Did Simon Le Bon sabotage the final Wham! show?
Not many bands can end their careers on their own terms. From the minute that that first single becomes a hit, the pressure is on to try and make something equally as strong to follow it up, lest one’s career crumble in on itself. While George Michael and Andrew Ridgely may have reached the top of the pop world in no time with Wham!, they did manage to leave their career on the best note they could have imagined.
Before they even had a hit to their name, though, Michael knew that the band had the potential to be huge. After scoring a handful of regional hits with tracks like ‘Wham Rap’, the duo got the opportunity of a lifetime when appearing on Top of the Pops, catapulting them into the stratosphere overnight with massive singles like ‘Bad Boys’.
Even though the group were still in their teens when they got going, Michael was blossoming into one of the greatest songwriters of his generation, including penning hits like ‘Club Tropicana’. While Make It Big would feature the band reaching their creative apex, ‘Careless Whisper’ would signal a change in how they were presented.
Billed as ‘Wham featuring George Michael’, the song would be a precursor to what Michael would be getting up to in his solo career, featuring some of the most sophisticated hooks of his career. While Ridgely may have been able to soak up the adulation of being in a band, he thought Michael would work better as a solo artist than tied to him.
Splitting on good terms, the duo would bid the world one final goodbye when they played two massive shows at Wembley Stadium. Although the group may have had the time of their lives putting on their final performances, one fellow pop star almost ended up sabotaging the entire event.
While Wham! had been at the peak of their popularity in the mid-1980s, Duran Duran were also finding their feet as pop stars, turning into new wave heartthrobs off the back of albums like Rio. As Michael and Ridgely descended upon Wembley, though, frontman Simon Le Bon almost crashed their moment by storming onto the stage during the performance.
Though Michael remembered the good times from the event, he was annoyed at LeBon’s insistence on getting onto the stage, recalling, “[My security guard] said to me, ‘Simon Le Bon would like to come on’. I said, ‘Excuse me, this is the last Wham show ever. Tell him to fuck off’. One of the reasons I’ve always sat on the film from that is that during the last song, which is ‘I’m Your Man’, the very last Wham performance ever, Simon Le Bon is onstage, and he doesn’t know the words, and I’m literally running away from him”.
While much of the footage from that day would later be made public in the Wham! documentary for Netflix, Michael would have nothing but happy memories from that time, later recalling how he thanked Ridgely for helping him become the superstar he turned himself into. His childhood band may have been finished, but Michael had an impressive solo career waiting in the wings for him, Le Bon be damned.
