Andrew Ridgeley: I wish Wham! had played a farewell tour

Wham!'s swansong capped a whirlwind, four-year run of hits

Wham! star Andrew Ridgeley has said he wishes they had taken their final show on the road - 37 years to the day from their farewell gig at Wembley stadium.

Decisively titled The Final, it came nearly four years after their first hit, Young Guns, and marked the start of bandmate George Michael's solo career.

But Ridgeley says he wanted the band's farewell to have taken a little longer.

"I would have liked to tour The Final to be honest," he tells the BBC.

"I felt a final tour to say goodbye to our fans around the world would have been a generous gesture. I felt it was a courtesy to them to have done that. The least we could have done, to be honest with you.

"But I also understood [George's] essential ideology behind having just one show."

• Radio 2 celebrates Wham!

The Final was heavy with emotion.

As the opening bars of Everything She Wants rang around the stadium, George appeared in his trademark leather jacket and glasses and declared: "This is the best thing I've ever looked at. We've got four years of thank-yous to say this evening... and I know we're going to enjoy saying them."

The show, which was attended by 72,000 fans, continued with hits including Club Tropicana, Freedom and Last Christmas, with guest appearances from Simon Le Bon and Elton John - dressed, for some reason, as Ronald McDonald.

Then, after two brief hours, Wham! played I'm Your Man and called it a day.

Demand was so high for the Wembley gig that it could have sold out three times over

Andrew says they always knew the group would "represent a chapter in our lives".

"It was so much about us as friends and our lives together as youngsters [that] it would have restricted George's growth as a songwriter to keep writing within the parameters that Wham! set.

"We'd both outgrown Wham!"

Andrew spoke to the BBC ahead of the release of a Netflix documentary about the band's meteoric rise and a brand new singles box set, called Echoes From the Edge of Heaven.

Here are his memories of being part of the 1980s' biggest pop act.

Bad Boys?

Andrew (left) and George in one of their earliest publicity photos

The Wham! journey began in September 1975, when 12-year-old Andrew volunteered to mentor a transfer student by the name of Georgios Panayiotou. They quickly bonded over their love of music and aversion to school.

"We'd skip class, go to the chip shop, get a chicken and mushroom pie and listen to records. We had a very broad tastes - Queen, Elton John, Led Zeppelin. And we were big Genesis fans. The first gig we went to see was Genesis at Earls Court in 1978. I don't think George ever made mention of it because it didn't quite fit the image he wanted to portray.

"We talked about forming a band from about the age of 14 but George was adamant that it would have to be after his O-levels. There was a lot of pressure on him from his mum and dad.

"But when we'd done our exams, it was like, 'Wait, I need to get my A-levels'. I felt I had to force the issue, so I essentially railroaded him into it."

An early wobble

Wham!s first TV appearance was on Saturday morning children's show Saturday Superstore

Wham!'s first single, Wham Rap!, failed to make the UK's top 100. Their second, Young Guns (Go For It) entered the chart at 87. Their career was hanging in the balance.

"If Young Guns had failed to be a hit, I'm not sure that we'd have had a third single.

"One of the big turning points was getting on [children's TV show] Saturday Superstore. That propelled us to the just outside the top 40. And then, famously, someone dropped out of Top Of The Pops and we were asked to fill in. That performance was absolutely pivotal. In those days, everyone watched Top of the Pops, so a new act would be a talking point the next day."

Wham! mania

The duo quickly became pin-ups, with a fierce rivalry between "Whammies" and "Durannies" over which band had the hottest members

"When I told my dad we'd been offered a record contract, his words were, 'That's very nice, Andrew, but when are you going to get a proper job?'. But our success happened so quickly, those doubts were dispelled very swiftly.

"The first occasion we performed to an audience who were palpably Wham! fans was at the Lyceum for [Capital Radio show] The Best Disco In Town. I do remember being surprised... The reaction was far, far different to the sort of thing we'd get when in some basement disco in Kettering."

Fleet Street comes calling

Andrew gained a reputation as a party animal

Andrew quickly became a fixture of tabloid front pages, with stories about "Randy Andy's" one-night stands, fast cars and nose jobs.

"The Sun fabricated a story of me seeing two Page Three girls and they had a photograph of the two girls posing with a cardboard cut-out of me - because, of course, I'd never met them.

"And they could get away with that. They behaved with and acted with absolute impunity."

In his memoir, Andrew says the focus on his sex life helped "take the heat off" his bandmate, who had come out privately in 1983, but was worried about a homophobic backlash if the media found out.

Wake Me Up Before You Go Go - a new chapter

"The tracks that were written for Fantastic [Wham!'s debut album], are good pop songs. Bad Boys is really well constructed - but George hated it. And I know why he hated it, because he was writing to a formula.

"But in the space of eight months, he'd written Wake Me Up and it was a quantum leap in sophistication, songwriting, arrangement, production. The whole nine yards. It was just different gravy.

"I think Wake Me Up liberated his songwriting. He discovered, that essentially he could do anything he wanted."

A sexual awakening

"My favourite Wham! song is I'm Your Man. It has such a primordial energy.

"It was the first Wham! track that was, lyrically, just about sex. That was a theme that dominated our lives at that point. And musically it expresses the same energy and excitement that the sex probably did!

"I'm Your Man is really a coming of age. When George became sure of his abilities, that was a real transformation. He gained an inner confidence that he'd lacked when we were kids."

The beginning of the end

Wham! became the first Western pop act to tour China in 1985

"When we toured the China and the States in '85, and we'd had a US number one album, we achieved everything we'd set out to.

"And, on my own part, I'd had enough of the consequences of our success. Some of them were unwanted and undesirable, as far as I was concerned, so a break held no fear."

Life after Wham!

After Wham!, George played on Andrew's solo album, and Andrew joined his bandmate on stage for 1991's Rock In Rio Festival

Andrew released one solo album, The Son Of Albert, in 1990, before retreating from the public eye. He's currently preparing to cycle from John O'Groats to Lands End to raise money for the suicide prevention charity Papyrus.

"I get asked, 'Do you still write songs?'. And I suppose I could but it's an awful lot of work trying to get them played [on radio].

"Songs need to be performed and they need to be heard, preferably listened to. There's far too much hearing of music around, and not enough listening."

George and Andrew remained friends until his death in 2016, although they maintained a fierce rivalry over Scrabble.

"Did either of us play the word 'Wham!?'. I don't think we ever had the letters, but we'd have tried! If you put W on a triple letter, that's a good score."

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