Keith Richards as ...

Humble Songwriter: “I don’t consider that you create or write anything. The best way to think about it, for me anyway, is that you’re an antenna. I sit down at an instrument – guitar, piano, bass, or whatever – and play somebody else’s songs. And usually within twenty minutes more or less, suddenly something’s coming. And that’s when the antenna goes up (wets his finger and raises it in the air). Incoming! You work it up a bit and then transmit it.”

Sociologist: “To me, the biggest thing America had done this century – apart from throwing its weight around – was its music. A whole grand new way, with so many different elements put together that never had a chance to be welded before. And it’s still going on, of course.”

Criminologist: “You know, during World War II the number of junkies in America dropped to almost zero because they just policed the fucking ports properly. Which means they can do it if they want to, if they really wanted to stop it. But you can make more money out of heroin than you can out of anything else.”

Nutrition Expert: “Why do you think there’s this three square meals a day? This is about factories. You eat, you go to work, you get a break for lunch, when you’re finished you get your dinner. But people should never eat like that. They should eat little bits every two hours.”

Friend: “I don’t agree with that saying ‘You can count your real friends on one hand.’ If that’s so, then you ain’t farming the rights acres, because friends are everywhere.”

Spiritualist: “You never know what the sound’s gonna be like in those stadiums. You’re relying on God, who joins the band every night in one form or another.”

Film Critic: “Because it’s in black and white and because the camera wobbles, everybody thinks, Wow, this is for real, man, and all that time it was obviously set up. It’s so far removed from what actually goes on.” (On the “documentary” COCKSUCKER BLUES that supposedly revealed what life was really like on a Rolling Stones tour)

Sex God: “I’m a lover. I’ve been trying to tell people this for years.” (Responding to Marianne Faithfull’s assertion that sleeping with Keith was the best night of her life.)

Environmentalist: “That’s the dichotomy between this planet and ourselves. We own it, we think. So did the dinosaurs, at one time, and look what happened to them”

Neighbor: “ I have a knack for finding a whole building of very cool people, you know, but there’ll be one uncool couple, they’re always a couple. And my apartment will always be either just above them or next to them or just below … ‘We can’t even hear Bug Bunny on our tv your music’s so loud.’ I’m plagued by that kind of thing.”

Humanist: “You’ll never get rid of nationalism and so-called patriotism, but the important thing is to spread the idea that there’s really this one planet – that’s what we’ve really to worry about.”

Political Analyst: “How many times can you use those words – justice, freedom. It’s like margarine, man. You can package it and you can sell that too. In America they have a great talent for doing that.”

Prison Convict: “First off, neither the accommodations or the fashion suited me at all. I like a little more room, I like the john to be in a separate area, and I hate to be woken up. The food’s awful, the wine list is terribly limited, and the library is abysmal.”

Warlock: “I’ve seen a few magicians in my time, but never in Rio. But I like Rio very much.” (on accusations that he has traveled abroad to study witchcraft)

Keith Richards on Family and Children

They do more for you than you do for them.

Children are far too intractable for you to impose yourself on them. There’s no point in having fights, because they beat you every time. Especially girls.

You don’t bring them up. They kind of show you what they need, and you provide it.

I live in this household of women, which sometimes can drive me totally round the bend, which is why I need to work and get on the road. I love ‘em all, but it’s weird to be living with a load of chicks – it doesn’t matter what age they are.

It’s only Patti (his wife) and me and the kids. There’s other people who clean up the house, but it’s not like there’s a nanny … No way.

Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, and there’s both my kids in the bed. They’ve managed to find their way, and we’re all in the same bed together … Family is a special thing…if you get a chance at it, try it out, because it’s one of the most special things that you’ll ever get on the face of this earth. It gives you that final missing link of what life’s about.

I know loads of their ex-boyfriends (on his daughters)

Keith Richards on Other Bands/Musicians

There’s more to it than saying “shit” on tv or learning how to spit by practicing in front of a mirror. (on the Sex Pistols)

Shave and go home. He’s a wimp in disguise. (on George Michael)

He’s trying to steal my headlines. (on Sid Vicious’s suicide while Keith was on a drug charge in Canada)

I ain’t too interested in white bands who rip off white bands who ripped off black bands.

Keith Richards On Drugs

"I’ve never had a problem with drugs, only with policemen."

