Fact #161822
When:
Short story:
Wham! play a concert at the Workers' Gymnasium, Peking, China, Asia.
Full article:
Simon Napier-Bell : There were so many tensions in setting the show up and so many problems that I don’t think I slept more than an hour a night on the four nights before the show. It was exhausting.
John Blake (journalist, The Sun) : Tickets cost nearly £2 each - three days wages for a manual worker. The fans were promised a free Wham! cassette with every ticket.
Simon Napier-Bell : I made a serious mistake right at the start. The opening act was a very good black breakdancer we’d brought, and I told him to go up to the front of the stage and perform for ten minutes, then jump off the stage, run through the audience, up into the gods, everywhere. They’ll never have seen anything like it. And they hadn’t. The entire audience was on its feet, total chaos.
Peter Martin (journalist, Smash Hits) : The lights go down bang on time, and the show begins. As a warm-up, we have a British dancer called Trevor who instructs the audience on how to body pop and breakdance …
Jonathan Morrish : It was fascinating just to watch the audience trying to dance to pop music. They just didn’t know how to do it. Their movements looked very odd.
Simon Napier-Bell : Of course when he finished, in the interval, an announcement came over the loudspeakers that if anyone stood up again, they’d be shot. So nobody stood up again, which made things very difficult for George.
It was extraordinary because the first fifty rows were taken out to house the world’s tv cameras – I think there were almost fifty tv cameras there that night. People certainly said they’d never seen so many tv camera units in one place. That killed the atmosphere a little bit because the audience didn’t start until a long way back, which is always difficult for a performer.
George Michael : There is a huge cultural difference which there is no way you are going to cross in an hour and a half… I turned my microphone down. I didn’t do anything particularly sexy, which is not my usual angle… We noticed The Police were very nervous about the possibility of everyone joining in. But I wonder what they could have expected. They know we’re a dance band.
Simon Napier-Bell : Then one of Lindsay’s idiot cameramen from America turned the floodlights full on the audience to film their reaction. Apart from the fact that a floodlit audience looks totally unnatural, when you turn cameras on a Chinese audience they assume it’s the secret police filming them so it completely killed any atmosphere that George was beginning to build up. And he did this time and again, these huge lights sweeping over the crowd.
After the show I absolutely went berserk. I don’t often lose my temper but I had a tirade of half an hour. I really needed to get it out. In the end, it didn’t matter a damn, because the thing was an event. But for me and for the boys, we’d spent a year and a half planning this thing and we wanted the show to be great. And it wasn’t.
But my tirade against Lindsay was also against myself really, because of what I’d done with the breakdancer.
At the end of the gig, though, there was very good applause. By a series of devious means I’d managed to get the Minister of Culture to be there, sitting next to me, so I stood up and clapped, and he looked at me, and I explained that it was a traditional sign of respect for a performer in England, so he stood up, so then the entire audience stood up. So then we had 20,000 people standing up, who’d been told they’d be shot if they did, but they had to stand up because the Minister For Culture was standing up.
Meanwhile, George had gone down to the basement dressing room, vowing never to come back again, because he’d been faced with this dull-looking crowd. So there was no encore. It was extraordinary.
People have tried to make it seem like some sort of political statement that Wham! sang Freedom that night, but the Chinese will tell you, “We all respect Chairman Mao our great leader who allows us to be free and live the life we want to live away from the capitalist dogs.” So it’s just a matter of how you define freedom. It can be translated in a non-subversive manner. The key thing about Wham! was that the Chinese didn’t want a subversive group out there. People like Billy Bragg and Paul Weller had wanted to go, but it didn’t happen. The Chinese government understood all too well that anyone who is anti-establishment, anti-government in one country, will be exactly the same in their country. If Billy Bragg or Paul Weller had been brought up in China, they’d have been pro-capitalist anti-government subversives. Wham! were two easy going kids who fitted in with the authority in their own country and would convey that message to Chinese kids too.
John Blake : Dozens of youngsters were thrown out of the Peoples’ Gymnasium when they ignored police orders to sit down and insisted on boogieing. One determined bopper was beaten to the ground by six policemen when he refused to return to his seat.
Simon Napier-Bell : Some kids did get beaten up by the police , but I think people wanted to see that. Yes, it happened, but I’ve seen that happen at plenty of concerts in the west, in Cincinnati, Dusseldorf, plenty of places. It’s horrible when you see it but journalists wanted to report about it happening in a Communist country more than they would somewhere else.
Jonathan Morrish : I saw a kid being beaten by the police , but it was quite a while after the dancing had stopped, right at the end of the show.
Simon Napier-Bell : But the whole event was intended to provoke some kind of reaction. It was an event for publicity and we knew kids would dance and we knew that would offend the police and the authorities. In a way, you wanted it to happen to the extent that it would get reported and make the whole event bigger. And you hoped it would provoke a reaction against it.
It was probably one of a lot of things which contributed to Tianamen Square some years later.
George was very perceptive, in lots of ways. I remember coming back to the hotel in Beijing with him, the night after the gig, and there were two big stone dragon statues outside. Someone had stuffed a Coca Cola can into the mouth of one of these dragons, and George said, ‘That just about sums up our tour, doesn’t it?’ I thought that was very good.
Shirlie Holliman (backing vocalist, Wham!) : I just think what we’re doing here is bad. I don’t want to sound funny or anything but I just don’t think it’s right that we’re playing here. People here are sad, they want Freedom, but they’re not allowed to have it and, in a way, we’re giving them a taste of something they can’t really have. I just think it was awful the way that boy was taken out of last night’s concert and beaten. That wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t come here. I just want to go home.
