FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE GEORGE MICHAEL AND ANDREW RIDGELEY PROFESSIONALLY PARTED COMPANY IN 1986, A MAJOR WHAM! REISSUE IS HAPPENING, WITH A SINGLES COMPILATION AND 7” BOXSET. IT COINCIDES WITH THE FIRST OFFICIAL WHAM! DOCUMENTARY, MADE BY NETFLIX. AS THEIR INCREDIBLE STORY IS FINALLY TOLD, ANDREW GIVES A VERY RARE INTERVIEW, WHILE PEPSI & SHIRLIE ALSO TELL THEIR PART IN WHAM!’S ALL TOO BRIEF HEYDAY.
JOHN EARLS
Forget about Bonfire Night: 5 November 1979 was an explosive day in music history and for the career prospects of 16-year-old Andrew Ridgeley. That was the date he left Bushey Meads secondary school and the day he and George Michael – or ‘Yog’ as Andrew still affectionately calls him, from the phonetic ‘Yoghir’ pronunciation of Georgios – decided it was finally time to form a band together.
Pop historians already know Ridgeley was the initial driving force behind Wham!, the confident teenager who persuaded his shy, awkward best mate to be in a band. It’s a genesis story that Andrew recalls clearly, reminiscing: “We were 14 when I first brought up the idea of forming a band. Yog said he needed to get his O-Levels out of the way first. November 5th was a Monday, a few weeks into our A-Levels. At breaktime, I told our form tutor: ‘Look, I’m leaving school’. She said: ‘That’s just as well, as we were going to ask you to leave’. I was pleased – I’d got in first! I phoned a nearby college, Cassio, and got an interview to go there instead. It made me realise it was now or never to form a band. When I’d raised the idea with Yog after O-Levels, he said: ‘Well, er... It’ll have to be after my A-Levels.’ I thought he was going to keep making excuses. I phoned George and said: ‘Look, we’re forming a band today. We’re doing it today, otherwise it’s never going to happen.’ There was a pause and Yog said: ‘OK, yeah. Let’s do it.’”
Andrew would have been expelled from Bushey Meads for truancy, but there’s no sign of the juvenile delinquent as he greets Classic Pop at the King’s Cross headquarters of Wham!’s record label, Sony.
It’s a minor miracle Ridgeley is being interviewed: he retired the second that Wham! finished in 1986 and, barring his solo album Son Of Albert in 1990, was barely heard from until his 2019 memoir, Wham!
George & Me.
Still, for a former recluse, Andrew Ridgeley is quite the talker. A keen cyclist and surfer, he’s in extraordinarily good shape: more pop stars should sack it all
