The Beverly Hills Arrest Scandal

Hi guys, this is Emmanuel. It has been a very long time. I'm here today because I have a brand new podcast out. It's called Big Lives. And the way it works, each episode, me and my co-host Kai Wright trying to figure out some of the questions and messy feelings that we've always had about some of our biggest cultural icons. And we do so every week by taking you on a journey through the BBC's vast archives. Like basically anything recorded on TV or radio on the BBC in the last hundred plus years. And we get into all kinds of interesting moments that you might not have seen or heard before, or in some cases some really wildhouse stuff that you've never seen because it was never heard. And we just have this unbelievable tape from all kinds of people. From Muhammad Ali to David Bowie to Amy Winehouse. Anyways, I'm going to stop yapping now and I'm just gonna play one of these episodes for you. I really hope you like it, and if you do, head over to the big lies feed and subscribe. Okay, uh let's get to it . From BBC Studios and Pushkin Industries, this is Big Lives. I'm Emmanuel Jochi. I'm Kai Wright. We are both journalists and cultural obsessives and we just love trying to understand the world through an individual person's life. And by individual person, we're talking about folks who are the architects of our culture, people who had a huge impact on the way we live now, but often you've been kind of flattened to this single image or to a single moment. We're diving into these complicated big lives of these icons and to do it we are using the treasure trove of the BBC archive . Turns out the BBC has been interviewing and covering cultural figures for over a hundred years. And they still have the tapes . What do you think is the stock caricature image of George Michael? I think most people the stock image is like like weird washed up pop star . And if you asked most gay men, you would probably get like fabulous diva. Yeah. I think that's accurate. And honestly, I don't think the two are mutually exclusive. And just to say, like, you know, George Michael is a massive pop star of the eighties and nineties. He started his career in this band called Wham , which he'd started with his best fri end. And that band and that music was sort of known for this like it's very positive, sort of happy kind of pop. And then George Michael made a transition to being like this solo artist. I feel like in the last couple decades of his life, really when I When I was growing up, he was this figure that was just kind of like I feel like the diva and ridiculousness parts of him are what we focused on. Um he was kind of a joke, frankly. It hurts to hear. Yeah. It hurts to hear that that's what y'all thought of George. I know and I I hate to say it. I think in some quarters, not all, but I think in some quarters he is still a little bit of a joke. I want to talk about that disconnect between the person in the icon you know, someone who was sort of like an icon in the gay community, and the sort of joke who I grew up kind of knowing and hearing aboutbout. A af lteristening through like years worth of archival interviews that he's given, I feel like the jokey version of him exist s just because we actually as, a society don,'t want to talk about some of the other things that were impacting his work. Like to see George Michael clearly would be to acknowledge some things we actually don't really want to acknowledge about the time period in which he was really becoming a star. Oh wow. Alright, I'm ready to talk about this. Alright, well let's do it. Woohoo! Uh and we're just gonna get into his backstory a little bit here. I have to say, looking through the archive, one of the things I enjoyed a lot about George Michael is that he was above all like just this massive showman in the way that he talks about himself. Oh. There's basic facts that like are incontrovertible, right? He was born to a Greek family in the 1960s in London , Giorgios Kriakos Pan tu, I've totally messed up that name. In fact, you can tell why he ended up becoming George Michael. But in just looking through the archive and sort of learning about his origins, there are like sort of these two different origin stories. The first one is that he always knew he had this love for music. I'm gonna play you this first clip is him in nineteen eighty six talking about just kind of his desire to be famous. I had very very strong ambitions from a very early age but they were totally unfocused. Totally unfocused. I mean, I as far as I was concerned when I, was seven years old, I was convinced that one day I was gonna be a pop star. I have no idea what I thought I was gonna do. Really? I don't know how. This is my George Michael, okay, Emmanuel. Like a seven year old who's like I don't know about talent or anything, but I'm gonna be famous. Right. You like what you're seeing is the image of a little boy singing and dancing in front of his mirror. Like that's the difference. Hair flowing, you know, all of it. Hair brush in hand. Well, okay, so there's that one. And then there's this completely different original story. He tells us a good thirty years after this first one on a British interview show that's really famous called Desert Island Discs. Something strange happened. 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 . 