The rise of Wham! Britain’s definitive 80s pop poster boys

As the definitive 80s poster boys, George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley exemplified the decade’s fun factor – here we celebrate the rise of Wham! Britain’s premier pop idols…

Bursting onto a music scene which had faded to grey in reflection of Britain’s bleak economic landscape in 1982, Wham! – two perma-tanned pretty boys with dazzling smiles, tightly choreographed dance routines and chirpy songs about getting paid and getting laid – penetrated the charts and the magazines with a fresh, irresistible brand of soulful pop. Bringing a much-needed sense of fun and frivolity to proceedings, their breakthrough hit Young Guns (Go For It!) set the agenda for a record-breaking four-year stint as Britain’s premier pop idols.

The antithesis of both the moody, so-serious New Romantics and the pop politicos earnestly fighting racism and the annihilation of workers’ rights under Margaret Thatcher’s divisive leadership, Wham! were an unabashed bundle of fun, a pair of good-time guys stealing the hearts – and the pocket money – of teenage girls with their fun-filled, infectious songs, colourful videos and heartthrob looks. With just two studio albums and a handful of irresistibly catchy singles, Wham! made it big in a spectacularly short period of time before the musical maverick at the heart of the outfit went on to make it even bigger as a solo artist, establishing himself as one of the greatest talents of his generation.

The Odd Couple

The Wham! story began six years earlier at Bushey Meads School with the budding friendship of Andrew Ridgeley, the school’s cool Jack the Lad, and new kid Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou – at the time a shy, overweight introvert who found it difficult to make new friends. Seemingly polar opposites in every respect – looks, personality and outlook – their shared obsession with music was the catalyst that bound them together. They would make up dance routines, and record their own mock radio shows onto cassettes.

Soon, their passion for music developed into writing their own songs, and for George this proved to be a vital new emotional outlet. His lack of confidence and inability to socialise meant he was living vicariously through Andrew, who was outgoing and sociable and enjoyed going to discos and picking up girls. George, meanwhile, spent most of his evenings at home or dutifully washing dishes in the kitchen of his father’s Greek restaurant.

While artists such as Elton John, Stevie Wonder and the roster of Motown were George and Andrew’s main early musical loves, the release of the movie Saturday Night Fever in 1977 had a profound effect on the pair, particularly George. Seduced by the sounds of disco and the confidence exuded by John Travolta’s Tony Manero, he lost weight, bought some contact lenses and gained a whole load of confidence. Guided by Andrew, he threw himself into the disco scene, experiencing the euphoria of the clubs and their Bee Gees soundtrack. Before long, the Saturday Night Fever phenomenon stirred George and Andrew’s own musical aspirations to the extent that they decided to form a band of their own.

The Fun Factor

“I had the motivation and George had the vision,” Andrew later told the BBC. “I had to insist we get a band together because he wanted to do what his parents expected of him. We had talked about it for so long and he was saying ‘after O-levels’… then it was ‘after A-levels’… and in the end I had to say, ‘No, George, it has to be now’. I wanted to make music and have fun.”

As George had expected, the decision to pursue music as a career did not go down well with his strict father, who harboured desires of George following in his own footsteps and running the family business. “He just thought I was a dreamer,” George later recalled. “I was obsessed with music, always had been, but it was inconceivable to him that I could earn a living doing it. This was a man who didn’t have a musical bone in his body and just thought, ‘What chance has this kid got of becoming a millionaire pop star?’ The turning point came when we had a big argument because I said I wouldn’t go to private school. He just lost interest after that.”

While Andrew had previously been the motivational half when it came to musical ambition, George’s father’s dismissal of his son’s dreams instilled in him a new determination. As well as spells on the dole (much to his father’s fury), George took on a number of menial jobs to support himself, including working on a building site, as a cinema usher, and as a DJ in a restaurant and a health club. However much he disliked the jobs, he was confident that they were a short-term arrangement and that he was simply supporting himself while he built his musical career.

