George Michael Forum

Part I ...

Chris: It’s Clearwater Revival (прим.скриптера: полное название этой очень классной американской рок-группы 60-70гг. – Creedence Clearwater Revival) ‘Have You Ever Seen The Rain’ (прим.скриптера: оригинальная песня CCR, автором её является вокалист группы Джон Фогерти. Советским меломанам в основном знакома в кавер-версии Бонни Тайлер). So, it’s eight thirty-five, it’s Monday morning, seventh of March, two thousand eleven, you’re listening to Radio 2 where George Michael came in on Friday for a chat, now he’s looking good and feeling better than he’s felt for ages, he spoke openly for an hour or so about the turmoil of the last couple of years, how he coped in prison, overcame his long battle with drugs, and now what’s next on his extremely ambitious musical agenda.

George: Here we are, together.

Chris: George, I haven’t talked to you for a year, perhaps two years. Much been going on?

George: Much been going on in the last two years, ahh! Ah, quite a bit.

Chris: Could you ever have imagined the rollercoaster?

George: In reality, my life has been a rollercoaster for so many years, do you know what I mean? (Chris: Wai…) I just didn’t know there was a really big, big homecoming, you know? You know, I didn’t know there was a new ride, uh, my own little (?). I know people think it must have been horrific experience, but for me, personally anyway, I think it’s much easier to take any form of punishment if you actually believe you deserved it, you know, and I did. And… there’s no question about that. Erm, the reason I-I-I went to prison, apart from the fact I’m George Michael and I’ve become the poster boy for, for cannabis, but, um, the, the main reason was, was that was the second time I’d been, I’d had a conviction, and if people actually take the time, err, to look back, then they’ll realise that actually there wasn’t even any cannabis involved in the first conviction. So my problems, although I’m not here to go into my drug hell, I would just say that my problems were always about forgetting that I’d taken something to make me sleep, and then getting in the car. By the time I went to court in my own head I’d been released from a very, very dark chapter of my life, anyway, by then, you know, I’d been, I’d had g… some counselling, I’m… in ongoing therapy, I’m going straight from here, actually, er, in ongoing therapy about, about, erm, you know, drug abuse and stuff. So I think what people need to know is that I took it very seriously, I didn’t understand my own behaviour, then I did understand my behaviour, but felt the… by the time I went to court, I was totally convinced that this was never gonna happen again regardless, you know, I knew I was about to lose my license, erm, I was assured I wasn’t going to prison, but I knew I th… I thought I was, you know, and, erm, and like I said, it was, it was much easier to take because I believed it was, er, deserved, you know. And I, I honestly am someone who was brought up with such a principle of do unto others, that this was a… hugely shameful thing for me to, to have done repeatedly. So karmically I felt like I had a bill to pay, you know. I went to prison, I paid my bill. And that’s the way I felt. I hope that whole period of my life where I think I was, I was a bit lost, erm, is over for good, I hope it’s self-evident, in, erm, just in the fact I’ve dropped about fifteen pounds (прим.скриптера: это 6,8 килограмма). I hope it’s self-evident I’m not eating as much anymore, which should tell you a lot. Erm…

Chris: That never occurred to me, of course!

George: Yeah, of course, yeah, well, it occurs to me, cause none of my trousers fit anymore, for the right reasons for a change.

Chris: You said that ‘I was prepared for the punishment, I deserved the punishment’. It’s almost like you wanted the punishment, or you needed the punishment, perhaps.

George: No, I didn’t need it, I just felt it was logical. And I felt it was a logical, erm, conclusion to, to a whole period of very, very confusing time for me, you know. And I really have never done anything in my life that I was ashamed of, and I’ve done this thing repeatedly, which I didn’t understand, erm, but having understood it I still felt I had a bill to pay.

Chris: Because the thing is, it looked t-t… on the other side, like you didn’t care.

George: Of course, yeah, of course. (Chris: Yeah). No, I did, I was terribly ashamed, every time it happened, you know. And I didn’t understand, even though it was a mistake, rather than a decision each time, I still didn’t understand why it wasn’t hitting my subconscious hard enough to stop that mistake happening again. And then I went into proper, proper therapy with a completely clean system, when I say ‘clean’ I mean clear of antidepressants as well, cause antidepressants, although they’re miraculous, erm, in some situations, sometimes they can really cloak what’s really going on, and I think that I for the first time had proper therapy about bereavement without antidepressants.

Chris: Oh! OK, cause it’s very hard for people to believe, me included, that somebody as successful (George: Mm?)…and I’ve been through a similar thing, no one (?) I don’t think, maybe, that somebody so successful could be depressed about anything!

George: Of course, you could, you look at the lives of the rich and famous, you think, you think there’s nothing to be depressed about, but believe me, day after day I watch television and see people, and, and try to, er, remind myself how lucky I am, well, it’s, it’s, you know, that’s one of the things about depression, when you are in, in a situation of security and you have a pleasant life, let alone a job that you love. If the people can’t understand depression, well, neither can you! Do you know what I mean? Neither can you, as an individual, and if anything makes you feel worse, you feel more guilty, more, more… that state of inertia that comes with depression makes you feel completely lousy bout yourself.

