Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
The George Michael A never-before-seen album that started with a bang and ended with sadness. It was 1992. After facing a toxic dispute with Sony Records, Michael decided to stay busy and declare his independence by creating an album of songs that will be played by many musicians, including Aretha Franklin, Janet Jackson and Sade Adu, under the name Trojan Souls. Michael worked on the album for several months until his Brazilian boyfriend Anselmo Feleppa died of Aids in March 1993 and he lost interest in music. They were never revived.
Music from the episodes was leaked, as well as some of the fly-on-the-wall footage taken by Michael’s close friend Andros Georgiou, who has spent years trying to get illegal videos removed from YouTube and TikTok. Now, a few months before the 10th anniversary of Michael’s death, they are releasing 90 minutes of unedited video like Trojan Souls – not a real movie but an unfiltered look at Michael in his creative work. “I thought these fans were making money from my rights so I decided to stop fighting and take it out,” says Georgiou. He hopes it will open the door to what he calls, with hyperbole, “the greatest album yet to be made”.
Georgiou named his famous 2012 memoir Rock: The Luckiest Man in Pop, the luck that his father and Michael’s father were cousins who moved to England from Cyprus together in 1953, so he grew up with one of the greatest artists of his generation. They remained close until the bitter fall in 1998, which later.
Loyal to his childhood friends (someone, David Austin, who now runs his estate), Michael gave Georgiou the opportunity to create. They first collaborated as Boogie Box High, whose cover of the Bee Gees’ ‘Jive Talkin’ was a Top 10 hit in 1987, and founded Aegean Records in 1996. Georgiou was also a constant friend on the road. When he was in Tokyo on the Faith Tour, Sony gave Georgiou a modern Hi8 camera that enabled him to make high-quality home movies.
Georgiou makes the premise of Trojan Souls sound as impressive as it is deceptive. When Michael released Listen Without Prejudice Vol 1 in 1990, he was so sick of his sexist image that he disappeared: no appearances in videos or handbills, no interviews, no concerts. Georgiou said: “He wanted to make music but he didn’t want to play a fake game either. Michael believed that Sony had punished him by downloading the song. The singer felt trapped.
In January 1992, he and Georgiou flew to LA for winter sun but Michael soon got bored and asked to go to Dave Stewart’s Chapel Studios in Encino to release a quick cover in the spirit of Boogie Box High. The 1979 disco hit Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now was a symbolic choice because Gene McFadden and John Whitehead originally wrote it to criticize their label, Philadelphia International. Michael decided to come back in July to start the album, and write for the musicians he loved growing up. According to Georgiou, only David Bowie politely declined. He says the name came to him in a dream: The Voice of Reason by Trojan Souls. “From the Trojan horse,” he says. “The soldiers came in and went down and fought.”
Back in London, Georgiou was forced to submit to Sony first, despite his bad blood. I called George and he said, ‘Come on Sony!’ I went, ‘I’ll be home in two hours and do a deal, trust me.'” Georgiou called A&R at Warner and he went through. “Rob Dickins, who was the chairman, was there, and he said, ‘What do you want?’ I said a million pounds. He’s gone, he’s done.” In October, Michael filed a lawsuit against Sony, alleging that the contract was an antitrust violation. “He wanted to get back to Sony as much as possible,” says Georgiou.
Despite the project’s painful origins, the three songs in the film are sunny, fun. Georgiou said: “He was very happy. “For the first few months we probably had the best time of our lives making this record.” The shimmering One Day I’ll Know was composed for Stevie Wonder and the shimmer of Maybe It’s Not Your Time by Bryan Ferry. The lead single Wendy Melvoin’s Song featured virtuosic rhythm guitar written by one half of Wendy and Lisa, hoping to entice her former boss Prince on board.
