George: A Memory of George Michael. Sean Smith
would be highly desirable now, but then it was just a dusty old antique. The record player became his principal preoccupation, especially when his mum gave him three old 45s to play – two tracks from The Supremes, the premier sixties girl band, and one from the leading British vocalist of the age, Tom Jones.
He would come home from Roe Green and, instead of dashing out to the field, he would hide away in his bedroom with his music: ‘I was totally obsessed with the idea of the records. I loved them as things and just being able to listen to music was incredible.’ George Michael would never have much in common with Tom Jones, the epitome of Welsh masculinity, but some of the later dance tracks of Wham! would have an affinity with the easy soulfulness of Motown. Lesley would have loved to dance to them if she hadn’t been so busy in the chip shop. At least Tom and Diana Ross were much cooler early influences than the Julie Andrews songbook.
For his next birthday, his parents bought him a cassette player with a microphone and he was able to tape the latest hits from the radio. He loved recording things; he and David became ‘The Music Makers of the World’, the name they gave themselves, and prepared to take pop by storm from the comfort of their homes in Redhill Drive. They also started to make their own tapes, of funny moments and little sketches that would have them howling with shared laughter. It was a pastime that Georgios continued to enjoy through much of his life.
Georgios had never bought a record. That was to change on the annual trip to Cyprus when he was ten and splashed out on ‘The Right Thing to Do’ by Carly Simon, which was a minor hit in the UK in 1973 when it was the follow-up to her best-known track, ‘You’re So Vain’. Carly Simon was one of the hugely popular group of female singer-songwriters of the early seventies that included Joni Mitchell and Carole King. They combined catchy melodies with heartfelt, introspective lyrics that often told a story of damaged love. She was the perfect choice for a sensitive boy like Georgios Panayiotou who, regardless of any future image, was always in touch with his feelings. ‘The Right Thing to Do’ was a song about Carly’s relationship with her then husband, James Taylor, another acclaimed musician of that age. The sentiment is a romantic one – ‘Loving you’s the right thing to do’ – but there’s a tinge of realism, of fading attraction and the need for reassurance … ‘Hold me in your hands like a bunch of flowers’.
This particular trip to Cyprus also marked the second time Georgios received a scolding from his father. He was with his cousin Andros when they developed a taste for nicking things from a local shop. They began by stealing sweets, some they ate while others they hoarded. Eventually their thieving got out of hand when they made off with a carton of Dinky toy cars. The shopkeeper realised it was them, found their stash and told their parents. Jack without further ado smacked his son around the legs, which effectively prevented Georgios from becoming Cyprus’s most wanted.
At least Georgios paid for ‘The Right Thing to Do’. Carly Simon had a touch more credibility than his other favourite record of that year: ‘Daydreamer’ by teenage heart-throb David Cassidy, who made a successful transition from television actor to pop star. David first found fame as Keith in the popular early seventies sitcom The Partridge Family. He sang lead vocals on a number of hits as part of the TV cast, including the number one ‘I Think I Love You’, before breaking through as a solo artist with hit singles ‘How Can I Be Sure’ and ‘Could It Be Forever’.
For a while, when ‘Daydreamer’ was at the top of the charts, Cassidy’s face stared down from the walls of a million adoring young teenage girls. He was blue-eyed, with immaculate teeth and hair, and, most of all, he was non-threatening; he was clean-cut and safe. Georgios liked both the song and the image of Cassidy. He never forgot the first time he saw the American star on television, heading a football on the roof of the LWT building on the South Bank. The camera panned to the ground below and there were thousands of girls screaming at him. He saw the adulation that Cassidy’s fame brought him and, although he was only ten, realised he wanted that for himself. Georgios longed to be put on a pedestal and adored from afar – famous but untouchable.
For a while Cassidy seemed to be on Top of the Pops every week. The long-running programme was essential viewing on Thursday evenings, and the following day it would be a major topic of conversation in the playground. He would join his friends to sing along to most of the chart hits, as did boys and girls all over the country.
On one rainy autumnal day the weather was too dismal to go outside, so everyone had to stay in the classroom for break. At that age, the boys tended to stick together at one end of the room and the girls would be grouped at the other. Georgios and Michael Salousti sat underneath a table and proceeded to give a rousing rendition of ‘Daydreamer’. ‘We were just singing away, minding our own business,’ Michael recalls. ‘You can imagine the scene – a bunch of kids making a lot of noise. We thought we couldn’t be heard amongst all the chatter. We didn’t notice, however, when it all went very quiet. Mrs Ash had walked in and there we were still singing, “I’m just a Daydreamer, I’m walking in the rain …”
‘Suddenly, all we could hear were the other children laughing away. And there was Mrs Ash looking down at us, trying her best not to chuckle away as well. You could tell she was desperate to burst into laughter. So we had to creep out from under the table completely red-faced and embarrassed.’
Georgios didn’t regard this as his first public singing performance, preferring to remember the less awkward gang shows that he took part in as a member of the local scout troupe. They used to meet in a hall near the school and he would wander down every week with Kevin O’Reilly from next door.
Mostly, his musical tastes were very much middle-of-the-road and focused on the charts and what was playing on Radio 1. This was an age of flamboyance and the rather feminine world of glam rock, where pop stars seemed most worried about blow-drying their hair and pouting for the camera – and that was just the men. Image ruled as acts such as The Sweet, Mud and Gary Glitter hogged the charts. There was little room for autobiographical contemplation in the lyrics of hits like ‘Tiger Feet’ and ‘Blockbuster’.
The ten-year-old Georgios Panayiotou was impressed, but the three acts that had most impact on him then were Queen, Roxy Music and Elton John. They had much more credibility among music critics. Queen first appeared on Top of the Pops in March 1974, performing their debut hit ‘Seven Seas of Rhye’. Georgios became an instant fan, much to the amusement of his friend Michael, who would tease him about it: ‘I used to laugh at it. I would say, “Queen are rubbish, Georgios. Who likes Queen? Nobody likes Queen.”’ Surprisingly perhaps, he did not choose a Queen track when he appeared on Desert Island Discs in 2007, although he didn’t forget all his childhood favourites. He picked ‘Do the Strand’, released by Roxy Music when he was ten.
None of his friends were particular fans of Elton John. He was never an artist that inspired great devotion, but over the years he was a huge influence on the music of George Michael. The melodies of the suburban superstar from Pinner were a pleasure best enjoyed in quieter moments. He liked the catchy hit ‘Crocodile Rock’ and could often be heard singing, ‘I remember when rock was young, me and Suzie had so much fun’ in the garden. He much preferred it to the more aggressive ‘Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting’ that often ended Elton’s shows.
The man born Reg Dwight had become one of the biggest superstars in the world despite a less-than-promising appearance. He was chubby, short-sighted, with an ongoing fixation with his hair, or lack of it, but was an aspirational figure for an impressionable ten-year-old boy from the suburbs – who was chubby, short-sighted and struggling with his hair.
At that age, Georgios pretty much liked everything in the charts, and that even included The Wombles; they featured in a school project he devised. ‘He could be very inspirational about certain things,’ observes Michael. ‘In our last year at junior school, we were put into groups and had to come up with a social project. So Georgios had the idea that we should all be Wombles. They were really popular at the time, clearing rubbish and keeping Britain tidy. The idea was to make things from the rubbish you collected. Georgios was very much the lead and took it upon himself to do the whole thing. He decided he wanted to be Orinoco, who was basically the most popular character. I had to make do with Uncle Bulgaria.
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