George Michael

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand seven.

Presenter0:28

My castaway this week is George Michael. For more than twenty five years he's been an international star, more than a hundred million records sold, countless number ones, armfuls of prestigious awards, and an army of loyal fans.

Presenter0:40

His ability to write, produce and perform perfect pop songs is unquestioned.

Presenter0:44

But along with the career highs, there have been lows, too. He lost a long wrangle with his record company, faced bereavement, and for years his sexuality was a matter of intense newspaper speculation, until he was spectacularly outed a decade ago. Within a few years, he said, he lost his lover, lost his mother, and lost his dignity. Just because you're rich and famous, he once said, doesn't mean your life is problem free. My problems are not any greater or lesser than when I was seventeen. They're just different. Sir George Michael, we're about to cast you away on this imaginary desert island. Would you welcome the solitude?

George Michael1:17

Right now I would actually. Right now I would because I've obviously just done a year's touring, which was closely followed by some community service. So I'm quite I'm quite ready to be on my own for a while.

Presenter1:28

I mean, it's been an extraordinary twelve months. You finished this tour, which I was a sell out, was a smash hit, got great reviews. You opened the new Wembley Stadium. The day before that, you were standing in the dock of Brent Magistrates' Court charged with that driving whilst unfit through drugs. I mean, have these twelve months seemed almost unbelievably extreme?

George Michael1:40

Yeah.

George Michael1:47

Well, yeah, I mean it it's been um actually been a bizarre year. It's been a very bizarre year because you can't imagine what it is like playing to people who've been loyal to you for 25 years and haven't seen you for 15. That's just been the most life-affirming thing I could have done. I'm so glad I did it. And yet on the other side, I feel like, you know, it's been shown to me time and time again and very, very strongly recently that the truth is nothing like as important as a good story.

Presenter2:15

Do the stories matter to you? I mean, given that you have been, as I said in the introduction, very, very famous for quite a long time. Do do do you still get buffeted by the headlines?

George Michael2:20

Quite a long time ago.

George Michael2:23

Well

George Michael2:24

I don't like people thinking that I've been done for for grass and and other drugs when I've been done for sleeping pills. But I can't do anything about the fact that the story lasts longer than the fact that you've told people it didn't happen, you know? When I realized it was that one-sided and that really me telling people the truth didn't wasn't going to make any difference, I just really I've I've managed in the last eighteen months to master the art of not reading them, which I should have done twenty years ago, really.

Presenter2:52

So those have been the low bits of the last twelve months. You said quite a while back when you decided not to tour again, you said, you know, if I wanted adulation I'd tour. I don't want adulation. Has a little bit of adulation been quite nice?

George Michael2:58

I don't want adulation to happen.

George Michael3:02

Well, it's not the adulation that's been nice, it's the absolute warmth, actually. It's the complete generosity.

George Michael3:09

I genuinely believe that the purpose of what I do is a positive one. I really do genuinely believe that most of my songs are life-affirming in some way. And that actually people who don't care about your music thinking lots of things about you that aren't true, it really doesn't matter. It really doesn't matter. And what's wonderful is that a lot of them that do think they're true really don't care. So I'm such a lucky man. It's so annoying to have people try and give the impression that the world is a totally screwed up place. And I really needed those people in front of me night after night to tell me that it wasn't. You know, I really needed it so badly, and I'm so grateful to them.

Presenter3:46

Tell me about your first choice.

George Michael3:47

This is the best female vocalist I've heard in my entire career, and one of the best writers. So all I can say is please, please understand how brilliant you are and I wish her every every success in the future and I know she can get past the media. I don't know if she can get past other things, but she's a fantastic talent and we should support her.

Presenter4:11

This is Amy Weinheis.

Speaker 34:19

For you I was a friend

Speaker 34:23

Love it is a losing game.

