Early Life
Michael was born Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou in East Finchley, North London. His father, Kyriacos Panayiotou, a Greek Cypriot restaurateur, moved to England in the 1950s and changed his name to Jack Panos. Michael's mother, Lesley Angold (née Harrison, 1937–1997), was an English dancer who died from cancer in Fulham. Michael spent the majority of his childhood in North London, in the home his parents bought soon after his birth. While in his early teens, the family moved to Radlett, Hertfordshire. There Michael attended the Bushey Meads School in the neighbouring town of Bushey, where he met Andrew Ridgeley. The two had the same career ambition of being musicians.
His involvement in the music business began with his working as a DJ, playing at clubs and local schools around Bushey, Stanmore and Watford. This was followed by the formation of a short-lived ska band called The Executive with Ridgeley, Ridgeley's brother Paul, Andrew Leaver, and David Mortimer (aka David Austin).
Read more about this topic: George Michael
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“Today’s pressures on middle-class children to grow up fast begin in early childhood. Chief among them is the pressure for early intellectual attainment, deriving from a changed perception of precocity. Several decades ago precocity was looked upon with great suspicion. The child prodigy, it was thought, turned out to be a neurotic adult; thus the phrase “early ripe, early rot!””
—David Elkind (20th century)
“School divides life into two segments, which are increasingly of comparable length. As much as anything else, schooling implies custodial care for persons who are declared undesirable elsewhere by the simple fact that a school has been built to serve them.”
—Ivan Illich (b. 1926)