YouSaid · the spoken record

George Michael

lines on the record: 52
first: 2007-09-30
most recent: 2007-09-30
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Well, I thought about this. and obviously are not allowed to have So I couldn't take Kenny. So that's out But on a desert island who is going to know I've not got a driving license so I can drive around in a DB nine I'll just drive around and around my little desert island on my DB nine because I am obsessed with cars and next two years I'm not going to get to drive one.”
2007-09-30 · Desert Island Discs · George Michael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I take any book of if I'm getting the Bible. Right, I'm getting Shakespeare, which I won't read, by the way. I'm not going to take a jolly book, but I think I would take a book of short stories by Doris Less”
2007-09-30 · Desert Island Discs · George Michael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Actually, this is the heaviest lyrical record on this list, and it's from a gay artist called Rufus Wainwright. And he's written this song called Going to a Town, really laying into the Bush administration talking about America soaking the body of Jesus Christ in blood, fantastic lyrics all over this record and someone that people should definitely check out.”
2007-09-30 · Desert Island Discs · George Michael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think well in all honesty nobody died on me in years you know it took years for me to believe that these blows weren't going to keep coming”
2007-09-30 · Desert Island Discs · George Michael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Depends what you call a problem, really. I'm a happy man, and I can afford my marijuana, so that's not a problem. I'm constantly trying to smoke less. Really? I would like to take absolutely, I'd like to take less. No question. To that degree, it's a problem. Is it a problem in my life? Is it getting in the way of my life in any way? I don't think so. I really don't think so”
2007-09-30 · Desert Island Discs · George Michael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Capable of driving. I've done half of my community service. I did some very interesting work with people with mental health problems and with people with drug addiction and I also scrubbed down some very dirty rooms and made chicken for heaters for some homeless people which was nice. I was quite good apparently even though it was my first time with chicken for heaters.”
2007-09-30 · Desert Island Discs · George Michael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, will you see, when I came out to my mother, I wrote her a letter the day after Anselmo died, because it seemed absolutely simple, it seemed like If there was a message at the moment of his death, it was well this is when you tell your parents, because this is the only part of yourself that you haven't opened up.”
2007-09-30 · Desert Island Discs · George Michael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh Godia, because I am not a liar. I'm too honest to dye my hair, I'm too embarrassed to dye my hair, I'm not a liar, you know But this was one lie that I'd been kind of trying to tell people in my own way for years and years and I don't know if something in me picked the most difficult way to do it.”
2007-09-30 · Desert Island Discs · George Michael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no, no, it would never have happened. I'm not saying the cruise thing would have happened. I'm saying I would never have put myself in the stupid position of doing in America where I knew the level of homophobia. I think for me to do that I was absolutely tempting fate. I think I was sick of the secret. Now that there wasn't any reason to be quiet, now that my mother was no longer in this world and was proud of my sexuality, a strange way of going about telling the world. But I think it was almost like it had to be that, the battle I'd played with the press was so much one of privacy and I felt so loath to actually sit and say I am gay the three words they'd wanted for years. It really wasn't something that needed holding on to anymore, but I just couldn't do it in the regular way. I think I had to do it and fool myself. I had to fool myself that had been dragged out of me.”
2007-09-30 · Desert Island Discs · George Michael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. Well, what are you going to do? So it was a one-off. Right. In my case, you know, I always knew it was going to happen sometime. I was going to get outed one way or another. And the reason I, it took me a good year to admit to myself that it was subconsciously deliberate.”
2007-09-30 · Desert Island Discs · George Michael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There are two reasons I've chosen this record. There are certain records that literally I just can't not move to, and this is one of them. The lyric makes me laugh. It's completely brutal, completely sexist, surprise, surprise, coming from American hip hop record, but it's funny, it is funny. Gold digger.”
2007-09-30 · Desert Island Discs · George Michael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“take longer to recover than others, and there's a situation where your own boss, so no one's kicking you up the ass to get out there and live again and see the positive, you know, but two bereavements losing a lover and your mother within the space of three years is a tough one.”
2007-09-30 · Desert Island Discs · George Michael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Didn't want to do any of that But actually, if what they really reasonably could have expected was when you just made $200 million for a company, you expect them to have a little bit of patience with you, you know. It was very obvious that I was going through something personal that meant I couldn't face the world. What I was actually going through personally was dealing with the fact that the person I cared for most in the world had a term of illness and I didn't know how long that terminal illness would be. I didn't know when I would ever be happy enough to write another song. I was terrified. I was absolutely terrified. At that point in time I had no idea what to do. And it was such a dark period of my life and I thought it was just going to continue that way. I really did. So I struggled with huge depression, especially after my mother died. I struggled with huge depression. And there's a bad combination here. There's someone who doesn't take bereavement very well. I don't think any of us do, but some of us, I think.”
