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Interviews With Mourners Reveal George Michael’s Struggles With Fame Portrait of George Michael Fills Out, Showing Pitfalls of Fame and Quiet Generosity
(about 5 hours later)
LONDON — Adam Gearon met George Michael when they were children living in the same village in Hertfordshire, England. “His music was therapeutic,” Mr. Gearon recalled on Monday, standing outside Mr. Michael’s home in the Highgate section of North London. “His words helped me through my personal struggles, and I associated songs with different times of my life.” LONDON — As heartbroken friends and fans mourned George Michael online and at his homes across Britain on Monday, questions swirled about the health and final weeks of the electrifying pop singer before his death on Christmas Day at the age of 53.
About 50 miles to the west, in the village of Goring-on-Thames, where Mr. Michael was found dead at his country home on Sunday, David Beddall, the churchwarden at St. Thomas of Canterbury Church, had wondered why Mr. Michael had not attended the midnight Christmas service, as he did last year. “We thought he wasn’t at home,” Mr. Beddall said. “He had his garden decorated with lights and you could see them from the bridge. It’s quite an impressive sight.” Once an indisputable sex symbol of the peak-MTV era, Mr. Michael appeared overweight and nearly unrecognizable in photographs, reportedly from September, that the website TMZ published on Monday. News media attention also fell on a 2015 tabloid interview with a relative claiming that Mr. Michael was abusing drugs and putting his life at risk. And after years of arrests related to drug use, as well as confessional interviews and health scares, the singer had largely retreated from the public eye, while his creative output had all but ceased.
The death of Mr. Michael — famous for hits like “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go,” “Faith” and “Careless Whisper” — at age 53 stunned celebrities and fans, but also the many people who knew him in England, where he spent most of his life. Paul Gambaccini, a radio and television presenter who had known Mr. Michael since youth and represented him during a 2011 tour, said in an interview that he was not surprised by the singer’s death because Mr. Michael was “not completely well” and had a “close brush with death” five years ago when he nearly succumbed to a bout of pneumonia. Doctors had to perform a tracheotomy.
Amanda Holland, 56, a neighbor of Mr. Michael in Goring-on-Thames, in Oxfordshire, and an amateur actor, once invited him to a play in which she was performing. “He’s an international superstar — I thought, there’s no way he would come to a local thing,” she recalled. “But he did, and he was fabulous, and he was kind and he was generous.” Police officials, who had announced that Mr. Michael died in “unexplained but not suspicious” circumstances at his home in Goring-on-Thames, England, could not be reached for further details on Monday because of Boxing Day. The singer’s manager, Michael Lippman, on Monday declined to elaborate on his statement that Mr. Michael had died of heart failure, “in bed, lying peacefully.” Forensic experts said an autopsy report could be ready in a couple of days.
Tom Fleming, 48, who had met Mr. Michael several times, knelt to lay a bouquet in front of the gate of the singer’s London home on Monday morning, weeping quietly. “He was always a happy, positive, loving person that shone through all the time,” Mr. Fleming said. While admirers sought to focus on Mr. Michael’s previously unreported donations and philanthropy, and neighbors remembered his charm as a low-key celebrity in their midst, a more complicated image of Mr. Michael’s life in recent years loomed, as well.
Mitsuya Fujimoto, a neighbor and music producer who shared a parking space with Mr. Michael in London in the 1990s, said they had become friends after someone broke into Mr. Fujimoto’s Land Rover, apparently thinking it was Mr. Michael’s. Several friends and associates, while declining to discuss details of his health, noted that Mr. Michael had a long history of hard living. In 2007, he was sentenced to community service and barred from driving for two years after he had been found asleep at the wheel and under the influence of drugs. The next year, he was arrested in London on suspicion of possessing crack cocaine.
“He was very, very quiet,” said Mr. Fujimoto, 56, a former producer for the Japanese band Chage and Aska. “He was always very, very reserved,” he added. “He didn’t like the attention. He was very humble.” “I’ve done different things at different times that I shouldn’t have done, once or twice, you know,” Mr. Michael said in a 2009 interview with The Guardian, in which he discussed his ups and downs with sex, sleeping pills, marijuana and crack. “People want to see me as tragic,” he said. “I don’t even see them as weaknesses anymore. It’s just who I am.”
