1980s kids are having fun.
The new Netflix series Wham! (now streaming) celebrates the beloved British band – and their incredible four-year rise to record profits and sold out stadiums – by taking an in-depth look at the lives of two young men who grew up in the UK. the first half of that decade.
Inspired by Andrew Ridgeley’s mother’s extensive memoirs and George Michael’s past, Chris Smith’s (Branson) story is a beautiful song that feels like a conversation between the two, as they reminisce about what they did and what they regretted.
I foresaw twice, Worth Watching we’ve picked out our favorite revelations from the 92-minute doco, which also features plenty of memorable cameos and performances from the duo and their co-stars.
It has been given
George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley were the faces of Wham!
Bushey Meads Buddies
Ridgeley and biological father Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou (Michael) first met at school in Hertfordshire in 1975 when they were 12 and 11 years old respectively.
While Ridgeley remembers the new boy’s “window glasses” and “big hair”, Michael remembers that he was “a bit of a pig, weird looking and shy”.
Raising his hand to direct “Yog”, Ridgeley says he quickly realized he was “joined at the hip”, sharing a love of Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and spending hours exercising and mixing comedy radio stations.
However, not everyone accepts their relationship, especially as Ridgeley’s school report described it as “confused”. “My parents thought he was the worst thing that could happen to me,” says Michael, who also admits that his Cypriot father stopped him from buying records and listening to his stereo for a while.
It has been given
Andrew Ridgeley and Georges Panayiotou were at odds as teenagers.
Their first group was very different
The pair were 16 when they formed the five-piece band The Executive in 1979.
“We played ska music [which included a ska take on Beethoven Fur Elise],” says Michael. “We were really bad. It started to fall apart after a year because people didn’t come to the games or the concerts.”
This is when Ridgeley makes a few interesting rebuttals to his friend’s testimony, describing the “disorder” as insufficient: “It messed up.”
It has been given
Andrew Ridgeley brought his then-girlfriend Shirlie Holliman as a lead singer from the early days of Wham!
Their first demo tape was only four minutes long
Built for £20 in Ridgeley’s front room using a four-track jack and a microphone attached to a broom, he recorded what would become Wham Rap! (Enjoy What You Do), Club Tropicana and Careless Whisper on C-60 cassette.
When it was finished and left school, it was “just one song, ⅔ of one and a quarter of the other” and was rejected by everyone, until Ridgeley pushed deeply about his neighbor Mark Dean’s (who founded the groups New Romantic Soft Cell and ABC ) mailbox.
“There were no songs on it, George just played guitar songs – but it was good,” said Dean, who signed them, in an interview with the former.
A new name is a lucky break
When he saw the name of G. Panos on their first single, Michael realized that there was an urgent need for a stage name. So she took her first name and combined it with the Christian name of one of the couple’s best friends.
But despite gaining a large following in the group, chart success did not follow – and they were about to give up, when a phone call came out of the blue in early November 1982. Another artist had canceled, so they could play No. 42 Young Guns singles on the show that week?
Although Michael had to sleep in a hotel room the night before filming and performing in his mother’s back room (“no choreographer would put up with that shit,” Michael laughs), “there was a certain energy in the tension” that had a strong impact on the audience. he saw.
“That was the moment that changed everything,” says Ridgeley, detailing how the released and re-released Wham Rap! revealed the charts.
Ibiza approval
They were shooting a video for Club Tropicana on the Spanish island when Michael showed up at Ridgeley and Wham! Shirlie Holliman (who later married Martin Kemp of Spandau Ballet). “It didn’t have any effect on our relationship,” says a supportive Ridgeley, “but we thought it best not to tell her Dad.”
“I really wanted out – and I gave up,” Michael recalls. “So I created a new persona, and decided to make myself famous.”
For him, Ridgeley “helped” by being known in the books as “Randy Andy”, allowing Michael to “fly under the radar”.
A nightmare in Muscle Shoals
Getting a chance to record at the famous Alabama Studios was originally Michael’s dream, but it went south.
As noted historian Jerry Wexler went on to remind him, this is where Aretha Franklin and Ray Charles sang their most famous hits. “I was guilting myself into singing the little thing that was written on the bus [Careless Whisper].”
The end was a disaster. “It had been stripped away. It was mediocre, it had lost all its character,” says Michael.
He made the bold decision to re-record, and did it himself – going through 10 sax players, before finding Steve Gregory.
The fourth festival peat depression
Having already scored free No.1s in 1984 (Freedom, Careless Whispers and Wake Me Up Before You Go), Michael made sure to record his fourth while watching a football game with Ridgeley.
To make it even sweeter, it will be Christmas No. , the spark in the works came when Bob Geldof asked Michael if he would be on a singles team to raise money to help fight famine in Ethiopia.
“Like everyone else, I thought it was great,” says Michael of recording the song Do They Know It’s Christmas?
His worst fears were realized, when Last Christmas settled at No. Although, Michael admits that even the feeling of self-pity did not help his depression.
Last Christmas reached number 1 in the UK, on New Year’s Day 2021, just over four years after Michael’s death.
Wow! now streaming on Netflix.
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