1979-80
(taken from BARE )  |
George and Andrew ... finaly formed their first band in the summer of 1979, the group was a Ska outfit whose name attempted to conjure up all the hand-made mohair smoothness of Two-Tone.
(Two-Tone was a spirited revival of Ska, reggae's jaunty, upbeat Jamaican forebear.
Two-Tone revived the Mod sensibility of the early 1960s and soon Top of the Pops, the Ellis Island for new English pop, was brimming with young people dressed in mohair suits, white socks and midnight shades.) The Executive were formed after the summer exams and, following months of heated rehearsals in various living rooms, they played their first show on 5 november, a misty Bonfire night, in a Methodist church hall in Bushey where Boy Scouts usually practised trying their knots. The band invitated all their friend and, despite months of acrimony in rehearsal, The Executives suddenly came good on the night. Bushey legend remembers George Michael's stage debut as a success. The Executive consisted of George, Andrew, Andrew's brother Paul (aka Paul Ridgeley), David Austin (aka David Mortimer) and Andrew Leaver. This other Andrew was born on the same day as Andrew Ridgeley, who remembers him being exceptionally talented. (Andrew Leaver was to die of cancer at the tragically early age of twenty.) Under the Wham! logo - two young men dancing in silhouette - on the Wham's first album, Fantastic, would be a dedication to Andrew Leaver and another friend, Paul Atkins, which had been killed in a car crash.) |
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By the time The Executive were a performing band, Andrew Ridgeley had left school for the leisurely academic life of Cassio College. George stayed on, coasting through his Art and English Literature courses (he had wandered away from Music Theory), and for the first time it seemed that their childhood friendship was going to fade away... Their friendship would have gone the way of all the finite bonds of childhood if it hadn't been for the band, their mitual insurance against adult life. The Executive banged out the happy, sunny syncopations of Ska - Rude Boy, their theme tune, was written at their first rehearsal - but there was nothing light-hearted about life in the band. Their rehearsals in their parents' living rooms were fraught with amateur hysterics - smoking amplifiers, electric shocks and screaming fits. The band dropped down to a four-piece when Andrew Leaver left. They went into a sixteen-track studio to cut a demo tape, recording their first-born "Rude Boy" plus a Ska cover of the old Andy Williams' tearjerker (taken from the album "The Essence Of Andy Williams"), Can't Get Used To Losing You. The most bizzare part of The Executive's canon was their Ska version of Beethoven's Für Elise. With their touring circuit extended to include Cassio College, where Andrew Ridgeley was taking his hedonism masterclass, The Executive demo tape began its ill-fated journey around the Artist and Repertoire (A&R) departments of the record companies. George and Andrew would take time off from scholl and college, travel to the capital and then sit around in the waiting rooms of the music business untim some lethargic talent-spotter finally agreed to see them. But even when they were granted an audience, the A&R man who lolled in his chair on the other side of the desk invariably pressed the STOP button before their tape had gone very far. 'Come back in the next millenium,' seemed to be the general consensus among the major labels, thought Andrew, and even those sympathetic to the Ska cause failed to offer them anything resembling a deal. It was part of the young band experience - after the exhilaration of first performing live comes the long, disheartening round of record company rejection. Andrew was cocky enough to attribute the negative response of the record companies to the advanced ages and modest IQs of the men who staffed the industry's A&R departments. George was confident enough to think that perhaps "Rude Boy" was sufficiently derivative to deserve all the rejection it had heaped upon it. He would do better next time... The demise of The Executive turned out to be one of those sad natural deaths of adolescence, that time when childhood friendships - and schoolboy bands - once so intense and important, suddenly run out of steam. David Austin had promised his fellow band members a gig at Harrow College, where he was taking what Andrew smirkingly referred to as 'an air conditioning course'. Harrow was closer to London and more of a genuine stop on the gig circuit than The Executive had been used to in the past. This was their big break. The Executive were alleged to be supporting wrinkled punk veterans, The Vibrators. There was only a week before the big night when George and Andrew - prompted by a certain unease that they couldn't quite put their finger on - called social secretary of the college and discovered that he had never heard of them. George and Andrew were incensed and The Executive were swiftly put out of their misery. In the band's aftermath, David went off to work with a group in Thailand, Paul Ridgeley defected to a jazz-funk outfit and George and Andrew attempted to form a new group with some older musicians. But these local players had too many domestic responsibilities to make any real commitment to a young group crackling with ambition. So it was only the two of them now. And adult life was closing in fast. |
But now I really had a go at him. I said, you have been rubbing this shit into my face for the last five years. I told him, there is no way I am not going to try to do this so the least you could do is give me some moral support. 'All seventeen-year-olds want to be pop stars,' he said. 'No, Dad,' I said. 'All twelve-year-olds want to be pop stars.'
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