2007-09-30 · Desert Island Discs · George Michael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I mean, I did sign a piece of paper aged eighteen that effectively, considering I've only been able to be sold rather than be free, effectively the results of that deal have only just ended. I'm just free.”
2007-09-30 · Desert Island Discs · George Michael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Her next record Goldfrap, that first Goldfrap album Felt Mountain is a great, great album, you know. It's amazingly elegant production. I'm a real admirer of her voice.”
2007-09-30 · Desert Island Discs · George Michael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I think I'm absolutely I think the album is a beautiful reminder of him. I wouldn't go through it again to make a great album. Don't get me wrong, you know, this man's life was much more important to me than entertaining people. I never want to feel that loss, I'd never want to feel that depth of emotion again. I hope he's very, very proud of it somewhere.”
2007-09-30 · Desert Island Discs · George Michael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We see unfortunately I wasn't writing anything I'd already just released an album when I met him, and then by the time he was I actually made another album he died, which is what the album was about. And to be perfectly honest, I think my best album, I think it probably will always be my best album, and I never want to be that inspired again, as I say to people, you know.”
2007-09-30 · Desert Island Discs · George Michael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“About three months before I lost my court case. Yes. So it was not a good year. It was A's related, yeah. I mean, he was a couple of years older than me. He very likely picked it up in New York before people had any inkling that New York was actually a hotbed of this new disease.”
2007-09-30 · Desert Island Discs · George Michael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was twenty seven, and I'd just started my first proper relationship, which is pretty old, isn't it really? Unfortunately, within six months I knew that he was terminally ill. So it was a very strange first love, you know, it was very distorted by the situation, but it was also a wonderful experience, you know.”
2007-09-30 · Desert Island Discs · George Michael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, what happened was actually it was a strange, strange thing. I don't know if people will relate to this, but there have only been three times in my life that I've really fallen for anyone. And each time on first sight I had something as clicked in my head that told me I was going to know that person. And It happened with Anselmo across a lobby so that I met him in that lobby, and I didn't understand why the click happened. This is a man in a Brazilian hotel I'm never going to see him again. Why did that happen? I didn't understand what was going on. This was the first love of my entire life. This was the first person I ever shared my life with. It was tragic that I lost him, but it was a wonderful, wonderful experience meeting him.”
2007-09-30 · Desert Island Discs · George Michael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Did I know? Actually, I'd probably just listen to my own songs on a desert island to remind myself that I was once known and famous, because I'd be explaining it to crustaceans, wouldn't I?”
2007-09-30 · Desert Island Discs · George Michael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So the next record quite appropriately is being boring by Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe, Pet Shop Boys. Neil Tennant at a certain point in the eighties was writing the most beautiful songs. No one wants to hear frightening, terrifying songs about AIDS, but they do if they're gay and they've lost friends, they do want to hear those people referred to and remembered and honored. And I think some of Neil's work did that beautifully.”
2007-09-30 · Desert Island Discs · George Michael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, when I was 19, I came out to various friends and one of my sisters, and I said I was going to talk to my mum and dad and was persuaded in no uncertain terms that it really wasn't the best idea. By friends, but they weren't really I don't think they were trying to protect my career or their careers. I think they were literally just thinking of my dad. Because, you know, when you're 19, that's as far as you look at your parents and say, oh, don't tell your dad, my God, your dad will hit the roof. And then very soon after that, everything changed. AIDS was just not something I was prepared to bring into my parents' life. I was too young and too immature to know that I was sacrificing as much as I was.”
2007-09-30 · Desert Island Discs · George Michael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I've been out to a lot of people since I was 19. I wish to God it happened then, I have to be honest. I don't think I would have had the same career My ego might not have been satisfied in some areas quite as much, but I think I would have been a happier man.”
2007-09-30 · Desert Island Discs · George Michael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no, absolutely not. Absolutely. And this was, you know, it wasn't as though it was a complete lie. You know, it's not that I had stopped having sex with women, but I was already fully aware that in and of itself was a lie, because what I really had made a connection to was an emotional part of my sexuality, and that was clearly gay. So there was all that feeling fraudulent as well, because I'm not, I think what people have to acknowledge if they know my behaviour since I've come out or since I outed myself accidentally, but probably not accidentally. I think there's a level of honesty that's quite obviously natural to me that I'm uncomfortable with anything else. I try to understand firstly how much I love my family and the AIDS was the predominant feature of being gay in the eighties and early nineties, as far as any parent was concerned, and my mother was still alive and every single day would have been a nightmare for her thinking about what I might be subjected to. So yeah, there were all these kinds of”
2007-09-30 · Desert Island Discs · George Michael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's a level of deification in America that you just don't get over here. You get quite the opposite over here, don't you? For an English boy, that was kind of, I was 24 and still quite afraid, still not knowing to be honest with you how to spend money. I was terrified of my lifestyle maybe removing my ability to connect to what I did. And I freaked out. I said, I don't want to make any more videos. I don't think I'll ever tour again. I have to step back.”
