George Michael, Wembley Stadium, London (original) (raw)

The portents weren't good. A ceiling just inside the stadium had sprung a leak, and water was trickling out, to the bemusement of people collecting tickets for the first gig at the new Wembley. The place is barely out of its wrappings and already, a reminder of the building it replaced.

It wouldn't have happened if Bon Jovi had been the first act to play there, as originally scheduled - the force of their evergreen poodle-rock wouldn't have tolerated errant drips. On the other hand, Bon Jovi aren't the men to impart a sense of event when a flagship venue needs launching. For that kind of thing you phone George Michael.

It wasn't just his stadium skills - the teen-hunk-turned-midlife-crooner played his last show with Wham! at old Wembley in 1986 - or the hit-stuffed back catalogue. The real clincher was that he hasn't toured in 15 years, so this was as momentous for him as it was for the audience. Pent-up demand on both sides produced a pop lovefest that did justice to the occasion, and overshadowed those images from the day before, when he was sentenced to community service for driving while unfit.

On that subject, it can't go unsaid that Michael despises the media, and didn't refrain from repeatedly saying so. Decades from now he may decide it was a waste of energy to have urged the crowd to shout at the press box, "Kiss my hairy Greek ass," but in the short term, it seemed to cheer him up.

But why so adversarial when his real revenge should be the fact that he can fill two nights at Europe's second-largest stadium? His songwriting ability cannot be disparaged: in two-and-a-half hours onstage, he never once resorted to the filler that pads out most gigs once the hits are out of the way. Careless Whisper, Faith, Amazing (dedicated to "the man I love"), Wham!'s I'm Your Man - every lightly soulful tune was a primer in the art of making music that's relevant to gay people, straight people and teens in pink cowboy hats.

Michael has been on the road with this tour since last September, and has tweaked the set as he's gone along. According to the programme four ballads were dropped to make room for what he does best: sparkling party music with a heart of glass.

The melancholy at the core of most of his tunes didn't register with 140,000 dancing feet, but it made itself felt in the way Michael used the stage, hiding his backing band in the shadows and roaming the stage alone, vulnerable against a huge, busy graphics screen.

It must be a mixed blessing to be able to write delectable disco tunes when Tim Buckley's elegiac Song to the Siren (the performance's only cover) is probably closer to his vision of what a song should be.

It was hard, though, to indulge the idea of Michael as pop enigma during the clunky Shoot the Dog (subject: Blair is Bush's poodle) and Freedom 90.

Both were graced with the performance's big special effects, huge inflatables of Bush and Blair. The latter was portrayed as a puppy and, later, the Statue of Liberty, holding a missile in place of the torch.

It was nice to see Michael dishing out the kind of ponderous lampooning he so resents when it's aimed at himself. However, nobody expects consistency in a pop star, and when the history of the new Wembley is written this will be remembered as a worthy opener by someone fast approaching national-treasure status.