Life Lessons from George Michael

George Michael by Herb Ritts for Interview.

Welcome to Life Lessons. This week, we’re flipping through the pages of our October 1988 issue and revisiting our cover story with George Michael. Inside, the singer sits down with Joseph Perkins to discuss the explosive success of his debut solo album, Faith, his struggle to come to terms with his newfound celebrity status, and the effects it has on his music, sexuality, and relationships.

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“I’m basically a control freak. It’s not because I want to be. I’m not at all into the power play that’s involved in it. I’m a perfectionist. It’s a big pain in the ass and it takes a lot of my time.”

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“It happened so quickly and I didn’t have time to establish what kind of person I wanted to be. You know, the years between leaving school and actually becoming an adult are very important years. You make a lot of choices as to the type of life you want to lead and what type of person you want to be. There were so many people who had opinions of me, a lot of them very unflattering, that it was hard to make up my mind about who I was supposed to be.”

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“It’s an incredibly limited sphere those tabloids have, isn’t it? Basically, they can accuse people of being gay and they can accuse people of taking drugs, but they can’t get any more sensational without entering into the realm of incredibly bad taste … As for me, they can say anything they like. They really can. I don’t give a shit. People have speculated about my sexuality for years and years. They are obviously interested in my sex life. Fine. Let them speculate. I’m not going to put them right one way or the other.”

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“My music is some of the most honest music that’s been released in the last four or five years, and I think that’s why people buy it. When I open my mouth and sing, the truth comes out. When I write, the truth comes out. I can’t lie. That, I think, is one of the strongest elements of my music. When people talk about my writing as though I’m doing it from an accountant’s perspective, it really pisses me off.”

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George Michael by Herb Ritts for Interview.

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“[My father] was more than apprehensive. He didn’t think I stood a chance in hell. He had no confidence in me whatsoever and was convinced that I was going to be coming to him for money when I was 40. We argued about it constantly. Then at a certain age I just stopped arguing. I realized that there was no way he could see, because for him to approve of what I was doing, he would have to have some belief in me as a musician. And he was not a musical man. I get along really well with him now, but I had a terrible time with him in my teenage years. All we did was scream at each other.”

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“‘Yog’ is an abbreviation—my real name is Yorgos, which is Greek for George. When Andrew first met my family, he heard my mom calling me ‘Yorgos.’ He just abbreviated it to Yog, and unfortunately it stuck. I hated it is a teenager. It was not the most glamorous-sounding name in the world. As I became George professionally and everyone called me George, Yog became the name that people who knew me from before used. It became more valuable to me.”

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I suppose maybe if I had been an attractive child, I would have had less inclination to push my physical presence. I don’t know. I really don’t know if I would have been any different. I think part of it has got to be compensation, yes, for the fact that when I was a kid, I wasn’t particularly attractive.

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George Michael by Herb Ritts for Interview.

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“I don’t like having my picture taken and I don’t like looking at myself because I don’t particularly like what I see. I’m perfectly happy to admit that insecurity. It doesn’t bother me. It’s there, just the same as the color of my eyes is there. I’m never going to get rid of it. I’m not going to wake up one morning and really like the way I look, but as long as other people like the way I look, that’s fine.”

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“There are very few things in my life that I can’t have if I want them. So when I see something that I can’t have, immediately I’m obsessed by it… I just mean people who seem unavailable in the sense that they’re not prepared to totally cling to anyone. I’m very attracted to people who are basically free spirits.”

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I just hope that I’ll stay around musically for as long as I can. I love to think that I will still be satisfying myself and other people as a musician until the day I die.

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George Michael by Herb Ritts for Interview.