2007-09-30 · Desert Island Discs · George Michael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now, if I was on an island, I'd be so furious. I think I'd need to vent anger every once in a while. Do you know what I mean?”
2007-09-30 · Desert Island Discs · George Michael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My fourth choice was Nirvana This record is the best produced rock record in the history of rock, I think, is not necessarily the greatest song, it's a phenomenal record. Obviously, it was a music industry changing record. It changed everything in America overnight, you know, because it's an absolute classic.”
2007-09-30 · Desert Island Discs · George Michael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“from who I wasn't like I had found it hard to make friends I made plenty of friends I just I had no physical confidence whatsoever and I looked up to Andrew on such a level because he just oozed confidence out of every pore and then suddenly we were massively successful and I went from being Andrew's kind of shadow as a sexually confident being to being really in the center of attention and at that level somehow I lost all my confidence I suppose also the realization that bisexuality was no longer a reality for me and I suddenly felt like a fake so the whole thing just turned me into someone who really felt the camera was my enemy.”
2007-09-30 · Desert Island Discs · George Michael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the image that stuck in my head of what I wanted to be was David Cassidy came to England for the first time, and there was a shot that stuck with me more than anything else. There was a shot of him in slow motion, head in a football around on the top of the LWT building. They then panned over the side of the LWT building, and there were just thousands of these girls screaming, obviously, but they couldn't get to him. There was all that adulation and they couldn't get to him. And somehow my desire for safety, you know, because I was quite an insecure child and my desire for fame were kind of locked up in that moment.”
2007-09-30 · Desert Island Discs · George Michael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But for a while it was just absolutely magical, playing out and with your best mate, you know, playing out your fantasies, it was just a dream, obviously, but no, I think what I was doing was I was supremely confident that I was writing pop classics, to be honest with you, but I was also supremely aware that if I kind of left the imagery a little bit more to Andrew. Kids kind of loved it”
2007-09-30 · Desert Island Discs · George Michael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're tired of what's gone before. Not at all, but I'm not on top of things at all. In fact, I was actually just telling you, I mean, it's fairly tragic for someone who's lived for the radio. But since I don't have a license, I don't listen to the radio anymore because I listen to the radio in the car. So for the next two years, my radio listening is probably going to be a bit slim.”
2007-09-30 · Desert Island Discs · George Michael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Number three is Nils Barclay. I think it sold fifty percent of all singles in the first six months of last year, and that's really saying something, you know. An amazing song is amazing song. Occasionally something left afield comes through and people see it for what it is, which is one of those old classics, you know, the kind of records we used to hear quite often. And it stands head and shoulders above everything else.”
2007-09-30 · Desert Island Discs · George Michael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I thought it was at some point I realised everything you do is you, even if it's the lies you tell, even if it's an act, it's the part of the real me, isn't it? Because that's what I want people to think I am.”
2007-09-30 · Desert Island Discs · George Michael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yorhos Girago Banoli. That was very good. All you have to do is kind of soften all the consonants. If you say Jorgos Giriago Banayodu, that's it. Whereas it reads Giorgios, Kiriakos Paniotu.”
2007-09-30 · Desert Island Discs · George Michael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It took a long time to spend it. That's the shocking thing. When you've just given up your job at the cinema, five hundred pounds is like I went into that office and gave up that job as though I'd just become a diamond dealer. So yeah, everything's relative, isn't it? It took me a while to spend it, yeah.”
2007-09-30 · Desert Island Discs · George Michael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh my god, I had five hundred pounds. I'd never been more flush, and I thought five hundred pounds was quite a good deal for thirty years, actually. Considering I'm really only just free of that original contract now.”
2007-09-30 · Desert Island Discs · George Michael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, no, I think we were 18. I just turned 18 when we got signed and we were, I think we were still eighteen by the time we had the first record out”
2007-09-30 · Desert Island Discs · George Michael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And suddenly I all I wanted to know about was music. It just seemed a very, very strange thing. And I have a theory that maybe it was something to do with this accident because this whole left brain, right brain thing. Nobody in my family seemed to notice, but I became absolutely obsessed with music and everything changed after that.”