Speaker 34:29

Five story fire as you can

Speaker 34:35

Laura

Speaker 34:36

It's a losing game

Presenter4:41

Amy Winehouse and Love is a Losing Game. George Michael, you were saying intriguingly when we were listening to that your great admiration for her talent and you were talking about the fact that for yourself you've never really been sure about anything in your life apart from the fact that you had the ability to create music that people wanted. Explain more about that, because that's very interesting.

Speaker 14:46

You're great at

Speaker 14:47

For her talent.

George Michael4:56

Mm-hmm.

George Michael4:57

One of it

George Michael5:00

Well, I'll tell you this is a really I take I've never said any of this before, but it's odd. I'm just kind of ridiculously um ready to say these things now. Um but I have a huge propensity for guilt because I was the boy in a in a Greek family who could do what he liked from a very early age and did.

Presenter5:18

Because the culture and the family.

George Michael5:19

Because the culture was patriarchal and it was to indulge the boy. I have two wonderful sisters who never got their way as young Greek girls, obviously. And I grew up with this terrible feeling of guilt. I had feelings of guilt as a small child, knowing that I was always the one that was going to get the easy ride. And I carry that propensity for guilt in strangest ways. And I think I've finally realized one of the reasons my life has been so extreme and has felt so, in some ways, self-destructive, is that it sounds arrogant, but I never had any feeling that my talent was going to let me down. I had a feeling that I had a huge advantage over a lot of other people in the industry and a lot of other people in my own life, obviously, that I love and care about very much. And I think in a strange way, I've spent much of the last 15 or 20 years trying to derail my own career because it never seems to suffer. I suffer like crazy. I suffer all around it. I've suffered terrible things, obviously, bereavements and public humiliations and blah, blah, blah. But my career just seems to always write itself like a duck in a bath, you know, like a like a plastic duck in a bath. And I think in some ways I resent that.

Presenter6:26

Yeah.

Presenter6:31

When you were very, very young, you decided you wanted fame. I mean, it was a very deliberate strategy of the family.

George Michael6:34

Oh, deliberate.

George Michael6:35

Absolutely. But by the time I was twenty two or twenty three, I knew that I was chasing something that was making me unhappy.

Presenter6:41

Can we rewind a l a little bit then to childhood? Your father was a Greek Cypriot immigrant, first generation. Your mother was born in England, as you say, you were the last of three children. What was life like growing up?

George Michael6:44

Yeah.

George Michael6:50

Yeah.

George Michael6:54

My father was the absolute archetypal, you know, nineteen fifties immigrant from Cyprus, very determined, and every single member of his family made something of themselves in this country, you know. Really they're a typical immigrant family that work their asses off and and reap the rewards.

Presenter7:11

And so he started off as a waiter and ended up having his own restaurant and running his own business successfully.

George Michael7:14

Very successfully, and and moved us out of a very working class environment into a middle class one. That didn't seem so incongruous because my mother, strangely enough, found out when when her mother died that her mother had in fact been Jewish.

George Michael7:31

So actually her origins weren't English, but she was incredibly Victorian because her mother had been disowned for marrying a Gentile, but her mother came from a very wealthy Jewish family

George Michael7:45

My mother carried with her some very Victorian ideas that really did not go at all well with my father's upwardly mobile my mother absolutely had no ambition for money, thought money was the root of all evil, so being half my mother and half my father genetically was never going to be an easy ride.

Presenter8:03

So much to talk about. Tell me about your second record.

George Michael8:06

Roxy music. At both ends of the spectrum Brian Ferry's made some of the sexiest music of the last uh thirty years. It's so original and it's so sexy and it's so insistent, I suppose. This is called Do the Strand.

Speaker 38:20

There's a new sensation.

Speaker 38:24

Say the whip and dangle

Speaker 38:27

That's a good beam.

Speaker 38:31

It's light on rainbow

Speaker 38:34

Advisor blue jeans

Speaker 38:38

You know what I mean?

Speaker 38:42

This fan

Presenter8:49

Roxy Music and Do the Strand. Not particularly chosen, George, because you were playing that when I mean, you must have been nine or ten when that came out.

