WHAT TO WATCH: We Should All Have A Friend Like Andrew Ridgely

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Bring tissues. Or pretend you have allergies. Netflix's new "Wham!" documentary charts the stunning worldwide rise of the namesake pop group in the early 1980s - they were the first Western music group in history to play mainland China - and while the story may be familiar to some, it's newly bittersweet given the death of George Michael in 2016. The tone is upbeat - and the hair, all that crazy-big 80s hair! - but the undercurrent is melancholy. 

What's new, at least to me, is Andrew Ridgley's role in both Wham and Michael's life. Ridgely has long been written-off as a lucky, semi-useless, hanger-on - by your truly included! - but Michael never would have had any kind of music career at all if it weren't for Ridgely, as Michael reveals in posthumously released audio recordings. It was Ridgely who brought him out of his shell as a child, encouraged his talents and wildest dreams of pop-stardom, and protected him early-on from prying press and fans, since Michael had already come out to Ridgely, who's straight, when they were recording their first album. 

And at the beginning, at least, Ridgely co-wrote all of the group's songs, including "Careless Whisper," one or their biggest hits, penned when they were just 17 years-old. When the duo decided to end Wham, there was no bitterness, no drama, just an acknowledgement between the two that it was time for Michael to go solo, and time for Ridgley, who'd grown weary and depressed by fame, to return to private life. 

"Wham was always going to be about youth, about being young," says the now 60 year-old Ridgely, something that both he and Michael knew when they ended the group. By mutual design, there would be no reunion. Michael, as we now know, was a tortured soul for much of his life, but until at least his early 20s, he had a genuine friend in Ridgely, who had the utmost respect for him throughout his life, and as he notes in the documentary, still does years after Michael's death.

Photo Credits: Urszula Solty

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