A piece of WHAM! History is coming back into spotlight.
George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley of WHAM! in China Photo Credit: © Neal Preston
In 1985, George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley traveled with their band to China for 10 days, making history as the first Western pop act to ever perform in the country.
They played two shows, one in Beijing and one in Guangzhou, and helped cross a cultural divide while simultaneously marking their rising global superstardom.
A documentary was planned at the time with hours of footage captured of the band performing, visiting with government officials and dignitaries, and making tourist stops, but it languished in a vault for decades due to disagreements between the original director and the band.
Now, a new documentary, titled “WHAM! 10 Days in China,” directed by Mike Christie, shares that archival footage with new interviews from Andrew, members of the band and management team, and Chinese fans who were there for the historic moment.
George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley of WHAM! in China at The Great Wall Photo Credit: © Neal Preston
“You were really hearing the same story from different perspectives. There wasn’t you know the anyone who had a wildly kind of different or completely unique or nonsensical version of anything we didn’t film with, and there were some of those people who just had slightly fictitious, egotistical versions, but and also, so it was fascinating that you knew when there was a consensus, you were you were really talking about the truth, not ‘a’ truth,” Christie told PauseRewind’s Elizabeth Stanton.
It’s highlighted in the documentary that WHAM!’s visit wasn’t entirely diplomatic, but more designed to breakthrough to the U.S. market in a roundabout way.
“The idea was to do this Andrew and George were really young at the time, so I don’t know if it’s something they would have thought about the actual impact of it. But I didn’t see much sort of trace of that, even in some of the interviews with other people like Simon [Napier-Bell, WHAM!’s co-manager at the time], who great guy, a legend, but you know, he sort of saw it in commercial terms, PR terms. He knew that you know, he saw it as the you know being able to help China open up with the music industry selling CDs or whatever, and I don’t know if anyone really considered the how incredible the human and cultural impact could be, and really that’s what the film’s about at the end of the day.”
Christie found he was the right man for the job of bringing the documentary back to life after speaking with Andrew and George’s estate about making sure the perspective of the Chinese people was highlighted alongside the band’s.
Wham China at the Great Wall. Photo Credit: © Andrew Ridgeley, Big Geoff Overseas Limited, Robobuild Limited t/a George Michael Entertainment. Photograph(s) by Martyn Goddard.
“I made some documentaries in China, and one of the things I was talking about caught their attentionwhich was talking about the Chinese perspective, which no one had really talked about,” he said.” It was always kind of everything through the WHAM! lens. And in a strange way, shifting the perspective that wasn’t just WHAM!’s story, that it was a story told from two sides plus all the other perspectives in the film, I think led to a lot of intrigue on the part of Andrew and the estate.”
Andrew and George navigate their unexpected diplomatic duties fairly well, but as can be seen in the documentary, they’re incredibly young and somewhat underprepared for the magnitude of what was happening.
“They were having like five days before a concert, and they had no idea that they were walking into a situation where they were going to be going to kind of ambassadors’ residences,” Christie said. The boys met with leaders, dignitaries, and other officials for multiple events, with “a banquet every day.”
Christie added, “They were dropped in the deep end, and they were 21 and 22, George was 21. It is extraordinary how they realize the importance of it and how they behaved with such incredible kind of dignity.”
Wham! on China Tour 1985. Great Wall. Photo Credit: © Andrew Ridgeley, Big Geoff Overseas Limited, Robobuild Limited t/a George Michael Entertainment. Photograph(s) by Martyn Goddard.
The documentary also serves as a time capsule of WHAM! at their peak, as well as offering a rarely seen look at the band backstage.
“Andrew told me, and I’ll hard take his word for it, that it’s the only footage of them backstage or sound checks or jamming,” Christie revealed. “We’ve got this incredible film footage that had gone through this restoration process that took the best part of a year, and it looks amazing. And you kind of think, thank God, they shot it on film because it’s rare that that they have all that footage, but to shot it on film is extraordinary.”
Even after the success of the tour, WHAM! never returned to China. George Michael died on Christmas Day in 2016, but his and Andrew’s legacy as artists has continued and been preserved thanks to fans around the world, including those in China.
Andrew joined the crew for the entirety of filming in China, revisiting the powerful moments that remain with him to this day.
Andrew Ridgeley in China for “WHAM! 10 Days in China.” (Photo credit: © Craig Hastings)
“He genuinely wanted to kind of go on that journey of kind of discovery,” Christie said. “I remember at the airport how profoundly affected he was by the whole trip. It had been a kind of a revelation all the way through. There was also moments we were there on the 40th anniversary of the Beijing concert, and we all went for a dinner. And there’s a kind of Chinese ritual that you know for someone who’s passed, someone who’s no longer there, which became a kind of quite a moment, and Andrew gave a little sort of speech, a little moment for George.”
“I think in a way he was he went back for both of them,” Christie said, adding, “I think there was an a quietly spiritual aspect to it, even though he probably wouldn’t use those words.”
“WHAM! 10 Days in China” will be in theaters July 28.
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