George Michael8:56

Yeah, I mean stri that didn't actually stop me from listening to the best Elton John and the best Queen records. But something strange happened at the age of about eight. I had a head injury and I know it sounds bizarre and unlikely, but it was quite a bad bang. I had it stitched up and stuff. But all my interests changed. Everything changed in six months. I had been obsessed with insects and creepy crawlies. I used to get up at five o'clock in the morning and go out into this field behind our garden and collect insects before everyone else got up.

George Michael9:33

And suddenly I all I wanted to know about was music. It just seemed a very, very strange thing, and I have a theory that maybe it was something to do with this accident,'cause they had this whole left brain, right brain thing. Nobody in my family seemed to notice, but I became absolutely obsessed with music, and and everything changed after that.

Presenter9:49

So when you were in your early to mid teens you met a friend called Andrew Ridgely and famously of course you would go on to form Wham, and you were about seventeen when Wham had its first hit, which was very, very young indeed.

George Michael9:54

If it

George Michael10:01

Well, no, I think we were eighteen. I'd just turned eighteen.

George Michael10:05

When we got signed and we were I think we were still eighteen by the time we had the first record out.

Presenter10:11

And that must have been a very big deal getting signed. Can you remember when?

George Michael10:13

Oh my God, I had five hundred pounds. I'd I'd I'd never been more flush, and I thought five hundred pounds was quite a good deal for thirty years, actually.

George Michael10:22

Considering I'm really only just free of that original contract now.

Presenter10:22

Yeah.

Presenter10:26

So you signed away, in essence, your creative life in that first deal.

George Michael10:30

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And apparently that's okay.

Presenter10:33

Can you remember what you spent that first five hundred pounds on?

George Michael10:37

It took a long time to spend it, that's the shocking thing, when you've just given up your job at the cinema.

George Michael10:43

five hundred pounds is like I went into that office and gave up that job as though I'd just become a diamond dealer. So so yeah, everything is relative, isn't it? It took me a while to spend it, yeah.

Presenter10:53

And you were born Yorios Kiriako Spanayotu. Was that okay?

George Michael10:57

Um say it for me.

Presenter10:57

Uh

George Michael10:58

That was very good. All you have to do is kind of soften all the consonants. If you say Yorgos, Giriago Banaiodu, that's that's it. Whereas it reads Georgios Kyriakos Panaiotu. Yeah.

Presenter11:09

Right, that's sort of what I said.

George Michael11:11

And there is a very urgent need for a stage name when you're 18. That is your destiny.

Presenter11:14

Yeah.

Presenter11:17

So George Michael was a c the name was a creation, but was the persona a creation at seventeen?

George Michael11:22

Well, I thought it was. At some point I realized, you know, everything you do is you, even if it's the lies you tell. Even if it's a an act, it's the part of the real me, isn't it?'Cause it's what I want people to think I am.

Presenter11:33

Tell me about your next record.

George Michael11:35

Number three is Knolls Barkley. I think it sold 50% of all singles in the first six months of last year, and that's really saying something. An amazing song is an amazing song. Occasionally something left afield comes through and people see it for what it is, which is one of those old classics, you know, the kind of records we used to hear quite often. And it stands head and shoulders above everything else.

Speaker 311:59

But think twice

Speaker 312:03

That's my only advice.

Speaker 312:08

Mm, come on now, who do you

Speaker 312:11

Who do you who do you think you are?

Speaker 312:16

Special soul.

Speaker 312:20

Believe that you're in control.

Speaker 312:25

I think you're clear.

Presenter12:28

Niles Barclay and Crazy. It's very interesting your selection, as we'll see as we go through here, George Michael, that you have chosen very contemporary music. You don't you don't seem to be somebody who's harking back to the musical past. Is is that because you always want to be on top of things, or is it because you're you're tired of what's

George Michael12:41

You're tired of what's gone before? Not on to not at all. I'm not on top of things at all. In fact, I was actually just telling you I mean, it's something fairly tragic for someone who's lived for the radio. But since I don't have a license, I don't listen to the radio anymore because I listen to the radio in the car. So for the next two years, my radio listening is probably going to be a bit slim.

