Aspel seems to be sort of looking at this articulate thoughtful 22 year old talking about the reasons for firing his management company in a bit of awe at how thoughtful and and intelligent George was - I saw a number of interviews where this happens when he was about 20, 21, 22 and the interviewers, you can tell are expecting airhead sort of responses - not with George. He just looks so sweet and young here -
Does anyone know if he ever gave any other interviews soon after the break up where he tries to explain why he says they broke up? When it happened I was 10 and live in the US and heard confused stories for a decade from random people who never seemed to have actually seen or read any first hand interviews with him where he explained why, so it was like there were rumors about what he said to the press in England. I don't remember him doing interviews here in general. It was always like we were getting all of our info about him from American media who were telling us what he told the a British media or if we were lucky we would see a 2-10 second clip of something that had been on British TV.
GM had learned that his management company was being bought by a company in South Africa which, at the time, had apartheid and GM had always been vehemently (and vocal) about the horrors of apartheid so he decided, as he explained here, that Wham! needed to cut ties with that management company - which they did. And, well done. Andrew was fine with it - as he has said in interviews as well.
I feel so sorry for him because if he had said the truth that (as he's said many times in interviews in the 90s and later) he was realizing he was gay and that it was going to be an issue because he was one of the most famous people in the world, he would have been ridiculed for being a fake who was marketing himself to schoolgirls and also a lot of people, including much or most of America, would have had a homophobic reaction and a phobic reaction to the idea that he might have AIDS. That would have been the end of his career in America. People had accepted Boy George as gay because he wasn't marketing himself as a heartthrob for girls and he sort of made a joke out of the whole gay thing which kind of diffused any uncomfortable feeling people had with it and also he was big before AIDS really became big. I don't think Boy George would have done well in America once AIDS really became big soon after he disappeared in America. There was such hysteria about how you might be able to get it. A lot of people would have been afraid to go to their concerts.
What killed Boy George in America was his arrest for heroin possession. It affected his ability for years to get work visas in America. It didn’t help that Boy’s first solo album’s songs wasn’t particularly what was in vogue on American radio at the time, so that hurt his career momentum. Plus, Culture Club’s music grew rather mediocre with the third and fourth albums and interest in it was already waning in America as a result.
@@RocStarr913 But remember that he had already disappeared for a bit by the time he got arrested and people were wondering where he was by the time we heard that he had gotten addicted to drugs and then that he got arrested. I was in elementary school and I remember for what seemed like a year or two everybody saying where did Boy George go and then finally hearing he had gotten addicted to drugs and we thought it was so sad that he had gotten into drugs let alone heroin. We kids hardly even knew what heroin was and I remember we had to ask the adults to explain to us what it was. That was long before Kurt Cobain and Grunge music. lol
In the 80s he was always saying things in interviews that he later said wasn't true. Like he later said he ended Wham because he was having a breakdown because he was realizing he was gay and that that was going to be a big problem because he was one of the most famous people in the world. Usually when he lied it was very brief and there would be a brief moment where he seemed uncomfortable that he just lied and then he immediately moved on as if he hadn't just lied. I don't know why he concocted this big complicated story because it just looked like he was covering something up and seemed fishy to everyone. The interviewer seemed like he realized it wasn't the truth and George kept not making eye contact with him and then would smile uncomfortablywhen he did make eye contact with him. There were better excuses he could have used.
It’s possible that this could be true as well and that he was as truthful as he could be at the time, given that he didn’t exactly define himself as gay at this point. He said in his autobiography that Pepsi offered Wham! an endorsement deal by late 1985 and George felt it was a do or die moment to decide when to stop Wham! There was a point at the time according to George where some of what ended up on the Faith album could have been on a third Wham! album, but the Pepsi offer basically made George realize that Wham! had gotten too big and that if he was going to go solo and keep doing the music he really wanted to do, this was the time to do it.
@@RocStarr913 Oh that’s interesting. I don’t remember hearing anything about that at the time or in all the interviews with him I have watched since he died. I remember the Pepsi ad he did during the faith period ( as well as publicity about the fact that Pepsi was upset with him for hardly appearing at all in the ad.) I didn’t know they had offered it to him many years before he actually did it. Didn’t he do it at the end of faith like maybe around 1989? Also why did getting the Pepsi endorsement deal make him feel like it was a do or die moment to decide when Wham would end? And then why did he think that it was a problem that Wham! had gotten too big? How did he think that was going to affect his career? I know he said that they wanted to go out on top and that that would be helpful for a solo career which made sense.
Didn't seem fishy to me; he was all of 24 years old and confused as to how to proceed with his career given his circumstances. There was really no one reason for them splitting up but there was the overriding one which is that they had begun Wham! still as teenagers and knew it would have a certain lifespan as they got older. His discomfort with certain personal/private matters were things he grappled with plus it was always known between the two that he would go off on a solo career. He owed no one any explanation whatsoever about his private life as to sexuality or anything else that wasn't hurting anyone but the media were like sharks and wouldn't leave the young man alone - it was sickening to witness. Fishy? Why because he didn't tell the world his private life? So many people think they have a right to public figures most intimate details - it is really a sad expectation.
