Track1: GEORGE MICHAL PROFILE (36.47 Total Time)

Track2-4: FEATURES (:90 Each)

Track4-14 INTERVIEW RESPONSES (6:48 Total Time)

GEORGE MICHAL PROFILE 36:47

George reflects on his music and career, focusing on the challenges and rewards of creating his new album "Listen Without Prejudice" Includes excerpts of each album track.

I'm George Michael and I hope you’ll listen without prejudice...”

(Cuts of all the tracks from LWP)

“When, I came up with the title for the album, I was warned actually by a lot of people actually that it might be misinterpreted because, aah, a lot of people’s immediate reaction was that I was asking people to listen without prejudice as though the prejudice was normally directed against me, or towards me, which is true in some cases, but, uhmm, really what I was talking about was that the album should be listened to by all types and all races, really, with an open mind because I think radio and video in the last 3 or 4 years has veered very much in two separate directions, one for kind of white America and one for black America and I think that its quite an unhealthy trend.”

(music)

“My main objective in making this album was just to make an album which was completely my own, in a sense. I think until now there’s always been some compromise because I’ve always felt that I wanted to move from one place to another. In other words, uhmm, I mean, very definitely with Faith I had to move away from, aah, what the public perception of me was with, uhmm, Andrew and Wham!”

(Wake me up tune)

“I think that if I had made this album after, for instance, the last Wham! album, I don’t think that people would have accepted it from me. I think there is always a matter of timing that has to be involved in a musical career and I don’t think it is just a matter of thinking about business. Its a matter of, if you write a song, you want to feel that its not gonna be bypassed because of people’s perceptions of you. Uhhh. And I think people have to be ready for what you’re gonna do, and now I think they are ready for this album. So, I made this album purely with the goal of making a great album. I wasn’t thinking in terms of who would buy it, who would listen to. I think I was fairly confident that it was going to get a hearing - whatever I did. Therefore, I could just be relaxed and make an album that, uhmm, I would like to listen back to.”

(Praying for Time)

“Its very difficult to, uhmm, really express what I was trying to say with Praying For Time. And when there is any subject which you really feel strongly about, especially if its complex, its very difficult to actually be eloquent about it and really get your point across. I think the actual lyric probably has much more power than me trying to explain it. I think it’s the type of song that so many people will have different interpretations. I wrote it, really, thinking just in terms of the way people act. I think people’s, uhh, lack of compassion for one another... and trying to work out why people are like that these day. And increasingly like that.”

“The first two lines of the chorus, the lines - Its so hard to love, there’s so much to hate - came into my head, and very often that’s the way a song will start with me, just a lyric will come into my head...I remember when it came into mine, I was just driving along, just on my way to get, you know, some gas...And it just came into my head. Its almost like you get a little message. Then you have to work around that, think of a melody for those words. And once you’ve got that nucleus, then, then you’re inspired to write the rest of the song. But it was something that I wrote it in about two or three days. I have no idea, really, why I wrote it. It just came very strongly to me. But all the best things come to me that way, you know. You almost feel like a channel when that happens.”

“I think there’s a lot less John Lennon in there than people relate to it... I think that the thing that I associate with John Lennon is simply the vocal sound. And there was this kind of very close, repeat, kind of echo that Lennon used a lot, especially in the Phil Spector sessions.”

(John Lennon insert ... Imagine…“Living life in peace...”)

“And I used that once the song was already written and down, I started to think that the song has that kind of feel to it, the song has that kind of feel, so I’m gonna see if it works to use that kind of vocal. And its kind of, I suppose in a sense, its a tribute when you, when you make a very direct reference. To me that’s my way of kind of showing the people that I think have made admirable music, really. You know, I felt passionate about what I was singing and that’s I think, if anything, I hope that’s what people relate to Lennon’s stuff. I hope that that is the connection because I did really feel something when I was singing this.”

(...”so maybe we should all be praying for time”)

“I think one of the beauties of writing is that your interpretation, the listener’s interpretation, can be completely off, but really mean something to them. That’s the point, uhmm, and I think that’s another very strong reason I felt that there shouldn’t be any kind of visual interpretation of the song. Which is why there’s no video. And I think that, more and more, as video advances, people’s way of listening to music becomes far less imaginative, and not just less imaginative, I think its, its done a disservice because the best music is always open to interpretation, and open to complete emotion. And you shouldn’t have a storyboard running through your mind when you’re listening to it. It should something different to each person. I felt when I finished it that I really didn’t want to lay down something for people to make messages clearer because maybe my messages would be, not as strong as the ones that they would feel themselves, you know?”