Two’s Company

First, George and Andrew tried out various band incarnations, including a spell as a ska quintet called The Executive with Andrew’s brother Paul, David Austin and another friend, Andrew Leaver (who would tragically die of cancer at the age of just 20). These 2 Tone wannabes played local gigs and hawked a tape around record companies, to be met with resounding indifference.

George and Andrew settled on becoming a duo, with Andrew’s girlfriend Shirlie Holliman and her friend Amanda Washburn as backing vocalists. Still without their own musical identity, Wham! recorded an eclectic four-track demo. Despite containing three tracks which would eventually become huge hits, Careless Whisper, Wham Rap! and Club Tropicana (future album track Come On! was the fourth song), the tape attracted little interest. There was, however, one exception – local A&R guy Mark Dean, who had recently had great success with Soft Cell and ABC and had just launched his own label, Innervision.

Dean instantly spotted the obvious potential of Wham! and was ruthless in his pursuit of their signatures on his contract. Taking advantage of their lack of business acumen, he dazzled them with his track record of two of pop’s biggest success stories of the year, and spun them a line about having to sign the contract then and there in order to meet a deadline ensuring their record could be released that year. Blindsided by the prospect of imminent success, George and Andrew succumbed, unknowingly tying themselves into a contract which essentially owned them for the next five years.

Go For It!

As Wham! went into the studio to begin work on their debut album, backing singer Amanda Washburn left the band, promptly replaced by session singer Dee C Lee, who happened to be in the studio working with another artist at the time. As work began on the record, it soon became apparent that George was now the musical driving force behind the band. Though Andrew had contributed to the writing of Wham Rap! and Club Tropicana, the pair reached an agreement that George would become Wham!’s sole songwriter.

“I never regretted stepping back from the songwriting,” Andrew later insisted. “He didn’t need the help and he didn’t want it. On occasions I did feel like I could have been more supportive, but he was getting on fine without it. The creative side took a back seat for me because he was doing a great job. We were going where we wanted to go.”

Despite embarking on a hectic promo schedule which saw them play up to six club PAs per night, the boys’ first single Wham Rap!, a politically-charged novelty rap track, failed to crack the Top 100 in June 1982. Innervision attributed the failure of Wham Rap! to the fact that the group hadn’t yet established an identity and people were thus unable to connect with them. Disappointed but still optimistic, the boys put it down to experience and began planning a swift follow-up.

Shooting For Stardom

For the second single, Young Guns (Go For It!), it was obviously imperative to create a recognisable Wham! branding. MTV, launched in 1981, had now established music videos as an invaluable marketing tool for artists to cultivate an image, and the good-looking duo took full advantage of it. As well as shooting a video, they flew to Corfu for promotional pictures casting the pair as party-loving playboys out for a good time.

The photographs earned them coverage in the teen mags, which in turn landed them a promo spot on the BBC’s Saturday morning TV show Saturday Superstore. Among the millions watching that appearance was a producer from Top Of The Pops. When an act pulled out of performing on the following Thursday’s show, Wham! were drafted in as a last minute replacement, delivering the performance that would change their lives overnight.

The Top Of The Pops performance of Young Guns, delivered like an excerpt from West Side Story soundtracked by Chic, was an instant sensation and sent the single rocketing up the charts, peaking at No.3. Flirting up a storm with backing singers Dee and Shirlie, George and Andrew were living their dream, having gone from performing their dance routines in front of the TV to performing them on TV.

According to George, Young Guns’ impact came as a huge relief. “Once we’d got that initial break, I knew we’d be fine,” he said. “Once we got our foot in the door, no one would get us out.”

His prophecy turned out to be true and the hits followed in quick succession with a remix of Wham Rap!, Bad Boys and Club Tropicana all following Young Guns into the Top 10, while the debut album, Fantastic, reached No.1 when it was released in July 1983.

