Don't say we never get you anything. Here, exclusive to the Observer blog, is a sneak preview from this Sunday's Music Monthly magazine. It's an extract from Simon Napier-Bell's new book, and it tells the bizarre tale of the plot to turn Wham! into a global band by setting them up with a gig in communist China (and stitching up Queen in the process).
Walls come tumbling down
It had happened at our first management meeting in May 1983 at the Bombay Brasserie, the best Indian in town, with a white cocktail piano and a glassed-in conservatory. Over lamb pasanda and spiced sea bass, George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley told us they now wanted to be the biggest group in the world. 'But we can't wait five years,' they said. 'If you and Jazz want to be our managers, you'll have to do it in two.'
That was scarcely possible. 'Especially in the States,' I emphasised. 'There's no national press, no quick way to spread the word through the Sun or the Mirror.'
'There are more than 4,000 radio stations,' Jazz added. 'It means endless cosying up to DJs, hanging out with them, taking photos with their wives and girlfriends.'
George and Andrew looked less than impressed. 'We won't do that,' George insisted. 'You'll have to find another way.'
But what? Jazz and I finished our meal in silence; the plates were cleared, wine drunk, menus brought for dessert. Then Jazz came up with an idea. 'Maybe you could be the first group ever to play in communist China.'
I suddenly realised I was being given the perfect excuse for travelling to the Far East while still being a pop manager in London. 'I should go to China at once,' I suggested. And like hearing my lottery number come up, George nodded. 'Sure, go ahead. Fix it!'
In Hong Kong, four months after that meeting, I took a taxi straight from the airport to a travel shop in Kowloon. Two hours later I had a single-entry visa, and that afternoon I took a train into China. It was packed with people visiting relatives in Canton, overdressed, as if off to a party – the men in their best sports shirts with well-pressed trousers, the women in dresses far too fancy for sitting on a train. Next to me a man said he was going back to visit his wife. 'Why didn't you bring her with you to Hong Kong when you left?' I asked. The question astonished him. 'Why bring wife to Hong Kong? Hong Kong is freedom. Wife is not freedom.'
Simply in terms of meeting people, this first trip was successful. In two days I visited five record companies and was introduced to a concert promoter and a local politician. But I soon found out that in China there was really only one record company – China Records, owned by the state. Every local record company was simply some sort of subsidiary to this monolith. Some were partnerships with local government, some with educational organisations, some with sports committees or children's charities.
At Long-Long Records I met Mr Lee. 'What you think of Canton?' he asked. 'I'm enjoying it.' 'Of course everyone enjoy Canton. Here we have freedom a little. In Beijing people are not allowed to think – down here we can have our own thoughts.'
'But can you act on them,' I wanted to know, or are they just for thinking?' The question went unanswered; probably not understood. I took a copy of Wham!'s first album from my briefcase. Before I could hand it to him he stepped across and pulled it out of my hand like a customs officer -grabbing contraband.
'What's this?'
'I manage a pop group in England – Wham!. I want them to play a concert in China.' 'I never hear of Wham!. How about the Beatles? I think the Beatles would be better concert.'
'They broke up.'
'Oh really?' He seemed genuinely surprised. 'I thought Beatles is very good for England. Why the government let them break up?' I laughed. ' How could a government keep a pop group together if they wanted to break up?'
'Maybe put them in jail?' Mr Lee suggested.
When I arrived in Beijing on my next trip, it was November, it was freezing and, foolishly, I'd arrived without a coat. This was still the time of Mao jackets, men and women in identical blue boiler suits, the girls with no make-up, everyone wearing soft canvas slippers even in the coldest weather. And nobody smiling.
I made a plan. I would come once a month on a trip that lasted 10 days and I would phone 20 or so important people suggesting I bought them lunch. But I wouldn't wait a week for them to call back; I would simply come back the next month and call them again. If they saw me coming often enough, offering lunch yet apparently unconcerned when they refused it, they would presume that my real purpose was to see someone more important than themselves, which might goad them into replying to my calls.
