https://soundcloud.com/aefan/wham-golden-soul-fantastic-unreleased

I'd be interested in hearing The Executive demo tape. I wonder if it still exists.

MickyDolenz said:

Very strange that he hasn´t used this outtake yet.

By the way, what is he up to these days? Haven´t heard from him in a long time.

that track has been about for ages. the song wasn't considered good enough for a wham record so george gave it away for use on the boogie box high album which came out in 1989. the wham version leaked a while back

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fnsY_Cw7Gs

What a terrible tune.

dancerella said:

What pray tell is that??

George and Andrew ... finaly formed their first band in the summer of 1979, the group was a Ska outfit whose name attempted to conjure up all the hand-made mohair smoothness of Two-Tone. (Two-Tone was a spirited revival of Ska, reggae's jaunty, upbeat Jamaican forebear. Two-Tone revived the Mod sensibility of the early 1960s and soon Top of the Pops, the Ellis Island for new English pop, was brimming with young people dressed in mohair suits, white socks and midnight shades.)

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The Executive were formed after the summer exams and, following months of heated rehearsals in various living rooms, they played their first show on 5 november, a misty Bonfire night, in a Methodist church hall in Bushey where Boy Scouts usually practised trying their knots. The band invitated all their friend and, despite months of acrimony in rehearsal, The Executives suddenly came good on the night. Bushey legend remembers George Michael's stage debut as a success.

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The Executive consisted of George, Andrew, Andrew's brother Paul (aka Paul Ridgeley), David Austin (aka David Mortimer) and Andrew Leaver. This other Andrew was born on the same day as Andrew Ridgeley, who remembers him being exceptionally talented. (Andrew Leaver was to die of cancer at the tragically early age of twenty.)

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Under the Wham! logo - two young men dancing in silhouette - on the Wham's first album, Fantastic, would be a dedication to Andrew Leaver and another friend, Paul Atkins, which had been killed in a car crash.)

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By the time The Executive were a performing band, Andrew Ridgeley had left school for the leisurely academic life of Cassio College. George stayed on, coasting through his Art and English Literature courses (he had wandered away from Music Theory), and for the first time it seemed that their childhood friendship was going to fade away.

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Their friendship would have gone the way of all the finite bonds of childhood if it hadn't been for the band, their mitual insurance against adult life. The Executive banged out the happy, sunny syncopations of Ska - Rude Boy, their theme tune, was written at their first rehearsal - but there was nothing light-hearted about life in the band. Their rehearsals in their parents' living rooms were fraught with amateur hysterics - smoking amplifiers, electric shocks and screaming fits.

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The band dropped down to a four-piece when Andrew Leaver left. They went into a sixteen-track studio to cut a demo tape, recording their first-born "Rude Boy" plus a Ska cover of the old Andy Williams' tearjerker (taken from the album "The Essence Of Andy Williams"), Can't Get Used To Losing You. The most bizzare part of The Executive's canon was their Ska version of Beethoven's Für Elise.

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With their touring circuit extended to include Cassio College, where Andrew Ridgeley was taking his hedonism masterclass, The Executive demo tape began its ill-fated journey around the Artist and Repertoire (A&R) departments of the record companies. George and Andrew would take time off from scholl and college, travel to the capital and then sit around in the waiting rooms of the music business untim some lethargic talent-spotter finally agreed to see them. But even when they were granted an audience, the A&R man who lolled in his chair on the other side of the desk invariably pressed the STOP button before their tape had gone very far.

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'Come back in the next millenium,' seemed to be the general consensus among the major labels, thought Andrew, and even those sympathetic to the Ska cause failed to offer them anything resembling a deal. It was part of the young band experience - after the exhilaration of first performing live comes the long, disheartening round of record company rejection. Andrew was cocky enough to attribute the negative response of the record companies to the advanced ages and modest IQs of the men who staffed the industry's A&R departments. George was confident enough to think that perhaps "Rude Boy" was sufficiently derivative to deserve all the rejection it had heaped upon it. He would do better next time.

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The demise of The Executive turned out to be one of those sad natural deaths of adolescence, that time when childhood friendships - and schoolboy bands - once so intense and important, suddenly run out of steam. David Austin had promised his fellow band members a gig at Harrow College, where he was taking what Andrew smirkingly referred to as 'an air conditioning course'. Harrow was closer to London and more of a genuine stop on the gig circuit than The Executive had been used to in the past. This was their big break. The Executive were alleged to be supporting wrinkled punk veterans, The Vibrators. There was only a week before the big night when George and Andrew - prompted by a certain unease that they couldn't quite put their finger on - called social secretary of the college and discovered that he had never heard of them. George and Andrew were incensed and The Executive were swiftly put out of their misery.

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In the band's aftermath, David went off to work with a group in Thailand, Paul Ridgeley defected to a jazz-funk outfit and George and Andrew attempted to form a new group with some older musicians. But these local players had too many domestic responsibilities to make any real commitment to a young group crackling with ambition.