A Fantastic Success

Though Fantastic’s success seemed almost inevitable, the release almost didn’t happen at all. Despite enjoying a swift succession of hit singles, the boys were disgusted to discover that they still apparently had no money at all, being forced to live on an allowance of £40 per week from Innervision. Forced into revolt by this meagre sum, they confronted Mark Dean, who flatly refused to increase it. Furious, George stole the master tapes of the album and essentially held them to ransom until he and Andrew were given more cash.

Although an agreement was reached, the episode set alarm bells ringing and marked the beginning of a series of changes within the Wham! camp. Helen ‘Pepsi’ DeMacque joined the band as backing singer after Dee C Lee left to forge a solo career and to become a full-time member of The Style Council, and industry heavyweights Jazz Summers and Simon Napier-Bell were enlisted as Wham!’s management.

With decades of experience under his belt, Napier-Bell’s first job was the task of freeing them from the tyrannical terms of their Innervision deal. As Wham! were silenced by the legal wrangling to get them out of their contract, they hit the road for their first tour (a jaunt sponsored by sportswear label Fila, which George and Andrew wore onstage throughout the tour). The 30-date Club Fantastic tour was intended to raise money to pay for legal fees and to maintain Wham!’s profile while they weren’t allowed to record new material. The tour cemented the group’s status as pop’s hottest property, sparking Beatlemania-style fan hysteria wherever they went. As well as the debut performances of Careless Whisper during the shows, the tour’s main talking point came when the duo pulled shuttlecocks out of their shorts and batted them into the hysterical audience.

A Bigger Splash

As 1983 drew to a close, so did Wham!’s first chapter. Following the tour, they flew to Provence to begin work on their second album. George continued readying songs for when they were free to record again, while Andrew continued to live up to his reputation as a professional playboy, his exploits earning him the moniker ‘Randy Andy’ in the tabloids.

Meanwhile, back home, lawyers for both parties eventually reached an agreement that Wham!’s contract had been unreasonably exploitative on Mark Dean’s side. Dean landed an out-of-court settlement, and Wham! signed a deal with Epic Records.

With a new label, new sound and new image, 1984’s rebranding of Wham! saw them achieve success beyond their wildest dreams. The lead single from the new album, Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go, was an unabashed slice of pure pop that was more Cliff Richard than cutting edge. The video saw a softening of their image, with a dewy-eyed George cooing into the camera, all blond highlights, gold hoop earrings and Day-Glo sportswear, before donning a white Katherine Hamnett ‘Choose Life’ slogan T-shirt for a cheesy dance routine. The song cast Wham! as pop’s ‘good guys’ in direct riposte to the filth and the fury of the villainous Frankie Goes To Hollywood, and it became their first No.1 hit.

Top Of The Pops

Post-makeover, Wham! seemed unstoppable. George’s debut solo single Careless Whisper and Wham!’s Freedom completed a hat-trick of No.1 singles, ensuring massive sales for the second album, the appropriately-titled Make It Big in November 1984. The same month, George contributed vocals to Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas?, ending the year at No.1 and No.2 respectively in the singles chart as the double A-side Last Christmas/Everything She Wants held firmly on the Christmas runner-up spot behind Band Aid. Wham! donated all the royalties from the single to the Ethiopia Appeal. With sales of 1.8 million copies, Last Christmas held the spot as the biggest-selling single in chart history not to reach No.1 until January 2021 when it managed the feat 37 years after first being denied.

George later revealed that he felt Wham! were treated as “a bit of a joke” by their peers, and he felt uncomfortable during the recording of the Band Aid single, with whispers and in-jokes being made at his expense. “I couldn’t believe people couldn’t see past the image and appreciate the music that this 20-year old kid was making,” he told VH1 in 2004. “What I was doing was remarkable… I was writing, producing and arranging these records, and I knew how to make them jump out of the radio. The idea that the fact that I was wearing stupid shorts and big earrings stopped people from noticing that is stunning to me.”

Stepping Out

While George was made to feel inferior by some of his peers at the Band Aid session, by 1985 he was beginning to feel validated by an Ivor Novello songwriting award and invitations from his musical heroes to work with them. He held his own against Smokey Robinson and Stevie Wonder at a Motown tribute concert at the legendary Harlem Apollo Theater, and was invited to perform Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me with Elton John at Live Aid. The pair became friends, and George recorded backing vocals for Elton’s Nikita and Wrap Her Up.