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 ha 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. It's so ridiculous. A bang on the head is so absurd. And what's funny about it to me is he's definitely fought about this myth he's creating. Looked up stuff. I mean, listen though, you know, rule number one for a diva, Emmanuel, I have to do not correct their origin stories. Do not like point out inconsistencies in their myth making, it your is job to nod and smile and say, Oh yes, that's exactly right. That's how it went down. I know for sure you're totally right. Honestly, you are you're just revealing how few divas I have in my life, Kai. I need more. Anyways, back to George Michael. So, right from the beginning or later, however you want to believe, he develops his like love. At seven or eight. Exactly. He develops his love of music. And by the time he's a teenager, he starts a band with one of his best friends at school, this guy whose name is Andrew Ridgely, and it's just the two of them. They get their first major record deal, the two of them, and this band becomes known as W Whamham. it has an exclamation mark. Yes, that is very important. And the exclamation mark is there because I don't know that group was known for this very, very positive quote unquote bubbleg um pop. I think that is a fair description of it. You know, disposable. It's literally a piece of bubble gum. The first album I remember seeing, it was Pink with, you know, wham is in like bubble actual bubble letters. Exactly. So you know, you think of it as like you dance to it once and that's the end. I feel like the best way to describe is actually just look at one of their most famous songs which is called Wake Me Up Before You Go Go. And I'm just I'm just gonna read the lyri I object to this already, but go ahead. Wake me up before you go go. Don't leave me hanging on like a yo- yoyo. This is not fair. This is not fair. And I caveat all of that by saying, yes, it is just as ridiculous as it sounds, and yet that song is a certifiable bop. It's spectacular. Like you can play it today and there is passion in the voice. You are you want to wake up and go to the go-go with him. Okay, well these songs were a Bob. They were also super successful. They were one of the biggest bands of their day. And I think even besides the music, there's this other aspect of them that I feel like it's such a time capsule of that moment in pop music, right? L ike they are putting out this happy-go-lucky pop while also looking pretty effeminate. You know what I mean? Yeah, certainly him. Yes. Certainly George, you know. I mean blown-out h air f with blonde tips, you know, and their all their photos are like airbrushed in that eighties style where they look like they you know, they're twinks in today's language, but they look like film twinks. Totally, totally. And the way their images are displayed on their album covers and stuff like that. It's like they're extras out of prime time soap Dallas or Days of Our Lives. You know what I mean? So like the hair is big, the earrings are definitely in it's like a lot of artists of that era, frankly. Like you have people like Prince, David Burry, just like these sort of effeminate people . But I have to say, I don't know that any of those guys wore short shorts the way that Andrew Ridgley and George Michael did on some of their music videos. Because they weren't as gay. Exactly. Like unlike a lot of the people in the 80s who were just sort of being effeminate. George Michael was actually gay. But around this time, he was not fully out. Not at all. Um most people listen to his music, I have to say watching it now, it was obvious that he was ga y. But at the time, it was kind of like it's open question. No, I mean you would have never that just the the pa the ability to deny what was inside in front of your face around sexuality at that stage. I mean, I was really young. So, but still in the culture, I mean, so I grew up, I didn't know of and someone who said, I am gay, I'm a gay man, publicly or privately, until I was a late teenager. I was like in college, you know. Um so it there it just wouldn't occur to you. It wouldn't have occurred to the average consumer that that George Michael was a gay man. I don't know what adult gay men were thinking at the time. But in the mainstream culture, no way would if he they would have thought he was gay. Right, right. And obviously back then it was not necessarily good for his life or his career to come out. I actually just want to play you this clip of him talking about that period and his identity. He did this interview much later in two thousand seven. Yeah, when I was nineteen I came out to various friends and m one of my sisters and I said I was going to talk to my mum and dad and was persuaded in no uncertain terms that it really wasn't the best idea. By who? 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. Your dad will 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. That's hard to listen to, honestly I well one, I hadn't realized how intentionally closeted he was in the Wham era, you know. Um for so many people, certain ly me, you know, it's a process of coming out to yourself uh that is hard , but to have been intentionally with the collaboration of his friends choosing to be closeted while being a pop star who was considered sexy, right? Like like young women were supposed to be into him. Uh I can't imagine the weight of carrying that. It's super exhausting. But then yeah, when you lay the AIDS stuff over top of it at the time, just the terror of that virus. Um and if he's talking about the early eighties, it's also a time rem,ember we didn't even know there was so much Yeah, we didn't I mean literally in a lot of quarters people did not call it AIDS. Like we didn't even have a name for it. And yeah, like in the early 80s, AIDS is this thing, right? That's just like coming on the scene, it's exploding. And activists in the US, gay activists, are desperately trying to just