Presenter13:00

They still play a lot of you, of course. You are, I understand, the most played artist on British radio. Um I mean those early days of Wham when you were very, very young and you were pumping out those hits, you know, things like Wham Rap and Club Tropicana, Wake Me Up Before You Go Last Christmas, a great big long line of them. What was life like, going from being this boy who wanted fame to this boy who suddenly got it, and then some?

Speaker 113:09

You know things like

Speaker 113:12

Yeah.

George Michael13:14

Mm-hmm.

George Michael13:21

Well, for a while it was just absolutely magical playing out a dream and with your best mate, you know, playing out your fantasies. It was just a dream, obviously. But no, I think what ha what I was doing was I was supremely confident that I was writing pop classics, to be honest with you, but um I was also

George Michael13:40

Supremely aware that if I kind of left the imagery a little bit more to Andrew.

George Michael13:47

Kids kinda loved it.

Presenter13:48

You said also a moment ago that you were living out your fantasies. I mean, what were your fantasies that you were living out in in the WAM?

George Michael13:54

I don't want to tell you all of them. Go on. But I think the image that stuck in my head of what I wanted to be was.

Presenter13:55

Go on.

George Michael14:00

David Cassidy came to England for the first time, and there was a shot that stuck with me more than anything else. There was a shot of him in slow motion heading a football around on the top of the LWT building. They then panned over the side of the LWT building, and there were just thousands of these girls screaming, obviously.

George Michael14:20

But they couldn't get to him. There was all that adulation and they couldn't get to him and and somehow my desire for safety, you know, because I was quite an insecure child, and my desire for fame were kind of locked up in that moment.

Presenter14:33

The insecurity that you were talking about there, that did not come from the insecurity about being able to write these platinum-plated pop songs. The insecurity came from what? The way you looked.

George Michael14:42

Yeah.

Presenter14:42

Yeah.

George Michael14:43

Just from who I was. It wasn't like I had found it hard to make friends. I made plenty of friends. I just um I had no physical confidence whatsoever. And I looked up to Andrew on on such a level because he just oozed confidence out of every pore. And then suddenly we were massively successful, and I went from being Andrew's kind of shadow

George Michael15:02

as a sexually confident being to being really in the center of attention. And at that level, somehow I lost all my confidence. I suppose also the realization that bisexuality was no longer a reality for me and I suddenly felt like a fake. So the whole thing just turned me into someone who really felt the camera was my enemy.

Presenter15:23

Let's talk about that in just a moment. For now, though, tell me about your fourth choice.

George Michael15:27

My fourth choice is Nirvana. This record is the best produced rock record in the history of rock, I think. It's not necessarily the greatest song, it's a phenomenal record. Obviously, it was a music industry changing record. It changed everything in America overnight, you know, because it's an absolute classic.

Speaker 315:47

Bring your friends fun to lose And to pretend she's overborn Self sure

Presenter16:16

Nirvana and smells like teen spirit. We came out of that just in time there, George Michael. You were starting to headbang, and you were saying if you were on an island, you'd be angry anyway, so that would be like if I was on an island.

George Michael16:23

If I was on an island, I'd be so furious. I'd think I'd need to vent anger every once in a while. Do you know what I mean?

Presenter16:28

Oprah Winfrey once said, If you come to fame not knowing who you are, it will define you. And I'm wondering that, given that Wham and fame hit you so early, did you begin to be a little disorientated by that magnitude of fame?

George Michael16:42

There's a level of of deification in America that you just don't get over here. You get you know, you get a quite quite the opposite over here, don't you? For an English boy that was kind of uh I was twenty four and

George Michael16:56

And still quite afraid of still not knowing, to be honest with you, how to spend money. I was terrified of my lifestyle maybe removing my ability to connect to what I did. And I freaked out. I said, I don't want to make any more videos. I don't think I'll ever tour again. I have to step back.