In the midst of The Big Tour – a mammoth jaunt which saw Wham! perform in the UK, Australia, China and, importantly, the US, where they had sold six million copies of Make It Big, had three No.1 singles and were playing to 60,000 fans in stadiums – George began to grow disillusioned. After singing with his idols, he was feeling trapped… not only by the music he was making but also by the image of Wham!, finding himself living out the group’s media personality by indulging in countless empty sexual encounters to mask the confusion he was experiencing over his sexuality.

Unfulfilled personally and creatively, following the release of I’m Your Man in September 1985 George shelved plans to write and record a third Wham! album and refused to participate in a deal to endorse Pepsi, which would have earned Wham! £3.3 million. He’d been shouldering the bulk of the work alone while Andrew reaped the rewards, constantly partying and enjoying his hedonistic lifestyle.

Dawning Of A New Era

Craving credibility and the freedom to be more personally honest in his work, George made the decision: he had to strike out on his own. His second solo single, A Different Corner, gave him his second solo No.1 hit before he re-joined Andrew for Wham!’s big send-off.

Throughout the early months of 1986, Wham!’s final recordings were compiled on The Edge Of Heaven EP and The Final – a collection of all their singles to date, including George’s two solo hits, released to coincide with The Final concert at London’s Wembley Stadium. Taking place on 28 June 1986, ‘Whambley’ was an emotional celebration of three remarkable years which included all the hits, special guests and surprises throughout the day… the perfect finale.

Worth Waiting For

While Andrew struggled post-Wham!, indulging in his passions for surfing and Formula 1 racing, George threw himself into work. In January 1987 he scored yet another No.1 hit, this time with I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me), a duet with another of his idols, Aretha Franklin. These invitations to perform alongside his idols were proof he had earned their respect, and his debut album was a vehicle to match them sales-wise, too.

Having already began work on his debut solo record once Wham! was laid to rest, George felt a sense of liberation and freedom to express himself in a way he hadn’t felt able to before. Holed up in studios in London and Denmark, he began to exert full creative control, writing and producing the album himself. Aside from his own album, he remixed and contributed uncredited vocals to a cover of Jive Talkin’ for his cousin’s band Boogie Box High, a tribute to the Gibb brothers, whose Saturday Night Fever soundtrack had affected him so deeply a decade earlier.

Keen to distance himself from the teenybopper image of Wham! – “It’s a musical challenge. I want to widen my audience. I think a lot of Wham! fans have grown up with me,” he suggested to Dutch TV programme Countdown – George launched his career with a controversial single and video which were banned by the BBC. The funk-driven I Want Your Sex was a calculated effort to reinvent himself, and it brought him a whole new audience.

Keeping The Faith

Though the sexually-charged I Want Your Sex got people talking, it could be argued that the shock tactics were unnecessary; indeed, they may have proved almost detrimental to the Faith album, a mature, eclectic collection which straddled rock, gospel, R&B and jazz and which saw George being mentioned alongside music giants such as Madonna, Prince and Michael Jackson.

The album was a colossus. It topped the UK album chart and spawned six singles; in the US it spent 12 weeks at No.1 on the Billboard chart, and four of its singles hit the top spot. The tour kept him on the road for nine months: “Videos are 50 per cent of the plan. But if you want to prove yourself as an artist, you have to go to all these places,” he told MTV. But he later described the tour as “bad trip number two”.

Yet again, George had created a persona in which he would feel imprisoned. Without the support of Andrew and the Wham! family, his feelings of isolation and loneliness were compounded, leaving him overexposed and mentally vulnerable.

George retreated from the public view after the tour to work on his next album, which he vowed to present in a markedly different way than Faith, spending the remainder of the 80s laying himself bare on an introspective collection of songs in which he felt that everything he had to say was included in the record’s lyrics…

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