"On the one hand, they say the Rolling Stones and rock musicians in general are corrupting the kids, but if they just left us alone and didn’t come looking for drugs, then nobody would know if we had a drug problem or not. … It’s only when they come busting into your room and then splash it all over the newspaper that anybody knows about it."

"I’ve never turned blue in someone else’s bathroom. I consider that the height of bad manners."

"If you’re going to get wasted, then get wasted elegantly."

"You ain’t gonna inject talent into yourself."

"Music and drugs – I don’t really correlate one thing with the other. One is what you’re putting out and the other is what you’re putting in."

"Cold turkey is not so bad after you’ve done it ten or twelve times."

Keith Richards Quote of the Day

I love cliches. They're so true and so boring.

Keith Richards Quote of Day

There's nothing more disturbing than two chicks whispering to each other.

What Are You Listening To?

My personal music catalog is awesome. I was born in the 60s, in the shadow of the babyboomers, so I grew up knowing all about The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Simon & Garfunkel, et al. I was a child in the 70s, witnessing disco and new wave; my first album after Shaun Cassiday’s “Born Late” was “Saturday Night Fever.” I was a teenager in the post-punk 80s, listening to Elvis Costello & the Attractions, the B-52s, the Pretenders, the Psychedelic Furs, Echo and the Bunnymen, Depeche Mode, George Michael/Wham!, Beastie Boys, Prince, Roxy Music, and English Beat (by the way, Duran Duran’s NOTORIOUS was the first CD I ever bought). In the 90s my interest in music waned considerably, but I still managed to sneak in the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Stone Temple Pilots, Nirvana, Moby, and Beck. For the aughts, it’s again pretty slim pickings, but have been buying Amy Winehouse, Robbie Williams, Sam Sparro, and the Scissor Sisters while rediscovering the genius of George Michael in a major way, as well as Joy Division and Pet Shop Boys. In the future I foresee foraging into classical music territory, particularly Beethoven and baroque in general.

Below is the complete list of music artists currently on my iPod. I plan on adding a ton more over the next several months, but here’s the lineup so far. So what do you listen to?

ABC
Air
Amy Winehouse
Beastie Boys
Beck
Bill Withers
Britney Spears
Bronski Beat
Bruce Springsteen
Christina Aguilera
David Bowie
Deee-Lite
Depeche Mode
Dirty Vegas
Duran Duran
Dusty Springfield
Elton John
Elvis Costello & the Attractions
Erasure
Filter
Fiona Apple
George Michael (duh)
Gnarls Barkley
The Go-Gos
Heaven 17
The Human League
Information Society
The Jackson 5
Jamiroquai
Jeff Buckley
John Lennon
Joni Mitchell
Joy Division
Justin Timberlake
The Knack
Madness
Madonna
Michael Jackson
Modern English
Naked Eyes
New Order
Pet Shop Boys
Pete Townshend
Pink Floyd
Prince
The Psychedelic Furs
Queen
R.E.M.
Robbie Williams
The Rolling Stones
Roxy Music
Sam Sparro
Scissor Sisters
Seal
Simple Minds
The Smiths
Spandau Ballet
Squeeze
Sting
The Stone Roses
Tears for Fears
Traffic
Vince Guaraldi Trio
Wham!
The Who
William Orbit
Yaz
10cc

Keith Richards, Rock Icon

I just love Keith Richards; he's always been my favorite Rolling Stone. With his writing mate Mick Jagger, he pretty much laid the blueprint for how a rock band should behave and what constituted the rock and roll lifestyle. They were the first real bad boys of rock and every band that came after them could only aspire to be carbon copies. They did it first. Then, with his girlfriend Anita Pallenberg, he introduced a whole new fashion aesthetic: rough around the edges rich hippie chic. I'll post some great pics of him and his lady later in the month, but for now I want to focus on just Keith the Legend ...

Stereotypes and Social Class

The term “stereotype” is disparaged in our culture. Lately I’ve come to think that this is somewhat perplexing. After all, isn’t stereotyping a testament to one’s acuity of mind to recognize recurring patterns and to expect – with at least some accuracy – a certain perception? Indeed, do stereotypes not form specifically because a certain trait is so often repeated that it becomes foreseeable? Could it be that stereotyping is actually valid?