Presenter17:17

To those of us buying your records at the time and and watching the videos, it was a very, very heterosexual image. I mean, I remember. I really think so. I really did think so. When I watched the videos.

George Michael17:27

The good women, honestly.

Presenter17:28

When I watched the video too, I want your sex I thought that man is clearly a very heterosexual

George Michael17:33

Oh, I see. Yeah, well, there was a, you know, I was with Kathy in the video, and, you know, this was basically.

Presenter17:38

And you weren't having a cup of tea. Let's just say that.

George Michael17:40

No, no, absolutely not. Absolutely. And this was, you know, it wasn't as though it was a complete lie. You know, it's not that I had stopped having sex with women, but I was already fully aware that in itself was a lie, because what I really had made a connection to was an emotional part of my sexuality, and that was clearly gay. So there was all that feeling fraudulent as well. Because I'm not, I think what people have to acknowledge, if they know my behavior since I've come out, or since I outed myself accidentally, but probably not accidentally, I think there's a level of honesty that's quite obviously natural to me that I'm uncomfortable with anything else. So I try to understand, firstly, how much I love my family, and that AIDS was the predominant feature of being gay in the 80s and early 90s, as far as any parent was concerned. And my mother was still alive, and every single day would have been a nightmare for her thinking about what I might be subjected to. So, yeah, there were all these kind of reasons.

Presenter18:36

Are you out to some people and not out to other people?

George Michael18:38

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.'Cause I've been out s out to a lot of people since I was nineteen.

George Michael18:42

I wish to God it had happened then, I have to be honest. I don't think I would have had the same career. My ego might not have been satisfied in some areas quite as much, but I think I would have been a happier man.

Presenter18:53

Did you wrestle with it around about the age of nineteen and

George Michael18:55

Yeah, when I was 19, I came out to various friends and one of my sisters, and I said I was going to talk to my mum and dad.

George Michael19:01

Was persuaded in no uncertain terms that it really wasn't the best idea.

Presenter19:06

By who?

George Michael19:07

By friends, but they weren't really I don't think they were trying to protect my career or their careers, I think they were literally just thinking of my dad. Because, you know, when you're nineteen, that's as far as you think you look at your parents, it's like, Oh, don't tell your dad, my God, your dad'll hit the roof And then very soon after that, everything changed. AIDS was was just not something I was prepared to bring into my parents' life. I was too young and too uh immature to know that I was sacrificing as much as I was.

Presenter19:33

Tell me about your next record.

George Michael19:34

So, the next record, quite appropriately, is Being Boring by Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe, Pet Shop Boys. Neil Tennant, at a certain point in the eighties, was writing the most beautiful songs. No one wants to hear frightening, terrifying songs about AIDS, but they do, if they're gay and they've lost friends, they do want to hear those people referred to and remembered and honoured. And I think some of Neil's work did that beautifully.

Speaker 320:07

We were always hoping that

Speaker 320:10

Looking back you could always rely

Speaker 320:15

And we will never be in the war again

Speaker 320:19

We will never be in boring Cause we will never be in boring

Speaker 320:27

We will never be in

Presenter20:32

Pet Shop Boys and Being Boring. It's interesting, George Michael, that you haven't chosen any of your own songs.

Presenter20:38

Yeah.

George Michael20:38

Oh d

George Michael20:39

Yeah.

George Michael20:40

Actually, I'd probably just listen to my own songs on a desert island to remind myself that I was once known and famous,'cause I'd be explaining it to crustaceans, wouldn't I?

Presenter20:50

Uh one of the most poignant songs I think you've written i is Jesus to a Child, and that was written for essentially your first love. How did you meet your first love?

George Michael20:57

How did you

George Michael21:00

Well, what happened was actually it was a strange, strange thing. I don't know if this if people relate to this, but there have only been three times in my life that I've really fallen for anyone. And each time on first sight I had something has clicked in my head that told me I was going to know that person.

George Michael21:21

It happened with Anselmo across a lobby, so.

