To this day, although it ended up as the B-side, I still think it's incomplete. That track was 'Blue (Armed With Love)', and after George and Andrew came to the studio we spent 11 hours trying to build it but never quite finished. At the very end of that project, they needed a B-side for 'Club Tropicana' and they had one night to do it. "That's when I first met Andrew and George,” Porter recalls, "and then they worked with Steve Brown to make their first album, Fantastic, recording a few tracks at Good Earth, where I assisted and engineered on some guitar sessions. Then, while still at Good Earth in 1982, he worked with producer Bob Carter on several projects at other London studios, including Mayfair, where they collaborated on 'Wham Rap! (Enjoy What You Do)'. This, in turn, led to an assignment for Porter to carry out some building work for producer Tony Visconti at his commercial facility, Good Earth, and in December 1980, at age 26, he began working there as an assistant engineer.Īfter an auspicious debut, contributing backing vocals to David Bowie's Scary Monsters, Porter learned miking techniques via morning jingles sessions and assisting on recordings by the Boomtown Rats, Hazel O'Connor, John Hiatt and Modern Romance. "I'd say, 'Well, why don't you take off the cowboy hat and dark glasses? If you walk through the airport wearing a raincoat, no one will know.' But he obviously wasn't interested in that.” The Last Days of Wham!Ī Southampton native who relocated to London during the mid-'70s, Porter was a singer in various bands before a keen interest in recording studios and a chance meeting with Phil Lynott resulted in him assembling an eight-track home setup for Thin Lizzy's lead singer/songwriter/bassist. "I went to the States a lot with him when he was working over there and he'd always complain about all of the press attention,” says Chris Porter, whose engineering of Michael's recordings spanned the latter's debut on 'Wham Rap! (Enjoy What You Do)' with Andrew Ridgeley in 1982 through to the 1995 single 'Jesus To A Child'. George Michael on stage during the 1988 Faith World Tour. Forget about walking around incognito - the man born Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou was milking his fame for all it was worth. The young dude I saw perusing the shelves in a local video store was George Michael, looking exactly like he did on the Faith album cover and in the title track's iconic video. The thick blonde hair, black leather jacket, white t-shirt, blue jeans, metal-tipped ankle boots, dark shades, designer stubble - this fan had the image down to a tee. Wham! went their separate ways in 1986, but the triumph of George Michael's debut album Faith in 1987 meant that the success of his solo career was never really in doubt.īack in 1988, when Faith had turned George Michael into one of the biggest stars on the planet and I lived around the corner from his home in north-west London, I ran into a guy who was a dead ringer for the 24-year-old singer, songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist.
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