George Michael carried an air of mystery about him, which matched his soulfulness and seriousness
about his art.
That all hinted at a man who dealt with profound sadness, misery, and heartbreak.
Here's the tragic real-life story of George Michael.
The early years of George Michael don't seem to have been outwardly traumatic, but they
were reportedly marked with a damaging coldness and distance from his family.
The future star was raised in a small London apartment by two parents, but his father,
an emigrant who ran a restaurant, was rarely around, which created a disconnect between
father and son.
According to People magazine, Michael said,
"I was never praised, never held.
So it wasn't exactly the Little House On The Prairie."
While he was interested in music from an early age, he didn't realize he wanted to pursue
music as his life's work until after he got seriously hurt.
In his memoir, Bare, he wrote,
"At the age of about eight I had a head injury and I know it sounds bizarre and unlikely,
but it was quite a bad bang, and I had it stitched up and stuff.
Suddenly, all I wanted to know about was music."
He didn't let his father know about his ambitions right away.
He told Event Magazine,
"Funnily enough, my father always used to say that he didn't think I could sing."
According to a Daily Mail interview with Michael's former Wham! manager, the singer's decades-long
battles with intoxicating substances began relatively late in adulthood, after he'd started
his solo career.
That drug use ultimately turned varied and voluminous.
In September 2008, police in North London discovered Michael in a public restroom using
crack cocaine and marijuana.
The amounts on his person were small, and he was released without further legal action.
According to Kenny Goss, Michael's former romantic partner of 13 years, taking drugs
was a matter of course.
Goss told The Sun,
"I would find drugs and flush everything down the toilet.
He was absent-minded, so [he] would just think he'd lost them."
"He knew how I felt about it, and I would say that was probably the only area that he
wasn't really honest with me about."
Michael himself told The Guardian in 2009 that at the peak of his drug usage, he smoked
in the neighborhood of two dozen joints each day.
By the time of the interview, he was down to "seven or eight a day."
After losing one of his romantic partners to AIDS back in 1993, Michael was understandably
left devastated and in deep mourning for a prolonged period of time.
That only got worse when, in 1996, his mother received news that she had a rapidly destructive,
terminal case of cancer.
She was able to spend one last Christmas with Michael and the rest of her family, eventually
passing away just two months later in February 1997.
In the documentary, George Michael: Freedom, Michael admitted that he was "spiritually
crushed" after her passing.
The singer subsequently fell into a deep, dark sadness.
He admitted,
"I'd never felt that kind of depression.
It was something different to grief.
It was on top of grief, I was grieving for my mother still, but it was something else.
It was the darkest time."
"I just kind of kept banging my head against a brick wall for the best part of three years,
and becoming more and more depressed, it was like a vicious cycle."
In the documentary, Michael also revealed that the mental darkness left him feeling
like his life had been "a waste of time" and that even two decades on, he'd never quite
moved on from his mother's death.
While Michael publicly exhibited the effects of a lifelong struggle with substance abuse,
his drug issues may have troubled him far more than his fans were aware, and especially
in the last few years of his life.
A friend of Michael's told The Sun,
"I believe easy access to drugs was the cause of his problems.
Once this disease gets hold of you, it's hard to fight it."
A source close to Michael told The Telegraph that the singer's drug problem almost took
his life more than once.
The individual added,
"He's been rushed to [the ER] on several occasions.
He used heroin.
I think it's amazing he's lasted as long as he has."
Michael scored his last major UK hit in 2012, and he'd largely retreated from public life,
except for the occasional live performance.
But at Christmas, the veteran superstar is on millions of people's minds, thanks to his
contributions to the holiday music canon, he was a soloist on Band Aid's "Do They Know
It's Christmas?" and recorded "Last Christmas" with Wham!
It's especially sad, then, that Michael passed away on Christmas Day 2016, while his songs
were undoubtedly making people happy in other parts of the world.
Michael's partner, Fadi Fawaz, went over to the singer's house in the morning, as the
two planned to have Christmas lunch together.
According to The Telegraph, that's when he discovered Michael, quote, "lying peacefully
in bed."
Authorities called to the scene were initially puzzled by the death but were not suspicious
of foul play.
A few months later, a coroner revealed that Michael passed away at the age of 53 from
natural causes, specifically issues related to the heart and liver.
Fawaz doesn't believe that Michael passed from natural causes, he thinks he took his
own life, based on his knowledge of Michael's behavior and the date on which his death occurred.
Fawaz told The Telegraph,
"George died on his mother's birthday, so that might answer a few questions...Not to
mention it took five attempts to manage to end his life."
This would mean that even if Michael did pass away from heart and liver problems in 2016,
he had sadly attempted to take his own life on four previous occasions.
If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide
Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).