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George Michael: Lewd Acts, Guilt, and Freedom · DISGRACELAND

0:00
Speaker 1: Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. This is the
0:16
Speaker 1: story about a pop star, a pop star with a
0:19
Speaker 1: rock and roll animal heart. It's about addiction and arrests,
0:24
Speaker 1: forbidden love and and even more forbidden kink. It's about
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Speaker 1: a man who defined sex, who is lusted after bive millions,
0:33
Speaker 1: but just couldn't find the confidence to see in himself
0:37
Speaker 1: what so many others saw. This is a story about
0:42
Speaker 1: George Michael, a man who made great music. Unlike that
0:48
Speaker 1: music I played for you at the top of the
0:50
Speaker 1: show that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop
0:54
Speaker 1: for my melotron called drive by Gloryhole MK. Two. I
1:00
Speaker 1: played you that loop because I can't afford the rights
1:03
Speaker 1: to All My Life by KC and Jojo. And why
1:08
Speaker 1: would I play you that specific slice of Silky Slow
1:11
Speaker 1: Jam Cheese. Could I afford it? Because that was the
1:16
Speaker 1: number one song in America on April seventh, nineteen ninety eight,
1:20
Speaker 1: And that was the day that George Michael walked into
1:23
Speaker 1: the public bathroom at the Will Rogers Memorial Park in
1:26
Speaker 1: Beverly Hills a closeted man and walked out in handcuffs.
1:32
Speaker 1: On this episode, Modacks undercover cops, liquid ecstasy, the car crashes,
1:39
Speaker 1: notorious prisons, and George Michael.
1:42
Speaker 2: I'm Jake Brennan, and this this disgrace Land.
2:19
Speaker 1: It's the nineteen eighties. You're at home watching MTV. In
2:23
Speaker 1: every video by a major pop artist playing on your
2:25
Speaker 1: family's tiny television screen, it's just so horny. You've got
2:32
Speaker 1: prints climbing out of a bathtub and dragging his naked
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Speaker 1: body across the floor. And when doves cry, And now
2:40
Speaker 1: here's Madonna in a white wedding dress being bedded by
2:44
Speaker 1: some casanova for the very first time, or so she
2:47
Speaker 1: claims in like a virgin. And what gen x are
2:51
Speaker 1: among us? Can forget Michael Jackson grabbing his jaunkin screaming
2:56
Speaker 1: oh in Martin Scorsese's video for Bad. But as you
3:01
Speaker 1: watch the endless parade of innuendo pass before your eyes,
3:05
Speaker 1: you come to the realization that no artist on MTV
3:08
Speaker 1: right now in the late nineteen eighties is hornier than
3:12
Speaker 1: George Michael. Sure, Prince Madonna and MJ are all kinky
3:18
Speaker 1: in their own ways, but George Michael is the kinkiest
3:21
Speaker 1: of them all. He puts it all out there as
3:25
Speaker 1: clear as a Bell in the title of his first
3:27
Speaker 1: single from Faith, his incredible nineteen eighty seven solo debut album.
3:31
Speaker 1: The song is called I Want Your Sex, which you
3:34
Speaker 1: know there's no subtext there at all. It's not she
3:38
Speaker 1: bop or Dancing with Myself. What it is is a
3:42
Speaker 1: horned up slice of stripped down synthpop, heavily inspired by
3:46
Speaker 1: Prince's Kiss. And when the same churches and conservative watchdogs
3:52
Speaker 1: who came after Prince for darling Nicky come after George's
3:56
Speaker 1: tight fitting, denim clad ass with their pitchforks count with
4:00
Speaker 1: the explanation that the song I Want Your Sex is
4:03
Speaker 1: not about casual sex but monogamous sex, all while the
4:08
Speaker 1: AIDS epidemic rages on in the background. George's defense doesn't
4:13
Speaker 1: know favors. Neither is the song's music video, with all
4:17
Speaker 1: those body parts writhing on silk sheets and George himself
4:21
Speaker 1: instantly iconic with his giant cross earring and impeccable stubble
4:25
Speaker 1: beard seductively tying a blindfold around a woman's eyes. The
4:30
Speaker 1: BBC refuses to play the song before nine PM, and
4:33
Speaker 1: many American radio stations ban it outright. But the more
4:37
Speaker 1: people talk about I Want Your sex, whether good or bad,
4:40
Speaker 1: the more it sells, quickly, sending its album Faith to
4:44
Speaker 1: the number one spot on the Billboard Album chart for
4:47
Speaker 1: twelve weeks and then going on to winning Album of
4:50
Speaker 1: the Year at the Grammys, thus making George Michael not
4:54
Speaker 1: only the horniest artist in nineteen eighty eight, but also
4:58
Speaker 1: the best selling artist mine nineteen eighty eight. Only five
5:03
Speaker 1: years earlier, George Michael or Giorgio's kiegu panal Do as
5:08
Speaker 1: was his given name, was dead broke, still living with
5:12
Speaker 1: his parents, and just beginning to embark on a whirlwind
5:15
Speaker 1: journey as a member of the pop band Wham alongside
5:18
Speaker 1: his friend Andrew Ridgeley. Fame came fast for George and Andrew,
5:24
Speaker 1: but George quickly outgrew what he called the bright young
5:27
Speaker 1: thing image. He didn't want to sing cheeseball songs like
5:31
Speaker 1: wake Me Up Before You Go Go anymore. He couldn't
5:35
Speaker 1: pretend that everything was day glow colors, pearly white smiles
5:39
Speaker 1: and chews, life t shirts. Life had its dark places,
5:43
Speaker 1: and it was in those dark places that George found
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Speaker 1: he was increasingly unable to escape. Despite being one of
5:50
Speaker 1: the pre eminent sex idols of his dad desired by
5:53
Speaker 1: hordes of fans who swooned over his Greek elvis smolder
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Speaker 1: in that distinct and commanding voice. The things that George
6:01
Speaker 1: Michael desired, the real sex he wanted, he wasn't able
6:05
Speaker 1: to have, at least not in the public eye. His
6:09
Speaker 1: own personal kink, which he kept very secret, wasn't something
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Speaker 1: he could put in a song, at least for now.
