Two music icons, 2 surprisingly similar paths

TWO movies on iconic musicians opened recently: The first is Elvis, a glitzy over-the-top biopic on Elvis Presley directed by Baz Luhrmann (of Romeo + Juliet fame). The second is George Michael: Freedom Uncut, a poignant documentary on George Michael co-directed by the musician prior to his death and his best friend David Austin. 

On the surface, Presley and Michael don’t seem to have much in common. The former was American, the latter was British. They had different socio-economic backgrounds and sexual orientations. They achieved global success 3 decades apart. Michael was 14 in 1977, the year Presley died.

But the 2 movies coincidentally opened in the same week of June, and showed how the 2 gifted musicians relied on a similar formula for success – and ended up eerily paying a similar price.

Presley (played by Austin Butler) was a huge fan of soul and gospel music. When he cut his early records, everyone listening to him sing on the radio assumed he was Black. When he started to get famous, he angered white segregationists for singing and dancing like a Black man. There were several attempts to ban his performances or at least tamp down the pelvic gyrations that had fans screaming wildly. But Presley was too in love with his audience to take heed.

Michael was also deeply influenced by Black culture. Although the world had evolved by the time he found success in the 1980s, he still got flak for making R&B, jazz and gospel-inspired music. The visually-impaired superstar Stevie Wonder joked: “You mean George is white? Are you serious? Oh my God.” George Benson, another Black superstar, looked comically aghast as he read out Michael’s name as the winner of Best Soul/R&B Album at the American Music Awards in 1989. 

Because of the social circumstances of his time, Presley seldom admitted publicly to his Black musical influences until later in his career. Michael, living in a different time, could pay tribute to his Black heroes, collaborating with Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Whitney Houston, Mary J Blige, Smokey Robinson and others.

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Presley was straight and Michael was gay. And both men had no qualms about using their masculine attractions to sell music. Presley’s flamboyant stage moves induced uncontrolled rapture among women who threw their underwear at him – something unheard of in the 1950s. Luhrmann’s film is particularly memorable when showing comical scenes of well-behaved, buttoned-up young women breaking into ecstasy when they see him dance.

When Michael left the boyband Wham! and went it alone in the late 1980s, he too cultivated a hyper-masculine image that was different from his previous pretty boy image. For his debut solo album Faith (1987), he appears in the title song’s video in a leather jacket, blue jeans, white tee and aviator shades – a copycat of Tom Cruise’s look in Top Gun (1986). It worked and Faith became one of the bestselling albums of all time.

It was thus inevitable that their overt sexuality got them into hot soup. Presley had to battle many conservative critics in his early years. And as he got older and gained weight, he was frequently lampooned for still trying to jiggle on stage in a jumpsuit. His popularity with women took a toll on his marriage which lasted just 4 years.

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For Michael, he spent years hiding his homosexuality, until he was finally forced out of the closet when he was arrested for “engaging in a lewd act” in a public restroom in 1998. That hurt his already-waning career, but he was also haunted by the spectre of Aids which had killed his first boyfriend Anselmo Feleppa.

Presley died of cardiac arrest at the age of 42; Michael died of a heart and liver disease at the age of 53. The causes were complicated by their habitual drug use.

Though the similarities between the 2 men are clear, the films are certainly different. Elvis is a rich and sumptuous film that tells the entire life story of Presley at manic speed. It makes the singer out to be a mythical demigod who only wanted to give his audience what they longed from him. Meanwhile, Freedom Uncut is a sober and poignant documentary that humanises Michael beyond the headlines, filling the gaps between what we knew of him from the media.

Elvis keeps us at a distance from the musician because Luhrmann could only get so close to a dead musician. Freedom Uncut takes us into Michael’s private world because it’s co-directed by Michael himself. 

Both approaches work well for their respective films. And at the same time, they each illustrate a deep-seated sense of loneliness and inadequacy felt by their subjects. As Elvis’ manager Tom Parker (played by Tom Hanks) says to him: “We’re the same, you and I: Two odd, lonely children, reaching for eternity,” – a statement that could describe Michael too.

These emotions pushed the 2 men to greater heights, but also kept happiness at bay. Fortunately for Michael, he lived a decade longer than Presley. And in that time, according to Freedom Uncut co-director Austin, he’d finally learned to be content.

Elvis is playing in cinemas islandwide. Freedom Uncut is a Golden Village exclusive.