(Source : not known)
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John Blake (journalist, The Sun) : Tickets cost nearly £2 each - three days wages for a manual worker. The fans were promised a free Wham! cassette with every ticket.
Simon Napier-Bell : I made a serious mistake right at the start. The opening act was a very good black breakdancer we’d brought, and I told him to go up to the front of the stage and perform for ten minutes, then jump off the stage, run through the audience, up into the gods, everywhere. They’ll never have seen anything like it. And they hadn’t. The entire audience was on its feet, total chaos.
Peter Martin (journalist, Smash Hits) : The lights go down bang on time, and the show begins. As a warm-up, we have a British dancer called Trevor who instructs the audience on how to body pop and breakdance …
Jonathan Morrish : It was fascinating just to watch the audience trying to dance to pop music. They just didn’t know how to do it. Their movements looked very odd.
Simon Napier-Bell : Of course when he finished, in the interval, an announcement came over the loudspeakers that if anyone stood up again, they’d be shot. So nobody stood up again, which made things very difficult for George.
It was extraordinary because the first fifty rows were taken out to house the world’s tv cameras – I think there were almost fifty tv cameras there that night. People certainly said they’d never seen so many tv camera units in one place. That killed the atmosphere a little bit because the audience didn’t start until a long way back, which is always difficult for a performer.
George Michael : There is a huge cultural difference which there is no way you are going to cross in an hour and a half… I turned my microphone down. I didn’t do anything particularly sexy, which is not my usual angle… We noticed The Police were very nervous about the possibility of everyone joining in. But I wonder what they could have expected. They know we’re a dance band.
Simon Napier-Bell : Then one of Lindsay’s idiot cameramen from America turned the floodlights full on the audience to film their reaction. Apart from the fact that a floodlit audience looks totally unnatural, when you turn cameras on a Chinese audience they assume it’s the secret police filming them so it completely killed any atmosphere that George was beginning to build up. And he did this time and again, these huge lights sweeping over the crowd.
After the show I absolutely went berserk. I don’t often lose my temper but I had a tirade of half an hour. I really needed to get it out. In the end, it didn’t matter a damn, because the thing was an event. But for me and for the boys, we’d spent a year and a half planning this thing and we wanted the show to be great. And it wasn’t.
But my tirade against Lindsay was also against myself really, because of what I’d done with the breakdancer.
At the end of the gig, though, there was very good applause. By a series of devious means I’d managed to get the Minister of Culture to be there, sitting next to me, so I stood up and clapped, and he looked at me, and I explained that it was a traditional sign of respect for a performer in England, so he stood up, so then the entire audience stood up. So then we had 20,000 people standing up, who’d been told they’d be shot if they did, but they had to stand up because the Minister For Culture was standing up.
Meanwhile, George had gone down to the basement dressing room, vowing never to come back again, because he’d been faced with this dull-looking crowd. So there was no encore. It was extraordinary.
People have tried to make it seem like some sort of political statement that Wham! sang Freedom that night, but the Chinese will tell you, “We all respect Chairman Mao our great leader who allows us to be free and live the life we want to live away from the capitalist dogs.” So it’s just a matter of how you define freedom. It can be translated in a non-subversive manner. The key thing about Wham! was that the Chinese didn’t want a subversive group out there. People like Billy Bragg and Paul Weller had wanted to go, but it didn’t happen. The Chinese government understood all too well that anyone who is anti-establishment, anti-government in one country, will be exactly the same in their country. If Billy Bragg or Paul Weller had been brought up in China, they’d have been pro-capitalist anti-government subversives. Wham! were two easy going kids who fitted in with the authority in their own country and would convey that message to Chinese kids too.
John Blake : Dozens of youngsters were thrown out of the Peoples’ Gymnasium when they ignored police orders to sit down and insisted on boogieing. One determined bopper was beaten to the ground by six policemen when he refused to return to his seat.
Simon Napier-Bell : Some kids did get beaten up by the police , but I think people wanted to see that. Yes, it happened, but I’ve seen that happen at plenty of concerts in the west, in Cincinnati, Dusseldorf, plenty of places. It’s horrible when you see it but journalists wanted to report about it happening in a Communist country more than they would somewhere else.
Jonathan Morrish : I saw a kid being beaten by the police , but it was quite a while after the dancing had stopped, right at the end of the show.
Simon Napier-Bell : But the whole event was intended to provoke some kind of reaction. It was an event for publicity and we knew kids would dance and we knew that would offend the police and the authorities. In a way, you wanted it to happen to the extent that it would get reported and make the whole event bigger. And you hoped it would provoke a reaction against it.
It was probably one of a lot of things which contributed to Tianamen Square some years later.
George was very perceptive, in lots of ways. I remember coming back to the hotel in Beijing with him, the night after the gig, and there were two big stone dragon statues outside. Someone had stuffed a Coca Cola can into the mouth of one of these dragons, and George said, ‘That just about sums up our tour, doesn’t it?’ I thought that was very good.
Shirlie Holliman (backing vocalist, Wham!) : I just think what we’re doing here is bad. I don’t want to sound funny or anything but I just don’t think it’s right that we’re playing here. People here are sad, they want Freedom, but they’re not allowed to have it and, in a way, we’re giving them a taste of something they can’t really have. I just think it was awful the way that boy was taken out of last night’s concert and beaten. That wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t come here. I just want to go home.
(Source : not known)