Wham! and the Singing Lesson

I first heard about the Wham! in China debacle as it was happening through my friends the Bloomfields. A prolific writer of postcards, which were often as forthright as they were funny, Lindsay sent them occasional progress reports, in which he did not trouble to hide the fact that things were not going well.

So I was very curious to see what the new Wham! documentary, Wham!: 10 Days in China, would make of the tour – and Lindsay’s part in it – forty years on.

It is a good, surprisingly honest film. Its account of the first Western pop band ever to tour China reveals the cynical nature of a visit that was calculated, above all else, to generate the publicity that would help the duo “conquer” America.

In describing this behind-the-scenes strategy, “to fast-track Wham! straight to the top”, Andrew Ridgeley, with whom the film opens and closes, sounds more like a record executive than a pop star – although of course the real star was only ever George Michael. While I had been expecting a rather bland exercise in Wham! nostalgia, the film is actually a rather fascinating documentary about the making – and traducing – of another documentary.

In early March 1985 Martin Lewis, who had produced The Secret Policeman’s Ball, invited Lindsay to direct a film about Wham!’s forthcoming visit to China. “I was immediately interested,” Lindsay recalled, “but everybody thought I was completely mad. And I said, ‘Why?’ I mean Wham! may not be great, but the visit of a Western pop group to China must be interesting.”

More comfortable talking about business than music or art, Ridgeley explains – in this new documentary about the old documentary – that Wham! acquiesced in their management’s decision to support the film but had no real interest in having the documentary made. “From our point of view why it would have been filmed was to claw back some of the vast expense of what it cost to go there.”

Whether George Michael really shared that point of view it’s impossible to know now as he’s no longer around to ask. But certainly when the documentary was filmed both he and Ridgeley were obviously reluctant participants, who did not trouble to hide their dislike of appearing before the cameras. They even seemed to take pleasure out of thwarting the very people they had hired to film them. “I think there was less and less engagement with them as the endeavour unfolded,” Ridgeley comments with a laugh, “and by Canton I think they were just running the cameras.”

The principal victim of this attitude was Lindsay as the director, but nor could the situation have been much fun for the crew. Joel Hinman, the location manager, remembered, “Throughout the entire experience the film crew – we were kind of like the carbuncle. We were a parasitic organisation. Nobody really wanted us.”

The only person to show any respect for Lindsay was Martin Lewis, who had persuaded him to make the film:  “He’d won the Oscar for the documentary called Thursday’s Children in 1954. He’d made ground-breaking feature films: This Sporting Life, If…., O Lucky Man! He would understand the breadth of this canvas.”

But Wham! didn’t care about the canvas and were contemptuous of the film-makers’ attempts to cover it. “I was no fan of Lindsay Anderson,” Ridge states openly. “I didn’t like him. He didn’t like us.”

But in light of the way that Wham! treated Lindsay and his film crew how could it possibly have been otherwise? “They were quite uninterested – I thought very foolishly uninterested – in the idea of a film being made,” Lindsay recalled.

With the distance of forty years, it is easy to see how two extraordinarily successful young musicians were victims of a toxic combination of money and ignorance. In a different time and place maybe they might have been receptive to a more meaningful exchange – not only with China, then a proverbially enigmatic country seeking to open itself up to the West, but also with one of Britain’s most gifted film directors, from whom there was much that they might have learned if only they had bothered to strive for a cordial relationship.

If You Were There... – Lindsay’s title for his documentary about the visit to China, which Wham! suppressed for many years – was not the first time that he had made a film in a communist country. In 1967, while he was in Poland directing a play, he made a short documentary about the Warsaw Academy of Dramatic Art. The result was a beautiful, lyrical film about a teacher eliciting – with warmth, enthusiasm and patience – truthful performances out of his students.

At one point he jumps on to the stage himself to show two young actors how to perform their dance steps. It is a charming moment, which also provides some insight into how the best art tends to emerge out of genuine, whole-hearted collaboration.

The original Polish title of the film, Raz, dwa, trzy, means “One... two... three...” It is what the teacher and students repeat over and over again as they dance together at the end of the film. If those Polish students represented – as Lindsay put it in the diary that he was then keeping – an “ideal of charm, seriousness, sensitivity – young humanity at its best”, Wham!’s misguided connivance in the sabotage of If You Were There... was young humanity kept far from its best.

The Singing Lesson ends with everyone in the hall – whether or not they’re actually on the stage – dancing together. It anticipates the jubilant ending of what many people consider to be Lindsay’s masterpiece, O Lucky Man! (1973). As a much more receptive pop star, Alan Price, sings the lyrics that carry the moral of the film, the performers and crew celebrate their creative achievement together in an end-of-shoot party – an exhilarating tribute to true collaboration.