At the 'Trade Desk' in my hotel lobby I found an English language phone book listing staff at all the important ministries. I spent the afternoon struggling through phone calls, trying to make myself understood, telling secretaries, office workers, even cleaning ladies (anyone who spoke a few words of English) what I wanted and what number they could call me back on. 'Tell the minister, Simon Napier-Bell is in town and wants to take him to lunch.' Amazingly, the very next morning I had my first taker – none other than the under minister for energy, which was strange because I didn't remember calling him. He turned up on a bike in a regulation Mao suit and came into the lobby still wearing cycle clips.
'You Mr Simon?' he asked, proffering his hand. 'Very please to meet you. Very please to talk about coal.' It was a puzzling introduction but it turned out he'd got my message muddled with someone else's. He thought I was from Norway and had come to buy Grade 2 coal from the mines in Jiangsu. It would have been churlish not to take him to lunch so, having informed him of his mistake, I fed him anyway. He suggested the rooftop Chinese restaurant at the Great Wall Hotel. Over lunch he told me, 'In Beijing, food in restaurants is terrible. But not here.'
'I don't know about music,' he told me over a dessert of toffee and banana ice cream. 'But I know about people in government. They all love good food.'
I was pleased. It looked like my plan might just work.
I'd heard too that the Beijing Hotel held a weekly disco on Wednesdays from 8-11pm. The interior of the hotel was olive green, the colour of government offices around the world, and the disco was in a bleak meeting room, like a church hall, big and bare, hung with lines of small triangular flags. Yet it was packed with young people, many of them students. Closer to the DJ you could make out the records – 20-year-old Beatles, 10-year-old Boney M, current Michael Jackson.
I leant against the wall and watched the dancers lurch from side to side, occasionally hiccupping their bodies into the air, rarely in rhythm. There was no sexuality, just extrovert movement. But none of this mattered, for in that room I saw something I'd not seen before. Smiles! They burst out all over the place as people chattered or danced or just leant against the walls and listened.
Nonetheless, under this happy facade there was still no real freedom. Around the walls were 'prefects', young men with red armbands. If they saw something they didn't like – a hint of romance perhaps, or an over-raucous piece of dancing – they would step forward and calm things by laying their hands on the person's arm.
'Are you from America? I'm Zhang Jin.' The speaker materialised from the dance floor, an earnest-looking male student.
'No. From England. I'm Simon.'
Zhang Jin had glasses, a white shirt, black jeans and clear, well-spoken English. 'Do you like our disco?'
'In comparison with my hotel room, yes. In comparison with other discos, not much.' He frowned. 'I could show you our disco at the university, then you might like this one better.'
'How could yours be worse?'
'We have no sound system.'
I laughed. 'So how can it be a disco?'
'It can't be. Not any more. That's why the authorities took away the sound system.'
A few moments later I was trapped in a small cafe round the corner – a grubby shack with noodles, pots of tea, plastic tables and three of Zhang Jin's friends – May Ling and Pang Yu (two tiny girls), and Chuen (a pipe-smoking male).
I asked: 'If we wanted to go to the best place in Beijing to have a meal and chat, where would that be?' 'Here,' said Zhang Jin. 'Everywhere else there are secret police. In the disco in the Beijing Hotel there are secret police. But not here.'
'Why not?
May Ling giggled. 'The food's so bad they refuse to come.'
We sat for two hours having a long earnest conversation about students, politics and pop culture, which to them meant dissident Chinese rock groups. I mentioned Wham! but they'd never heard of them.
'What about Culture Club?' I asked. 'Boy George? Queen? The Sex Pistols? Paul McCartney? John Lennon? The Beatles?' Yes – Pang Yu knew them. 'My uncle had one of their records – 'Bits and Pieces'. During the Cultural Revolution he was reported by a neighbour for playing it and sent to work in the fields for three months.'
'Bits and Pieces' was by the Dave Clark Five, but it didn't seem worth telling her.
