1984 Wham! Concert Ticket Royal Highland Hall Ingliston Scotland George Michael

Description

Wham!
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Whaam!
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Wham (disambiguation)
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Wham!
Andrew Ridgeley and George Michael
Background information
Also known as
Wham! UK
(briefly in the US)
Origin
London
, England
Genres
Dance-pop
post-disco
Years active
1981–1986
(reunions: 1988 and 1991)
Labels
Columbia
Innervision
Epic
Sony Music
Associated acts
The Executive!
Pepsi & Shirlie
Dee C. Lee
Past members
George Michael
Andrew Ridgeley
Wham!
were an English musical duo formed by members
George Michael
and
Andrew Ridgeley
in 1981.
[1]
[2]
They were briefly known in the United States as
Wham! UK
due to a naming conflict with an American band. Wham! sold more than 30 million certified records worldwide from 1982 to 1986.
[3]
Contents
[
hide
]
1
History
1.1
Increasing success
1.2
Legal disputes with Innervision
1.3
Switch to Epic and continued success
1.4
China (1985)
1.5
Live Aid (1985)
1.6
Breakup (1986)
1.7
Post-Wham! and Michael's death
2
Discography
3
Concert tours
4
References
5
External links
History
[
edit
]
Michael and Ridgeley met at
Bushey Meads School
in
Bushey
near the town of
Watford
in Hertfordshire. The two at first performed in a short-lived
ska
band called the Executive, alongside former school friends David (Austin) Mortimer, Andrew Leaver and Paul Ridgeley.
[4]
When this group split, Michael and Ridgeley eventually formed Wham!, signing with
Innervision Records
. British graphic design studio
Stylorouge
was credited with adding the exclamation point to the name of the band.
[5]
Michael took on the majority of roles and responsibilities within the band—composer, producer, lead singer, and occasional instrumentalist. Still teenagers, they promoted themselves as hedonistic youngsters, proud to live a carefree life without work or commitment. This was reflected in their earliest singles which, part-parody, part-social comment, briefly earned Wham! a reputation as a dance protest group.
The debut record to be released by the band was "
Wham Rap! (Enjoy What You Do)
" in June 1982. It was a double A-side including the Social Mix and the Unsocial Mix. The record was not playlisted by
BBC Radio 1
in the UK, partly because of the profanity in the Unsocial Mix. Separate videos were recorded for each set of lyrics. "Wham Rap!" did not chart for the group.
In October 1982 "
Young Guns (Go for It!)
" was issued. Initially, it also stalled outside the UK Top 40 but the band got lucky when the BBC programme
Top of the Pops
scheduled them after another act unexpectedly pulled out of the show.
Increasing success
[
edit
]
Wham!'s first manager was Bryan Morrison. The effect of Wham! on the public, especially teenage girls, was felt from the moment they finished their debut performance of "Young Guns (Go for It!)" on Top of the Pops. Michael wore espadrilles, an open suede jacket, and rolled-up denim jeans. Ridgeley stood behind him, flanked by backing dancers
Dee C. Lee
and
Shirlie Holliman
. Afterwards, the song shot into the Top 40 at No. 24 and peaked at No. 3 in December. The following year (1983), Dee C. Lee began her work with
Paul Weller
in
The Style Council
, and was replaced by Pepsi DeMacque. Holliman and DeMacque would later record as
Pepsi & Shirlie
.
Wham! followed up "Young Guns (Go for It!)" with a reissue of "Wham Rap! (Enjoy What You Do)", "
Bad Boys
" and "
Club Tropicana
". By the end of 1983, Wham! were competing against pop rivals
Duran Duran
and
Culture Club
as Britain's biggest pop act. Their debut album
Fantastic
spent two weeks at No. 1 in the UK album charts in 1983.
[6]
Notoriety and increased newspaper and magazine coverage were duly achieved with their antics of placing
shuttlecocks
down their shorts during performances on their first tour, the Club Fantastic Tour.
Legal disputes with Innervision
[
edit
]
Soon after this, Ridgeley became conscious of legal problems with their initial contract at Innervision. While the legal battle raged, Innervision released a medley of non-single album tracks from
Fantastic
, entitled "
Club Fantastic Megamix
". Wham! publicly denounced the release and urged fans not to buy it. After all the legal wrangling, Innervision admitted there were royalty discrepancies with Wham!'s contract, the fall-out of which led to the bankruptcy and eventual dissolution of Innervision altogether in 1985.
