Andrew Ridgeley
| Andrew Ridgeley | |
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| Birth name | Andrew John Ridgeley |
| Born |
26 January 1963 Windlesham, Surrey, England |
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| Years active | 1981–1991 |
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Andrew John Ridgeley (born 26 January 1963) is an English singer, songwriter and record producer. He was best known in the 1980s as a member of the music duo Wham! (with George Michael).
Andrew John Ridgeley was born in Windlesham, Surrey, England. Ridgeley's parents were Jennifer and Albert Ridgeley. His mother is English and his father is of Italian and Egyptian descent. Ridgeley grew up in Bushey, Hertfordshire, and attended Bushey Meads School. His mother was a schoolteacher at Bushey Heath Primary School and his father worked for Canon. When George Michael was enrolled at the school, Ridgeley volunteered to take him under his wing.
After years of playing in various music groups, the most notable, being The Executive, Michael and Ridgeley formed Wham!. They then approached various record labels with a homemade tape (which took ten minutes to record in Ridgeley's living room), and signed with Innervision Records. According to I'm Coming to Take You to Lunch, a book written by Wham's manager, Simon Napier-Bell, the band left Innervision after the first album and signed with CBS.
Wham! enjoyed worldwide success from 1982 to 1986, selling more than 28 million records worldwide. Wham! made their U.S. debut appearance on Dick Clark's American Bandstand and went on to become the only British act in the 1980s to secure three No. 1 singles in both the UK and the US.
Simon Napier-Bell has admitted that he fabricated a story in 1984 that Ridgeley had been smashed on the nose by somebody in a nightclub, in order to get publicity for Wham! on the front page of British tabloid newspapers. After days of tabloid headlines, it was later revealed that the bandages on Ridgeley's face were because he had plastic surgery on his nose.
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