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Speaker 1: He was sixteen years old when he began cruising for
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Speaker 1: sex with other men, or cottaging as it's called back
6:23
Speaker 1: in George's home country of England, and it wasn't just
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Speaker 1: the sex, but the pursuit of sex. The rush of strange,
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Speaker 1: anonymous men sending their strange anonymous glances, carrying out these
6:35
Speaker 1: private fantasies and public places only added to the thrill,
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Speaker 1: as did the ever existing chance that he'd get caught. Guilt,
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Speaker 1: as George himself once said, was a massive turn on.
6:48
Speaker 1: Guilt got him off. Guilt was instilled early as a
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Speaker 1: foundation of a very traditional culture in which quote unquote
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Speaker 1: gay was something you caught like a cold, and the
7:00
Speaker 1: only thing George wanted to catch was the next kink.
7:03
Speaker 1: The more illicit, the better. But it was important that
7:06
Speaker 1: no one knew anything about this. He was terrified at
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Speaker 1: being outed, never mind what his own homophobic father would think.
7:13
Speaker 1: He was more concerned about what it would mean for
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Speaker 1: his fame in his career. He worked tirelessly to keep
7:19
Speaker 1: it all a secret. And if you've ever had a
7:21
Speaker 1: hide who you really are from someone you know, it
7:24
Speaker 1: could be isolating. For George Michael. He was hiding himself
7:28
Speaker 1: from millions of adoring fans. Add to that a corrosive
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Speaker 1: lack of self esteem that stuck with him for life.
7:35
Speaker 1: And well, it's like he said in his song Praying
7:38
Speaker 1: for Time, it's hard to love and there's so much
7:41
Speaker 1: to hate. Hate came easy to George. Where the press
7:46
Speaker 1: were involved, Are you gay? Was quickly becoming the first
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Speaker 1: and only question that most so called journalists were interested
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Speaker 1: in asking. It was none of their fucking business. He
7:58
Speaker 1: didn't tell them that he wasn't romantically involved with the
8:00
Speaker 1: women he strategically surrounded himself with, or that he wrote
8:03
Speaker 1: I Want your sex for an unrequited crush he had
8:06
Speaker 1: on a straight French playboy, and he certainly didn't tell
8:09
Speaker 1: that anything about who he'd met down in Rio and
8:12
Speaker 1: brought back with him to his house. In Los Angeles.
8:16
Speaker 1: The papers had no clue that a man named Enselmo
8:19
Speaker 1: Philippa had finally allowed George Michael to want not just
8:23
Speaker 1: sex but love. And George Michael didn't know that his
8:29
Speaker 1: love within Selmo, while beautiful in life, affirming in a
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Speaker 1: way he'd never known, was also doomed, and that in
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Speaker 1: the aftermath of that love he would wind up deeper
8:39
Speaker 1: in the darkness, where his old kinks would be waiting control.
9:09
Speaker 1: For some, when you lose it, it costs a lot
9:12
Speaker 1: to get it back. For music festival promoter Roberto Medina,
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Speaker 1: the cost to once again being control was five million dollars,
9:21
Speaker 1: or rather, that's how much his family pooned up to
9:24
Speaker 1: guarantee his safe release. The Arab men from Rio de
9:28
Speaker 1: Janeiro's criminal underworld, who kidnapped him three weeks earlier, kept
9:33
Speaker 1: there under the bargain. They let Medina go and moved
9:36
Speaker 1: on to the next powerful Brazilion they could abduct and
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Speaker 1: demand a heavy ransom for. In return, Medina got back
9:42
Speaker 1: to his life controlling what he could, which in his
9:45
Speaker 1: case meant planning the music festival Rock in Rio, a
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Speaker 1: highly ambitious nine night affair with big corporate sponsorships and
9:53
Speaker 1: even bigger names that was scheduled to take place in
9:56
Speaker 1: January of nineteen ninety one, some artists turned to when
10:00
Speaker 1: it became known that Medina's kidnapping ordeal was no isolated incident.