George Michael21:27

I met him in that lobby and I didn't understand why the click happened. This is a man in a Brazilian hotel. I'm never going to see him again. Why did that happen? I didn't understand what was going on. This was the first love of my entire life. This was the first person I ever shared my life with. It was tragic that I lost him, but it was a wonderful, wonderful experience meeting him.

Presenter21:51

How old were you then?

George Michael21:54

I was twenty seven and I'd just started my first proper relationship, which is pretty old, isn't it really? Unfortunately, within six months I knew that he was terminally ill. So it was a very strange first love, you know it was it was very distorted by the situation, but it was also a wonderful experience, you know.

Presenter22:11

And so he died in that was it nineteen ninety three.

George Michael22:13

1993, that's right.

Presenter22:14

And it was an AIDS-related illness.

George Michael22:15

About three months before I lost my court case, yes. So it was not a good year.

Presenter22:18

Next slide.

George Michael22:19

It was AIDS related, yeah. I mean, um he was a couple of years older than me. He very likely picked it up in New York before people had any inkling that New York was actually a hotbed of uh this new disease.

Presenter22:20

Yeah.

Presenter22:33

One of the uh signatures of being truly and deeply in love, of course, is that you want to sing about it from the rooftops. You want to tell everyone I mean, how open were you about the love affair?

George Michael22:39

You know,

George Michael22:41

Well, see, unfortunately, I wasn't writing anything. I'd already just released an album when I met him, and then by the time.

George Michael22:48

I actually made another album, He Died, which is what the album was about. And to be perfectly honest, I think my best album I think it probably will always be my best album and I and I never want to be that inspired again, as I say to people, you know.

Presenter22:59

That's a very bittersweet situation, isn't it, that your most creative period, something that and also one of your most popular albums, Olders, is something that came out of such such pain. Can you reconcile those two feelings, or will there always be a degree of dissonance bet between them?

George Michael23:06

So

George Michael23:13

No, I think I'm absolutely I think the album is a beautiful reminder of him. I wouldn't go through it again to make a great album. Don't get me wrong, you know, this man's life was was much more important to me than entertaining people. I never want to feel that loss, I'd never want to feel that depth of emotion again. I hope he's very, very proud of it somewhere.

Presenter23:37

Tell me about your next record.

George Michael23:39

Uh next record. Gold frap. Uh that first gold frap album, Felt Mountain, is uh a great, great album, you know. It's amazingly um elegant production. I'm a real admirer of her voice.

Presenter24:24

Gold frap and paper bag. You you mentioned just a moment ago, and indeed it's been something of a theme, it was at the beginning, the the the derision with which you talk about record companies and record executives. You had this big, nasty High Court battle with Sony that lasted about six months, I think it was. Um were you propelled by anger about different things into that? Was it actually all about the record company?

Speaker 124:34

Yeah.

George Michael24:39

Yeah.

Presenter24:47

Well

George Michael24:47

I mean, I did sign a piece of paper, aged eighteen, that effectively, considering I've only been able to be sold rather than be free, effectively, the results of that deal have only just ended. I'm just free.

Presenter25:05

You called it at the time professional slavery, which of course was a beautifully calculated, well-turned phrase. But if at the same time, which may have been the contention of your record company, you didn't particularly want to put yourself out there, you didn't want to go on the radio shows and go on the TV shows and make the videos in the sharp suit looking great, you didn't want to do any of that. They might reasonably have been expected to respond by saying, well, we won't really play the game either. If you actually.

George Michael25:14

P.

Speaker 125:17

Yeah.

Speaker 125:20

Uh

George Michael25:20

Yeah.

George Michael25:21

Do you want to do it?

George Michael25:22

They

George Michael25:28

Well actually if they've been if what they reason reasonably could have expected was when you just made two hundred million dollars for a company, you expect them to have a little bit of patience with you, you know? It was very obvious that I was going through something personal that meant I couldn't face the world. What I was actually going through personally was dealing with the fact that the person I cared for most in the world had a terminal illness, and I didn't know how long that terminal illness would be. I didn't know when I would ever be happy enough to write another song.