like wake up the public to what's happening. Um like just to just I when I was looking through the thing I was struck by was like take a song like Wake Me Up Before You Go Go that I just made fun of, right? This happy go lucky song. The year Wake Me Up Before You Go comes up this activist, Bobby Campbell, who's was a nurse who came forward with this illness that he had, he had complications from AIDS, and that was sort of like this seismic moment in the public consciousness about oh, there's this Well, first off, I'm just connecting the dots like between the beginning of AIDS activ ism and wham . And even in my own life, just thinking about like looking at that album cover and looking at the the that bubblegum pop , you know, um, alongside this epidemic. And it was a time in certainly at least in the United States, where there was so much desire for optimism. Right. Like that's what made AIDS so hard, one of the things that made it so hard to respond to is everybody, including gay men, were at a moment politically and cultur ally where it was like morning in America, let's have fun, you know, and along comes this epidemic. And to think about him as a 19 year old boy , that sucks. Just the weight of that on someone. You can hear it like between the lines of like what he's saying. I just want to play you just another clip from that same interview. So I try to understand firstly how much I love my family, and the AIDS was the predominant feature of being gay in the eighties and and early nineties, 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. And that's legit. You know, and it's interesting when he's saying this stuff to the modern ear, it might sound cowardly too, right? Because we went through this whole period right, you know, in the 80s and 90s around coming out, not just as gay men and not as just as queer people, but also around HIV and naming your status and fighting the shame that was part of what was killing us. I mean, act up slogan was silence equals death. Right. Um, and at the same time, he's a 19-year-old boy, you know, and being gay and and this deadly disease is is synonymous and I just I have so much sympathy for him carrying that. And so much honestly about his experience in Wham and what comes next is his transition from the scared boy at 19 to the man that he's gonna become. And the man that he wants to be given everything that's happening. And that's what we're gonna talk about after the break. Welcome back to Big Lives. Today we're talking about the one and only George Michael. By the late 1980s, George Michael is kind a done with the bubblegum poppiness of Wham. Yeah. Right? He releases sort of almost like a tester single. Just the Testa Waters of Solo Stardom that Andrew Ridgely helps co-write uh but is not in called Careless Whisper . A bonafide classic yes uh which I have to say as someone who grew up playing the saxophone, someone has asked me to play that song almost every time I've ever played in public. Like almost every single time. The whole thing is supposed to be much more romantic. And it's just like this sort of indication of where he's going as an artist, right? He's he's trying to be a little bit more openly thoughtful in terms of like sultry and soulful and a little darker, you know . There's a line in there about how his guilty feet ain't got no rhythm. Yes. I'm never gonna dance again, not the way I danced with you. Like it's it's it's definitely supposed to be the sort of song that someone could picture themselves in. You know what I mean? And like where there's loss and hurt. It's not a party, it's a reflection. A hundred percent. And he keeps that moving, right? And all of it builds to this tent pole of an album, like a first major solo album called Faith. Absolutely one of the best albums ever. Wow. Best albums ever. Correct. Okay. Okay. That was what I will stand on. Wow. It's br it's brilliant. It's brilliant work. It's certainly, you know, in my life, it is one of my favorite albums. Can I make a guess as to why that is, Kai ? Okay, yeah. Well, one, the music is fantastic. It is. It is such a more mature version of him and also it is a version of him just in terms of the aesthetic, like his appearance. If he's been on this journey from boy to mad, he is a man when faith comes out. He's a madman. I'm talking he goes from sort of, as you said, this kind of twink in the 80s to a muscled man. He goes from being clean shaven to having just the right amount of stubble. The stubble to this day, the George Michael stubble. Like there are all of y'all are out here trying to do the George Michael stubble. And the the dangling cross earring became like the thing for many generations later, young gay men of like, can I have the stubble and the little cross earring? And a lot of the visuals for this album, he's left the Days of Our Lives soapstar look behind and uh he looks kind of just like a biker dude in leather that is just a little too tight. Just enough biker dude is a very polite way to put it . This is leather king. This is like a lever daddy. Yes. The other thing is I will say I hadn't thought about this. Um, but having listened to you like thinking through him, it also part of what makes it such a great album for me is it feels so much more honest. And I hadn't I never really thought about that. Like that's part of what's so cool about the look and the music and everything, is it is a more honest person and a more honest take. Like insofar as what you're seeing is a man who is really embracing not only like in a way his own gayness, which he's still not out at this point, but you know, there are songs in this album that when you listen to them, that is