10:04
Speaker 1: Not George Michael. The one point five million dollars he
10:08
Speaker 1: was getting paid to play two nights at the festival
10:10
Speaker 1: was one reason why the forearmed bodyguards were four more.
10:15
Speaker 1: And then there were his other demands. To sweeten the pot,
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Speaker 1: he had Medina pay for his friends to fly down
10:21
Speaker 1: to Rio two, put them all up, and not just anywhere,
10:24
Speaker 1: but at the Royal Rio Palace, the same place Sinatra
10:27
Speaker 1: State when Medina brought Old Blue Eyes to Brazil for
10:30
Speaker 1: the first time some ten years earlier. And then when
10:34
Speaker 1: the Royal Rio Palace wasn't good enough for George, he
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Speaker 1: had Medina move him to the even swanky or Copacabana Palace,
10:40
Speaker 1: specifically into the very suite where his friend Princess Diana
10:45
Speaker 1: had once stayed. What the hell else was Medina gonna do.
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Speaker 1: He gave five million to armed thugs like it was nothing,
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Speaker 1: and the least he could do was give a fraction
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Speaker 1: of that to a guy who was royalty, himself musical royalty.
11:01
Speaker 1: Even back in the Wham years, George was a star,
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Speaker 1: the kind of star for whom demands were non negotiable.
11:09
Speaker 1: George expected the very best, even if that meant paying
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Speaker 1: ten grand to fly his stylist sister across the Atlantic
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Speaker 1: to fix his hair for a video shoot. George Michael,
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Speaker 1: not Roberto Medina, was the one truly in control, control
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Speaker 1: of his image, his narrative, his closeted life only. He
11:28
Speaker 1: said what photos of him could be used and what
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Speaker 1: photos could not. For his second solo album, Listen Without
11:35
Speaker 1: Prejudice Volume one, a record intended to be a more
11:38
Speaker 1: mature artistic statement, he tore down his own iconography, literally
11:43
Speaker 1: torching the leather jacket from faith in the music video
11:46
Speaker 1: for Freedom ninety, a video which featured five of the
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Speaker 1: hottest women in the world at the time, Linda Evangelista,
11:53
Speaker 1: Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford aka Cindy c, Tatiana Patiss and
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Speaker 1: Christy Turlington him but most notably did not feature the
12:03
Speaker 1: man of the hour, George Michael. In a video made
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Speaker 1: about the soon to be famous film director David Fincher,
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Speaker 1: an equal to George Michael, when it came to artistic control.
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Speaker 1: But I digress. The Freedom ninety video played on what
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Speaker 1: felt like a NonStop loop on MTV. Yet for all
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Speaker 1: the sex oozing from the screen, George Michael was, like
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Speaker 1: I said, conspicuously absent from it. He knew exactly what
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Speaker 1: he was doing, just like he knew what he was
12:30
Speaker 1: doing back when Faith was released, and his self described
12:32
Speaker 1: goal was to cross over not to the pop chart
12:36
Speaker 1: as was typically the case, but to the soul in
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Speaker 1: R and B charts. It was one thing to see
12:42
Speaker 1: his ballad One More Try top what was then called
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Speaker 1: the Hot Black Singles chart. But when he beat both
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Speaker 1: Michael Jackson and Bobby Brown to win Best Soul R
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Speaker 1: and B Artist at the nineteen eighty nine American Music Awards,
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Speaker 1: singers like Dion Warwick very publicly were like, uh, what
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Speaker 1: the fuck? The Dog Corney, host of Soul Trains, said
13:01
Speaker 1: of that particular win, this being a quote unquote free country,
13:05
Speaker 1: people are entitled to call George Michael a soul artist
13:08
Speaker 1: and in effect changed the meaning of the word soul.
13:13
Speaker 1: But at the Rock and Rio in January nineteen ninety one,
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Speaker 1: twenty seven year old George Michael's soul was very much
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Speaker 1: alive and kicking out in the crowd. One of the
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Speaker 1: locals in Selmo Philippa, seven years George's senior, was staring
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Speaker 1: directly into it. Then Selmo's eyes burrowed deep into the
13:32
Speaker 1: pop stars sexually charged Aura. He was smitten. He was
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Speaker 1: struck by George, Michael's beauty, his voice, the whole package.
13:40
Speaker 1: And this wasn't a fanboy thing. Enselmo was at the
13:44
Speaker 1: show for the experience and for some of the other performances,
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Speaker 1: not George specifically, but right now he felt a connection.
13:51
Speaker 1: He simply had to meet him. In the next day,
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Speaker 1: and Selmo tracked George down at the Copacabana Palace and
13:58
Speaker 1: watched as he got into a taxi. He greased the
14:01
Speaker 1: palm of one of the caves at the hotel stand
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Speaker 1: to give up George's destination and buzios a few hours away,
14:08
Speaker 1: and with the help of a well connected friend who
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Speaker 1: owned a house in that resort town, Anselmo skipped work
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Speaker 1: and made the two hour drive. He found George and
14:16
Speaker 1: a club dancing and partying.
