Date 26/12/2016 - News People
Many Chinese who had never even heard of the band Wham lined up for hours to buy $1.75 tickets to the groundbreaking April 1985 concert at the People?s Gymnasium, the biggest stadium in Beijing at the time. Singer George Michael's death, for many in China, brought back memories of the first major Western band to play in the country after the death of Mao Zedong and decades of cultural isolation. Wham!?s manager Simon Napier-Bell had spent 18 months persuading the Chinese government to let them perform. The Wham! concert influenced Chinese musicians, who had never seen electric guitars played on stage and began to get interested in rock ?n? roll.