George Michael25:59

I was terrified. I was absolutely terrified. At that point in time, I had no idea what to do. And it was such a dark period of my life. And I thought it was just going to continue that way. I really did. So I struggled with huge depression, especially after my mother died. I struggled with huge depression. And there's a bad combination here. There's someone who doesn't take bereavement very well. I don't think any of us do, but some of us I think it takes longer to recover than others. And there's a situation where you're your own boss, so no one's kicking you up the ass to get out there and live again and see the positive, you know. But two bereavements, losing a lover and your mother within the space of three years is a tough one.

Presenter26:39

Let's take a break for your seventh record.

George Michael26:41

There are two reasons I've I've chosen this record. There are certain records that literally I just can't not move to, and this is one of them. The lyric makes me laugh. It's completely brutal, completely sexist. Surprise, surprise, coming from an American hip hop record. But it's funny. It is funny. Gold digger.

Speaker 327:00

She take my money.

Speaker 327:02

Well, I'm in need. Yes, it's a trifling.

Speaker 327:07

Friend indeed

Speaker 327:09

Oh, she's a gold digger.

Speaker 327:12

Well time

Speaker 127:13

Uh

Speaker 327:14

There Digs on me

Speaker 127:16

Mm.

Speaker 127:17

Now I ain't sayin' she a cold digger But she ain't messin' with no broke bro Now I ain't sayin' she a gold digger

Presenter27:23

Nice

Speaker 127:25

But she ain't messing with no broke, broke.

Speaker 127:28

Get down, girl.

Presenter27:30

That was Kanye West and Gold Digger. Did you come to a point after you were well, intriguing that you said.

Presenter27:38

not really forcibly outed, but you know, the happening that everybody knows about wasn't just on every front page, it was on every front page for about ten days. You were in the park in LA as everybody knows, and in the toilet you were busted by a policeman undercover because of sexual advances you made to him.

Speaker 127:42

Every front page was on there.

Speaker 127:43

Retain.

Speaker 127:47

Yeah.

George Michael27:47

But he knows an in the

Presenter27:53

You were forced to come out.

George Michael27:55

Yeah. Well what were you gonna do? Say it was a one off. Right. In my case, you know, I always knew it was gonna happen sometime. I was gonna get outed one way or another. And the reason the reason I it took me a good year to to admit to myself that it was subconsciously deliberate.

Presenter28:12

Um I read uh that you said, and of course because I read it I don't necessarily know if it's true, but uh that it would not have happened if your mother had been alone if your mother had been alone enough.

George Michael28:19

If your mother had been alive. No, no, no, it would never have happened.

Presenter28:22

Why?

George Michael28:22

I'm not saying the cruising would have happened. I'd say I would never have put myself in the stupid position of doing it in America where I knew the level of homophobia. I think for me to do that, I was absolutely tempting fate. I think I was sick of the secret. Now that there wasn't any reason to be quiet, now that my mother was no longer in this world, and I was proud of my sexuality, strange way of going about telling the world. But I think it was almost like it had to be that. The battle I'd played with the press was so much one of privacy, and I felt so loath to actually sit and say, I am gay, the three words they'd wanted for years. It really wasn't something that needed holding onto anymore, but I just couldn't do it in the regular way. I think I had to do it and fool myself.

George Michael29:11

I had to fool myself that that had been dragged out of me.

Presenter29:14

Did you feel that a burden had been lifted?

George Michael29:17

Oh God, yeah. Because I I'm not a liar. I'm too honest to to dye my hair. I'm too embarrassed to dye my hair. I'm not a liar, you know. But uh this was one uh l lie that I'd been been kind of trying to tell people in my own way for years and years and I don't know, some something in me picked the most difficult way to do it.

Presenter29:37

When you were talking to me about your mother at the very beginning of this conversation, you said that she was very Victorian in her values. How did she react when you had come out to her?

George Michael29:40

You said

George Michael29:42

And yeah.