In the end, I got five takers for lunch at the Great Wall's rooftop restaurant and decided to put them together into one bumper banquet, but it wasn't a great success. None of them spoke English and they each brought a translator, so it was lunch for 11. I was -anxious not to ask a question to which anyone could answer, 'No! Wham! cannot come and play in China.' I spoke instead in statements: 'It would be really nice if one day China and England could have a cultural exchange of popular music artists.'
If that statement went down all right, I would go a bit further. 'I manage an English pop band called Wham!. If one day there was a cultural exchange of pop artists, it would be really nice if Wham! were one of them. Please give me your views on this.'
I looked round the table, waiting for answers, but it was as if they hadn't even heard me speak. They were too involved in the special roast duck with tamarind sauce.
Kaz Utsonomiya acted as a London representative for Japanese record companies and artists. He had just heard that some Japanese film-makers were making a war movie in China using tens of thousands of Chinese soldiers as extras. 'They're spending billions of yen and Queen have asked them to use their contacts to arrange a concert in Beijing. From what I've heard, they've almost -succeeded. You're about to be pipped at the post.' I couldn't believe it.
I spent the next couple of days making two presentations – the sort of thing people searching for investors prepare about their product. I put together a brochure about Wham! and another about Queen – 25 -copies each, and they looked very good indeed. The Wham! brochure had pictures, biographies and reviews, slanted to show how family-orientated the boys were – how middle-class, how morally correct and clean-cut. They dressed in simple clean clothes, did their hair nicely and always invited their parents to concerts. The brochure on Queen was quite different. There were pictures of Freddie Mercury and each band member. In all the pictures, the clothes were outrageous and the make-up as thick as could be conveyed in pictures.
And there were other things. The first page was a blow-up from the dictionary showing one of the definitions of 'queen' – 'a male homosexual, especially if adopting the female role'. Sprinkled liberally throughout the brochure were pictures of drag queens in Brazil, muscle maniacs on Santa Monica beach, naked men cavorting in gay clubs, and two men kissing at the Sydney Mardi Gras, one rather butch, the other lipsticked to the upper limits. Without telling him about the brochures, I asked Kaz to fix me a meeting with the people making the movie in China. 'Porodyusa is the person to talk to,' he told me. 'He's the one who has been talking with Queen.'
The next day I was in Tokyo. Porodyusa was a pleasant man, very dapper in a suit and tie and strictly in the business of talking a deal. I showed him the folder on Queen and told him, whether he helped me or not with Wham!, I would be sending it to key people in different ministries in China. He was shocked. 'This is not something you should show to too many people.'
'I intend to show it to everyone.'
'But that would make it very difficult for us to get Queen into China.'
'Good! You can help Wham! instead.'
I could see he was taken aback by my aggression, but he agreed anyway. The next morning we flew to Beijing where he took me to the All-China Youth Federation to meet Zhou Renkai – a bulky man with a greasy pockmarked face and a dingy tweed suit, the seat of which hung six inches lower than his bottom. It was a brief meeting and, seemingly, unproductive. 'Mr Napier-Bell manages a pop group and is interested in them coming to play in China,' explained Porodyusa, then watched in embarrassment as I handed Zhou copies of my folders on Queen and Wham!.
As we left the office Porodyusa said, 'Be careful of Mr Zhou. He's mad about money. He will ask payment for everything he can think of. On the other hand, if you want him to help, it would be best to give him all he asks for.'
To start with, Zhou asked for lunch, which I provided at the Great Wall Hotel. He said he'd been a cocktail pianist in Shanghai before the revolution but there wasn't much of the cocktail bar about him these days. Two decades of communism had hardened him up; he was manipulative, scheming and greedy, and spent a great deal of time exploring the more malodorous parts of his body with his fingers before sniffing them. 'We would need money for everything,' he explained through his translator. 'But the money from ticket sales will go to the All-China Youth Federation.'
Although he spoke as if it was within his powers to say yes to a visit by Wham!, I still wasn't going to get drawn into asking that fatal yes-or-no question: 'Can Wham! come or not?' I had to avoid giving him the chance of saying no. Despite misgivings, something told me that Zhou was the right person. He may not have been in the upper reaches of the power structure but he held an important position in the Youth Federation, and the Chinese saw young people as their future.
