - was he fooling himself then or is he fooling
himself now? - but Michael clearly believes it. Anyway, it worked. He believes that certain tabloids wanted to
destroy his career but, if anything, it won him fans. He cracked funny and clever jokes on Parkinson and
set the video for Outside in a toilet complete with dancing policemen. "You'd think I'd done something really
heroic by getting my knob out and then admitting to it. When you're caught with your pants down, tell the fucking
truth, you know?"
But then he had no way to avoid grieving for his mother, and depression swallowed him whole. He stayed
at home smoking joints and watching too much television news, getting angrier and angrier. He couldn't write
so he released a low-key album of jazz standards, Songs From The Last Century, which was critically
savaged. When he reappeared in 2002 his critics smelt blood. "Ah, but I knew that it wasn't blood," he
says triumphantly. "It was tomato ketchup."
That year he released two one-off singles: Freeek!, about the influence of pornography on mainstream TV;
and Shoot The Dog, which controversially attacked Bush and Blair's foreign policy, particularly on Iraq,
long before the likes of Ms Dynamite and Chris Martin. Why take that risk? "This sounds very strange but
at the same time as I wanted to be famous for doing something special, I've always wanted to be normal. I
think the way my coming out happened let me know that there was no point in trying to be like other people
. Also, when you have a secret that people want to expose, you're less inclined to shout about anything."
He has no regrets but still feels wounded. He's furious that no musicians, not even anti-war I ones, came to
his support. "I read the interviews with Damon Albarn and he was horribly simplistic and uninformed. And
you know they thought they were too good to give me a ring."
The funny thing is that, two years on, his representation of Blair as Bush's poodle seems rather tame.
Clearly, this lifelong Labour voter (until 2001, when he voted Lib Dem) has lost whatever faith he had in
the prime minister. "I can't imagine what it feels like for people who lost their kids to hear Tony Blair's
pathetic little bleatings that he still thinks the world is a safer place. It's so disrespectful." Louder, angrier. "I
wish to God that the Labour party had the guts to get rid of Blair, because it could survive another election
without him. I think it's too important for world affairs that he's gone. I think globally he is a dangerous man.
He is an altruist who thinks he's doing everything for the best but he cannot face up to his own ego."
Of course, the same thing has often been said about pop stars who try dabbling in politics, but Michael
genuinely knows his stuff. He is particularly cogent about the lack of understanding between the Muslim
and non- Muslim worlds. It's one of Patience's themes: "The only people who can reconcile this are the
next generation, because this one's doing a horrific job."
Michael gives good indignation. Sometimes he sounds halfway between a conspiracy theorist and Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells, railing against everything from George Bush to deregulated TV to
bad service in chain restaurants. Does he consider himself old-fashioned? "I'm so of my generation. Actually I'm almost of the generation just before me. I still believe you have a responsibility as
an artist to have some integrity."
For him, that involves detachment from the world of celebrity. He hasn't seen his most famous friends, EIton John and Geri Halliwell, for two years, and he's not looking for new ones.
"As you become older you become more selective. Most celebrities bore me to tears. How can attention be worth what it is to be a celebrity today? The lack of dignity and the lack of privacy and
the hideous jealousy." He's on a roll. "Almost every one of us big stars is a fuck-up and we have a huge problem with authority so why accept the authority of the lynch mob? Why would you want
to wander around in Heatsville and be answerable to idiots? I'm not answerable because I really, literally don't care. I could never be humiliated again. Never. I'll still sue the fucking arse of them if
they don't get it right - if they give me a small willy or something, but I honestly couldn't give a fuck. I dont mind if they think I've slept with Sheffield Wednesda
bad service in chain restaurants. Does he consider himself old-fashioned? "I'm so of my generation. Actually I'm almost of the generation just before me. I still believe you have a responsibility as
an artist to have some integrity."
For him, that involves detachment from the world of celebrity. He hasn't seen his most famous friends, EIton John and Geri Halliwell, for two years, and he's not looking for new ones.