Chris: I think one of the problems you’ve had, if you don’t mind me saying (George: Mm-hmm), is the fact you were so good at your job (George: Mm-hmm), because when you did the tour, people were accusing you before that of, of suffering from stage fright, let’s say you’ve announced a huge tour (George: Mm-hmm), and they were: ‘Will he be able make one night?’, and you absolutely nailed every single night!

George: Well, I’ve never had stage fright, I’ve never had stage fright in my life, I had, I had ten years when I could barely walk because I had two disks out of place and I had them removed, so I now have this literally a (?) of aluminium in my back, and, six great big screws that… like the kinda thing you see in Dad’s garage, but they are… but literally, that’s what holds my back up and I had that problem going on for nearly twenty years, until I had the surgery, and the surgery made the er, made the tour impossible.

Chris: But you had that tour, you had those live dates, s...

George: Yeah, I did a hundred and fifteen shows, I didn’t miss one. Everybody but one got, got (?)

Chris: Yeah, and isn’t it crazy, isn’t it crazy to think, Oh (?), you know, that professionalism, not perfection, cause you are a perfectionist, you know that (George: Mm-hmm), and there’s nothing wrong with that (George: Mm-hmm), that’s why you do, that’s why you do, you do, do it so well. But all that was going on in the middle of this private madness, this private turmoil, not unlike (George: Mm-hmm) your old friend, Elton John, when he was touring in the 70s and he played Shea Stadium. (George: Mm-hmm). And the night before he tried to kill himself (George: Mm). And then he went t-to hospital, and he had his, his, his stomach pumped, in time to go and play the gig, and he played it like…

George: And he played it.

Chris: …brilliantly!

George: My problems were never anything like that. Do you know what I’m saying? I mean it really wasn’t a question of me stumbling from place to place, and just getting it together. It’s different, but it’s the same for everybody. If you u… you use drugs to escape a situation, and then eventually it’s the drugs you can’t escape. You know, it’s the same as anybody else’s story, one way or another.

Chris: You’ve talked to him recently?

George: Not for a while, no, not for a long time.

Chris: D’ you think you might?

George: He wrote to me in the nick, which is nice, (Chris: Yeah), and, erm, so did Boy George, who wrote me a lovely letter. We spoke in the last couple of days. One of the guys from ‘Frankie’ (прим.скриптера: Джордж имеет в виду группу Frankie Goes To Hollywood, это популярная в 80-х британская команда, которую большинство советских меломанов знало по песням Relax, Two Tribes и The Power Of Love) I have to say thank you to, I can’t remember which one of them it was…

Chris: Paul, was it? (прим.скриптера: это вокалист FGTH)

George: No, it wasn’t Paul, it was one of the ones I didn’t know, anyway. That was very sweet. And I got a letter from Paul McCartney, which is lovely.

Chris: (?)

George: It’s cause he’s been there, down there in Japan for, for, oh, (?) got through to me, er, through regular (прим.скриптера: тут запись прервалась) channels, George got through to me on emailaprisoner.com, which I thought was fantastic. There’s a service, you pay five pounds a letter or something, and you can f… anyone that you know is in prison you can write to.

Chris: So you both are ex-cons now, you could hang out together, couldn’t you?

George: Exactly, exactly.

Chris: The lags together, it sounds (?) 'the lads together'.

‘Faith’ playing

Chris: Quarter to nine, Radio 2 time, Monday morning. And now more from George Michael talking to us on Friday afternoon here at Radio 2. What was it like, the first night you put your head on a pillow in a prison cell? What did you think?

George: Well, it was Pentonville, by the way. And it wasn’t a weekend break. Erm… What did I think? Well, I didn’t feel sorry for myself, really. I though, oh my God, this place is absolutely filthy, but I, I just thought you get your head down, it’s, you know, it’s an eight-week sentence, you know, it’s the natural way of things, if you behave yourself that’ll mean four weeks, four weeks of your life. Nobody told me I wasn’t in Pentonville for four weeks, they were nice enough to keep that from me. That actually it was just like a clearing house, cause it was the closest prison to the Magistrates Court, that’s the way it works. But they didn’t tell me so, I thought I was in there for four weeks, and that wouldn’t have been great. And I probably would’ve come out with a terrible back, cause the beds are like eighty years old, and they’re just made of metal, you know, you’re literally lying on metal and about, er, an inch and a half of, of foam (прим.скриптера: около 4 сантиметров).

Chris: It’s incredible. I can’t believe you’re saying this.

George: I mean I’ve been through so many, erm, things in my life that’ve been emotionally torturous, that, you know, ultimately, four weeks of, of… however bad it was gonna be, it didn’t, didn’t, I didn’t find that daunting (Chris: You didn’t…) which is what all these stories are about, you know, of me crying and (?) this, and I (?) just all these are rubbish, it’s just they wish that was me, but that’s not me.