the conclusion you come to. Certainly. Um like there is a song called Father Figure, which is a complicated song. It's a creepy song. It's a creepy song. But I love it. You know, some of the lyrics, just to do the reading again. You know, let me be your father figure. Put your tiny hand in mine I will be your creature teacher anything you have in mind George. And it works. Like, it is the biggest selling album in America in 1988 . And Faith actually becomes the first album by a white solo artist to hit number one on the Billboard top black albums chart. This I did not know . So he's he's become I mean this is and remember this is Michael Jackson and Prince is still around. Prince is still around . Like. Keep sweat. You know. Like this man is beating Keep Sweat. On the a man who ha once uh had a radio show called The Sweat Hotel. He's beating Keep Sweat for sex in this among black people. Wait back, I'm I don't know about the Keepsweat Sweat Hotel. Keep sweat sweat hotel. That's a discussion for another time, but all you need to know is it is a cool in radio show. Shut up. Is a call-in radio show all about sex and people calling in to keep sweat about their problems. How do I how is this the first time I've heard of this? I don't know. But all you need to know for now is that George Michael beat that guy. Right, right. Beat that. And this went with totally. He's in this period where he is totally flying high. And then this other thing happens, which is that he meets someone, and I'm gonna play just this clip about it. Um, again from the interview show Desert Island Discs. He gave his interview in two thousand seven. How did you meet your first love ? Well, what happened was actually it was a strange, strange thing. I don't know if this if people will 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 gonna know that person . And it happened with Anselmo across a lobby. So 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 gonna see him again. Why did that happen? I didn't understand what was going on. This was the first love of my entire life. I this was the first person I ever shared my life with. How beautiful. He's such a beautiful storyteller. He is. He is, right? He just saw a man across the hotel log And it's but I mean listen, have you never experienced such a thing? I have experienced such a thing. I have experienced such a thing. For sure, for sure. Where you're just like I don't know how you're gonna matter to me, but you are gonna matter. But you're all I can focus on in the world. A hundred percent. In true George Michael fashion, there is another variation of this story. Which is that he meets and just to say the man he meets, his name is Unselmo Filipe . Um he is Brazilian. There's a version of this story where George Michael is performing a concert in Rio to like thousands of people and in the crowd a lone face . This they're not even similar. Not even similar. To be fair to him. To be fair to him, I do think in that version of the story he later sees him again in a hotel l obby. But the way he tells it is in that similar kind of way where it's like I saw this man in the crowd. Everyone else is driving to my music, but this man is serious. Wow. George. Yes. Yes. Again. I don't know if this is all inappropriate. You do not correct Adivas Origin's story. I just like both stories. Okay. I just love both stories. And I the main thing you need to take away from this law is that this was George's first real adult relationship. Like, he was in love, in love. Yeah. And this relationship would totally change the trajectory of his life. Because within six months of that fateful meeting, of them starting to date, Anselmo will be diagnosed with AIDS . Yeah. And so this fear, right, that George Michael and so many other men, like it's come home. Yeah. And it maybe it had come home in other ways before that, but in this specific way was something that totally rocked his world. And the thing about that is Anselmo he gets sick pretty quickly. Um and you know at this point we're now firmly in the nineteen nineties, right? Um but early ninety. Early nineties still. So like ninety one, ninety nine, like in around 90, in around that there's still no treatment. AIDS is just finally starting to be a thing that the government is taking seriously, not just as it applies to gay people, partly because there are two seismic events in pop culture. Basketball star Magic Johnson revealed he'd been infected with HIV during heterosexual sex. I have attained uh I will have to retire from the Lakers. AIDS clinics were inundated with calls for days afterwards. Which opens up a whole world for a lot of people. Yeah. Like massive world-changing massive world changing thing just like up until then HIV is known as the gay man's disease. And the white gay man's disease. A hundred percent. And a lot of people I don't want to say okay with it , but there 's okay, yeah, okay with that. Absolutely. And also Magic Johnson is probably one of the most famous people on the planet. Right. In nineteen ninety one. Right. Like maybe the most famous sportsperson other than Michael Jordan . And literally that same month, that same November, Freddie Mercury dies from pneumonia after having battled AIDS. The pop star Freddie Mercury died last night in London. The lead singer with Queen, aged forty-five, had announced on Saturday he was suffering from AIDS. Yeah. Another massive celebrity, I mean one of the most famous, arguably the most famous rock star on the planet right then . And as an aside, now that I think about it, a bit of a counterpoint to George Michael. I mean, Freddie Mercury was so clearly gay. You know, what George Michael became