For more on his extraordinary life, pick upthis weeks issue, on stands Friday.
Cindy Crawford
The supermodel remembers her role in his Freedom!
Everyone shot [scenes] separately so it wasnt like a big party atmosphere.
Herb Ritts/Trunk Archive
We each had our own personalities within the video.
But I remember being bummed, like, Really?
I have to be in the bathtub with a towel on my head?
Everyone else gets to look so cool!
Then when I saw it after I was like, okay this is pretty cool.'
For so many of us, [Georges songs were] the soundtrack of our young coming of age.
But more than the music, it was the message that was just as important.
MTV had really changed the face of music.
It wasnt enough to have a great voice anymore.
You had to be the whole package.
I think people loved him more because of that.
It really opened up a lot of doors for LGBT people to feel confident about themselves.
So when he did finally come out, it was like, This is you!
The first time I heard George was with Wham!
and I liked it then.
He had a very unique sound, very different from anything that was out there.
It reminded me of [working with producer] Jerry Wexler.
Wed go in the studio and cut songs.
If we were happy with what we recorded, Jerry would say, Lets wait until tomorrow.
If we feel the same way [then] that we do now, maybe we have a hit.
I Knew You Were Waiting had that.
Musically, it does not grow old.
[When we made the music video], we had a super time.
He was calling most of the shots: how he wanted this, how he wanted that.
My older sister, Erma, just fell for him right away.
He was very friendly and personable, easy to talk to.
