In April 1985, big-haired pop-duo Wham! took to the Worker’s Gymnasium stage in Beijing infront of thousands of screaming Chinese fans, becoming the first western pop act to play communist China.
This unlikely event had taken band manager Simon Napier-Bell 18 months of negotiations to organise; a process documented in his 2005 book I’m Coming To Take You To Lunch.
The idea to play China came about following the bands insistence that they become the biggest act in the world within two years. Napier-Bell and co-manager Jazz Summers knew that this would be impossible following the conventional route – namely touring America continuously for years – so came up with the China tour as a globally-press-worthy publicity stunt. Napier-Bell flew to China and sat in hotel rooms calling whatever government phone numbers he could get his hands on, usually leaving the message: “Tell them Simon Napier-Bell called to take them to lunch”.
“It was two years of lunches – I fed the whole government, 143 people three times each.”
The resulting shows were captured in a Popumentary which itself was not short of difficulties behind the scenes.
The final version, Wham! In China : Foreign Skies, seems to be out of print but is available in it’s full glory on Chinese YouTube-a-like, Youku:
The film was shown to 70,000 Wham! fans at their 1986 Wembley concert, the largest audience ever for a premiere. It might not be an enduring classic – it is slow and fairly insubstantial – but the impossibly absurd sight of George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley, replete with bouffant hair and metre-wide shoulder pads, meeting the staid Chinese bureaucracy mano-a-mano is too good to miss. Choice quotes abound throughout:
“Where are all the screaming girls?” – George Michael at Beijing Airport
Beyond this, Careless Whisper has now been added to my list of “Secret Shames”. Fantastic song.
© Ed Peto 2008
Awesome post Ed! I was there in the Wham! aftermath, in 1986, and had people coming up to me all the time and asking, “Do you like The Wham?” (Try as I might, I couldn’t explain why the definite article was not part of the act’s name, but the exclamation point was.)
Posted by Kaiser on January 22nd, 2009.
[...] tilfældigt faldt jeg over denne artikel på Outdustry fra december, der handler om netop Whams tur til [...]
Posted by Skulderpuder og pophår: Film om Wham’s tur til Kina i 1986 | KINABLOG.dk on January 30th, 2009.
George Michael is also a great singer and was quite famous in the 80’s era.`;,
Posted by Keira James on May 28th, 2010.
George Michael have created lots of scandal in the 90s he he-`’
Posted by Jacob Patel on July 21st, 2010.