when F aith came out was kind of a version of what Freddie Mercury had been since the seven. Oh, so sort of just like sexual, a little teasing, very much himself, without actually saying anything. Yeah, and that thin, masculine, like tight clothes, uh and like really associated with being a gay man of like that era's gay culture. And you know, it's interesting that you you point out that sort of difference and the relationship between the two because you know how we were talking earlier about that origin story of George Michael where he sort of you know knows he wants to be a star from the beginning and he's singing in front of his bathroom mirror possibly at seven. Like the person he's imitating when he does that is Freddie Mercury. Wow. Freddie Mercury is George Michael's hero. That mak es total sense. A massive hero of his. That makes total sense . And within a year of Freddie Mercury dying, Queen hits up George Michael. Like their band members hit up George Michael and they're like, hey, we are gonna put on a massive tribute concert for Freddie Mercury. This thing is gonna be billed basically as up until that point one of the largest, if not the largest, aid-specific benefit concert and awareness concert in UK history. Do you wanna stand in for Freddie Mercury? I didn't know about this. Yeah. Did he do it? So he does it. And I want to talk about this and just take a moment here. Because not only does George Michael do this, I actually think it's the best, most honest performance that George gives in anything in his entire career. And it is that way because it's it's the most emotional . We're just gonna play some of it for you here. Please. So he's singing this song, Somebody to Love, is obviously a song about someone who is yearning, yearning, yearning for compet The lyrics of which kind of speak to the journey that he's been on. George Michael has found someone to love in M. Selmo, but that person is dying . And there's this moment in this performance that I don't know, I just think is so, so special. It's towards the end of the song in a section of it where they're repeating the main melody of the song. And this thing happens that's so special. And there's just like this silence here a little bit . And then the crowd just actually responds to him . The whole time, George Michael just looks so transported, right? And you know, he was later asked about this performance. He acknowledges that he thinks it's one of his best performances. And here's what he says about it. He said, My subconscious knew I was singing a Frederick Mercury song after his passing in front of my lover . Oh man, you're gonna make me cry. Because I had to take all those years of standing in a bedroom, whether it be with a mic, I I don't think I had a hairbrush, she says. But I would stand and sing to the mirror and sing all those queen songs and know them backwards, know the harmonies, know everything about them, and that child was gonna take all that knowledge, all that subconscious eating enough music from that group, and sing one of Freddie Mercury's songs to the world and Selmo was there and I was dying inside and my whole he says he just went to another place and he calls it the loudest prayer of his li And he says it's not an accident but that performance perhaps the most well known of his career was sung to his lover who was dying. Oh my God . It's so moving. And I mean, one his voice. This is I'm glad that one of the things about that performance that we could get to in this conversation is George Michael is an in fucking credible singer. Yeah. Like, even from the beginning, that note when he's like somebody i mean i'm not even gonna try like it's so beautiful and if you've ever heard like cuts you know of these ev of of his songs where they've stripped everything out and just left it to the vocals. Yeah. His his voice is angelic. Yeah. Um so it's this angelic prayer that he's describing, you know, while his partner is dying and there's no treatment, you know, um it's a certain death at that time . Uh what an incredible thing. Yeah. What an incredible thing. He's carrying all of that. And he feels he's sad but also seems so free because he's getting th this arena is packed to the gills with thousands of people. The had that sort of feedback must have been incredible. I I can't imagine. I didn't know about this concert uh and and I didn't know about his lover and it's so sad. Yeah. But there's a thing that happens next which I feel like is him working through that sadness in a real way. A sadness that, you know, as we've talked about, so many people are experiencing at this moment in time, so many men are experiencing. And so illness progresses after that concert, and George Michael is not making music, right? He's just sort of like, this is a time, and he feels some sort of guilt about that a little bit. He's sort of like, I know that this is a moment where I could be out there talking about this disease. And don't get me wrong, he was still doing a lot of these sorts of benefit concerts and things like that. Like Elton John did a couple, he did those. But he's not making music. And there's trouble actually with his record company about that. Because they don't understand. They're like, where's our music, bro? Make me some money. Fuck you. Which of course pisses George Michael off. And I'm just gonna play a clip of him talking about that um in 2007 . When you just made $200 million 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 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. 