(Freedom 90)

“Freedom 90 is my confessional, I suppose. Its my way of kind of putting the past behind me in a lyrical sense, if, to some degree, I think that it sounds more like a Wham! record, in terms of its energy and spirit, than anything on Faith did. Uhmm. And that’s deliberate because the first half of this song deals directly with those years.”

“When I came into the business I had no idea that I was going to be any kind of any physical entity. I’d grown up with Andrew. I was a particularly unattractive, uhmm, adolescent, and aaah, he was always very handsome and I always assumed that the vast majority of physical attention would be on Andrew. I think when things changed and I started to feel some of that, I got completely carried away, because, after all, I was 19/20 years old, suddenly, uhmm, I was considered attractive, and I was still very insecure. And I spent years, uhmm, working through those insecurities, I think. And, really, in a sense, it was a distraction. It was like a six yearlong distraction to me. I had to work out that the most important thing in the world was not to have people think you were gorgeous, you know. And I, eventually, came to that decision, and this song really is about that. Its about me moving away from kind of selling myself as a physical persona, and just getting on with what I’m best at, which is writing songs.”

“I think I’ve come to realise that my only real conviction is with song writing. I don’t think I am, or was, important as a “pop” star. And I don’t think that I have anything really important to say other than with my songs, you know. I’d much rather concentrate my energies and, if anything, uhmm, direct my lifestyle towards my song writing. I see my career with Wham!, and my career solo, ‘til now, as being a kind of apprenticeship. And, uhh, its left me in this position, I have a platform now, uhmm, from which I can actually write and have these songs heard. Hopefully, the loss of the visual image is not going to damage me too much. I understand that it could; I understand that its a risk, but I’d like people to believe that I’m not stepping back from video because, just because I think I’m big enough now and I don’t have to do it. I’m stepping back because I think that’s the way to protect myself as a songwriter.”

(Freedom 90 plays... “and the boys from MTV”)

“The reference to MTV really talks about the way I reinvented myself for MTV when Wham! finished, and, obviously, very successfully because it was a completely different phase of my career. And I’m just really again, its, it talks about the fact that, aaah, I worked as a strategist really. I was kind of managing this person that was half of Wham! and then needed to change, and was still not me, really. I mean, both of the images, the old Wham! image even though it was far more embarrassing to me now than the image from Faith, they were, to some degree, both fairly removed from me as a person. And the song just deals with the fact that I’m not going to do that anymore. I mean, its about as confessional as you can get, really.”

“There are parts to, uhhh, this lyric that could be taken completely as a relationship type of lyric. And that is deliberate because what I’m really trying to say is that my relationship with the public has been almost like a personal relationship. The line “I don’t belong to you and you don’t belong to me” means that, really, that I should be able to step back from certain things (i.e. the visual interpretation), uhmm, without real recrimination, and also, that I have to work to keep people’s support by, you know, giving them the best music that I can. I don’t believe that I deserve loyal support without working for it, but at the same time, I think I should be able to make the decision that I don’t want to be a quote/unquote, video star anymore, without people thinking I’m just being offhand because its a very important decision that I’ve made, and I haven’t made it flippantly, and I haven’t made it thinking that I won’t have to, uhmm, you know, somehow make up for it. And, hopefully, the way I’ll make up for it is with better music.”

(They Won’t Go When I Go)

“Well, Stevie Wonder is, possibly, my favourite writer. Uhmm, and definitely one of my favourite singers. One particular period, in the seventies, he was just writing masterpieces, one after another, there was just like, no question; he was the most, just consistently brilliant writer. And this particular song, I’ve always thought it was a beautiful song which had not been arranged to full effect.”

(Stevie Wonder singing blending into George’s version)

“I think at the time he’d kind of just discovered synthesizers, and there was so much synthesizer work going on that I thought it was detracting from what he was doing as a singer, so I grabbed that opportunity and thought, right, I’ll take this song and strip it down just to piano and vocal, and see how it goes, and I was really pleased with the result.”

(More ‘They Won’t Go When I Go” - George version)

“I did the backup vocals on the track, and its difficult because, one of the things about doing your own backing vocals is that your timing is obviously, naturally, always going to be the same. So you have to think about, if you’re doing something like this where you want to get that kind of gospel feel, you have to think about trying to make the voices try to sound like different people. You have to change the tone and change the timing of each vocal, so that they don’t all just move as one backup vocal. It was quite interesting to have to do that, but I mean, it worked because I think, in general, people don’t think that, it doesn’t occur to them, that those backup vocals were me.”

