After George Michael’s death on Christmas Day at the age of 53, a letter resurfaced that Frank Sinatra wrote to the newly-famous pop star, and it’s full of sage advice from a seasoned showman.
Following the release of his sophomore solo album Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1, Michael told the Los Angeles Times in an interview for their Calendar magazine cover that the life of a singing sensation wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. From that 1990 interview:
“Michael says his pop dreams proved to be a personal nightmare, leaving him on the verge of an emotional breakdown during the early weeks of the 1988 ‘Faith’ tour…
‘…I’m also sure that most people find it hard to believe that stardom can make you miserable. After all, everybody wants to be a star. I certainly did, and I worked hard to get it. But I was miserable, and I don’t want to feel that way again.’
Frank Sinatra, then 75 years old, read the interview and apparently didn’t care for Michael’s attitude. He published an open letter in the same magazine, rebuking him for not appreciating his fame and encouraging him to continue making music:
Frank Sinatra's letter to George Michael pic.twitter.com/LXDpjiXqdD
— Catherine Rampell (@crampell) December 26, 2016
“Those who have it — and you obviously do or today’s Calendar cover article would have been about Rudy Vallee — those who have talent must hug it, embrace it, nurture it and share it lest it be taken away from you as fast as it was loaned to you.
“The tragedy of fame is when no one shows up and you’re singing to the cleaning lady in some empty joint that hasn’t seen a paying customer since Saint Swithin’s day. And you’re nowhere near that; you’re top dog on the top rung of a tall ladder called Stardom, which in Latin means thanks-to-the-fans who were there when it was lonely.”
It’s possible that Sinatra, being a star of a much different era, missed some of the nuances that Michael found so troubling: It was eight years later that Michael was arrested for “lewd behavior” by a male undercover officer, and then came out publicly as gay.
He told the BBC in a 1998 interview:
“The press seemed to take some delight that I previously had a ‘straight audience,’ and set about trying to destroy that. And I think some men were frustrated that their girlfriends wouldn’t let go of the idea that George Michael just hadn’t found the ‘right girl’ [yet]. Which is still what a lot of my extended family still think!”
Sinatra’s advice to “loosen up” falls hollow in comparison to Michael’s internal struggle, as a sex-symbol celebrity in a time when being yourself wasn’t what the people really wanted.