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. I it's really enraging. You know, I can and you can kinda hear the rage in his voice there and I with him. You know two hundred million dollars he's made you you can't let this man grieve. Totally. The whole thing is a mess. Um he can't write music, he doesn't want to write music, and he's angry. And he's angry at these music executives that he says we're talking about him in really defamatory ways . And these executives deny this to this day. But you know, George is on the record talking about how music executives at Sony were calling him like the F-word. Course. So George takes all of that anger and he's looking through his contract and he's like, you know what? These guys are not allowing me enough freedom as an artist. So he decides he's gonna sue Sony and try and get out of his contract . He is so angry in this time, he makes a comment that uh I have to say he's a choice as a white guy in a um he made I have to say it's a choice. I the comment is that he likens his situation to quote professional slavery. Which this is a choice. I don't know why these artists, how many artists have felt like they needed you know, I mean this is a Kanye remark? No. But the difference is Kanye is at least black, bro. At least those two are black. But listen it does not that comment does not super go down well for a white guy in music. You know what I mean? Like, ah . And some of the public perception of him around this time is like, you know, greedy, whatever. Especially because they have no idea. They don't know. Nobody really knowss what he' dealing with behind the scenes. And then of course, Anselmo dies. Inevitably. Um which is brutal. George Michael actually uses that particular moment to reach out to his own mother and finally come out to her personally. Because it feels like okay, there's this one honest thing I should be doing. Yeah. But he's still not out publicly . You know, uh understandably like Ansang was the great love of his life, it plunges him into this massive depression. Sure. So he sues Sony and he loses . Which means he's spent at this point quite a while without making anything. Yeah. Gone years without releasing new music, nothing to show for it. And he starts sort of sliding out of the public's eye, I think, around this time as a serious person, around the mid-90s. Where people are just like this guy, maybe yeah, should we take him seriously? I don't know. Yeah. Um like he makes an album mourning his lover, and it does not do nearly as well as Faith or Dreav's album did. No, I don't I barely remember it. Exactly. Oh, and I'm a fan. You know. Exactly, exactly. Um so this is the beginning of George Michael as a joke. And I feel like even just by saying George Michael as a joke, I'm underplaying it. Like George Michael is gonna become a very, very easy punching bag for a lot of people. And that is really, really gonna be the case in 1998. I know where this is going. Alright, let's get to it after the break. Welcome back to Big Lives. Today we're talking about George Michael and where we are now at is the year 199 8 . Ooh . This look of recognition just came across your face. Yeah. Yeah . I want you to picture 9998, Beverly Hills, California, George Michael is inside a public toilet at a park. Okay. And he's there to have sex . Yes, yes, yes . I don't know. Would you say it was a thing that was happening in the 90s? Oh, come on, man. Oh, yes, it happens to this game. Um like, but certainly, you know, uh going for decades, cruising cultures when you know, like certainly gay men, but I think we're people of all sorts, you know, go cruising for sex in public places. And it grew out of a time when that's what you had to do and expanded into a time where that's what you enjoy to do. They're called public sex environments is the public health word for it. Wow, okay. And park restrooms. Well, in this public sex environment, uh man approaches George Michael on kind of like a listen I'll show you mine you show me yours kind of thing only that man is a cop and so of course as soon as George Michael interacts with this person he's arrested , and it's this massive thing. One headline from the time was called Zip Me Up Before You Go Go . It is this massive thing. George Michael, if you didn't know before you know now that he's gay because he has been involuntarily outed in this very By the fucking cops. Yeah. Public way. This huge way. Here's how you basically reported it at the time. Yeah. While we've been on air, police in Beverly Hills have confirmed that the singer George Michael has been charged with committing a lewd act in a park toilet. Beverly Hills police officers arrested the singer known as George Michaels. Mr. Michaels was arrested for a violation of 647A of the penal code, engaging Engaging in a lewd act. Go right to hell. One, you know, um at this time , uh, and it's started happening again today. Uh one of the things that police departments in cities around the country were doing is when they needed to run up tickets , were going and doing entrapment stings uh on gay men in public sex environments, which is an absurd use of public money. And it was a really big deal. We I mean because this was it was still illegal period to have a gay sex period. Sodomy was illegal. The same Supreme Court had not thrown out uh sodomy laws. And so in many places, I was reporting on it down in DC and Virginia at the time. It was an opportunity to sort of rail against gay people. Look at how like depraved we are. And so yes, George became a joke, I have to say, for us too , like in this moment, like it is funny. It is funny. You know, like so on one hand, it's funny, right? Like, oh, literally caught with your pants down, you know, um, and all of that. You know, and he's already a sex symbol. And