(Something to Save)

“I think it would be safe to say that I was confident that making an album this time, that pleased me, would be at the same time making an album for everyone else. I think I have the confidence now to believe that. Uhmm, I mean, I may be completely wrong, but, uhhh, I’m very pleased with it and the reaction I’ve had is, uhhh, well I guess its kind of pleasant surprise, I think, that the changes are very drastic in some ways, but also, uhmm, that people enjoy them.”

“Something to Save is the first thing that I wrote, actually, for this album. I wrote it in Paris at the end of the Faith tour. I just had the feeling, especially having promoted and sung the Faith album for 10 months, I think all that huge electronic sound I kind of wanted to strip down and I wanted to write an acoustic song. Initially, I was going to put drums on it, but listening just to the guitars themselves, I thought it sounded clear enough. And load of people thought it wasn’t finished...but, its the kind of rhythm you expect a rock drummer to come in on the, you know, the second verse, or whatever, but I, I just thought it had more emotion and it had more, uhhh, clarity without any drums, you know, so I just kept it to the guitars and the cellos.”

(Cowboys and Angels)

“Cowboys and Angels is just a metaphor for men and women, really. The song is just about the kind of tug-of-war that goes on and the way relationships slide one way and the other. And there’s always someone with, you know, with the upper hand kind of thing. In terms of the music, I had been listening to a lot of 60’s, uhmm, kind of Portuguese music, and Brazilian music, and when they teamed up with people like Nelson Riddle and stuff like that. I really wanted to get that feeling of a sixties soundtrack, you know, one of those Ariel shots they do of a car driving in the south of France, you know.”

“It took me longer than any track I can remember recording because the arrangement was so difficult because, you know, being a jazz arrangement, it really had to be authentic and that, when you’re not working with real jazz musicians, and, of course, I was playing some of the stuff on it, you have to be really careful that you don’t fall into some kind of pop or rock cliche, so it took along time to do.”

(Waiting for that Day)

“Waiting for that Day, the musical concept behind it was to take a very black rhythm and something which has been used constantly in recent dance records. There’s a sample of the James Brown intro into, the song’s called Funky Drummer, and its just the drum track. I wanted to use it very bare, and place a completely non R&B song over the top of it, so I used acoustic guitars and old sixties keyboard sounds.”

(...you can’t always get what you want...)

“The reference to the Rolling Stones song was just that, really, it was a reference which, apart from melodically over those two chords working perfectly, you know, it, uhmm, it just was my way of kind of, of tailing off the song because, uhhh, the song in some sense is about a relationship which has been over, but, aaaah, I wanted to kind of rekindle. And the idea being that it had been obvious that in the interim period neither party had got what they wanted out of life, and maybe it was time to reassess the situation, i.e. come back, you know - Uhmm, didn’t work by the way (laugh).”

(Mother’s Pride)

“Mother’s Pride has the most direct message, I think, on the album, really. There can’t be that many interpretations of this. Its really women’s roll in war, I suppose, because war is always presumed to be male territory and women stand back. And I think the fact that men go into war, and their whole attitude to aggression and fighting, or whatever, that feeling. I think part of it is instinctive, but I think part of it is instinctive in women, too. I think the pride they feel in their husbands or their sons, and also that need to harden their sons, you know, is there in them, too. I think, although a lot of women, very rationally, would say that they want their sons to become very caring, kind of non-sexist, all this kind of “new man” thing, I think even though they, rationally, that’s what they want, I think instinctively its kind of hard to do.”

“With this album the lyrics tended to come first. Definitely, the inspiration came from the lyrics, rather than, ahhh, melodies. And then it was a matter of finding melodies in my head to match, and equal, the power of the lyrics. Probably, its the first time that’s happened. I mean, I think until now, my overall priority has been with melody. I think probably until now, I was a little bit reluctant to tell the world about what I felt about certain things. I think that comes one, from being English, because the English tend to have a real...especially in my position, when it comes to pop stars, its very frowned upon to take yourself seriously if you have been any kind of, aaah, lightweight pop star in the past, you know. So, I was kind of nervous of doing that. But also, I think as you get older you, aaah, you form your opinions much more strongly. They kind of crystallise.”