In no instance is this thought more prevalent than when I am confronted with working class white people. Originally, when I was younger, the initial reaction for me was to be open, to observe and not expect. Judge each person separately on an individual basis. Discern. Learn. This is what I have been taught. I don’t assume that just because someone is working class that he/she is dumb, racist, homophobic, alcoholic, wife-beating, immigrant-bashing, grammatically-challenged, or has more children than they can afford.

And I never use the term “white trash” because it’s pretty much the same thing as calling someone a nigger. (So pin a gold star on my lapel for post-liberal enlightenment.)

This modus operandi is often put to the test, however, and I find myself having to throw my sincere open-mindedness out the window. I mean, what else can you think when …

-- the working class secretary your father just hired lives in a trailer park, has two front teeth missing, chain smokes, and drinks like a fish?

-- the working class guy you dated last summer is unapologetically racist against black people (Nigger this and Nigger that) while speaking English like a fucking moron (“he borrowed me his car and his wife ain’t too happy ‘bout dat… dat building over dere has a real nice fa-kahd.”).

-- your working class neighbor has never been on the Internet and it goes without saying that she doesn’t have an email address.

-- the recent working class job applicant at your father’s office didn’t finish high school, never got her G.E.D., and likes to hunt deer in army fatigues with her redneck husband.

-- the typical working class female guest on the Maury Povich Show is obese, has four kids from three different fathers, and lives on government aid.

Anyway, you get my point, right? So here’s yet another experience to challenge my earnest refusal to use the term “white trash”…

Chicago, where I live, is split in two: The North Side and the South Side. Basically whites live on the North Side while blacks and working class white people live on the South Side. On the North Side you have Wrigley Field Stadium and the Chicago Cubs. On the South Side you have the U.S. Cellular Field and the Chicago White Sox. On the North Side you have yuppies and bohemians, a thriving gay community, upwardly mobile blacks, and a lot of sushi restaurants. On the South Side you have … well, I don’t know because I’ve been on the South Side a whole four times in my entire life. And even then it was driving through very fast with the windows rolled up and the car doors firmly locked. (Bourgeois angst, what can I say.)

Recently, these cultural differences came into sharp relief when the Cubs played against the White Sox on the South Side at U.S. Cellular Field. Richard Roeper, a local journalist, posted his outrage when he attended the game and overheard many examples of unapologetically homophobic remarks on the part of working class White Sox fans. Just one example goes like this:

In the men's room on Friday, after the game: Sox fan walks in, does an exaggerated prance and shouts in a lispy voice, "I'm a Cubs fan, where are the gay bars?" He says this about 10 times, over and over, until a Cubs fan in line finally says, "Why don't you go home and beat your wife?" The response from Mr. Genius: "Maybe I will!"

Yeah, for real. You can read the full article at: http://www.suntimes.com/news/roeper/1644778,CST-NWS-roep30.article

I swear, people really are their stereotypes. At least the white working class ones. At least from what little I’ve observed or have been told. Since I’m too lazy and cowardly to do any actual sociological research on my own, I decided to supplement my meager experiences with working class white people by reading THE REDNECK MANIFESTO by Jim Goad, a college-educated intellectual born on the wrong side of the tracks. So far it’s a fascinating read but, oddly enough, it’s actually reinforcing some of those very stereotypes (while, happily enough, making us middle-class folks feel sympathetic toward and even a little respectful of “The Great Unwashed”). I’ll let you know what I think of it when I’m finished. So far, it’s a real eye-opener and incredibly refreshing in its frankness.

In the meantime, I’ll close with yet one more anecdote: On Facebook we had a discussion about the whole White Sox thing on the Gay Boystown thread. I put in my two cents, basically adding that the term “white trash” was just as offensive as the word “nigger.” My comment got pulled because someone flagged the Facebook Administration and complained that the N word was used. So then the Gay Boystown administrator got a stern warning (WTF?!). So I had to repost my comment, writing “NIG---“ in place of “nigger” … but intentionally leaving in “white trash.”

No complaints the second time around. Guess the term “white trash” is still flying below the liberal radar of political correctness.

GQ 2004 Interview, Part 4 (George Michael)

At the age of 19, during the making of Wham!'s second album, George had worked out he was bisexual. He told Andrew Ridgeley and close friends immediately, and was ready to tell the world. "I had very little fear about it, but basically my straight friends talked me out of it. I think they thought as I was bisexual, there was no need to. But it's amazing how much more complicated it became because I didn't come out in the early days. I often wonder if my career would have taken a different path if I had."

