It’s hard to believe that it was 40 years ago when pop duo Andrew Ridgeley and George Michael, collectively known as Wham!, burst onto the music scene with “Young Guns (Go For It)”. Though the song wasn’t a huge success, their popularity, particularly among teenaged girls, skyrocketed thanks to their hastily scheduled performance on the BBC’s Top of the Pops TV show in 1982. It wasn’t long before the pair were riding the top of the charts with a string of Number 1 hits that included “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go”, “Freedom”, “I’m Your Man” and the perennially popular and, dare I say, cloying “Last Christmas”. Their story is told in WHAM!, a new documentary by Chris Smith (AMERICAN MOVIE; JIM & ANDY; FYRE).
As audiences learn from the documentary, from the time they met in school in northwest London when they were 11, Andrew and Georgios Panayiotou, George’s real name, were the best of friends. The pair shared a common interest in songwriting and singing, recording their music on their TEAC 4-track Portastudio set up in the Ridgeley’s living room. They also loved dancing and they were regular fixtures at London’s clubs on weekends. WHAM! recounts the band’s brief history (just four years) using archival footage, framed by the dozens of scrapbooks that Andrew’s mother kept to chronicle their meteoric rise in the pop music world.
Given that George passed away in 2016, Smith risked creating a story that might re-write history in Andrew’s favour, giving him more credit for the band’s success than he might have deserved. Fortunately, that doesn’t happen as Andrew readily acknowledges that very quickly on in their relationship George wanted to take control of the duo’s songwriting and producing efforts, and he was okay with that. To us on the outside, it seemed that Andrew just wanted to have fun, which he did, according to the tabloids at the time, but behind the scenes Andrew’s role was to manage George, who had huge ambitions to be a solo artist. His best friend was grappling with being in the closet and, as audiences learn in WHAM!, Andrew advised him to stay there as it would be detrimental to his career, his image as a pop idol and his relationship with his family. It took George’s arrest in 1998 for engaging in a sexual act with an undercover police officer in a public toilet for him to admit publicly what few at the time knew but many had already suspected. However, by this time his reputation as a music superstar was already well cemented in place thanks to his song, “Careless Whisper”, which came out in 1984, and his duet with Elton John at Live Aid one year later.
Wham! fans will love the nostalgic trip this film takes audiences and even those who weren’t fans might find themselves tapping their toes while watching the pair prance around on stage in skimpy outfits, performing songs like “Club Tropicana”. Quite interestingly, the film reveals why Wham! chose to became the first foreign pop group to play in China and it wasn’t because of the new fans in that country that they might adopt. It was a savvy move on their part, one that would catapult them to new heights of popularity.
Though WHAM! is both informative and joyful, it strangely lacks any contemporary interviews with Andrew. It’s been 37 years since their farewell concert at Wembley Stadium. It would have been nice to hear if his views of their relationship or their success have been reshaped any in that time. Unfortunately, if Smith knows, he doesn’t reveal it here.
WHAM! is streaming now on Netflix. Though it has its flaws, it’s still well worth watching. You might discover that you’re a Wham! fan after all.
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