so now, you know, I mean, who wouldn't of course the cop really wanted to have sex with George, who wouldn't want to suck George's dick, you know, like those kinds of things. Yes. Um but also like just a very relatable outrage, you know? Um, so he's a punchline, but he is also somebody who for me certainly, and I think for many of us of my generation at this moment, like really felt solidarity with George in this humiliation. Right, right, right. And you know, it's interesting, Zeb it, because I feel like at this time, right, he spent twenty years in the public eye. Yeah. That whole time he's tread this very careful line . But he's forced into it here. And what George Michael does is he decides to go on sort of British TV's version of the Tonight Show. It's a massive show called Parkinson's, hosted by this guy, Michael Parkinson. And I'm just gonna play a clip. It's Michael Parkinson just talking about that decision and about the events that led up to George Michael sort of like meeting this moment. You took the decision I think twenty-four hours after all this was happening with a had a helicopters and news crews all outside. You decided to go to a restaurant, didn't you? Tell me what happened when you went there. Um well I suppose I just I was I uh there's one recurring th eme to my actions as a celebrity or as a person, as an adult, and that is if I'm pressured into anything or pressured into a point of view or a certain position, either by individuals or by history, i.e. the way that celebrities normally deal with scandal and shame, you know, um or supposed shame. I react against it. And my my react my reaction to this was I'm not going to be like another one of these people that's peeking out from behind their net curtains a month later, you know, um trying to get rid of the press. They were surrounding the house and I thought, for God's sake, you know, what is the game here? What what do you want? A reconstruction what what is it you know why are you all here so I thought I'm just gonna go out for a meal I know they'll all chase me I know they'll just you know I know it will cause and it did cause havoc you had all these all these cars going across red lights and this and I was just ambling down to my local restaurant you know and I just thought that's the only way to deal with it. In fact someone had said something to me earlier in the day that um one of my closest friends said that his mother said he's not the first he won't be the last uh he's just the biggest and I thought well I like that I love it. I love him. I love him. He just bodies it, right? Like Yeah, like supposed shame, you know, like I love even in the middle of telling that story, he was careful. Supposed shame. Yes. You know. Um, and by the way, I'm hung. Totally, totally. And you know, it's interesting because I'd never seen that interview until like a week ago. And watching it today, my initial reaction was, oh, so that's the end, right? He killed it. 'Cause if I watch someone be like that on national television now instant win, I think George Michael by this point had gotten to a point where he was sliding a little bit out of a public consciousness. Like just as a very much, yeah. Um he's definitely back in that regard. Uh sales on his greatest hit album definitely increase. Did they really and you know, he puts out um very, very wild kind of music video and a song that parodies what happened in the bathroom. Um it's spectacular. It's it's unreal. Absolutely spectacular. Yeah. It's like cop costumes and disco bulls are involved. George is in a cop cop soon. Like he isn't cop cop. And it's like tight fitted and I mean there's no more winking at being gay, obviously. You know, but like it is full on like cop fetish , you know, which is a great comment on like, well, why are you in the bathroom with me, Mr. Cop? Like, if you so put out by you penal code 2057A or whatever the hell it was. Like why are you in here with your dick out? Exactly. But as much as that video and that song generates buzz, you know, in a sort of almost like 90s reality kind of way , writ large, in the United States , his biggest market . It's essentially the end of his musical career. Well, but I think it's also Emmanuel the start of now I'm thinking about what you said at the beginning of our conversation and like the difference between how we think about him because you're right. It I almost forget that it's the end of his musical career because it's the b it's not the beginning of him being a gay icon, but it's like a really big moment in the story of him as an icon for our generation. Um because he is so bold about it. Right. Um, and we get the joke, but then we also get to punch back, you know. Um and so I still see him and think of him as undefeated. Right. You know . Um you're right. It was the end of his music career. I don't think about that. Right. And I mean just to be clear, like he's still making music, right? There are literal songs, big songs that he did in the early 2000s that got basically almost no radio play in the US. And some massive collaborations with huge stars of the day. Like, for example, he did a massive duet with Mary J. Blige . And like, it really didn't get much radio play in the US. I I think it's just like by the early two thousands, I think that gap between the people who like see George Michael as his icon and the people who see him as a washed up star, that's kind of a jok e that starts to really widen. And we're into this era where really a lot of what you're hearing about George Michael, if you're not on the icon train, is wild stories about like this kind of out of control, oversex guy. And by the 2000s, what you see in