14:19
Speaker 3: Walked over to him and told him straight up, I'm
14:21
Speaker 3: in Selmo Filippe and I followed you for two hundred miles. Typically,
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Speaker 3: a confession like this from a complete stranger would set
14:29
Speaker 3: off red flags for anyone, not least of them being
14:32
Speaker 3: an international pop star with a legion of fans, some
14:35
Speaker 3: of them crazed. George Michael, however, had been enjoying the
14:39
Speaker 3: company of strangers since he was sixteen, and this sort
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Speaker 3: of thing didn't frighten him in the least. In fact,
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Speaker 3: it turned him on. But there was something different about
14:48
Speaker 3: in Selmo. He was more than a passing encounter in.
14:51
Speaker 1: A public toilet. George could have sworn, seeing him now,
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Speaker 1: that he had actually first laid eyes on Enselmo way
14:58
Speaker 1: out in the crowd the night before from where we
15:00
Speaker 1: stood on stage, and that he too was feeling a
15:03
Speaker 1: strong connection, a connection that went beyond wanting just sex.
15:08
Speaker 1: This was fate, This was destiny, at least in the
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Speaker 1: eyes of George Michael and Enselmo Philippe. The next stretch
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Speaker 1: of time was more blissful than not, or at least
15:21
Speaker 1: as blissful as it could be for a man who
15:23
Speaker 1: continued to live his life very much in secret. George
15:27
Speaker 1: flew Incelmo back to Los Angeles with him, where they
15:29
Speaker 1: began living together in a lavish new home that Georgia
15:32
Speaker 1: built in Beverly Hills. The house was filled with orchids
15:36
Speaker 1: and also with love. Yet although George introduced Encelmo to
15:40
Speaker 1: his inner circle as his partner, their love was forbidden
15:43
Speaker 1: in public for fear that any public display would lead
15:46
Speaker 1: to George being outed, and if that happened, his career
15:50
Speaker 1: and everything that came with it, this house with giant
15:53
Speaker 1: glass walls, for instance, would be taken away. In the end, however,
15:58
Speaker 1: it was romantic bliss was taken away when Inselmo was
16:02
Speaker 1: diagnosed with AIDS. George continued to keep his sexuality in
16:07
Speaker 1: his private life a secret, and when he sang Queen
16:10
Speaker 1: Somebody to Love at a tribute concert for Freddie Mercury,
16:13
Speaker 1: who recently died from the same disease, he secretly dedicated
16:17
Speaker 1: it to Enselmo. But no one could know this, just
16:20
Speaker 1: like no one could know that the power of his
16:22
Speaker 1: absolutely electrifying performance that night was in large part due
16:27
Speaker 1: to how he was mapping his own profound pain onto
16:29
Speaker 1: the song's painful lyric. No one could know any of it,
16:33
Speaker 1: which is why George wouldn't visit Enselmo in the hospital
16:36
Speaker 1: when he got really sick, and also why he didn't
16:38
Speaker 1: fly down to Rio for the funeral. When Enselmo passed
16:41
Speaker 1: away in nineteen ninety three at the age of thirty six,
16:45
Speaker 1: George Michael fell into a deep depression. He was angry,
16:49
Speaker 1: angry at the press as they continued to pry. He
16:52
Speaker 1: was angry at his record label too. He believed Sony
16:55
Speaker 1: had failed to properly promote Listen without prejudice and now
16:58
Speaker 1: had to shackledhim what he called professional slavery. He sued
17:02
Speaker 1: and was told by a judge months later that his
17:05
Speaker 1: argument had no substance whatsoever. When his mother passed away,
17:10
Speaker 1: his depression intensified. He was taking prozac daily in smoking
17:15
Speaker 1: marijuana at every waking moment. Even though he was making
17:18
Speaker 1: new music, like his third studio album, Older, released in
17:21
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety six, he wasn't touring. The press was buzzards
17:26
Speaker 1: were unrelenting. They called him the Howard Hughes of pop music.
17:32
Speaker 1: But George Michael was no germaphobe recluse. He made sure
17:36
Speaker 1: he got out of the house regularly. He always went alone,
17:39
Speaker 1: leaving his new boyfriend Kenny Goss behind. They said long
17:43
Speaker 1: walks were therapeutic, and George supposed they were, but more
17:47
Speaker 1: therapeutic for him at this moment, more than the walk,
17:50
Speaker 1: the weed, the prozac was the destination will Rogers Memorial Park,
17:56
Speaker 1: about a mile from his house in Beverly Hills. He
18:00
Speaker 1: tried to blend in among the palm trees, his sunglasses
18:03
Speaker 1: and ball cap obscuring his face and thus his celebrity.
