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Here are articles that have an important story to tell, perhaps more important than you might admit. It’s about two different subjects – or maybe three: Wham!, China and filmmakers Lindsay Anderson. A powerful band looking to open up as a western, a band nervously doing what needs to be done to make it big in the US, and a great film director, in need of money, taking a job he didn’t believe in.
In 1985, the legendary manager of Wham! George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley may break the US: Wham! it would be the first western music group in China. They will play where the Beatles, Stones and Elvis have never played before, and international publicity will launch them in the US. (He was right – it did.) In our modern age, the film and music industry has always considered China an important factor in the most important Asian market, but in 1985, Michael and Ridgeley were the Kirk and Spock of the charts, going where no pop pop has gone before.
After months of patient negotiations with Communist Party officials, Napier-Bell pulled off this strategic coup; he found two of his most impressive and famous boys in Beijing and then in Guangzhou, with the opportunity to paint on the Great Wall. This would be a difficult trip of 10 days in which, like a royal or presidential visit, they had to tolerate the press in front of the combined British red-top tabloids who wanted them. For the same reasons, he also accepted the idea of the filmmaker Martin Lewis to make a fly-on-the-wall script, and his idea of a high-profile, respected director: Lindsay Anderson. But Anderson continued to push the hard-hitting cultural-struggle title of the film and the musicians wanted fame, so Anderson was summarily fired after the tour, being depressed and frustrated throughout, making no secret of his dislike of Wham! (Perhaps Anderson thought he could do something like Antonioni’s 1972 immersive TV documentary about China, Chung Kuo: China.)
The bland PR movie was shown a year later, but now the amazing picture has been updated, with new interviews with the survivors, most famous for Ridgeley – although he brings the film closer to what Anderson wanted. We see how brave she and Michael were, but still brave. He was in his twenties, yet he was expected to make official speeches that would offend diplomats, and he had to deal with brutal questions about Chinese policemen harassing dancers at their concert in Beijing. (The officials, it was said, were particularly disgusted by the song Freedom, although how well they understood the English lyrics is an open question.) In Beijing, the audience was glacial, for whom Wham! they were creatures from another planet, while in Guangzhou, having access to Hong Kong pop, the crowd was very happy.
But the point was that Wham! they started something that could not be started: they gave the Chinese a taste of freedom. Four years later was the Tiananmen Square massacre. It was Wham! China’s tourism is the world’s most famous event, the flapping of a butterfly’s wings caused an earthquake? Maybe. But it is not possible to search here. It would be fair to say that George and Andrew, having no interest in China except as a gateway to US glory, were overcome by a great love of the country. (Fortunately there is also the question of their views on communism and the left, since they supported the miners last year. Did that help them win?)
Well…he never came back, even though Ridgeley is shown in the present day looking out over the wall. 1985 was their annus mirabilis, the year of their biggest US success and George appearing on stage with Elton John at Live Aid. Perhaps China’s success was predicted later. It’s a strange and exciting moment in pop and political history.
