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

By

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

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

PECKERWOOD'S WEEKLY LUNOCRACY POST! For the Week Of 11/18/24!

By
Image
Welcome, chirruns, to the inaugural "Peckerwood's Weekly Lunocracy Post!" post. For the entire week of 11/18/24, you can come here to vent, mock, fling dirt, flash your bits and discuss anything and everything lunocracy worldwide. New posts will follow every Monday.  BTW, to you 'Muricans out there, if you could live anywhere else like many celebutants are doing , where would it be? Me, I'd split my time between  Santorini  and  Amsterdam . But in the meantime, I'm here, and for now, I ain't too happy about it, if'n you get my drift.  Photo Credit: Getty Images
Read more

OPEN POST: PROJECT BABY FACE IS A VANITY DISASTER!

By
Image
I love my headline here. It reads like something out of some shameless 50s tabloid headline about an alien boy hidden away from the world because he has the head of a 4-month-old infant. Well, in his ever more bizarre quest for youth, the disturbed but too rich to go broke in his absurd waste of money, 2 million this year alone, Bryan Johnson has discovered what us vain bitches have known for a while. He could have paid me a cool million to quietly whisper in his ear, "Hey, Bry, loss of fat in your face can age you." No duh? One look at a fat pudge of a baby and an 80-year-old is plenty to prove something obvious, yet this fool and his money part to discover these groundbreaking insights into aging. This genius has a team, and his goal is to "bio" hack aging, having once absconded with the blood of his teenage son to trick his middle-aged cells or some such nonsense. His cells laughed at his ass and refused to change.  Schadenfreude is my oldest friend, and I enjoy
Read more