George Michael became a pop icon… but childhood photos reveal a shy boy whose own dad told him he couldn’t sing
AS the nation comes to terms with the shock death of George Michael, glowing tributes to the much-loved star are not hard to come by.
His untimely death on Christmas Day has sparked an outpouring of affection towards the singer who was rumoured to have been battling addiction in his final months.
The internet is littered with stories of his kindness and generosity as friends, family and fans mourn the loss of a great musical talent.
But the man who achieved fame and fortune struggled to find contentment and as the media reflect on his life, it becomes increasingly apparent that George’s childhood was far from perfect.
Born in 1963 to a dancer mother Lesley Angold and Greek-Cypriot restaurateur dad Kyriacos Panayiotou, George - real name Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou - was raised above a launderette in north London with his two sisters.
His father spent long hours running his restaurant which put distance between the pair.
“As a very, very young child I don’t suppose I saw him at all,” George said in an interview.
“I didn’t learn about hard work from him because I could never work as hard as he did. Just the idea of coming to a foreign country and working until your fingers bleed.
"When I look at my dad, that’s what I see. I see lots of other things too, lots of faults.”
That distance made it difficult for George to confide in his family.
He said: “I never really told my parents that I wanted to be a pop star or anything.
"They just knew that I was totally obsessed with music. Funnily enough, my father always used to say that he didn’t think I could sing.”
It seems his father’s quest to improve the family's financial status meant affection in general was rare.
George once said: "I was never praised, never held. So it wasn't exactly the Little House On The Prairie."
But the lack of encouragement didn’t deter George from chasing his passion for music, a passion which developed from a very young age.
At the age of six he wrote his first song after developing an obsession with a wind-up gramophone he was given as a gift.
“The first sign of real obsession with music was with an old wind-up gramophone that Mum had thrown out into the garage,” George said in his autobiography, Bare.
He added: “My parents gave me three old 45s – two Supremes records and one Tom Jones record – and I used to come home from school literally every day, go out to the garage, wind this thing up and play them.”
But George explained that it was a couple of years later at the age of eight that he became determined to make music his life.
He said: “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, and 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, all I wanted to know about was music, it just seemed a very, very strange thing.
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“And I have a theory that maybe it was something to do with this accident, this whole left-brain right-brain thing.
"Nobody in my family seemed to notice but I became absolutely obsessed with music and everything changed after that.”
As a teenager George and his family relocated from London to Hertfordshire and it was at his new school Bushey Meads where his ambitions started to take shape.
In an interview George explained that he was 14 years old when he heard a song on tape and began to analyse the melody.
He said: “It occurred to me that this melody shouldn’t have gone that way, it should have gone another way.
“And it suddenly occurred to me that I would have written it that other way.
“That was the first moment I remember thinking I could have written that - but better.”
George always thought he was destined for something greater and even when he suffered from depression at school, he recalled a time when he believed things would change for him.
In a TV interview he spoke about a time when he had skipped school and was sitting on a bus to avoid being caught bunking.
He said:“I remember thinking to myself: ‘One day, no one will be able to touch you. You’ll somehow get away from everyone else in some respect’.”
It's a good thing George didn’t avoid school altogether though - for it was at Bushey Meads School that he met Andrew Ridgeley, with whom he would later form Wham!
Speaking about the day they first met, George said: “The teacher says, ‘We’ve got a new boy, who’s going to look after him?’
"They allot the new kid to someone they feel might be responsible enough to have a new kid in their charge – so I was dying to have a go. He was introduced, I put my hand up – and I got him.”
The pair complemented each other as George felt crippling shyness and a lack of self-confidence while outgoing Andrew was happy to be the star of the show.
George confessed: “I had no physical confidence whatsoever. I looked up to Andrew because he oozed confidence from every pore.”
Andrew introduced George to the party scene and the duo formed their first group - a ska band called The Executive.
The band didn’t last long but provided the perfect practice for the boys’ second venture Wham!
Speaking about how they worked together George said: “We used to have a laugh, we had the same sense of humour.
"I think one of the reasons he liked me was because I knew a lot about music.
“You see, all he knew at that age was that he wanted to be famous. And as we grew up together, I encouraged him musically.
"And what I got from him were the aspirations to become the type of person I wanted to be seen as. It was a good exchange.”
Together, the boys set up Wham! in 1981 when George was just 17. And the rest is history.