"As you become older you become more selective. Most celebrities bore me to tears. How can attention be worth what it is to be a celebrity today? The lack of dignity and the lack of privacy and
the hideous jealousy." He's on a roll. "Almost every one of us big stars is a fuck-up and we have a huge problem with authority so why accept the authority of the lynch mob? Why would you want
to wander around in Heatsville and be answerable to idiots? I'm not answerable because I really, literally don't care. I could never be humiliated again. Never. I'll still sue the fucking arse of them if
they don't get it right - if they give me a small willy or something, but I honestly couldn't give a fuck. I dont mind if they think I've slept with Sheffield Wednesda
Surely he protests too much. Michael does mind, about many, many things. He registers
every slight, every snide remark. The other day he looked up his new single, Amazing,
on Amazon and noticed that all the customer recommendations on the page were Pet
Shop Boys records. "For God's sake, what does Amazing have to do with the Pet Shop
Boys?," he protests. "It's like that line in The Office when he goes [in Gareth's voice] 'I'm
not homophobic. Look at my record collection: Queen, George Michael, Pet Shop Boys.
They're all bummers.'" He laughs uproariously.
Amazing is a rare moment of unambiguous celebration on an album that teems with
ghosts. My Mother Had A Brother is about a gay uncle who committed suicide around
the time Michael was born, while Round Here reflects on his parents, and his pre-fame
days as Georgios Panayiotou. (Please) Send Me Someone is subtitled Anselmo's Song.
Having dealt with so much bereavement, does it get any easier? "Unfortunately, I don't
think so, no. I mean, it's terrifying for me, terrifying for me, every time Kenny gets on a
plane to America." He falters, then continues matter-of-factly. "I don't think I'd be hard
pressed to stay in this world if it happened to Kenny, because I know how long it could
take to get through it.
every slight, every snide remark. The other day he looked up his new single, Amazing,
on Amazon and noticed that all the customer recommendations on the page were Pet
Shop Boys records. "For God's sake, what does Amazing have to do with the Pet Shop
Boys?," he protests. "It's like that line in The Office when he goes [in Gareth's voice] 'I'm
not homophobic. Look at my record collection: Queen, George Michael, Pet Shop Boys.
They're all bummers.'" He laughs uproariously.
Amazing is a rare moment of unambiguous celebration on an album that teems with
ghosts. My Mother Had A Brother is about a gay uncle who committed suicide around
the time Michael was born, while Round Here reflects on his parents, and his pre-fame
days as Georgios Panayiotou. (Please) Send Me Someone is subtitled Anselmo's Song.
Having dealt with so much bereavement, does it get any easier? "Unfortunately, I don't
think so, no. I mean, it's terrifying for me, terrifying for me, every time Kenny gets on a
plane to America." He falters, then continues matter-of-factly. "I don't think I'd be hard
pressed to stay in this world if it happened to Kenny, because I know how long it could
take to get through it.
George Michael turned 40 last June. "It's fantastic," he says. "You can look in the mirror and say: 'Ah, I'm not looking so bad for 40!' I see age as an achievement. There's half the world wishing
they had the chance to get old." Does he ever think of giving up his career? He refers me to Through, the last song on Patience. It begins: "I think it's over/See, everything has changed/And
all this hatred may just make me strong enough/To walk away." What does that mean? "To be honest with you," he says, "I have an absolute plan for my future and it doesn't look like what
I'm doing now." Specifically? "It would be negative to talk about it now because I couldn't be happier, but the future looks very different." But this is the end of something?
"This is definitely the end of something." If Patience is some kind of goodbye, it will be a fitting one. "I think I've just made the best record of my career," says Michael. "It was agony but it was
worth waiting. For me, anyway. It's just whether or not it was worth waiting for everyone else." He laughs. "That's what we shall see." Abso-bloody-lutely.
they had the chance to get old." Does he ever think of giving up his career? He refers me to Through, the last song on Patience. It begins: "I think it's over/See, everything has changed/And
all this hatred may just make me strong enough/To walk away." What does that mean? "To be honest with you," he says, "I have an absolute plan for my future and it doesn't look like what
I'm doing now." Specifically? "It would be negative to talk about it now because I couldn't be happier, but the future looks very different." But this is the end of something?
"This is definitely the end of something." If Patience is some kind of goodbye, it will be a fitting one. "I think I've just made the best record of my career," says Michael. "It was agony but it was
worth waiting. For me, anyway. It's just whether or not it was worth waiting for everyone else." He laughs. "That's what we shall see." Abso-bloody-lutely.