Wham! The Final
Saturday 28 June 1986,Wembley Stadium.
A desperate horde, 72,000 in total sneaked towards the twin towers, seeped into the stadium and then settled, a little too tightly packed, on the famous rectangle. Once past the badge-covered screamers - perhaps 30 per cent of the total assembly - who jostled noisily and tearfully at the front, no discernible style of dress unified the crowd at all. Young, by and large, and distinctly 'non-rock', they had drifted to London from a hundred parochial towns. Office teams from Mansfield, a pack of 'schoolies' from Stoke-on-Trent, trainee nurses from Chelmsford and scorers of young dating couples, garage mechanics perhaps, clutching their rather more hyper girlfriends as close as possible. They could have been plucked, at random, from any nightspot in the country.
They were simply a cross-section of the nation's youth. Ordinary, excitable, not particularly well behaved, and not menacing, either. Wham! fans together for the very last time. And together they howled at the sight of the eternally parodic Gary Glitter, performing at Wembley for the first time since 1972. They bounced merrily to Nick Heyward, whose run of Haircut 100 and solo hits were recent enough to be lodged, just, in the minds of the majority of the crowd. It was extremely hot - so hot that the stewards believed they had been given licence to dowse the crowd, especially the T-shirted girls, with jets of often unwelcome water. This official stupidity soon spread into the crowd where, alas, oafish lads fell into yob mode, squirting cans of lager over everyone and anyone, transforming a mild, good-natured pop event into artless idiocy.
Following this came a screening of the film that would have been Wham! in China: A Cultural Revolution, now transformed into the less ambitious, post-Anderson video project produced by Martin Lewis and Jazz Summers and blandly retitled 'Foreign Skies'. At 7:35pm, four hours after Glitter's 'amusing' appearance, audience impatience was skillfully transformed into fevered anticipation as the familiar strains of 'Everything She Wants' drifted over the crowd.
And suddenly, a leather-clad, stubble-faced, short-haired George Michael appeared, dancing alone part from two anonymous and routine black dancers.
The crowd's glee had exploded and died before the three supporting members of into George's Wham! fell happily slipstream, with Andrew hamming it up supremely, passing his cloak to a giggling and Shirlie, theur figures hugged by spray-on Pepsi leather dresses. Following the sprightly choreograohy of 'Club Tropicana', George took hold of the microphone and, at last, added a touch of personality, of warmth to the proceedings.
"This is obviously the most important gig we have ever played", he stressed, ignoring the resulting cheers. "We've got four years of thank yous to say this evening and I know we are going to enjoy saying them, so let's get started."
And from that moment, things warmed up. George had made eye contact with the first few adoring rows of the crowd and their subsequent squeaky responses filtered across the stadium, setting things up nicely for sixty minutes of solid, back-to-back Wham! highlights, all delievered with the expected stunning choreography. George's galloping athlecism controlled the camp posturing of Andrew and the girls who, vis a series of deft costume changes, fell into rather crass parody spanning the history of rock'n'roll, although not in chronological order.
One hour in, with the infectious dancing having permeated the ranks of the police officers - unprecedented, surely - the garish, burly figure of Ronald McDonald sauntered cheekily onstage, causing the initial bewilderment in the crowd to transform into cheery recognition as, sitting behind a white grand piano, he was suddenly, quite clearly, revealed as being Elton John. He was no stranger, of course, to the vast, heady climes of enormous stadiums but his curious costume was perhaps an attempt to disguise his middle-aged girth, all the more obvious as he shared the stage with at least four examples of rather svelte youth.
'The Edge of Heaven' had passed before George fully acknowledged Elton John's presence with a somewhat dour run-though of 'Candle In The Wind', George's vocals adding an eerie edge to Elton's classic. Later in the surprisingly long set, Elton John returned, his tasteless McDonald creation abandoned in favour of a pink grape jacket, his head capped by a pink Mohican wig. Would he ever give up trying to upstage Wham!?
Meanwhile, to complete the atmosphere of pop-star chumminess, Duran Duran's Simon Le Bon - who, like Andrew, had found his true spiritual ome in the posey South of France resorts of Nice, Juan Les Pins and Antibes, and who had also become a symbol of the sockless 1980's - joined George on vocals. And the final image, to accompanying wails of absuld grief from the crowd, saw George and Andrew clasped together, dripping with tears and sweat, waving a last good bye to their fans.