One of the complications was not being able to be completely honest with people. "I used to sleep with women quite a lot in the Wham! days but never felt it could develop into a relationship because I knew that, emotionally, I was a gay man. I didn't want to commit to them but I was attracted to them. Then I became ashamed that I might be using them. I decided I had to stop, which I did when I began to worry about AIDS, which was becoming prevalent in Britain. Although I had always had safe sex, I didn't want to sleep with a woman without telling her I was bisexual. I felt that would be irresponsible. Basically, I didn't want to have that uncomfortable conversation that might ruin the moment, so I stopped sleeping with them."

His only bona fide girlfriend was Kathy Yeung who appeared in the video for "I Want Your Sex"; George says she knew he was bisexual. He also confesses to having had a secret crush on Madonna "during her chubby years" and recalls their first meeting alone. "I felt she was really trying to suss out whether I would go for it or not." He bends double with an expression of mock excruciation. "God, I've never told anyone this before! But I was only 23 and was really intimidated because I felt like she was coming onto me and although I thought that she was sexy, she was just too powerful for me at that stage. She's very strong. Her sexuality is hers, it's not for men, and I had a feeling it would be sex of an intensity that would feel like I was with a man. I don't know why. Maybe I should have tried it!"

In his autobiography, former Wham! manager Simon Napier-Bell described George and Andrew as having a "beguiling homoerotic intimacy". Did he ever fancy Andrew? He screw up his face at the thought. "I can't think of anything more vile than sleeping with Andrew. I've known him since he was 11 and he's one of my best friends. There probably was something homoerotic there, simply because we were so close. But luckily, I never fancied him. Also, he's just not my type, to be honest. Beautiful though." The pair remain close friends, with George spending last New Year at Ridgeley's home in Cornwall, and Ridgeley recently staying at George's home in Goring, Oxfordshire, for the latter's 41st birthday party. Settled with a family, Ridgeley leads the quiet life, spending time with his children and indulging his passion for surfing. It's an anonymity George craves but is philosophical he'll never achieve. "In the very early days of Wham! the attention felt great, but I do wonder how much freedom I gave away by trying to become something I wasn't. Much as I'm privileged and thankful to be in the position I am, there's no question I would have enjoyed my journey more if, when I was 18, I hadn't chased the whole physical, sexual part of things."

But after 22 years of being in the public eye, the reality is that people's response to him gets stronger and stronger. Although they tend to give him space, they feel they know him and he often encounters dropped-jaw expressions of shock that are quite discomforting. "I once tried a disguise. It was when I had longer hair and I tucked it up in a baseball hat and wore my prescription glasses. I looked nothing like me, or so I thought. But within a few minutes of leaving the house, someone said, 'Hello George, I didn't know you wore specs.' So I gave up on that."

The upsided of fame, he says, is that, generally, everyone is so nice to him. And, of course, he receives accolades like GQ's Lifetime Achievement award. "Yes, that's what you get when you don't dye your grey hairs!" he laughs. "But seriously, I'm really flattered. Thank you."

His hunger for privacy was blown completely out of the water when he was arrested trying to pick up an undercover LA cop in 1998. He came out fighting on the talk show circuit, saying it was entrapment by the police and media. Previously, his explanation has been that it was a cry for help, his way of telling the world he was gay rather than giving the story to one journalist. But now he's thought about it more deeply and has a likelier explanation. "Now I honestly think it was a desperate attempt to make the trauma in my life about me, because then, maybe, I could control the outcome," he says. "Up to then, the traumas had been out of my control and the outcome always bad. From the point when Anselmo got sick, I felt out of control. There were also family problems too hurtful to talk about, but I was snowed under with things I couldn't do anything about. So I gave myself this six-month distraction from every day being about missing my mother. For six months, I had to work hard to fight for my career, but once that was done was there was nothing to stop what came after it, which was just total depression. But as subconscious plans go, it was pretty successful!"

