Sathnam Sanghera

later in Wham's career, and then he stopped too soon.

He retired too soon.

Yeah, I mean...

It's such an important sax solo.

I also wanted to describe it as the national anthem for the saxophone.

In that, if you can't play the Careless Whisper solo, you can't play the saxophone.

But of course, George never played the saxophone.

And he composed it on one of those Wasp synthesizers.

And on the first demo, that's what you hear.

And so the first recording of Kelly's Whisper was done with Jerry Wexler, one of the most famous R&B musicians, producers of all time, Aretha Franklin, countless other artists.

George, barely out of his teens, sent to America to record this song he'd written when he was 17.

He didn't like any of the saxophone players, and there were some of the best in America coming to play it, and he was sending it off, you know, with the tail between their legs, saying, no, it's not right.

But Jerry Wexler

understood and he said that you know what sometimes a musician has an idea of what something is and it's not and it's really important to get it right because That can make or break a pop song and if you listen to Jerry's version, it's not right Yeah, doesn't sound right.

They came back to London.

He thought he produced his own version in the end I think that he went through around 12 saxophone players and the final one got it they got it by changing the speed of the recording and

Because actually it's very hard to play that sax solo on a sax.

You almost have to mess around with it or add another key to the sax.

So finally they got it with the 12th version.

And that's only because George wasn't in the studio and he didn't realise that trickery had been employed.