(Heal the Pain)

“Heal the Pain is kind of my tribute to, aaah, middle period Beatles records, really. Because one of the things that I have been listening to the past two or three years, is the Beatles. I think every generation, at some point, listens to the Beatles and, probably, will continue to do so. I think the Beatles and the Stones, the Beach Boys, basically the first group of artists that wrote for themselves, and represented their own generations. I think its a very, very inspiring period, definitely, for songwriters. I think, if anything, Heal the Pain is, in terms of sound, the most derivative thing I’ve ever done, but its such an obvious reference that I don’t think that anybody would take it as anything other than a tribute, really. “

(Soul Free)

“In terms of music, definitely, I think that my definition of “soul” is something that comes from the heart, as a singer, something that goes form the heart to the mouth and bypasses the head. I, I definitely know that I never thought I sounded black. When people say how come I have a black following, how come I’ve had that much support from the R&B, I think its really because I’ve tried to do that. As I’ve, as I’ve progressed as a singer with each album, I think I try and say what I feel and really make that jump from the heart to the mouth, and really kind of try to pretend that there’s no kind of thought process in between. Every time I go back into the studio, I think I get closer to doing that.”

“Soul Free, in terms of a vocal, I think its got the most release on it, maybe. It really kind of blasted. And I had real fun doing it, but I’d like to think that I do it all over the album. You know, I’ve really tried to, to be as honest a singer as I can this time.”

(Freedom 90)

“This is the first album I’ve enjoyed making, actually. Its the first album I’ve taken my time and said, “OK, it’ll be ready when its ready”, you know. Uhmmm, because originally, it was going to come out, probably, at the end of last year. And I just decided that I had to relax. Uhmm and I really did, I mean, I felt at the end of making this album that I could have just carried on, whereas, making the other albums in my career, I have been completely exhausted by the end of them, and really glad it was over, you know. Uhmm, but this time I’m really enjoying myself, so... I’ll probably go in and start recording again very soon.”

(...you’ve got to have some faith in the sound, its the one good thing that I’ve got)

“I would say that ten years of writing, its gone from what was craft, I think, because, I think that putting together songs and arranging songs, I’ve always had a real pride in it as a craft, uhmm, and I spent a long time perfecting that into songs that you’d hear on the radio, that would grab your attention for three or four minutes, and that were much more radio songs than anything else, and I think now I’ve got to the point where what’s just as important to me was to really, uhmm, take something out of myself and give it. I’ve always written from a point of view of wanting things to be heard - for different reasons.”

(Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go)

“I mean, I think WMUBYGG, however much people have put it down, I think it was very much a very strong pop record. I think the best of my material, even from really early material... there’s no doubt that people of my generation, when they hear it in twenty years time, they’re going to remember it, they’re going to be nostalgic about it because it was actually that it made an impression.”

(Careless Whisper)

“I think the same thing applies, in some ways I think Careless Whisper is fairly lightweight, even though people love it, but I know that it will be around. That is the way I write. I mean, I have always written with a complete disregard for whether or not something really applied to now. I mean, quite often it did apply to now, but my main reason feeling about a song is that it should be able to be taken out of context, and without everything that is going on around it, and still sound good. That’s the point.

(Various snippets)

“I think I could very much say that George Michael is a different person now than the person who wrote the songs, even on the last album, let alone the earlier albums, and definitely, the person who wrote for Wham! was a completely different individual, I mean, obviously the same person, but with completely different objectives and with a completely different outlook on life.”

“What I think will make me happy now is to feel that I am recognised for constantly trying to push what I am doing, musically, to another level. And that, to me, is an unbelievable driving force, and is much stronger than my ambitions were to be famous.”

“Overall, I’m very positive, I always have been. I’ve always been a great optimist. I’m a very lucky man. I would never deny that, but I don’t think I am just a lucky man. I think I worked very hard. I think I treated my situation, and uhmm, the people around me with enough respect, and I think to some degree, I’ve earned what I have now. And really, you can’t evaluate those kinds of things in terms of money.”

“I don’t know anyone who can live without music. You get out of bed and a piece of music can make the difference to the way you start the day. That’s what music is about. Music is completely about your emotions. You take music and take it to amplify what you want to feel. Of course, it changes people’s lives - it will always change people’s lives. Its there. I’m just very glad that its changed my life to the degree that it has, that it has become centre of my life. I feel very lucky that that’s the case.”

1990 George Michael Mini-Profile

Producer: Jo Interrnate

Executive Producer: Dave Sholin

Technical Production: Ron Hummel Production Inc.

Management: Kahane Entertainment

(C) Copyright CBS United Kingdom Ltd.