At the end of the meal, to make sure things didn't head in the wrong direction, I gave him several more copies of my folder on Queen. As we went down in the lift he looked through it again, shaking his head in disbelief. 'So lucky you tell me about this.'
At the beginning of March 1985, having spent 18 months going backwards and forwards to Beijing, avoiding questions that could result in a negative reply and proposing instead scenarios that started with the word 'if', I came out with my final one over yet another lunch at the Great Wall Hotel. 'If you were to invite Wham! to play a concert at the People's Gymnasium, it would be really nice if it were to be on 7 April.' Without even referring to Zhou, the interpreter told me, 'There will be one important condition; you must do nothing to publicise the event within China.' As I nodded, Zhou smiled. 'It's agreed then,' the interpreter told me.
That afternoon I flew to Singapore. Before the Chinese could change their minds I wanted the news announced all over the world. I called Jazz in London: 'It's fixed. Get all the press you can.' He wasted no time; when I woke up next -morning it was on the front page of the newspaper hung on the door knob of my hotel room.
We arrived in Beijing in a jovial mood – more than 100 of us – George and Andrew, their parents and friends, the road crew and the journalists. I was the only one who had been to China before and as we stood in line to go through immigration it occurred to me that this was the first time I'd ever been there with an officially issued visa.
The embassy were to give us a party – it was something I'd arranged based on the fact that the ambassador, Richard Evans, was going to attend the concert. 'A pop star's manager, are you?' said a middle-aged gent in a decaying white suit. 'How -a-a-a-a-a-wfully interesting. And what exactly does one have to do for them? Change their nappies?' Annoying as he was, this relic from the British Empire had hit it on the head. It was strange – he was so unmodern, so unworldly, yet so instinctively right.
'And what does one call the person one manages?' he asked. 'One's client? One's protegé? One's bank balance? Haw, haw, haw!'
'I've heard about groupies,' a braying woman told me. 'Will there be any here in China?'
'I doubt it. To be honest, Wham! aren't really known here. It was a bit of a coup getting them in.'
Her husband butted in. 'Well, maybe you could be a groupie for the afternoon. Oh haw, haw, haw!'
Again, he was pretty near the mark, for she was undoubtedly undressing Andrew in her mind.
A man approached me holding a packet of cheese crisps, a good few of which he crammed into his mouth before he spoke. He looked somewhere between Greek and Filipino but spoke American.
'You're the manager, aren't you? Listen – we really approve of this Wham! thing.'
'That's the second time I've heard that,' I told him. 'Some students at Beijing University said it. Who do you mean by "we"?'
He filled his mouth with more crisps (they appeared to be the essential fuel of his -conversation). 'Government policy-makers.' 'Which government?' I asked. 'America's? China's? What nationality are you?'
'Can't tell you that,' he said, screwing up his empty crisp packet and dropping it on the lawn. 'But we'd like to see more publicity within China for your Wham! concert. It may seem a small thing to you, but cumulatively, events like this can revolutionise the way young people in China perceive things.'
'Wham! just want to play a concert,' I told him brusquely. 'They aren't interested in changing the world.'
I moved away and found myself next to one of the embassy's junior attachés.
'Who's that man I just escaped from?' I asked. 'What does he do?'
The junior attaché looked disapproving. 'CIA, I think. He imports trouble! Such a pain, those people.'
In the VIP box at the concert, I sat sandwiched between the British Ambassador and General Xiao Hua, a senior member of the Central Committee.
Below us the auditorium was packed with cameramen. In a roped-off area in front of the stage were more than 70 TV crews; behind them, 200 stills photographers and hordes of international reporters. Every one of the 15,000 seats was filled with chattering young Chinese. In case their excitement should boil over, a thousand members of the People's Police stood round the walls downstairs, ready to stop trouble before it could start. The lights went down, the audience cheered, the band came on, the first chord was struck and George and Andrew bounced out smiling and waving.