[
citation needed
]
Switch to Epic and continued success
[
edit
]
Now signed to
Epic Records
(and other
CBS Records
imprints around the world), Wham! returned in 1984 with an updated pop image. These changes helped to propel Wham!'s next single, "
Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go
", to the top of the charts around the world. It became their first UK #1 single and rose to that position in the USA as well, accompanied by a video of the duo with Pepsi and Shirlie, all wearing
Katharine Hamnett
T-shirts with the slogans "CHOOSE LIFE" and "GO GO".
The next single, "
Careless Whisper
", was issued as a George Michael solo piece, yet unlike any Wham! single except "Wham Rap!" and "Club Tropicana", it was co-written with Ridgeley. The song, about a remorseful two-timer, had more emotional depth than previous releases. It quickly reached No. 1, selling over 1.3 million copies in the UK.
[7]
"Careless Whisper" marked a new phase in Michael's career, as he somewhat distanced himself from Wham!'s playboy image. In the US—so as not to confuse American listeners just being exposed to Wham!—the single was billed as "Wham! featuring George Michael".
In the autumn of 1984, Wham! returned as a duo with "
Freedom
", another UK chart-topper and the first single for quite some time to reach #1 in the UK without an accompanying video. Wham! subsequently decided to use a video edited together from footage of their tour of China in time for "Freedom's" US single release. The group by then had achieved three number-one singles in a row. In November, they released their second album,
Make It Big
, which quickly climbed to #1 on the album charts, and the band set off on an arena tour at the end of 1984.
[8]
The double A-side single "
Last Christmas
/
Everything She Wants
" became the highest-selling single ever to peak at No. 2 in the UK charts. It stayed at No. 2 for five weeks and, to date, is the 24th best-selling single of all time in the United Kingdom, selling over 1.4 million copies in the UK.
[7]
Wham! donated all their royalties from the single to the Ethiopian famine appeal to coincide with the fund-raising intentions of Band Aid's "
Do They Know It's Christmas?
", the song which kept them out of the top spot. Nevertheless, Band Aid's success meant that Michael had achieved #1 status in the UK within three separate entities in 1984—as a solo artist, as one half of a duo, and as part of a charity ensemble.
[9]
At the end of 1985, the US
Billboard
charts
listed "
Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go
" as the number-three song and "
Careless Whisper
" as the number-one song of the year.
[10]
China (1985)
[
edit
]
In March 1985, Wham! took a break from recording to embark on a lengthy world tour, including a ground-breaking 10-day visit to China, the first by a Western pop group.
[11]
The China excursion was a publicity scheme devised by
Simon Napier-Bell
(one of their two managers—
Jazz Summers
being the other). It began with a concert at the Peoples' Gymnasium in Beijing in front of 12,000 people. They also played a concert in front of 5,000 in Canton. The two concerts were played without compensation.
[12]
Wham!'s visit to China attracted huge media attention across the world. Napier-Bell later admitted that he used cunning tactics to sabotage the efforts of rock band
Queen
to be the first to play in China: he made two brochures for the Chinese authorities – one featuring Wham! fans as pleasant middle-class youngsters, and one portraying Queen lead singer
Freddie Mercury
in typically flamboyant poses. The Chinese opted for Wham!
[13]
British Director
Lindsay Anderson
was engaged to accompany Wham! to China and make a documentary film about the visit. The film was shot over two weeks of March and April and edited over late spring and summer 1985 in London. Anderson called his one-hour and 18 minute film
If You Were There
. In the final stages of editing, Anderson was dismissed
[14]
by Wham!'s management, the editing team quit, and the film was entirely re-edited, renamed and released as
Foreign Skies: Wham! In China
. According to a 2006 interview with
The Independent
,
[15]
Andy Stephens, manager for Michael, said that the film [Anderson's version] was simply not good enough to be shown in public: "It's a dreadful film ... It's 20 years old and it's rubbish. Why on earth should we allow it to be shown?", although after viewing it in 2008 critic and journalist
John Harris
described it as "a rich, poetic, panoramic portrait of China's strangeness to the eyes of outsiders".
[16]
Live Aid (1985)
[
edit
]
Sporting a beard, Michael appeared with Ridgeley onstage at
Live Aid
on 13 July 1985 (although they did not perform as Wham!). Michael sang "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me" with
Elton John
, while Ridgeley joined
Kiki Dee
in the row of backing singers. In September, Wham! released the single "
I'm Your Man
" which went to No. 1 in the UK charts.