The spotlight died, and so did Wham!.
A desperate horde, 72,000 in total sneaked towards the twin towers, seeped into the stadium and then settled, a little too tightly packed, on the famous rectangle. Once past the badge-covered screamers - perhaps 30 per cent of the total assembly - who jostled noisily and tearfully at the front, no discernible style of dress unified the crowd at all. Young, by and large, and distinctly 'non-rock', they had drifted to London from a hundred parochial towns. Office teams from Mansfield, a pack of 'schoolies' from Stoke-on-Trent, trainee nurses from Chelmsford and scorers of young dating couples, garage mechanics perhaps, clutching their rather more hyper girlfriends as close as possible. They could have been plucked, at random, from any nightspot in the country.
They were simply a cross-section of the nation's youth. Ordinary, excitable, not particularly well behaved, and not menacing, either. Wham! fans together for the very last time. And together they howled at the sight of the eternally parodic Gary Glitter, performing at Wembley for the first time since 1972. They bounced merrily to Nick Heyward, whose run of Haircut 100 and solo hits were recent enough to be lodged, just, in the minds of the majority of the crowd. It was extremely hot - so hot that the stewards believed they had been given licence to dowse the crowd, especially the T-shirted girls, with jets of often unwelcome water. This official stupidity soon spread into the crowd where, alas, oafish lads fell into yob mode, squirting cans of lager over everyone and anyone, transforming a mild, good-natured pop event into artless idiocy.
Following this came a screening of the film that would have been Wham! in China: A Cultural Revolution, now transformed into the less ambitious, post-Anderson video project produced by Martin Lewis and Jazz Summers and blandly retitled 'Foreign Skies'. At 7:35pm, four hours after Glitter's 'amusing' appearance, audience impatience was skillfully transformed into fevered anticipation as the familiar strains of 'Everything She Wants' drifted over the crowd.
And suddenly, a leather-clad, stubble-faced, short-haired George Michael appeared, dancing alone part from two anonymous and routine black dancers.
The crowd's glee had exploded and died before the three supporting members of into George's Wham! fell happily slipstream, with Andrew hamming it up supremely, passing his cloak to a giggling and Shirlie, theur figures hugged by spray-on Pepsi leather dresses. Following the sprightly choreograohy of 'Club Tropicana', George took hold of the microphone and, at last, added a touch of personality, of warmth to the proceedings."This is obviously the most important gig we have ever played", he stressed, ignoring the resulting cheers. "We've got four years of thank yous to say this evening and I know we are going to enjoy saying them, so let's get started."
And from that moment, things warmed up. George had made eye contact with the first few adoring rows of the crowd and their subsequent squeaky responses filtered across the stadium, setting things up nicely for sixty minutes of solid, back-to-back Wham! highlights, all delievered with the expected stunning choreography. George's galloping athlecism controlled the camp posturing of Andrew and the girls who, vis a series of deft costume changes, fell into rather crass parody spanning the history of rock'n'roll, although not in chronological order.
One hour in, with the infectious dancing having permeated the ranks of the police officers - unprecedented, surely - the garish, burly figure of Ronald McDonald sauntered cheekily onstage, causing the initial bewilderment in the crowd to transform into cheery recognition as, sitting behind a white grand piano, he was suddenly, quite clearly, revealed as being Elton John. He was no stranger, of course, to the vast, heady climes of enormous stadiums but his curious costume was perhaps an attempt to disguise his middle-aged girth, all the more obvious as he shared the stage with at least four examples of rather svelte youth.
'The Edge of Heaven' had passed before George fully acknowledged Elton John's presence with a somewhat dour run-though of 'Candle In The Wind', George's vocals adding an eerie edge to Elton's classic. Later in the surprisingly long set, Elton John returned, his tasteless McDonald creation abandoned in favour of a pink grape jacket, his head capped by a pink Mohican wig. Would he ever give up trying to upstage Wham!?Meanwhile, to complete the atmosphere of pop-star chumminess, Duran Duran's Simon Le Bon - who, like Andrew, had found his true spiritual ome in the posey South of France resorts of Nice, Juan Les Pins and Antibes, and who had also become a symbol of the sockless 1980's - joined George on vocals. And the final image, to accompanying wails of absuld grief from the crowd, saw George and Andrew clasped together, dripping with tears and sweat, waving a last good bye to their fans.
The spotlight died, and so did Wham!.