2007-09-30 · Desert Island Discs · George Michael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, that didn't actually stop me from listening to the best Elton John and the best queen records. But something strange happened, the age of about eight. I had a head injury, and I know it sounds bizarre and unlikely, but it was quite a bad bang. I had it stitched up and stuff, but all my interest changed, everything changed in six months. I had been obsessed with insects and creepy crawlies. I used to get up at five o'clock in the morning and go out into this field behind our garden and collect insects before everyone else got up.”
2007-09-30 · Desert Island Discs · George Michael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Roxy Music at both ends of the spectrum, Brian Ferry's made some of the sexiest music of the last thirty years. It's so original and it's so sexy and it's so insistent, I suppose. This is called Do the Strand.”
2007-09-30 · Desert Island Discs · George Michael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Very successfully and moved us out of a very working class environment into a middle class one. That didn't seem so incongruous because my mother, strangely enough, found out when her mother died that her mother had in fact been Jewish. So actually her origins weren't English, but she was incredibly victorian because her mother had been disowned for marrying a Gentile, but her mother came from a very wealthy Jewish family, and My mother carried with her some very Victorian ideas that really did not go at all with my father's upwardly mobile. My mother absolutely had no ambition for money, thought money was the root of all evil, so being half my mother.”
2007-09-30 · Desert Island Discs · George Michael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“England, as you say, you were. My father was the absolute archetypal nineteen fifties immigrant from Cyprus, very determined, and every single member of his family made something themselves in this country. They're a typical immigrant family that worked their asses often and reap the rewards.”
2007-09-30 · Desert Island Discs · George Michael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Deliberate strategy. Absolutely. But by the time I was 22 or 23, I knew that I was chasing something that was making me unhappy.”
2007-09-30 · Desert Island Discs · George Michael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To suffer. I suffer like crazy, I suffer all around it, I've suffered terrible things, obviously bereavements and public humiliations and blah blah blah but my career just seems to always write itself like a duck in a bath, you know, like a plastic duck in a bath. And I think in some ways I resent that”
2007-09-30 · Desert Island Discs · George Michael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because the culture was patriarchal and it was to indulge the boy. I have two wonderful sisters who never got their way as young Greek girls, obviously. And I grew up with this terrible feeling of guilt. I had feelings of guilt as a small child, knowing that I was always the one that was going to get the easy ride. And I carried that propensity for guilt in strangest ways. And I think I finally realized one of the reasons my life has been so extreme and has felt so in some ways self-destructive is that it sounds arrogant but I never had any feeling that my talent was going to let me down. I had a feeling that I had a huge advantage over a lot of other people in the industry and a lot of other people in my own life obviously that I love and care about very much and I think in a strange way I've spent much of the last fifteen or twenty years trying to derail my own career because it never seemed”
2007-09-30 · Desert Island Discs · George Michael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'll tell you this is a really, I've never said any of this before, but it's odd. I'm just kind of ridiculously ready to say these things now. But I have a huge propensity for guilt because I was the boy in a Greek family who could do what he liked from a very early age and did.”
2007-09-30 · Desert Island Discs · George Michael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is the best female vocalist I've heard in my entire career, and one of the best writers. So all I can say is please please understand how brilliant you are, and I wish every success in the future, and I know she can get past the media. I don't know if she can get past. Other things, but she's a fantastic talent and we should support her.”
2007-09-30 · Desert Island Discs · George Michael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't want adulation. Well, it's not the adulation that's been nice, it's the absolute warmth actually, it's the complete generosity. I genuinely believe that the purpose of what I do is a positive one. You know, I really do genuinely believe that most of my songs are life affirming in some way, you know, and that actually people who don't care about your music thinking, lots of things about you that aren't true really doesn't matter. You know, it really doesn't matter. And what's wonderful is that a lot of them that do think they're true really don't care. So, you know, I'm such a lucky man. It's so annoying to have people try and give the impression that the world is a totally screwed up place. And I really needed those people in front of me night after night to tell me that it wasn't. You know, I really needed it so badly. I'm so grateful to them.”
2007-09-30 · Desert Island Discs · George Michael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A long time ago Well I don't like people thinking that I've been done for grass and other drugs when I've been done for sleeping pills, but I can't do anything about the fact that the story lasts longer than the fact that you've told people it didn't happen, you know. When I realized it was that one-sided and that really me telling people the truth wasn't going to make any difference, I just really, I've managed in the last 18 months to master the art of not reading them, which I should have done 20 years ago, really.”
2007-09-30 · Desert Island Discs · George Michael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source