Around this time, Ridgeley began a relationship with
Keren Woodward
of
Bananarama
. Ridgeley also took up the hobby of rally driving. "
Last Christmas
" was re-issued for the festive season and again made the UK Top 10, peaking at No. 6, while Michael took up offers he was starting to receive to add his voice to other artists' songs. He performed backing vocals for
David Cassidy
, and also for Elton John on his successful singles "
Nikita
" (UK No. 3) and "
Wrap Her Up
" (UK No. 12), on which he sang co-lead vocals.
Breakup (1986)
[
edit
]
Michael was keen to create music targeted at a more sophisticated adult market rather than the duo's primarily teenage audience, and therefore, Michael and Ridgeley officially announced the breakup of Wham! in the spring of 1986. Before going their separate ways, a farewell single "
The Edge of Heaven
", and a greatest hits album titled
The Final
would be forthcoming, along with a farewell concert entitled
The Final
. Announcing the breakup, Michael said: "I think it should be the most amicable split in pop history."
[17]
The farewell single reached No. 1 in June 1986. "
Where Did Your Heart Go?
" was the group's final single in the United States. The song, originally recorded by
Was (Not Was)
, was a gloomy and sombre affair. The duo's last release was a double-LP collection of all the singles to date, including some extended versions. This was released in North America as the severely pared-down
Music from the Edge of Heaven
with alternate tracks.
At London's
Wembley Stadium
on Saturday 28 June 1986, Wham! bade goodbye to their fans and each other with an emotional embrace at the end of its final concert. 72,000 people attended the eight-hour event,
[8]
which included support artists, on a scorching hot day in London. The band had been together for five years, selling over 28 million records and 15 million singles.
Foreign Skies
, the documentary of their tour of China, received its world premiere as part of the festivities.
Post-Wham! and Michael's death
[
edit
]
For several years after becoming a solo artist, Michael spoke negatively, in public, about his time with Wham!, partly because of the negativity of intense media coverage on Ridgeley. Michael complained of the constant pressure he felt, and he claimed that the duo had been mistreated financially. He also spoke disparagingly about some of the videos from the Wham! repertoire, especially the video from "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" from the
first album
. However, his perspective on the era softened somewhat in the later years of his life. At his solo concerts he would still perform "I'm Your Man" and "Everything She Wants", the latter being one of the more critically acclaimed songs from the Wham! era.
Andrew Ridgeley moved to
Monaco
after Wham!'s breakup and tried his hand at
Formula Three
motor racing. Meeting with little success, Ridgeley moved to Los Angeles to pursue his singing/acting career, the failure of which caused him to return to England in 1990. Regardless, CBS Records, having taken up the option on Wham!'s contract that specified solo albums from Michael and Ridgeley, released a solo effort from Ridgeley,
Son of Albert
, in 1990. After poor sales, CBS declined the option of a second album. On 25 June 1988, George Michael's 25th birthday, he played the third of three dates at Birmingham's
NEC
as part of the
Faith World Tour
. He appeared deeply moved when he was surprised on stage by many members of his family with Andrew Ridgeley, who was pushing a trolley carrying a huge birthday cake. They led the 13,000-strong crowd in a rendition of "
Happy Birthday
" before Ridgeley accompanied Michael in a performance of "
I'm Your Man
".
In January 1991, Ridgeley joined Michael on stage for a few songs at the encore of his performance at the
Rock in Rio
event at the
Maracanã Stadium
in
Rio de Janeiro
,
Brazil
.
[8]
On 21 November 2009, there was a Wham!-themed night on television's
The X Factor
in the UK. Michael later appeared on the show's final episode, performing a duet of "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me" with finalist and eventual winner
Joe McElderry
. In 2012, Michael said that there was no truth in speculation that he and Ridgeley were set for a Wham! reunion to mark the 30th anniversary of the group's first album.
[18]
Michael died from heart and liver disease at his home in
Goring-on-Thames, Oxfordshire
on Christmas Day 2016. He was 53.
Discography
[
edit
]
Main article:
Wham! discography
Fantastic
(1983)
Make It Big
(1984)
The Final
(1986) (UK and Japan only)
Music from the Edge of Heaven
(1986) (North America and Japan only)
Concert tours
[
edit
]
Club Fantastic Tour
(1983)
The Big Tour
(1984-85)
The Final
(1986)