
Wham! George Michael & Me is Andrew Ridgeley’s memoir from 2019, published three years after George’s death. As a fan of both Wham! and George Michael, I raced through its 344 pages. The book read more like a transcript, so it is likely Ridgeley was interviewed at length and didn’t physically set pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) in actually writing it.
Andrew covered his boyhood and family life and included many photos from that time. He is a dead ringer for his father, Albert. Andrew befriended George–then Georgios Panayiotou–at school and took him under his wing when the pudgy guy with glasses and an unpronounceable name showed up needing an orientation. The two bonded and became immediate friends.
He covered their early musical ventures with a band called the Executive and then the formation of Wham! From the start of the memoir, Andrew revealed a profound humility and grace. He acknowledged that the press often made mincemeat out of him, yet he doesn’t harbour any resentment about the way he had been treated. His focus was always directed towards George and the band. They wanted Wham! to be a chart-topping fun-loving youth-oriented dance band. As long as they succeeded in that regard, he could deal with any skewering in the press.
With the main half of the duo now deceased, I was expecting Andrew to claim credit for what may have, during Wham!’s tenure, been presented as solely George projects. I was surprised not to encounter any “Hey, that was my idea” grandstanding. Wham! had a vision where they wanted to be and how long they were going to last. The band was, from the start, not a long-term project. Andrew, who cowrote some of the early Wham! songs with George, revealed how, in “another decision made behind the scenes”, he had been persuaded to step back to allow George to handle all the songwriting on his own. I have no doubt that their record company spoke to George about this. He was by far the greater writing talent, and:
“a tension was slowly building in and out of the studio to the point where it was clear we needed to talk. One day, we met at my parents’ house and, after discussing it, decided that he should write everything. I could only agree that it was the best way for Wham! to make that number 1 record we wanted, and it was a relief to get it out in the open and to have made a decision. The pressure was undoubtedly now heaped upon his shoulders, but we both knew it was for the best.”
I might have expected more bitterness from Andrew about this, but he maintained a gentlemanly tone throughout the memoir. If anything, in my opinion he deserved a songwriting credit on “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go”, since he came up with the title, at least. And he did cowrite Wham!’s (or solo George’s, depending where you live) biggest hit, “Careless Whisper”.
Andrew knew George from boyhood and was witness to all the teenage insecurities that befall young men. George was always obsessing with his untamable hair. He was also self-conscious about his large glasses and his physique, which he felt was on the husky side. According to Andrew, even when fame broke Wham! to stellar status, where they would have stylists and hairdressers at their call to transform them into pinups, George was still insecure about his appearance.
And this is where I believe that Andrew was needed most. From the start of their musical collaboration, it is my opinion that Andrew provided a crutch for George to lean on, which was more valuable to him than Andrew’s talents as a cowriter or composer. If you look at the contributions Andrew provided in Wham! you might wonder what function he had in the band at all. Surely some of their backing musicians could have taken just as much credit. No wonder the press roasted him so often. In their opinion, he was nothing more than a do-nothing hanger-on party boy. Why was he in Wham! in the first place?
Although George had the voice to make him a star, the armchair psychiatrist in me sees that he didn’t have the mindset to go out and do it on his own. As long as Andrew was there though, George could go out and face the public. When I read about George’s body image issues, I had to wonder about that, because he appears in the “Club Tropicana” video wearing the briefest swimming trunks and in later years in concert, he’d wear a loose vest over a bare chest. If those were solo videos or concerts, George wouldn’t have the confidence to wear so little. Yet I believe that during the run of Wham! with Andrew constantly by his side, George was able to work through his insecurity issues and when Wham! was over, he was ready to strike out on his own.
Andrew shared some fond memories of his time in Wham! and I was most tickled by a certain backstage encounter. Andrew was approached by the band’s tour director who informed him that Jimmy Page was waiting outside with his daughter, who was a huge fan (likely Scarlet Page). Would he be willing to meet them? Andrew wrote:
“My head span [sic]. Jimmy Page was waiting to meet me. The finer details of who he was with and what on earth he might be doing here evaporated in an instant. I couldn’t hear, I couldn’t think, completely discombobulated by the idea that one of the most iconic musicians in rock’n’roll history, a guitar god, was just outside the door. I composed myself, stepped outside and came face-to-face with Jimmy, who was standing patiently with his young daughter. It really was him–this was not a wind-up.
“Bloody hell. Bloody hell. Bloody hell…I thought. That is Jimmy Page.
“And then an awful realisation struck me. Oh, my God, I can’t believe he’s been dragged to a bloody Wham! concert. Surely the last thing he wants to go to is a bloody Wham! concert…? But there was no turning back. I shook his hand and grinned like an idiot.”
The memoir jumps from Wham!’s final concert in 1986 to Christmas day in 2016, when the news broke that George had died. Andrew doesn’t dwell long on George’s death. The last seven pages are a tribute from his lifelong best friend.