Chris: You’ve been to many darker places. What was it like on the last night when you put your head on the pillow?

George: That’s a very good way of putting it – I’ve been to very many darker places (Chris: Yeah), yes.

Chris: So, the last night, then.

George: The last night was great, actually. And the strange thing about it was the whole of the wing I was on had been told they couldn’t come to me for autographs, (?) absolutely everything they wanna do, and ev… every single p… staff member as well, every single one. But on the last night a guy came, er, a guy came into the room and asked me to sign his guitar, er, he’d managed to get hold of a guitar, he asked me to sign it. So I signed it to him. Of course, I used to say to them all, ‘Go and get a bit of prison paper! Then it’ll be worth something!’. Do you know what I mean? (Chris: Yeah) ‘Then it’ll be worth something, and especially years down the line. Get a bit of (?), you know, Her Majesty’s service prison paper with a ‘George Michael’ signature on it’. So, they used to do that. But this guy came in with his guitar, and I said, oh, what, what, he said he wanted me to write the day, and, and I said, what’s the day, and he said “It’s the tenth of the tenth of the tenth’. And I thought, that’s just so fitting, it’s kind of like the clock rolling round to the end of something, like tomorrow I start again. Do you know what I mean?

Chris: So do we have an album title, then?

George: Oh, ‘Ten, ten, ten’ (прим.скриптера: скриптер долго ржалЬ

). No, I think (?) so anymore.

Chris: (?) too cliched.

George: I don’t know what it means in Chinese numerology (прим.скриптера: 10.10.2010 в сумме дают пять – число удачи), someone will have to twitter… to a… to actually, well, (?) someone will have to twitter you, or tweet you (прим.скриптера: выбирал, как правильно образовать глагол от слова Twitter. Типа – победю? Нет, побежду

).

George: ‘…sitting with Chris Evans…’

Chris: ‘…pretending it’s the morning.’

George: ‘…pretending it’s Monday. It’s Monday morning.’ Now I’ll be rude about you.

Chris: (?) How can you be so ugly with anyone (?)

George: ‘I’ve no idea…’

Chris: It can only be a hundred and forty characters, you know that?

George: I know that, that’s all right, I can still insult you with that!

Chris: All right.

George: ‘I’ve no idea how he keeps this job… This job’.

Chris: OK now, I’m gonna tweet now as well, is it all right?

George: All right, wait, wait, wait, er, mine isn’t out there yet. Right, now just pren… pressing ‘Send’… there you go.

Chris: Yeah. I’m sure you’ll have like a billion followers by the end of this programme. I’m just gonna tweet now, all right? ‘With...’

George: He’s typing very fast.

Chris: ‘...George…’

George: With an aggressive look on his face.

Chris: ‘…Michael plugging charity single…’

George: Yeah.

Chris: ‘…on the cover of which he looks like Ringo Starr’.

George: It's the beard, it's the gray beard thing! (прим.скриптера: Вот что Джордж тут на самом деле говорит!

)

Chris: No!

George: No?

Chris: It’s just cause you do, anyway! I’ve always thought that.

George: (?) I’m much cheerer a person than Ringo Starr.

Chris: All right, we’ll play a song.

George: All right.

Chris: This is your new single, tell us about it.

George: Well, it’s coming out for Comic Relief, which is the most important thing about it, I gu… I guess at the moment. I… like I said I came out of the nick, sat around chatting with my mates for a couple of hours, then switched on VH1, and what was playing when I switched it on, the TV, was ‘Freedom’ by, by Wham!, which was just quite remarkable in the first place, you know that video of us in China. And, and then directly after they played ‘True Faith’. I suddenly heard the lyric for the first time, for what it was, it was fantastic lyric. It was about addiction and I just thought, how perfect would that be, that’d be great, I’d love to do that. And, and I recorded the vocal within the next twenty-four hours, and actually almost all of this is one take that I did at home. And it was… that’s the kind of musicality that, that, er, I only show when I’m completely and utterly kind of joyful, you know.

Chris: And the new stuff, the music that…

George: Hey, you would be a bit cheerful getting out of prison. For a bit.

Chris: I hope I never find out. Or probably will.

'True Faith' playing

Chris: George Michael single for Comic Relief. Available from the thirteenth of March, and before that George Michael in conversation recorded on Friday afternoon, there’s more tomorrow, tomorrow George Michael talks about ‘Fatherhood’, his new album, a brand new worldwide tour with a twist (?)

Woman: What’s the twist?

Chris: He’s twisting! (Woman: Ahh!) Well, (?) he’s telling me but you’ll have to see what he tells you (?) tomorrow. And also (Woman: Such a tease!), and, err, he’s about a week on Friday Comic Relief, he has a Comic Relief surprise. (Woman: Mm! Mmm-hmm) Yeah, he’s part of Comic Relief as a surprise, all coming up on tomorrow’s programme.

to be continued...