Wham! launched the career of George Michael, gave the universe a handful of indelible radio singles (including "Freedom" and "I'm Your Man") and made it reasonable for artists to put punctuation in their band names (a tradition continued by Therapy? and Panic! at the Disco). But underneath their pop exterior beat a socially conscious heart. George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley both advocated for AIDS education, and on this day in 1985 became the first Western pop group to play a concert inside the People's Republic of China.
Wham! performed in the traditionally closed-off country in front of 15,000 fans (and more than a few government officials) at the People's Gynasium in Beijing. The show didn't start as a political statement, as Michael and Ridgeley wanted little more than to be the biggest group in the world as quickly as possible. Simon Napier-Bell, the band's manager, felt that being the first group to penetrate the Communist nation would elevate Wham! to just such a plateau, so he spent 18 months getting the show together.
The show ended up going off without a hitch, though according to Napier-Bell, the atmosphere inside the venue was more than a little bizarre. "They announced on the loudspeaker that nobody could stand up, everyone had to sit down through the whole show," he told the BBC in 2005. He also said that the fans in the venue mistook the TV news cameras as monitoring gear for the secret police, which made them paranoid and docile. "There were 7,500 people downstairs intimidated by the lights and the police standing around the outside, and upstairs you had 7,500 people getting more and more wild and crazy," he said. "So it was a very strange atmosphere."
The entire fiasco is documented in the excellent tour film "Wham! In China: Foreign Skies," which captures the fervor of the fandom and the strange energy of China in the 1980s. Even if you don't remember Wham! as groundbreaking artists, at least keep them in mind as the duo who gave us "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go."
First Linkin Park had to cancel their gig at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas on Monday, then they axed their five-date China tour, all because of lead singer Chester Bennington's back injury, according to the band's Web site. The tour was supposed to raise money to benefit Sichuan Province, the area ravaged by May's earthquake. At least disappointed concertgoers will get their money back, and the band's concert promoter has donated money to earthquake victims anyway.