Mr. Michael came out as gay in 1998, after the end of a protracted legal battle with Sony Music, and shortly after he had been arrested on charges of lewd conduct in a men’s room in Beverly Hills, Calif. He had long been a supporter of AIDS prevention and gay rights. In the summer of 2015, Mr. Michael and his publicists denied that he was facing serious drug addiction after a report published in a British tabloid, The Sun, quoted the wife of a relative saying, “I’m petrified he will die.”
“He should’ve come out much sooner than later, because I think that made him stressed,” Mr. Fujimoto said. Mr. Michael responded on Twitter, “To my lovelies, do not believe this rubbish in the papers today by someone I don’t know anymore and haven’t seen for nearly 18 years.” He added, “I am perfectly fine.”
Mr. Fujimoto recalled once sharing a flight with Mr. Michael after a music event in Nice, France. The flight attendants were “freaking out” over him, he said. “But he’d tell them, ‘Please calm down.’ He never wanted that kind of attention.” Rather than dwell on Mr. Michael’s difficulties, some close friends on Monday highlighted another dimension of the man they knew, describing him as a generous benefactor given to quiet and spontaneous acts of kindness.
Mr. Michael, whose legal name was Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou, was born in 1963, the youngest of three children of Kyriacos Panayiotou, a Greek Cypriot immigrant who later shortened his name to Jack Panos and opened a restaurant, and the former Lesley Angold Harrison. He formed Wham! with a schoolmate, Andrew Ridgeley, who wrote on Twitter on Sunday that he was “cleft with grief.” He was famous by age 20. “He was a closet philanthropist,” Mr. Gambaccini said.
Mr. Gambaccini recalled how in 1994 the British government cut aid to the Terrence Higgins Trust, an AIDS charity. To make up for the shortfall, Mr. Gambaccini, a patron of the trust, said he had sought to raise 300,000 pounds. But in the end, he did not have to try too hard, he said. Mr. Michael donated most of the money.
“He never wanted public recognition,” Mr. Gambaccini said.
The television presenter Richard Osman wrote on Twitter on Monday that Mr. Michael had secretly contacted a woman who appeared on “Deal or No Deal,” a British game show, to give her £15,000 needed for an in vitro fertilization treatment.
Sali Hughes, an author, wrote on Twitter that Mr. Michael had once tipped a waitress £5,000 “because she was a student nurse in debt.” And Emilyne Mondo, a volunteer at a shelter for homeless people, posted that Mr. Michael had worked there anonymously.
“I’ve never told anyone,” she said. “He asked we didn’t. That’s who he was.”
For some neighbors of Mr. Michael, his turn away from the spotlight and toward personal privacy made him just another member of the community.
Amanda Holland, 56, a neighbor of Mr. Michael in Goring-on-Thames, in Oxfordshire, and an amateur actor, once invited him to a play in which she was performing. “He’s an international superstar — I thought, ‘There’s no way he would come to a local thing,’” she recalled. “But he did, and he was fabulous, and he was kind and he was generous.”
Mr. Michael, whose legal name was Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou, was born in 1963, the youngest of three children of Kyriacos Panayiotou, a Greek Cypriot immigrant, and the former Lesley Angold Harrison. He formed Wham! with a schoolmate, Andrew Ridgeley, who wrote on Twitter on Sunday that he was “cleft with grief.” Mr. Michael was famous by age 20.
“I’m not stupid enough to think that I can deal with another 10 or 15 years of major exposure,” Mr. Michael told The Los Angeles Times in a 1990 interview. “I think that is the ultimate tragedy of fame. … People who are simply out of control, who are lost. I’ve seen so many of them, and I don’t want to be another cliché.”“I’m not stupid enough to think that I can deal with another 10 or 15 years of major exposure,” Mr. Michael told The Los Angeles Times in a 1990 interview. “I think that is the ultimate tragedy of fame. … People who are simply out of control, who are lost. I’ve seen so many of them, and I don’t want to be another cliché.”
