George Michael sold more than 100 million records, created a number of truly iconic pop culture moments and, at one point, Princess Diana had a crush on him.
That’s quite a resume, but it doesn’t even scratch the surface when it comes to revealing who the English singer, born Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou, was as an artist.
This is revealed in the most stunning way in George Michael: The Faith Tour, a new concert film made by some of the people who were closest to the artist.
The film was recorded across two consecutive shows in May 1988 at the Palais Omnisports de Paris-Bercy in Paris, and the footage has remained buried until now.
Its release almost a decade after the singer’s death is a must-see experience for his fans and should be compulsory viewing for all music lovers.
Legendary music video director Andy Morahan’s credits include making the West End Girls clip for the Pet Shop Boys, the Summer Rain video for Belinda Carlisle and the epic November Rain by Guns N’ Roses.
But his ultimate claim to fame was working with Michael, making multiple music videos across the singer’s career, including some that are considered bona fide classics of the medium.
When Michael was still one half of Wham! with Andrew Ridgeley, Morahan collaborated with the duo to make the unforgettable music video for Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go.
He reunited with the singer after Wham! broke up, helping to shape the visual aesthetic of the mega-selling solo album that followed — Faith.
Like Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go, the music vid for Faith is seared into the memory of everyone who’s seen it.
“We decided to do a very stripped-back kind of video that was against a white background, and just use certain props like the jukebox and the guitar and the boots and the shades, and just keep it really, really simple,” Morahan says over a video call with PLAY.
“Make it all about the performance and him . . . and it seemed to work perfectly for the song and for him and his image, and it really launched the Faith album.”
The only reason the new concert film exists at all is because Michael asked Morahan to bring his camera crews to the Paris shows on the Faith tour to capture some live footage to use in the music video for another single from that album, Monkey.
After that job was done, the footage sat on a shelf gathering dust until Michael’s lifelong friend and executor of his estate, David Austin, discovered it while archiving the vast treasure trove of material amassed during the singer’s life.
Austin says the Paris shows took place about halfway through the Faith tour, when Michael had fine-tuned his performance as someone who was still getting used to life after Wham!
“His performance was polished. The show was polished. You got to remember, this is somebody who designed every detail in that (concert),” Austin explains.
“The musicians, the arrangements, the structures of the songs, the sound he wanted, so somebody who was involved in everything, and by the time the show had got to Paris, it was a well-oiled machine.
“He served his apprenticeship with Wham! as it were, and by the time he got to the Faith tour, he knew what he was doing, he mastered the art of his writing, his performance and his vocals, so all of that kind of came together.”
From a production perspective, the fact Morahan’s brief was to collect live highlights for a five-minute music video meant he went about capturing the footage very differently than if the goal was to make a concert film.
Instead of basic camera operators and static shots to ensure the show was comprehensively covered, Morahan hired director-of-photography level crew and instructed them to push the boundaries.
“I was saying, ‘Go for the best shots (with lens flare), fling the cameras around a bit’, so . . . it had an energy that you might not have got out of a regular, scripted (concert film),” Morahan says.
“It had an energy that matched George’s energy.”
Morahan and Austin have co-director credits on the concert film, but it opens with a short film directed by someone with an untouchable pedigree in the music industry — Mary McCartney, daughter of Sir Paul, the former Beatle.
Titled Finding Faith, McCartney’s film uses archival images and interviews with Michael as a voice over, allowing the singer to describe this moment in time in his own words.
Growing up in one of the most famous music households on the planet, McCartney was a huge fan of Michael in Wham! and then as a solo artist, before eventually getting to meet the man later in life when, as a photographer, she was invited to have an exhibition in his gallery.
As someone who lived through it as a fan, McCartney remembers the uncertainty of what Michael would do next when he chose to close the chapter on the commercial juggernaut that was Wham! prematurely.
“You could sense he’d almost outgrown where he was,” she remembers.
She says her film captures the singer at a pivotal point in his life, not to mention his career.
“We catch him at a time where he’s like, ‘What am I willing to do for me, because I want to have my own life’,” McCartney says.
“The audio is taken from interviews that George did for a book that he wrote, so they’re very personal recollections.
“He was very honest and very open about how he felt about things . . . but also he had real confidence in his talent, which is also something that I wanted to put forward.
“And then it ends on his connection with the audience and touring, which kind of sets you up, and then you’re into the concert film.”
The film, like the Faith tour itself, is laser focused on Michael to the most minute detail, which, when seen on the big screen with proper cinema surround sound, provides a visceral viewing experience.
But there’s an intimacy, too.
“You see the sweat dripping off his eyebrow,” Austin says.
“You see the audience singing. You see him like half-smile, listening to their response, with his back to the camera.
“There’s all these little moments in there that Andy was able to capture because of the way they went out and filmed it.”
The end result ranks alongside the 2018 Aretha Franklin masterpiece, Amazing Grace, as one of the best concert films of the past 20 years.
For George Michael fans, it more than restores the Faith.
George Michael: The Faith Tour is in cinemas November 12.
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