George Michael29:47

Oh, well you see when when I came out to my mother, um

George Michael29:51

I wrote her a letter the day after Anselmo died because it seemed absolutely simple. It seemed like if there was a message at the moment of his death, it was well this is when you tell your parents, because this is the only part of yourself that you haven't opened up.

Presenter30:08

What about the recent pain then? As you mentioned, you you no longer have a driving licence and you for two years you won't be able to drive because uh you were found now it's reported and you do take issue with a lot of the reporting on this that you were found slumped at the wheel of your car and you were incapable of driving and you were found guilty of that. You've done community service for that. How long did you do for community service?

Speaker 130:16

Uh

George Michael30:16

Mm-hmm.

George Michael30:23

You're capable of driving

George Michael30:29

Um I've done half of my community service. I did some very interesting work with people with mental health problems and with uh people with drug addiction and and I also you know scrubbed down some very dirty rooms and and made chicken fajitas for some homeless people, which was nice. I was quite good apparently, even though it was my first time with chicken fajitas.

Presenter30:50

Do you think you have a problem with drugs?

George Michael30:53

Um

George Michael30:54

It depends what you call the problem, really. I'm a happy man and I can afford my marijuana, so that's not a problem. Uh I mean, I'm constantly trying to smoke less, really. I would like to take absolutely I would like to take less, no question. To that to that degree, it's a problem. Yeah.

George Michael31:11

Is it a problem in my life? Does it is it getting in the way of my life in any way? I don't think so. I really don't think so.

Presenter31:18

You said a little earlier that this is a time in your life when probably unlike any other you found peace and a degree of contentment and you've been back on the road with all the attention that that has garnered. What do you think it is essentially that's brought you that peace?

George Michael31:25

Nothing.

George Michael31:27

Yeah.

George Michael31:36

Um

George Michael31:40

I think, well, in all honesty, nobody died on me in in years. You know, it took years for me to believe that these blows weren't going to keep coming.

Presenter31:49

Tell me about your final record.

George Michael31:52

Actually, this is the heaviest lyrical record on on this list, and it's from a gay artist called Rufus Wainwright. And he's written this song called Going to a Town, really laying into the Bush administration, talking about

George Michael32:08

America is Soaking the Body of Jesus Christ in Blood, fantastic lyrics all over this record and someone that people should definitely check out.

Speaker 332:17

I'm going to a town that has already been burnt

Speaker 332:24

I'm going to a place that has already been described

Speaker 332:32

I'm gonna see some folks who have already been let down.

Speaker 332:37

I'm so tired of America.

Speaker 132:39

Uh

Presenter32:45

Rufus Wainwright and going to town. Um so at this point uh on the island I will give you George Michael, the Bible, the complete works of Shakespeare, and you're allowed to take another book. What would you like to take?

George Michael32:58

Um I'd take any book of if I'm getting the Bible right, I'm getting Shakespeare, which I won't read, by the way, I'm not going to take a jolly book. But I think I would take um a book of short stories by Doris Lessing.

Presenter33:03

Yeah, so

Presenter33:14

You may have that then. And of course, you're allowed a luxury on this island to make things more bearable. What would your luxury be?

George Michael33:19

Well, I've thought about this.

George Michael33:22

And obviously you're not allowed to have

George Michael33:26

uh a partner so I couldn't take Kenny.

Presenter33:28

Yeah.

George Michael33:28

So that's out. Um but on a desert island, who is going to know I've not got a driving license? So I can drive around in a DB nine. I'll just drive around and around my little desert island on my DB nine because I'm obsessed with cars and, you know, next two years I'm not going to get to drive one.

Presenter33:46

It's yours. And if the waves were to crash to the shore and and threaten to wash away these eight disks that you've chosen, what's the one you would run to save?

George Michael33:56

Oh my God I think I'd have to say any winehouse.

Presenter34:01

You can have it.

George Michael34:02

Hmm.

Presenter34:02

George Michael, thank you very much for letting us hear your desert.

George Michael34:04

Thank you, Kirsty. Thank you so much.

Presenter34:14

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk/slash radio four.