Concerned with protecting the mystique, Michael has never been officially recorded holding an instrument or making music. “If you’re a fan, this is your first chance to see how he directs everyone in the studio,” says Georgiou. It’s great to see how well Michael drills his world-class musicians – Melvoin, keyboardist Chris Cameron, bassist Deon Estus and backing vocalist Lynn Mabry – in take after take, even grabbing Estus’ guitar at one point to show him what he means. To the viewer the takes may sound the same but Michael is always chasing the best words he hears in his head.
“He had a 48-track studio in mind,” says Georgiou. He remembers how, even as children, Michael used to interrupt the music of his favorite artists and explain how he could change this or that. Or how, when he was working at Sarm West in Notting Hill, Michael would get into the car with a masked cassette tape and have a song recorded by the time he got home to Hampstead.
“He was a frustrating person to work with because he had such an extraordinary talent,” says Sathnam Sanghera, author of Tonight the Music Seems So Loud: The Meaning of George Michael. “He would often sing to musicians and say, ‘This is what I want it to sound like. I’ve talked to a lot of musicians who worked with him and almost all of them said the same thing: ‘It drove us crazy at the time.’ But when he looks back, he realizes that of all the people he worked with, he was the most talented. He had these amazing ears. “
The pieces heard in Trojan Souls are interesting but it was Elton John’s collaboration for This Kind of Love that was completed. By early 1993, Feleppa was fading fast. Georgiou says: “It was so difficult for him to finish everything that we started going in a different direction. “Then it became too much for him.” Leaving work unfinished was not unusual for Michael, however. “George had a history of losing interest,” says Sanghera. “A lot of projects went unfulfilled: Listen Without Prejudice Vol 2, the Daft Punk collaboration, musicals …”
After a few years, Georgiou’s relationship with Michael ended again. On 7 April 1998, Michael was arrested for “sexual misconduct” in a public restroom at LA’s Will Rogers Memorial Park and the closeted star was released to the world. Georgiou said: “It was a mistake when he was arrested. He laughed it off but it really affected him emotionally and it was the beginning of the end.”
When I talked to Michael in 2004, he said that his mother had died of cancer a year earlier. After working through the drought that followed Feleppa’s death to become a senior in 1996, he also experienced grief. “Actually since 1991, when I found out (Feleppa) was HIV positive, all I did was wait for someone to die or be sad,” he told me. “It was easy for me to be upset and angry and careless.”
Michael’s forced walk on Hampstead Heath caused chaos. Georgiou thought it was self-destructive; Michael was not happy with his friend’s opinion. Georgiou said: “I didn’t understand the danger. He was loud and proud, which I respect a lot, but you can’t keep doing what you’re doing. He says the last straw was Michael suddenly ordering him to drop the whole Aegean series. “The next day I was like, you know what?
Another story is that Georgiou crossed the line in telling his story, and giving family photos, to Hello! magazine. In any case, Michael told me: “Losing this friendship was very sad for me. Georgiou says that they reconnected enthusiastically in 2016 and planned to meet in the new year. “It took a lot. We are all Greeks at heart and we are proud and proud.” Then he died.
The Trojan Souls script wasn’t completely mothballed. Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now was released on Aegean Records in 1998, as one of the first commercially available MP3s, and Michael also recorded This Kind of Love, sans Elton, shortly after his death – Sanghera calls it “one of his greatest unreleased songs”. As for others, we can only guess. Can Voice of Reason be successful?
“I think it would have worked as a duets album, because 90% of George was his voice,” says Sanghera. “He was at his creative peak. This would have been Listen Without Prejudice Vol 2 if his lover hadn’t died, if he hadn’t sued Sony. But I think he would have needed two more years to make a great album. This is just the beginning of something that could have been amazing.”
Georgiou is often criticized by Michael’s fans for making money being close to the pop star. He is now planning a rewritten memoir, a film sequel, a multi-screen release on his website, and a duet version of This Kind of Love if he can get Elton John’s blessing. Then again, these are his videos and Trojan Souls was his work, too. Because of the long separation from Michael, the home movies document not only an unfinished album but a very rare friendship. “It’s my legacy in a way,” he says. I lived there for almost 40 years. What a time that was!
