If you weren’t a teenager in 1984, it might be hard to understand, but here it goes: There are Gen Xers out there who remember where they were when they saw the video for the Wham! clapping pop song ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go’.
In it, George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley, the heartbreaking frontmen of Wham!, wear big smiles and short beach shorts as they perform their catchy bop – titled after a note Ridgeley once left on his family’s fridge – to a small crowd of adoring fans . There were fingerless gloves, neon face paint, white ‘Choose Life’ T-shirts that had nothing to do with abortion: it was a new wave dance party for cool kids who thought Mötley Crüe was worthless.
Ridgeley, who turned 60 in January, remembers having a lot of fun.
“It was our first video with an audience,” he said during a recent video interview from his London home. “The atmosphere was really, really excited and exciting.”
Ridgeley and his bandmate are the subject of “Wham!”, a new documentary premiering Wednesday on Netflix. Directed by Chris Smith, it charts the British group’s ascent to pop stardom, beginning with their ferocious performance on the music show “Top of the Pops” in 1982, through the worldwide success that followed the albums “Fantastic” ( 1983) and “Make It Big” (1984), ending with the farewell concert in London in 1986.
Self-directed as a power pop video, the film explains how the duo’s modern blend of disco, funk, pop and soul, in songs like “Young Guns (Go for It)”, “Careless Whisper” and “Freedom, “helped Wham! become one of the greatest pop groups of the late 20th century, even though it only lasted four years. Unlike bands that broke up over artistic or personal differences, Wham! had no rise and fall.” just a rise and they called it quits,” Smith said.
They didn’t break up either, Ridgeley said, but “brought Wham! close in a way that we choose.”
Fans may be disappointed to learn that Ridgeley is heard in the documentary but not seen as he looks today: debonair and patrician, with silver hair and a still cheeky smile. Smith said it would have thrown the film’s mythical aspirations off balance if Ridgeley were in front of the camera, but not Michael, who died seven years ago at age 53.
After Wham!, Ridgeley told me, he and Michael no longer lived in each other’s pockets, as they had since they were kids. But their bond was solid.
If Ridgeley is tired of being mostly known for his friendship with Michael, he didn’t show it. He perked up when he talked about Michael, whose loss made Ridgeley feel “like the sky had fallen into it,” as he said in 2017. But he didn’t seem to talk much about his life now, except to say he liked riding a bike.
The documentary features archival media coverage and tons of concert footage, including scenes from groundbreaking shows in 1985 when Wham! became the first western pop group to perform in China.
But it is Ridgeley’s mother who has provided the most personal treasures. Since her son started playing music with Michael in grade school, she’s kept about 50 carefully organized scrapbooks filled with photos, reviews, and other ephemera. They include snapshots from the mid-1970s, when Ridgeley first met Michael as Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou, the son of a Cypriot father and a British mother.
Ridgeley was also the son of an immigrant father – his father was Egyptian – and a British mother, and he immediately hit it off with the boy he called Yog, a nickname he often used in our interview. The scrapbooks paint a vivid portrait of boys who loved Queen and “Saturday Night Fever” and wanted to make music a career.
“All I ever wanted to do from the age of 14 was play in a band, write songs and perform,” Ridgeley said with the enthusiasm of a 14-year-old in his voice, adding that fame and celebrity “have never been a motivating factor for both of us.”
Ridgeley said he and Michael knew Wham! would have a finite lifespan because Michael’s songwriting began to “develop and evolve in a way and at a speed” that Wham! could not accommodate. In November, Michael will be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
Since the heyday of Wham! Ridgeley battles the perception that he’s only famous because he was in a duo with a more talented artist. However, the documentary argues in his favor and follows how Ridgeley, a guitarist, worked with the composer and recording artist Michael.
Yet Ridgeley acknowledged that his musicianship was not in the same league as Michael’s, “one of the best, if not the best singing voices of his generation,” he said, sounding like a proud brother.
When Michael approached him after they shot the video for “Club Tropicana” (1983), 15 years before he did so publicly, Ridgeley said he supported him lovingly and with a shrug. Michael was more shocked by how his father would react than how the public would react, Ridgeley said; had Michael come out during the Wham! years, Ridgeley said he and fans would have supported him.
“I didn’t think it would affect our success, and probably not in the long run,” he said. “It will have been difficult for him for a while, there is no doubt about that. It would have required management by all of us. But after the initial sensationalism, it’s on the table, isn’t it?”
Na Wham! Ridgeley released a solo album in 1990 which went flat and he did a brief stint as a Formula 3 driver but otherwise stayed out of the limelight. The British tabloids have been breathlessly watching his love life – including his 25-year relationship with Keren Woodward, a former member of another ’80s pop group, Bananarama – just as they did when they nicknamed him Randy Andy from the Wham ! era gave .
Ridgeley did not pursue fame further as he appeared in Wham! gave him “everything he wanted,” said Shirlie Kemp, a friend from school and a Wham! background singer. Not just professional.
“I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone else on a par with George the way Andrew was, intellectually and with a sense of humor,” said Kemp, whose husband is Martin Kemp of the 1980s band Spandau Ballet. was the best relationship I’ve ever seen George have with anyone.”
Ridgeley said “there are only a few stones left unturned” as he has spent the last five years working on projects that are everything – Wham! In 2019, he published a memoir, “Wham! George Michael & Me,” and had a cameo that year in the romantic comedy “Last Christmas,” which was inspired by the group’s holiday single of the same name. Coming later this month is “Echoes From the Edge of Heaven,” a Wham! singles collection.
He still seems to be in awe of what he and his best friend have created together.
“I could never really understand that we had achieved the same kind of success as the artists we revered as gods growing up,” he said. “We played at Wembley Stadium, the same place where Elton John played. You can say, ‘Me am the same.’ But in your own mind you will never be the same.”
