'Patience' pays off for Georgey boy

George Michael's long-overdue new album comes out after great personal loss, but the reluctant pop star is now finding happiness in domestic life and dogs, and at last learning to enjoy his wealth, writes KATHERINE TULICH

It's hard to forget the pervasive 80s image of the fresh-faced cherubic boy with the bright eyes, mop of streaked blond hair and white T-shirt bopping to Wake Me Up Before You Go Go. The face of 40-year-old George Michael as he sits in a London hotel room is a little more lined these days; the hair is blacker and speckled with faint hints of grey.

He is smaller than you would expect, with a slight body. His partner of eight years, Texan Kenny Goss, is in the next room while his constant companions, two boisterous labradors, come bounding in.

Michael's mood is buoyant. A smile, a joke and a laugh come easily to his lips.

It's an optimistic mood that has only come recently into his life. He is making a career comeback with his first album in eight years, Patience. Its first single Amazing easily brings to mind past hits Fast Love and Too Funky.

"It's such a relief. I really thought I would never be able to do this again," explains the singer who says he has only recently emerged from a terrible struggle with writer's block.

"I have gone through so much to get to this album. I have worked through so much depression, fear and anxiety. My life has been like a really bad soap opera for the past 10 years," he laughs.

It doesn't take much prompting to get Michael to talk candidly about his life.

"Everything was going my way. And I was happily marching into the history books, but then it all just fell apart."

By 1984 Wham mania had hit with a caffeine jolt of infectious pop in Wake Me Up Before You Go Go and as it became obvious that Michael was the only Wham member with musical talent, his transition from teenybopper idol to solo pop superstardom was seamless. Wham played their final gig before 72,000 fans at Wembley Stadium in 1986.

His first solo album, the Grammy-winning Faith, spawned four number one hits including I Want Your Sex and the title track. But with the release in 1990 of his second album, Listen Without Prejudice, Michael began to retreat, shunning the press and refusing to make videos.

Michael says, in retrospect, that was the catalyst for his downward spiral, personally and professionally. "I decided I needed to protect myself and sort things out privately, so I moved out of promotion and I really started to get my shit together. I worked out that I was definitely gay and I knew if I was going to be gay and happy then I needed to find a partner. I was not going to do that by travelling the world as George Michael, but it felt like I got hugely punished for taking those steps to protect myself."

Michael blames former Sony chief Tommy Mottola for his career demise.

Michael's legal battles with Sony began in 1992 as he tried to release himself from the $12 million contract he had signed in 1988. Two years later a London court rejected his claim. While the singer appealed, as the court battles continued, he was unable to release new material. In the end he never won his case but Virgin Records bought out his contract and he released his next album Older in 1996.

Personally, he has faced a number of losses. His Brazilian lover Anselmo Feleppa died of Aids (his 96 album Older was written as a tribute) and in 1997 he found his mother was dying of cancer.

Michael claims it was this crushing cycle of grief that led to the incident that would be forever imprinted as a grubby footnote on his dossier - his arrest for lewd behaviour in a public toilet in a Los Angeles park in 1998.

The fallout from that forced Michael to come out about his sexuality. "It was really something that had made me feel uncomfortable for a long time, the dishonesty of it, but I saw it as a fight for privacy between me and the press," he says.

"I know it must have looked like I was acting the way most closeted gay stars behave, but I was trying to give all these hints. I dedicated Older to Anselmo, I even grew myself one of those funny little moustaches - any way I could to imply I wasn't ashamed, but I just didn't want to give those bastards [the press] what they wanted by declaring it."

Michael now sees his arrest as a call to attention. "The idea that people thought I was ashamed of being gay and the motivation it created for me to create some trouble for myself, it took me years to work out why I had done that to myself. But it was also in a strange way a distraction from the ongoing depression I was feeling over the loss of my partner and my mother."

On his new album Patience Michael has written a song for his mother called My Mother Had a Brother. "When I was 17 my mum sat me down and told me about her brother who killed himself on the day I was born. He had waited through her pregnancy but could not wait any longer. She told me she thought he was probably gay and couldn't cope with the family's situation ... If in some way I am his reincarnation it's to tell him how happy I am and that I share my life openly with a man."

Michael has always shunned the rock star life. He is frugal with his money and claims to live simply. But he says he is enjoying his considerable wealth now that he is in a contented relationship. He recently bought the upright piano John Lennon used to write the song Imagine, at a cost of £1.5 million ($4 million). "If I didn't buy it some Japanese investment portfolio would have grabbed it and that would have been a tragedy," he says.


While Michael has bought several properties over the years, he is in the process of selling them. He will keep his property in London and in Goring, a country estate outside of London.

"I'm rarely in them these days. I don't travel anymore so they were just huge extravagances. I'm a real homebody. Last year I left the country once to go and visit Sony in New York to decide whether I would sign with them again but that's it. I live a really quiet life. I have my partner and I have my two lovely dogs - I've got my TV, got my weed, I'm happy."

While it's unlikely Michael will tour extensively again, he has been asked to perform at the opening of the Olympics in Athens which he is likely to do. "If someone had told me five years ago that my life would be this good now, I would have been so relieved. I'm not afraid of anything now."

* George Michael's Patience is due out on Monday.