18:09
Speaker 1: He was just one of the guys, searching like they
18:11
Speaker 1: all were, for that furtive glance, that knowing look. He
18:16
Speaker 1: found one, just like he always did. Hanging around the
18:19
Speaker 1: yellow stucco public toilet. Six foot something, bright white teeth,
18:25
Speaker 1: t shirt and jeans. The two walked into the restroom
18:28
Speaker 1: together as strangers, but within minutes George Michael would find
18:33
Speaker 1: out that the man he thought was an anonymous tryst
18:36
Speaker 1: was in fact an undercover officer the Beverly Hills Police Department.
18:47
Speaker 1: We'll be right back after this. We're we're we're.
19:00
Speaker 4: On April seventh, nineteen ninety eight, at approximately sixteen forty
19:04
Speaker 4: eight hours, that's four forty eight pm, Beverly Hills police
19:08
Speaker 4: officers arrested the singer known as George Michaels. Mister Michaels
19:14
Speaker 4: was arrested for a violation of six point forty seven
19:16
Speaker 4: A of the Penal Code engaging in an elude act.
19:22
Speaker 4: The arrest was made by members of the Crime Suppression
19:24
Speaker 4: Unit at Will Rogers Park, located at Cannon and Lomitas
19:30
Speaker 4: in Beverly Hills.
19:34
Speaker 1: The undercover cop who slipped into the Will Rogers Memorial
19:37
Speaker 1: Park restroom with George Michael on April seventh, nineteen ninety eight,
19:41
Speaker 1: claim that George went in first. George insisted it was
19:45
Speaker 1: the other way around. George also insisted that he unzipped
19:48
Speaker 1: his pants and began masterbating only after the other guy
19:51
Speaker 1: did this undercover cop dude, and that claimed contradicted the
19:55
Speaker 1: police report that followed, which stated that the cop was
19:58
Speaker 1: not masterbating, but rather simulating urination, and that was rich.
20:03
Speaker 1: George thought, if he tried taking a leak while doing
20:05
Speaker 1: all the things that the guy was doing to himself
20:07
Speaker 1: in there, you'd get piss all over your hands. In
20:10
Speaker 1: George's eyes, this was entrapman, plain and simple. But whether
20:14
Speaker 1: or not George's version of what went down was true,
20:16
Speaker 1: it didn't matter. He knew that he'd never won a
20:18
Speaker 1: game off, he said. He said against the Beverly Hills
20:20
Speaker 1: Police Department, not in this particular task force, a crime
20:24
Speaker 1: suppression unit would do whatever it took to make arrests
20:27
Speaker 1: and thus justify their existence. After receiving numerous complaints about
20:31
Speaker 1: sexual activity in public toilets, George pled no contest. He
20:37
Speaker 1: was fined nine hundred and ten dollars in sentenced to
20:39
Speaker 1: therapy community service in two years probation. He was also
20:44
Speaker 1: forbidden from going back to will Rogers Park. That part
20:48
Speaker 1: he could handle, and there were other parks, other public toilets,
20:52
Speaker 1: many more fish in that proverbial sea of cruising subculture.
20:56
Speaker 1: But his reckless behavior, his complete disregard for the control
20:59
Speaker 1: he said so carefully wielded when it came to his
21:01
Speaker 1: private life, had very nakedly revealed his secret to the
21:05
Speaker 1: entire world, and now the press was having a field
21:08
Speaker 1: day with that secret. Zip me up before you go
21:12
Speaker 1: go down, and outed in Beverly Hills. These were actual
21:17
Speaker 1: headlines from actual publications at the time. But as crushing
21:21
Speaker 1: as I'm sure it was for George Michael to read
21:24
Speaker 1: all these things and to suddenly find himself the butt
21:27
Speaker 1: of every joke from every late night talk show host,
21:29
Speaker 1: and as stupid. That's his word, by the way, as
21:31
Speaker 1: he felt over allowing himself to be well exposed in
21:35
Speaker 1: this particular way. The arrest and his subsequent outing had
21:39
Speaker 1: an unexpected result too. In many ways, it finally gave
21:44
Speaker 1: George the thing he'd soun so earnestly about years earlier. Freedom.
21:52
Speaker 1: I'm a dirty, filthy fucker, and if you can't deal
21:55
Speaker 1: with it, you can't deal with it. George Michael was
21:59
Speaker 1: taking the opposite approach that he once had when he
22:01
Speaker 1: came to journalists. Now he welcomed them into his house
22:04
Speaker 1: and told them everything. What do you want to know?
22:07
Speaker 1: His boyfriend, Kenny Goss open relationship tricks, rent boys, escorts,
22:12
Speaker 1: whatever you want to call them. Of course he's got
22:15
Speaker 1: a little black book and the wallet to match, because
22:17
Speaker 1: sex ain't cheap. But you're not paying for the sex.