He says cruising was something he used to do occasionally when he was feeling bad about himself, but that he no longer has that compulsion. "I don't need that thrill any more and my sex life has become more conventional in a way. In general, I'm the happiest I've ever been. I have been through so much loss there's little for me to fear any more. The only worse experience in life, I think is to lose a child." He reveals that he and Kenny have discussed having a child, but "I have dismissed it out of hand because I know that's not the way I want to go. I think I would be a good dad, but terribly neurotic. And I wouldn't be a very happy man if I had to make all those sacrifices."

What, I ask, if Kenny's desire to have a child outweighs George's wish not to?

"I'd have to let him go and find someone who wanted that too," he replies swiftly. "You can't have a child just to keep a relationship together, can you? I sometimes think it's a shame for Kenny because he could quite easily adopt with someone else. He's fantastic with kids, and I have a feeling he'd do it much better than me. But he's not obsessed with having children."

So it's just George and Kenny, and the occasional lover or two who drifts in and out of their beds but is never allowed to encroach on their life together. It works for them and George genuinely seems like a man who has fought more than his fair share of demons but emerged stronger for it. "Is my body a temple, or is my life a temple?" he muses. "I'm definitely in the latter category and I think my life has been better since thinking that way."

END.

GQ 2004 Interview, Part 3 (George Michael)

George went into therapy as soon as Anselmo was diagnosed, and it was three years after his death before he felt able to consider another relationship. Then, in 1996, he met Kenny Goss, the chisel-jawed Texan who shares his life to this day.

They have always said they met in the LA department store Fred Segal, but the truth is they got talking in a respectable LA spa. "We thought if we told the truth, certain people would think we met cruising each other!" he laughs. "But that wasn't what happened at all. We just got chatting and I asked him out for dinner. I wasn't even sure if he was gay."

Thrilled that his life seemed to be on the up again, he rang his mother to share the good news. In the same call, she told him she had been diagnosed with cancer. "So I didn't even get one day to feel happy about having met Kenny. I was back into the black hole," he says quietly. "I haven't had any dark days for a long time now, but there was a point when that was all I had. I just used to sleep and sleep. Some days I could barely put one foot in front of the other; it was real depression. I was on Prozac. It made a slight difference, but for it to have really worked I would have had to be pumped so full of drugs I think the side effects would have been dreadful."

He would frequently snap out of the depression and think it was over, telling anyone who'd listen how his life was back on track and how he'd write a successful album any day now. But then the smallest thing would trigger it again.

"I was so close to the edge all the time that I kept getting knocked back into the abyss, constantly looking over my shoulder wondering where the next blow would come from. But touch wood, things are good now. No one's died on me or betrayed me for a while," he laughs.

Being depressed is one thing, living with it quite another, and one wonders how Kenny coped with so much dark reality when the relationship was still in its fledgling stages.

A lesser person might have run a mile, and George is in no doubt quite how important his partner's support was. "If he hadn't been around, I think my life would have been in danger, in terms of me," George says matter-of-factly. "After Mum's death in 1997, when I couldn't write and I felt really worthless, I don't think I could have taken it really. I think I might have been one of those cowards who choose a nasty way out."

Does he means suicide? He purses his lips and ponders the thought for a moment or two. "I don't know for sure, but I would imagine it would have been a strong possibility if I hadn't had someone as strong as Kenny to rely on. He was there to put his arms around me and remind me there was something positive going on. I was never without stress from the moment I found out about Mum's cancer, but Kenny waited and he finally got to see me healthy and happy last year. Hopefully it was worth the wait."
He gives a wry smile and lights up a Silk Cut.

It's well-documented that George also likes to smoke joints, once puffing his way through up to 18 a day. His intake is much fewer now, but at its height, does he think it contributed to his depression? "If you've smoked it for a long time - which I have - it can be linked to depression, but I don't think that's the case with me. I'm sure it's bad for me in some ways, but I love smoking. I wish to God I didn't, especially as a singer. It was the most stupid thing I ever did, but I'm definitely a more together and happier man. In other words, I seem to have progressed mentally, regardless of being a pothead!" He pauses and puts on a mock serious tone. "But I wouldn't recommend it to the young."

His laid-back attitude to his own wellbeing is in contrast to his concern for those close to him, particularly Kenny, whose company sells sportswear to US schools and colleges. "My biggest problem in life is fear of more loss. I fear Kenny's death far more than my own. I don't want to outlive him. I'd rather have a short life and not have to go through being torn apart again. Kenny has to travel a lot with his job and we have fights before he flies because I try and get him to avoid British Airways or American Airlines in case he falls victim to a terrorist attack. When he leaves me, I panic. I can't relax until he's called to say he's arrived safely. But when I fly, I don't care and get straight on BA."