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So it was only the two of them now. And adult life was closing in fast.
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George: Me and my dad were having this big argument. We were driving in the car and I was playing him this demo tape. Apart from "Rude Boy" I had done something with David and I was plugging this thing around all the record companies as well. And I remember playing it in the car to my dad and he was going on about how I had to realize that there was no future in this for me. He had been telling me all this for years and I had given up arguing with him long ago - I knew he wouldn't take any notice. But now I really had a go at him. I said, you have been rubbing this shit into my face for the last five years. I told him, there is no way I am not going to try to do this so the least you could do is give me some moral support.

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'All seventeen-year-olds want to be pop stars,' he said.

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'No, Dad,' I said. 'All twelve-year-olds want to be pop stars.'

unique said:

that track has been about for ages. the song wasn't considered good enough for a wham record so george gave it away for use on the boogie box high album which came out in 1989. the wham version leaked a while back

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fnsY_Cw7Gs

the wham version didnt leak a 'while back' it leaked when i posted it. where was it posted ages ago?

MickyDolenz said:

I'd be interested in hearing The Executive demo tape. I wonder if it still exists.

i recall seeing gm ska thing on youtube a while back like the bands very early demo of careless whisper or something

[Edited 4/12/15 11:26am]

Dilan said:

unique said:

that track has been about for ages. the song wasn't considered good enough for a wham record so george gave it away for use on the boogie box high album which came out in 1989. the wham version leaked a while back

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fnsY_Cw7Gs

the wham version didnt leak a 'while back' it leaked when i posted it. where was it posted ages ago?

yes it did leak a while back. i know who leaked it originally, and i know the person who's soundcloud you posted. he got it from the first person. but it's been around GM fans for a while and i think been on youtube since 2011

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGlgore8LD0

unique said:

Dilan said:

the wham version didnt leak a 'while back' it leaked when i posted it. where was it posted ages ago?

yes it did leak a while back. i know who leaked it originally, and i know the person who's soundcloud you posted. he got it from the first person. but it's been around GM fans for a while and i think been on youtube since 2011

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGlgore8LD0

that's 'soul boy' not 'golden soul'

Dilan said:

unique said:

yes it did leak a while back. i know who leaked it originally, and i know the person who's soundcloud you posted. he got it from the first person. but it's been around GM fans for a while and i think been on youtube since 2011

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGlgore8LD0

that's 'soul boy' not 'golden soul'

both leaked around the same time

unique said:

Dilan said:

that's 'soul boy' not 'golden soul'

both leaked around the same time

are you sure? its not on youtube nor was it discussed on the george michael forums as normally every new leak is.

Dilan said:

unique said:

both leaked around the same time

are you sure? its not on youtube nor was it discussed on the george michael forums as normally every new leak is.

yeah i'm sure. GM forums are usually pretty dead or are more interested in pictures or being excited about going to live shows than discussing rarities and outtakes which is why i don't bother with them often. theres a crazy amount of stuff

Its not bad actually, Georges voice is already distinctive and quite strong there. But the phrasing and construction of the song is fairly weak, still this is a learning process I guess.

.

You can tell that George Michael had raw vocal talent even back then.

unique said:

Dilan said:

are you sure? its not on youtube nor was it discussed on the george michael forums as normally every new leak is.

yeah i'm sure. GM forums are usually pretty dead or are more interested in pictures or being excited about going to live shows than discussing rarities and outtakes which is why i don't bother with them often. theres a crazy amount of stuff

I´m not a serious fan, more of a casual listener but the older I get, the more respect I have for him and I like GM´s erratic behaviour.

Are there a lot of outtakes? Is there an early version of Careless Whisper somewhere?

I loved the documentary A Different Story (?) , still have it on VHS somewhere. I wish Prince would do something like that but then again, that docu and GMs behaviour seem to be the polar opposite of elusive Prince.

KoolEaze said:

unique said:

yeah i'm sure. GM forums are usually pretty dead or are more interested in pictures or being excited about going to live shows than discussing rarities and outtakes which is why i don't bother with them often. theres a crazy amount of stuff

I´m not a serious fan, more of a casual listener but the older I get, the more respect I have for him and I like GM´s erratic behaviour.

Are there a lot of outtakes? Is there an early version of Careless Whisper somewhere?

I loved the documentary A Different Story (?) , still have it on VHS somewhere. I wish Prince would do something like that but then again, that docu and GMs behaviour seem to be the polar opposite of elusive Prince.

there are a few early versions of careless whisper such as the demo, and of course the jerry wexler mix that was the first main studio recording that GM didn't like and rerecorded the version you will know. the wexler mix was released as a limited 12". there's also an alternate video with the wexler mix. theres an instrumental too. there's quite a lot of outtakes, but mostly alternate versions/mixes of known songs. remember of course that GM does a lot of cover versions which means he doesn't have loads of great unusued songs. there are alternate versions of known songs with different names as they have different lyrics

there was a dvd documentary on sale at the 25 live shows that was pretty good