But instead of bursting into song as he was meant to, George hesitated. With all those cameramen and TV crews training their sights on him, he opened his mouth and not a sound came out. He really hated photographers, and the sight of them all had caused something to happen he'd never experienced before. George – always overconfident, always cocky, never nervous – was experiencing his first attack of stage fright.
With cameras flashing madly and TV crews following his every move he ran to the far side of the stage, clapping with the beat, trying to loosen himself up.
By now I was as nervous as George – when things went wrong he could be unpredictable – but he recovered quickly and somehow pushed out the first line, croaky but audible. Then the second line, stronger and more confident, and suddenly the stage fright was gone. The show was on the road. The next song was 'Club Tropicana'. George bounced round to the back of the stage, clapping on the beat, encouraging the spectators seated behind the band to do the same. They hadn't a clue; they thought he wanted applause and politely gave it.
If the audience seemed interested rather than ecstatic, it was probably because of an announcement during the interval. An authoritarian Chinese voice had blared through the speakers: 'Stay in your seats. Don't dance!' – and for the moment that's what they were doing, especially downstairs, intimidated by so many police and soldiers. But they were enthusiastic and cheered hugely, letting out strange bursts of clapping which had no relevance to either the beat or the start and finish of songs. In the context of a normal concert, this show was never going to work, but as a bizarre event it was red-hot.
Away from the police and the prying -cameras, the upstairs audience was more boisterous. One big block, perhaps a thousand people, were foreigners with tickets from their embassies. By the end of 'Bad Boys' they were dancing. The Chinese near them took confidence in their numbers and copied them. Then scattered groups around the other upper tiers started to do the same. Some even got the hang of clapping on the beat, even learnt to scream when George or Andrew waved their butts. 'Careless Whisper' calmed the crowd for a moment but then Wham! crashed into 'Young Guns' with its sexy dance routine.
Some TV crews had escaped from their area downstairs and were climbing the terraces, roaming along steeply raked balconies, their hand-held lights sucking up small groups of demented dancers like garden lights attracting whizzing night insects.
With two numbers to go, a teenager downstairs started dancing in a corner, smoking a cigarette, drinking from a bottle of rice wine. He was grabbed by half a dozen People's Police, causing a minuscule rumpus.
Just what the world's media had been looking for! They leapt from their area, the guards unable to contain them, competing to shine lights on what was happening. Some photographers, finding themselves pushed back by the police, struggled with them so that the single drunken fan became the cause of a skirmish between photographers, TV crews and police, which of course was filmed by others.
The band pounded into the last number, the last three minutes of the show. Downstairs, filmed by the TV crews, the police took away the lone dancer. Upstairs, the kids jived on. Then the band hit the last chord and the houselights came up.
From all round the hall there was cheering but next to me General Xiao Hua looked shaken. The passionate reaction of the young Chinese was new to him and he didn't like it. The dangers of Western pop culture must have been clear.
The next day we received international newspaper reports by Telex. On the front page of all the British tabloids was the story of the police beating up a boy for dancing. The American papers concentrated on the audience's desire to learn what rock'n'roll was about – 'Rock and roll history made in a riot of enthusiasm.'
A week later I went through immigration in Los Angeles. It was a terminal I'd been through two months earlier when 'Careless Whisper' was at number one in the US charts yet no one knew the group's name. I was confronted by the same customs officer who'd given me a 50-minute body search on my previous visit.
'Hey man,' he said, cheerfully, 'you're the guy who manages Wham!, aren't you? We've been watching them non-stop on the news all week – ABC, NBC, CBS – whatever channel you turn on, there they are.' By the time I'd stopped and pulled out a couple of autographed singles there were other people asking too. 'Wham! is it? Hey, they're huge.'
It was just as we'd planned.
'I'm Coming To Take You To Lunch' by Simon Napier-Bell is published by Ebury Publishing at £10.99 on 3 March.
Don't forget to come back and read the rest of OMM on Sunday.
