Andrew Ridgeley

Andrew John Ridgeley (born 26 January 1963) is an English musician. He is best known for his work in the 1980s in the musical duo Wham!, which consisted of him and George Michael. Wham! were one of the most successful pop acts during the 1980s, selling more than 30 million certified records worldwide from 1982 to 1986. They scored five number one hits in the UK, and two of their singles, "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go", "Everything She Wants" also topped the US Billboard Hot 100. In 2019, Penguin Random House published Ridgeley's memoir Wham! George & Me.

Ridgeley was born in 1963 in Windlesham, Surrey, to Jennifer Jill (née Dunlop; 1943–2009) and Alberto Mario Zacharia (1933–2015), who later changed his surname to Ridgeley. His mother was of English and Scottish descent, while his Jewish father was also of Italian, Yemeni and Egyptian origin. Ridgeley's father's family were expelled from Egypt as a result of the Suez Crisis. He has one sibling, Paul, born February 1964. Ridgeley was raised in Bushey, Hertfordshire, and attended Bushey Meads School. His mother was a schoolteacher at Bushey Heath Primary School, and his father worked for Canon. When George Michael started school, Ridgeley volunteered to take him under his wing.

After the break-up of the short-lived group The Executive (of which Ridgeley, his brother Paul, and Michael were members), Michael and Ridgeley formed the duo Wham! in 1981. The former was the lead vocalist, primary songwriter, and played keyboards, while the latter co-wrote songs, played guitar, and performed backing vocals. They approached various record labels with a homemade demo tape–which took ten minutes to record in Ridgeley's living room–and signed with Innervision Records (distributed by CBS Records). After one album, the duo signed with Epic Records/CBS.

Wham! topped the UK album charts with their first album, Fantastic, which yielded four top ten hits. Their second album, Make It Big, gave them their US breakthrough, producing three No. 1 singles on both the UK and US charts. In 1984, Ridgeley underwent surgery to have his septum straightened to improve his breathing after having broken his nose at age nine. After photos were published in British newspapers showing Ridgeley's bandaged face, Wham!'s manager, Simon Napier-Bell, fabricated a story that the bandages were the result of Ridgeley having been hit in the nose in a nightclub. After days of tabloid headlines, the true reason was revealed.

In 1984, Wham! charted two UK No. 1 singles, and were competing that year with pop rivals Duran Duran to be Britain's biggest pop act. Toward this end, Napier-Bell devised a publicity scheme that he believed would turn them into major international stars: In April 1985, he took Wham! to China for a ten-day visit. They gained huge worldwide media attention when Wham! became the first Western pop group to play in China: after two warm-up shows in Hong Kong, they played a show in Beijing in front of 15,000 people at the Worker's Gymnasium, and one final show in Canton. The visit was recorded for a documentary film titled Wham! in China: Foreign Skies. In 1985, Ridgeley performed at the Live Aid charity concert with other backing singers, while Michael performed with Elton John.

Biography summary from English Wikipedia, photograph via Wikimedia Commons.