(The interview prompted a retort from Frank Sinatra, who wrote to him in an open letter: “Come on, George, loosen up. Swing, man. Dust off those gossamer wings and fly yourself to the moon of your choice and be grateful to carry the baggage we’ve all had to carry since those lean nights of sleeping on buses and helping the driver unload the instruments.”) (The interview prompted a retort from Frank Sinatra, who wrote to him in an open letter: “Be grateful to carry the baggage we’ve all had to carry since those lean nights of sleeping on buses and helping the driver unload the instruments.”)
Mr. Michael’s music career had slowed in recent years, a period that included several painful episodes in his life. Mr. Michael — known for hits like “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go,” “Faith” and “Careless Whisper” — famously came out as gay in 1998, after the end of a protracted legal battle with Sony Music, and shortly after he had been arrested on charges of lewd conduct in a men’s room in Beverly Hills, Calif.
In a 2004 interview with the British edition of GQ, Mr. Michael spoke candidly about losing his partner, Anselmo Feleppa, a Brazilian, to AIDS in 1993. At the time, Mr. Michael was still in the closet, and the antiretroviral drugs that helped AIDS become a manageable disease, and not necessarily a fatal one, had yet to become widely available. In a 2004 interview with the British edition of GQ, Mr. Michael spoke frankly about losing his partner, Anselmo Feleppa, a Brazilian, to AIDS in 1993. At the time of Mr. Feleppa’s death, Mr. Michael was still in the closet, and the antiretroviral drugs that helped AIDS become a manageable disease, and not necessarily a fatal one, had yet to become widely available.
“I’m still convinced that had he been in the U.S.A. or London, he would have survived, because just six months later everyone was on combination therapy,” Mr. Michael said in the interview. “I think he went to Brazil because he feared what my fame would do to him and his family if he got treatment elsewhere. I was devastated by that. The idea that he had the opportunity to go somewhere better but wouldn’t take it because of my fame makes me feel very guilty.” “I’m still convinced that had he been in the U.S.A. or London, he would have survived, because just six months later everyone was on combination therapy,” Mr. Michael said in the interview. “I think he went to Brazil because he feared what my fame would do to him and his family if he got treatment elsewhere. I was devastated by that.”
Later, Mr. Michael developed a relationship with Kenny Goss, an American businessman, whom he met at a Los Angeles spa in 1996. When he came out to his mother and disclosed the relationship, she was supportive, but she also told him that she had terminal cancer; she died in 1997. Mr. Michael and Mr. Goss subsequently opened an art gallery in Dallas; they split up in 2009 but remained friends. (Mr. Goss did not respond to an email requesting comment.) Mr. Michael’s mother died a few years later, leading to depression, he said. “Losing your mother and your lover in the space of three years is a tough one.”
Mr. Michael had several brushes with the law, and several health scares. In 2007, he was sentenced to community service and barred from driving for two years after he had been found asleep at the wheel and under the influence of drugs. The next year, he was arrested in London on suspicion of possessing crack cocaine. His final tour, “Symphonica,” ended in the fall of 2012, and a live album drawn from those performances, released in 2014, represented his most recent commercial output. (“Patience,” his previous album of original songs, was released in 2004.)
“I’ve done different things at different times that I shouldn’t have done, once or twice, you know,” Mr. Michael said in a 2009 interview with The Guardian, in which he discussed his up and downs with sex, sleeping pills, marijuana and crack cocaine. “People want to see me as tragic with all the cottaging and drug-taking,” he said. “I don’t even see them as weaknesses any more. It’s just who I am.” There was some potential movement in his career of late. This year, Mr. Michael received a bump in pop-culture relevance when the film “Keanu,” a comedy from Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele, featured his music prominently in its plot — and not as the butt of a joke, as Mr. Michael had come to be treated by some, especially after his 1998 arrest in Beverly Hills. The filmmakers assured Mr. Michael’s manager, Mr. Lippman, that they would use his music respectfully.
In 2010, his driver’s license was revoked again, this time for five years, after he drove a Land Rover into the side of a photo shop, denting the wall; he spent four weeks in jail. In 2011, he nearly died from a bout of pneumonia. Doctors had to perform a tracheotomy.