So much of their eight-year liaison is conventional. But recently, the relationship hit the headlines when George revealed they both have no-strings-attached sex with other men. "Some gay men manage monogamy forever, and I envy them because it's a great thing. But when you first meet someone, that chemical flows through your body and says 'fuck, fuck, fuck!" it's wondrous. If you can keep hold of that, great. But for me to experience that again in a relationship, I'd have to split with Kenny."

His argument is that although they have sex with other men, they are emotionally monogamous. But here comes another George Michael revelation...sexually, he swings both ways. "When I walk into a restaurant I check out the women before the men, because they're more glamorous. If I wasn't with Kenny, I would have sex with women, no question," he enthuses. "But I would never be able to have a relationship with a woman because I'd feel like a fake. I regard sexuality as being about who you pair off with, and I wouldn't pair off with a woman and stay with her. Emotionally, I'm definitely a gay man."

Most gay men will tell you they knew from as young as three or four that their sexuality was a predisposition they could do nothing about. Where does he stand on the nature versus nurture argument? "In my case it was a nurture thing, via the absence of my father who was always busy working. It meant I was exceptionally close to my mother. All of my early sexual fantasies were straight and totally readable. My first fantasy involved me being surrounded by a group of nuns who all had their tits out. I mean, how obvious can you get. I was lying helpless on some kind of medical table. I have no idea what that all means. And there was a female maths teacher I use to masturbate about as well, so all that led me to believe I was on the path to heterosexuality. It wasn't until puberty that I started fantasising about men, and I do think it had something to do with my environment. But there are definitely those who have a predisposition to being gay in which the environment is irrelevant."

He has said in the past that, as a child, he sometimes felt his mother didn't regard him as man enough. "She was so liberal as a parent that it didn't make sense that she might feel like that," he says now. "But I think it was because her brother Colin had killed himself the day after I was born, and she thought it was because he was gay. So I'm sure she was terrified of seeing anything gay about me because, to her, being gay meant misery. I totally understand that, even though she was misguided in worrying about it."

Thankfully, times have now changed to such an extent that Colin's famous nephew is open and happily gay and appearing on the cover of GQ. "Every little bit helps," smiles George on this notable event.

TO BE CONTINUED …

GQ 2004 Interview, Part 2 (George Michael)

When 12-year-old Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou first met Andrew Ridgeley at Bushey Meads school in Hertfordshire in 1975, the seeds were sown for a musical career that was to gain him worldwide recognition and untold millions in the bank. As Wham! they burst onto the pop scene in 1982 with the heady combination of micro shorts and George's major songwriting talent. By 1986 they called it a day and a new, more sombre George Michael emerged.

His first solo album, 1987's Faith, sold ten million copies and won a Grammy. In 1990 there was Listen Without Prejudice Vol. I, followed by Older in 1996 full of powerful ballads. Then...nothing. Although there were vast sales of for his greatest hits CD, Ladies And Gentlemen, in 1998 and the contractual-obligation album of covers, Songs From The Last Century in 1999, he suffered writer's block for nearly four years and despaired whether he'd ever write a hit again. While waiting for a house to be renovated, George moved back to the first house he ever bought - the one we're sitting in now and the one he most associates with his mother, who would insist on cleaning it for him. "Something miraculous happened and I just started writing again," he says, convinced it has something to do with the feel of his mother in the house. The subsequent 2002 single "Shoot The Dog", a satire on Bush and Blair in the run-up to the Iraq war, only got to N°12 and George found himself criticised for meddling in politics. But he remains unrepentant and included it on his latest solo effort, Patience, which is Britain's fastest-selling album this year, selling 275.000 copies in its first week and reaching N°1. Sales are currently approaching four million worldwide and the album also received favourable reviews, with one commenting that it's a new George Michael "who no longer minds being thought as a pop star". He frowns, "I never minded being thought as a pop star. People have always thought I wanted to be seen as a serious musician, but I didn't. I just wanted people to know that I was absolutely serious about pop music."