22:20
Speaker 1: Of course, that's not what the money's for. The money
22:22
Speaker 1: is to pay the trick to leave once the sex
22:25
Speaker 1: is over, just like George was ready for this journalist
22:28
Speaker 1: to leave right now. The guy had gotten a good
22:31
Speaker 1: look at the bag of weed and pills on his
22:32
Speaker 1: coffee table of the Harman Miller painting on his wall
22:35
Speaker 1: titled Incurable romantic seeks, dirty filthy horror. Now George's cell
22:42
Speaker 1: phone was blowing up. It was Paul. Paul made adult
22:46
Speaker 1: films and did dirty d's not so dirt cheap but
22:49
Speaker 1: best of all, right, now Paul had the champagne if
22:52
Speaker 1: George was willing and able, Champagne being the two's code
22:56
Speaker 1: word for GHB aka liquid X to see, an extremely
23:02
Speaker 1: potent drug capable of sending one into a heightened state
23:05
Speaker 1: of sexually charged euphoria. Shit, Yeah, George was willing and
23:09
Speaker 1: George was able. Let's fuck the journalist hit the bricks,
23:14
Speaker 1: and there was Paul, right on schedule, a travel sized
23:17
Speaker 1: shampoo bottle in his hand. George squeezed a few drops
23:20
Speaker 1: of GHB from the bottle into a glass of Coca
23:22
Speaker 1: Cola and drank it down. And the drug sent this
23:25
Speaker 1: libido into hyperdrive. Even better, it made him feel beautiful.
23:31
Speaker 1: On GHB, he didn't have to think about young George Michael,
23:34
Speaker 1: the overweight, pimply reject or so he'd always seen himself.
23:37
Speaker 1: He also did not have to think about Enselmo and
23:39
Speaker 1: the others he'd lost through that straight French playboy, and
23:42
Speaker 1: the others he never had in the first place. The
23:45
Speaker 1: drug made the music vibrate through his body. Each key
23:49
Speaker 1: he touched on the cigarette stained piano, the one previously
23:52
Speaker 1: owned by John London, which George had wanted auction for
23:55
Speaker 1: something like one point five million pounds each he resonated
24:00
Speaker 1: inside of his fingertips, and then his palms, his arms,
24:04
Speaker 1: his shoulders, his entire body. GHB supercharged his self esteem
24:09
Speaker 1: each time he left one of his many homes, like
24:11
Speaker 1: the one just north of London in Highgate. From there
24:14
Speaker 1: he took a path not unlike the one back in
24:16
Speaker 1: Beverly Hills, down a curving hill and into Hampstead Heath,
24:20
Speaker 1: a big park full of bushes and trees, where men
24:23
Speaker 1: just like him were looking for sex. The thrill of
24:26
Speaker 1: being caught, the guilt who was all still there. But
24:30
Speaker 1: seeing as he'd been arrested once already, he was now
24:34
Speaker 1: far more cavalier than ever before. But the thing is
24:38
Speaker 1: GHB is incredibly addictive, and when you overuse or abuse
24:43
Speaker 1: the drug, it could lead to what's known as a
24:45
Speaker 1: g hole, which is when someone high on GHB just
24:49
Speaker 1: slumps over and checks out even when they're standing up.
24:53
Speaker 1: And for you, George Michael, you're about to fall into
24:57
Speaker 1: a g holder won't let you go for the next
25:00
Speaker 1: four years. February two thousand and six, you do some GHB,
25:09
Speaker 1: some marijuana and then you hit a London club. You
25:12
Speaker 1: leave at one am. Thirty minutes later, you're found in
25:15
Speaker 1: your Mercedes stalled out, knocked out, asleep at the wheel.
25:19
Speaker 1: The drugs are found on your person, as is allegedly
25:23
Speaker 1: a studded black leather fetish mask with a zipper on
25:26
Speaker 1: the mouth. So what you think, live and let live.
25:30
Speaker 1: The cops let you off with a warning. Two months later,
25:33
Speaker 1: it's April. More GHB, more weed. This time you're driving
25:37
Speaker 1: the Range Rover, trying to get back to your house
25:39
Speaker 1: in Highgate and suddenly there's this fucking Ford Fiesta just
25:43
Speaker 1: park there. Fuck you put it in reverse and then
25:47
Speaker 1: in drive and then shit, where did that little Pugio
25:51
Speaker 1: come from? Somehow you find your way home and the
25:54
Speaker 1: next morning the cops are at your door asking about
25:56
Speaker 1: the fucked up front end of your Rover parked in
25:58
Speaker 1: the driveway. Five months later, it's September. Your tour starts,
26:04
Speaker 1: your first tour in fifteen years. You're calling it twenty
26:08
Speaker 1: five Live to celebrate your quarter century. Is one of
26:10
Speaker 1: the greatest to ever do it. The tour will stretch
26:13
Speaker 1: out for the next two years, and we'll see you
26:15
Speaker 1: perform one hundred and six shows in forty one countries
26:19
Speaker 1: in gross over two hundred million dollars. Every stage you
26:23
Speaker 1: step on, you kill it. You're a professional, which means
26:26
Speaker 1: you can compartmentalize. It also means that you work hard
26:29
Speaker 1: and you play hard too. On a day off, you
26:32
Speaker 1: tee up GHB, sleeping meds, antidepressant, chase it all with
26:37
Speaker 1: a joint. You can't see straight as your Mercedes tears
26:40
Speaker 1: ass into the night, weaving from one lane to the next,
26:43
Speaker 1: destination Hampstead Heath to get your rocks off, but you
26:47
Speaker 1: don't make it. You pass out, Your Mercedes rolls to
26:50
Speaker 1: a stop, and once again the cops find you and
26:54
Speaker 1: your drugs. This time they charge you drug possession and
27:00
Speaker 1: under the influence. In December, the judge sentences you to
27:03
Speaker 1: community service in a small fine, and she takes away
27:06
Speaker 1: your license for two years. But she doesn't want to
27:09
Speaker 1: interrupt your historic tour, the one that has become the
27:11
Speaker 1: most commercially successful European tour of the year. She knows
27:15
Speaker 1: that tomorrow you're playing the first of two sold out
27:17
Speaker 1: shows at Wembley. You show your gratitude, your capacity for change.