Last summer, Mr. Michael and his publicists were forced to deny that he was facing serious drug addiction after a report published in a British tabloid, The Sun, quoted the wife of a relative saying, “I’m petrified he will die.”
Mr. Michael responded on Twitter: “To my lovelies, do not believe this rubbish in the papers today by someone I don’t know anymore and haven’t seen for nearly 18 years.” He added, “I am perfectly fine.”
Simon Napier-Bell, who managed Wham! — the duo of Mr. Michael and his musical partner Andrew Ridgeley — in the 1980s, until Mr. Michael left for a solo career, learned of his former client’s death while in Southeast Asia. “Just finishing dinner next to the Sarawak River in Borneo, slightly tipsy and feeling good, and I think I’ll leave it that way,” he wrote in an email on Monday.
Paul Gambaccini, a radio and television presenter who had known Mr. Michael for decades and represented him during a 2011 tour, said he was not surprised by the news, “because he had the close brush with death with the tracheotomy and pneumonia.”
Mr. Gambaccini called Mr. Michael “an incredible talent,” adding, “He was an astonishingly honest writer in that his songs reflected himself utterly.”
In a 2007 interview with the BBC talk-show host Michael Parkinson, Mr. Michael acknowledged his “self-destructive behavior,” which he partly attributed to the pain of his mother’s death. While he said that he was “absolutely appreciative of just how privileged I am,” he also spoke of “the kind of pain” that “makes you physically incapable of doing anything about it” and “the effort of putting one foot in front of the other.”
His final tour, dubbed “Symphonica,” ended in the fall of 2012, and a live album drawn from those performances, released in 2014, represented his most recent commercial output. (“Patience,” his previous album of original songs, came out in 2004.)
Yet there was some movement in his career of late. Earlier this year, Mr. Michael received a bump in pop-culture relevance when the film “Keanu,” a comedy from Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele, featured his music prominently in its plot — and not as the butt of a joke, as Mr. Michael had come to be treated by some, especially after his 1998 arrest in Beverly Hills. The filmmakers assured Mr. Michael’s manager, Michael Lippman, that they would use his music respectfully.
“A golden opportunity dropped in our laps,” Mr. Lippman told Billboard, and then went on to tease the rerelease of Mr. Michael’s 1990 solo album, “Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1,” which had been expected this fall. “We were trying to find as much exposure as possible.” (That reissue was subsequently pushed back to March 2017, to coincide with a documentary, “Freedom,” about Mr. Michael’s life.)“A golden opportunity dropped in our laps,” Mr. Lippman told Billboard, and then went on to tease the rerelease of Mr. Michael’s 1990 solo album, “Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1,” which had been expected this fall. “We were trying to find as much exposure as possible.” (That reissue was subsequently pushed back to March 2017, to coincide with a documentary, “Freedom,” about Mr. Michael’s life.)
The producer Naughty Boy, who has worked with Beyoncé and Sam Smith, told the BBC earlier this month that new music from Mr. Michael was also a possibility. “He’s got an album coming out next year, and he’s going to be doing something for my album as well,” Naughty Boy said. “I don’t know what to expect. And, to be honest, he’s more mysterious than anyone else so I’m actually excited.” The producer Naughty Boy, who has worked with Beyoncé and Sam Smith, told the BBC this month that new music from Mr. Michael was also a possibility. “He’s got an album coming out next year, and he’s going to be doing something for my album as well,” Naughty Boy said. “I don’t know what to expect. And, to be honest, he’s more mysterious than anyone else, so I’m actually excited.”
Geri Halliwell, a singer-songwriter and a former member of the Spice Girls, had known Mr. Michael since they were children in Hertfordshire; they attended the same sixth-form college — a secondary school where students prepare for examinations — although she was a few years behind him.
“The music industry has lost a legend and a gentleman,” she said in a statement on Monday. “He was a loyal, true friend, I will miss him so much.”
Another childhood friend, Mr. Gearon, 45, described listening to Mr. Michael’s music as providing a soundtrack for his life. “He was such a big icon in my life,” he said. “His music was poppy in the beginning but it came to have a message.”