Certainly, many of his solo lyrics have a darkside a world away from the lyrical bubble gum of Wham!'s "Club Tropicana" and "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go". But little wonder, for George has, in his words "been into the abyss" in his private life.

The start of the downward spiral can be pinpointed to New Year 1991 when his Brazilian boyfriend Anselmo Feleppa flew to London to tell George he had tested positive for AIDS. It was just three months after they meet. "He'd had the result earlier but he told me it was negative because he didn't want to spoil my Christmas," says George, who dedicated Older to Anselmo.

Anselmo eventually died of a brain hemorrhage in 1993, shortly after returning to Brazil for a blood transfusion. Because the death was unexpected, George wasn't with him. "It was untimely, but that way he never lost his dignity, and I suppose I was spared the worst of what some people go through. But I'm still convinced that had he been in the USA or London, he would have survived, because just six months later everyone was on combination therapy."

Studies now show a three-drug combination of anti-HIV treatments is much more effective than a single drug or two-drug combinations in preventing disease progression. "I think he went to Brazil because he feared what my fame would do to him and his family if he got treatment elsewhere," says George. "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."

Anselmo had a strict Catholic upbringing and, to this day, the effect it had on his life is something that leaves a bitter taste in George's mouth. "I can't bear Catholicism. One of the most heartbreaking things I ever saw was when I went into Anselmo's room one afternoon and he was sitting there in bed with his prayer cards. I just thought to myself, 'Please don't tell me you think you're going to hell.' It makes me so angry and I sincerely hope he didn't fear that." The day after Anselmo's death, George decided to finally admit to his parents he was gay, and he did so in a long letter. His mother Lesley's only reaction was devastation that she hadn't been able to help her son through such a traumatic experience. But what of Jack, the traditionally Greek father who had always had a more remote relationship with his young son, owing to prolonged absences running the family restaurant? "He never displayed any disappointment or homophobia," says George. "I'm sure he felt it, and it was hard for him, but he didn't lay any of it onto me which I have to thank him for. This is sad, but I do feel success can negate a parent's disappointment. I genuinely feel that although his son is gay and not going to give him any grandkids, my dad's consolation is that I have done well in life."

TO BE CONTINUED …

Happy Birthday George Michael

May you get totally stoned and have lots and lots of sex on this special day. Oh, and drop some Ecstasy while you're at it.

GQ 2004 Interview, Part 1 (George Michael)

George Michael's house is tucked away alongside a block of flats in the dead end of a rather unremarkable west London road. His Range Rover barely squeezes onto the off-street park area, and there are no security gates, no imposing entrance pillars, and not so much as a CCTV camera or concrete lion in sight. Britney et al would pale at the thought. The man even answers his own front door, for God's sake, greeting me with a cosmetically assisted Colgate smile that's the only clue to his superstar status. "I'm just not security-minded," he shrugs, throwing coffee into two cups in his kitchen. "And I have a feeling that if you think that way, bad shit comes to you. If someone really wants to hurt you, they'll find a way whatever. I don't want to live my life worrying about it."

That said, he has had a couple of unsettling experiences with fans, most notably an English girl who lived under his house for four days. Built on a slope, the low-slung frontage leads into a spacious, split-level living room, propped up by stilts at the rear, overlooking a fabulously lush garden that belies its city location.

"I had no idea she was under there," George says. "I was talking to one of my friends one night, and I thought I could hear my name being called out. Then she suddenly presented herself." He called the police, but as there were no anti-stalking laws at the time, they told George there was nothing they could do. "The only reason they eventually took her to police station was because she punched one of them," he scoffs. "She came back a few times, and a few months later they found her masturbating in the corner of my garden!"

He's also found other fans lurking around the property, and a few have broken in and left gifts. But he seems unfazed by this. "Listen, if I had children, I would be Mr Security. I'd have all the trappings because I would be neurotic on their behalf. But as it's just me, no."

Until recently, a journalist's only hope of entering George's private world would probably have meant joining the crazed fan under the floorboards. But here I am, welcomed into his home, a cup of coffee in my hand and surrounded by scented candles which add to the relaxed atmosphere. Dressed in black with his Labradors Meg and Abby playing at his feet, this is a trim, healthy George, finally at peace with who he is, a man who admits, since his arrest in 1998 for lewd behaviour in a Los Angeles public loo, he's been "a better-off gay man".

TO BE CONTINUED …

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