the headlines is that whatever you know he was doing with a read in terms of coping, that seems to have become a drug habit. Yeah. And so he's arrested in two thousand and eight uh in a public bathroom, but this time not necessarily for nude sex. This time it's because he's in possession of crack cocaine and marijuana. Right. And I I don't know, think this is where my image of him as a kid comes from, which is sort sort of like right, this oversexed drugged out has been. I mean he ultimately dies of a drug overdose, right? No, no, no. Actually, and so this is officially no. Officially he dies in his sleep. Like anything else is conjecture. See? Even me. Even me. Right, right. And I think that's the thing, even if you don't n see him as a drugged up person, his demise feels so connected to that. Yeah. The way he's covered, he's not covered as a person who is dealing with probably a decent amount of survivor's guilt, you know what I mean, who's depressed and trying to cope with it. Yeah. And I I I think we don't want to see that not just with George Michael, but by the early two thousands, and this is my experience as someone who's coming of age in this time. HIV slash AIDS is this thing that no one's really talking about as a thing that happened in America or the UK. It's a thing that is happening somewhere in Africa, vaguely. In sub-Saharan Africa, that's right. You know what I mean? That's right. And no one wants to talk about necessary talking about it there. We're just kind of ignoring and I I want to be careful about the use of we , but I feel like there are a decent amount of people who are ignoring kind of what's just happened. I was at that time spending an enormous amount of my time arguing. You're all ignoring this. And you need to stop. So I, you know, it absolutely. I'm also when you describe the caricatured version of you know this drugged out gay man go drugged out oversexed gay man . It's also the caricature of gay men at that time. Totally. Period. Right. And it's interesting to me to think about that's that he becomes emblematic of that idea of a gay man to the broader culture . And to me and the queer people in my world, you know , he is emblematic of being more than that. Yeah. Of like an honesty with, and that's what I meant about going back to faith, you know, like it starts to be honest. One of the lyrics of that album is like all we gotta do now is take these lies and say they're true. Right. Like he's reflecting on like the hypocrisy of the moment. And for me , all of his honest journey through the epidemic, through having to bury his partner, the survivor's guilt of certainly that generation, Ike is so definitive. And the fact that he got over all of that to laugh at the end while he's supposed to being laughed at, to stand up and say, What of it? I'm having sex in the park. Yeah. Go to hell. Um for me and for us, he's a symbol of our perseverance. Totally. Um that's a sort of larger sort of meta thing happening here too, which I I hope. That's more optimistic than me. I hope y'all got guilt about it. I hope some people are guilty. Uh because there is guilt to be had about uh the lives that were discarded globally. Yeah. Well thank you. Thank you for going on that journey with me. Um I think journey, but it's also I know a journey you were there for. You know what I mean? You've No, but I learned so much that stuff that I didn't know. I didn't know about this stuff. I have a better understanding of George, my hero. So thank you. Of course. Of course. So now I wanna know, after Jeremy have been on where are we going next week? Okay. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna play you a few clips of the person that I'm gonna introduce you to. I have somebody really fun. Okay. Uh and um and I think you'll know who this is, but let's go. Let's see. Let me start with this clip. I get up there and just do it and say what's on my mind and over a period of time it develops I find something's funny and then what's not funny, I leave out I like humor. I like funny stuff. I don't like not funny stuff. I don't care who does it. Okay . Don't tell people if you know what it is. Whoever is loves funny stuff. Okay. Loves funny stuff. This is a comedian. Being black was being cool. I remember it wasn't black in those days because black wasn't beautiful yet. Remember you couldn't even say black. You called dude black. I don't say that. And he is funny. And he is funny and that's the voice is so iconic. Like you have to people know this by this point. He's a black comedian though. Uh and here's the last one. Do you find that the bigger you get, the h further away you get from like the street and therefore the harder it is to be funny still. Yes. Well it's not harder but it's just h diffic ult to be in the streets if you got some money. Yes, exactly. And people are rushing up to you asking I cannot wait for this episode. Oh my gosh. There's no reason to be in the streets if you got somebody. That's the truth. That is the truth. All right, well that's next week. Alright, until next time. Until next time . Big Lives is a production of BBC Studios and Pushkin Industries. It's hosted by me, Emmanuel Jochi, and Kai Wright. Our team over at BBC Studios includes producer Emma Reverell, archive producer Samira Chowdery, sound design by Melvin Rickerby, our executive producer is Annie Brown, our production coordinator is Galen Davis Connolly, and our produ ction manager is Mabel Finnegan Wright. The team over at Pushkin Industries includes executive producer Constanza Gollado, producer Daphne Chen, our legal advisor is Jake Flanagan, and our marketing team includes Morgan Ratner and Jordan McMillan.