Long before George Michael started hanging around public toilets, smoking a reported 25 spliffs a day and driving his car through London shop fronts, he was busy making history.
In April 1985, he performed alongside lesser-known band mate Andrew Ridgeley at the Beijing Workers’ Gymnasium in front of an audience of 15,000, almost all of whom were dressed in blue and gray Mao suits.
Wham! had become the first Western pop group to ever tour communist China.
The performance was watched closely by police, several members of the Government and the world’s media. With the band’s invitation coming just a few years after China’s commitment to reforming and opening up, the occasion was of huge historical significance. China had showed, though the medium of inoffensive dance pop, that it was living up to its rhetoric and embracing the outside world.
The man behind the tour was neither Ridgeley nor Michael, but their then-manager, Simon Napier-Bell. Best known for managing acts like The Yardbirds, John’s Children and Marc Bolan, Napier-Bell is also a journalist and author. But despite writing several books about his experiences in the music industry, he was initially reluctant to detail Wham!’s eastern endeavors.
“I’d been pestered for years by publishers to write a book about Wham! but it just didn’t interest me,” he explains.
His resolve broke in 2005 with the publication of I’m Coming to Take You to Lunch: A Fantastic Tale of Boys, Booze and How Wham! Were Sold to China.
The book presents the groundbreaking tour as a win-win situation for communist superpower and post-disco duo alike. On China’s side, the tour showed a keenness to welcome the eyes of the world, while for Napier-Bell it offered an opportunity to promote Wham! to a colossal, and untapped, market – both inside and outside of China.
“To begin with, I had planned to make Wham! the best-known band in the world within three years. But it proved impossible to reach that goal in such a short time,” he explains. “To make things worse, George Michael not only hated the media but also disliked endless touring. Thus I had to try another way. Making Wham! the first Western band ever to perform in China would guarantee global press – especially in America.”
The idea was a bold one. For it to work, Napier-Bell would have to convince the Chinese government that it could appease its urgent desire for the world’s attention by bringing in a pop group. But with rock band Queen also vying for the honor of being the first Western act to perform in China, the next challenge was to make sure that group was Wham!
In addition to some light sabotage (he made brochures comparing the wholesome pair with the dangerously flamboyant Queen front man, Freddie Mercury), Napier-Bell also traveled to China on 13 separate occasions. He invited countless Chinese officials to lunches, each utilizing one of history’s greatest tactics of persuasion – which explains how “booze” came to feature in the book’s title.
“I negotiated repeatedly with Chinese officials and told them that the foreign media were waiting for exciting news from China, so why not let them know that a top international band had been invited to play?” he recalls. “I told them that when people see Wham! performing in Beijing, it would prove [that they were] serious about opening up.”
The Chinese eventually agreed and issued an official invitation, though there would be no publicity for the performances and the band would have to cover venue rental, equipment and ticket printing. These costs were no barrier to Napier-Bell’s determination to open the Chinese market and he even gave out two free Wham! cassettes with every ticket. The strategy proved well-judged.
“Very few Chinese knew about Wham! but a week later, every music fan in the country seemed to know everything there was to know about the band,” Napier-Bell explains. “[The plan] obviously worked because [travel writer] Colin Thubron mentions endlessly hearing Wham! being played everywhere when he visited China shortly after the concert.”
As the architect of China’s first contact with Western pop, Napier-Bell also became one of the few to visit the country at the dawn of its market-economy age. But he believes that the China he returns to for this month’s Literary Festival is a markedly different place.
“At the time when Wham! went to China, everyone was wearing Mao suits and when I tried to talk to people they ran away,” he says. “Beijing had just one modern hotel: the Great Wall Hotel. In 1985, Beijing and the hotel were like two different worlds, but today it’s the world of the [latter] that has triumphed. The Great Wall is now simply one of thousands of glittering steel-and-glass buildings.
During this trip, Napier-Bell intends to visit Beijing Workers’ Gymnasium, where Wham!’s journey from entertainment sections to front pages began. It no longer plays host to hordes of blue and gray Mao suits.
“The grim, never-ending drabness that I knew so well has completely disappeared,” says Napier-Bell. “Beijing looks like Tokyo or Singapore because everything that was old, grubby and depressing has been torn down and replaced with things that are tall, shiny and gleaming.”
// Shanghai: March 21, 7pm, RMB75. Glamour Bar.
Beijing: Tuesday, March 18, 7-8pm, Capital M.
0 User Comments