27:22
Speaker 1: I'm glad to put this behind me, you say. Now
27:25
Speaker 1: I'm off to do the biggest show of my life.
27:28
Speaker 1: Big shows and big plans aside. You don't put it
27:31
Speaker 1: behind you. It's still there, the addiction and the kink.
27:35
Speaker 1: You're no longer allowed to be in the front seat
27:37
Speaker 1: of your Mercedes or your range Rover, but guilt continues
27:41
Speaker 1: to drive your underlying compulsion. In September of two thousand
27:45
Speaker 1: and eight, police finds you slinking around the public toilet
27:47
Speaker 1: at Hampstead Heath. You look fucked up and suspicious, and well,
27:52
Speaker 1: you are fucked up in suspicious, and your well documented
27:55
Speaker 1: reputation precedes you. They search you and find crack cocaine
28:00
Speaker 1: that you swear to God. They were tipped off, probably
28:02
Speaker 1: by someone who wants you to go to rehabit Jesus
28:06
Speaker 1: Elton john S might his own fucking business. You aren't
28:10
Speaker 1: in the market for salvation or for Elton John's pity.
28:13
Speaker 1: It's all self loathing and bad habits. Soon you can
28:17
Speaker 1: legally drive your car again, and much to no one surprise,
28:19
Speaker 1: once again, you crash it. Though this time not into
28:23
Speaker 1: a bunch of park cars. This time you put your
28:26
Speaker 1: rover through the facade of a one hour photoshop in
28:29
Speaker 1: North London. The engine is still running when you're woken
28:32
Speaker 1: up by a police officer banging on the driver's side window,
28:35
Speaker 1: and a few days later someone writes wham on the
28:38
Speaker 1: part of the storefront where you crash your car. But
28:41
Speaker 1: you're not laughing, because now on this you're seventh the
28:46
Speaker 1: rest in twelve years, yes years, even though it's all
28:50
Speaker 1: been a blur and felt like mere months. Now a
28:53
Speaker 1: judge is describing a new kind of penalty, not just
28:57
Speaker 1: another fine and another loss of your license. There's something else.
29:02
Speaker 1: You're going to prison. By twenty ten, MTV was a
29:28
Speaker 1: shell of its former self. Gone were the days of
29:32
Speaker 1: NonStop music video programming of Prince and Madonna and Michael
29:36
Speaker 1: Jackson every hour on the hour, and of MTV News
29:38
Speaker 1: anchored for years by Kurt Loder, So there was no
29:41
Speaker 1: news coverage to be found on MTV. On September fourteenth
29:44
Speaker 1: of that year, when forty seven year old George Michael
29:48
Speaker 1: Grammy winner best Selling Artist of nineteen eighty eight, biggest
29:51
Speaker 1: grossing European tour headliner of two thousand and six and
29:54
Speaker 1: two thousand and seven, owner of multiple luxury homes throughout
29:58
Speaker 1: the world and one of the horniest MTV the artists
30:00
Speaker 1: to ever live. Was strip searched, given a nondescript inmate
30:04
Speaker 1: uniform and led down the dank and disgusting hallways of
30:07
Speaker 1: HM prison Pentonville, located in North London. Pentonville was no joke.
30:13
Speaker 1: The men's prison was infamous that housed rapists, murderers and pedophiles.
30:19
Speaker 1: It was crawling with roaches and rodents. George was led
30:23
Speaker 1: by guards to the Vulnerable Prisoners unit, which was for
30:26
Speaker 1: quote sex offenders and people who have committed serious crimes unquote.
30:32
Speaker 1: His arrival was anticipated, just as it had been years
30:34
Speaker 1: ago in places like Wembley and Rio, only now his
30:38
Speaker 1: audience was out not for his voice, his music, or
30:40
Speaker 1: his sex, but out for his blood. The voices of
30:44
Speaker 1: incarcerated men, violent men meant at their absolute lowest, echoed
30:49
Speaker 1: through the prison halls. Where's George Michael? Bring us? George Michael.
30:54
Speaker 1: George was terrified as he was led inside his cell.
30:57
Speaker 1: He kept his head down and kept to himself. Normally,
31:01
Speaker 1: the company of strange man loitering around toilets would have
31:03
Speaker 1: turned him on, but this, this was different. The very
31:08
Speaker 1: thought of going to prison had been enough to scare
31:10
Speaker 1: him sober he actually detoxed while awaiting sentencing, but now
31:15
Speaker 1: that he was on the inside, it was even worse
31:17
Speaker 1: than he could have ever imagined. Luckily, only the first
31:21
Speaker 1: three nights of his two week prison sentence would be
31:23
Speaker 1: here at Pettonville. The rest would be served two hours
31:26
Speaker 1: away in Suffolk at High Point Prison, where George slept
31:30
Speaker 1: in the Good Behavior Wing. Playpool received get well letters
31:33
Speaker 1: from Elton John and Paul McCartney, and on the day
31:36
Speaker 1: he left, signed autographs for every staff member and prisoner.
31:43
Speaker 1: A free and for now clean George Michael got to
31:46
Speaker 1: work on what was next, which was Symphonica, a live
31:50
Speaker 1: album documenting an orchestral tour of originals and covers he'd
31:54
Speaker 1: made in twenty eleven. In twenty twelve, sober George was
31:58
Speaker 1: all nice suits and buttoned on shirts. Is once trademark
32:02
Speaker 1: good hair have been buzzed down tight with a salt
32:04
Speaker 1: and pepper goatee to match. Even before we hit fifty
32:07
Speaker 1: years old, he was playing the elder statesman type, but
32:11
Speaker 1: a new lease on life, a new swell of creativity,
32:14
Speaker 1: a prison stint, detox therapy, a handwritten letter from a beadle.
32:20
Speaker 1: These are things that happen in hopes that they take
32:22
Speaker 1: hold and inspire not just change, but sustained change. And
32:27
Speaker 1: that doesn't always happen, because sometimes there's something that takes
32:31
Speaker 1: hold even stronger, whether it's a cank or a compulsion
32:35
Speaker 1: or an addiction, one driven by habit or by some
32:38
Speaker 1: deep seated psychological trauma. And look, I'm clearly not Sigmund
32:42
Speaker 1: Freud here, and I'm not cank er compulsion shaming either.
32:46
Speaker 1: We all have something, some more destructive than others, of course,
32:50
Speaker 1: and obviously George Michael had the kind of demons that
32:52
Speaker 1: you couldn't cast out by two weeks in a jail cell.
32:56
Speaker 1: A sex icon for the Ages, an icon for the
32:59
Speaker 1: gay community. At life, arch a man who owned numerous
33:01
Speaker 1: pieces of luxury property and lived the sort of life
33:04
Speaker 1: that most of us will only dream of. With all that,
33:07
Speaker 1: he was never able to feel as sexy as he
33:09
Speaker 1: was seen by others, And so he was back to
33:13
Speaker 1: texting his friend Paul, back to asking for delivery of
33:17
Speaker 1: Champagne aka GHB, Back to a manufactured sense of sexiness
33:24
Speaker 1: back in that g hole, unconscious, this time not behind
33:28
Speaker 1: the wheel, but in his bathtub, where an overdose sent
33:32
Speaker 1: him straight to the emergency room. Two years later, George
33:37
Speaker 1: Michael was dead at fifty three years old, discovered by
33:42
Speaker 1: his latest boyfriend on Christmas Day. The official conclusion was
33:46
Speaker 1: natural causes stemming from a heart disease that makes it
33:49
Speaker 1: difficult for your body to pump blood. But considering that
33:53
Speaker 1: his family chose to withhold the toxicology report, and also
33:56
Speaker 1: considering that he died completely alone at some point on
33:59
Speaker 1: Christmas or early Christmas morning, it's entirely possible that it
34:03
Speaker 1: was a less medical and more emotional affliction of the
34:06
Speaker 1: heart that did in George Michael, once one of the
34:10
Speaker 1: biggest stars on the planet. And that is that disgrace.
34:17
Speaker 1: I'm Jake Brennan and this is Disgraceland, all right, thanks
34:34
Speaker 1: for getting Kicky with me in this episode. This week's
34:36
Speaker 1: question of the week is how many times have you
34:39
Speaker 1: had sex in a public toilet? No, that's obviously not.
34:42
Speaker 1: The question of the week's question is which nineteen eighties
34:45
Speaker 1: MTV era artist is your favorite? Is it mister George
34:48
Speaker 1: Michael or is it someone else who best defines the
34:51
Speaker 1: era for you? And why I want to know? Hit
34:54
Speaker 1: me up at six one seven nine oh six sixty
34:56
Speaker 1: sixty three eight, leave me a voicemail, sent me a text.
34:58
Speaker 1: Hear your answer on the after already bonus episode coming
35:01
Speaker 1: up right after this one, and you can also send
35:03
Speaker 1: your answers to me at disgracelampod, on Instagram, X and Facebook.
35:07
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35:09
Speaker 1: Win some free merch are here comes some credits.
35:14
Speaker 5: Disgraceland was created by Yours Truly and is produced in
35:17
Speaker 5: partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be
35:21
Speaker 5: found on the show notes page at disgracelampod dot com.
35:24
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