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"* 'Tells the story with a raconteur's relish and a cast of shady characters straight out of a Graham Greene novel' - Q magazine * 'A riot of boys, booze and 80s excess...a great raconteur and his snide asides are a joy...Bitchier than an Elton John put down' - Elle * 'Reading this is like sitting across a table groaning with fole gras, listening to a raconteur extraordinaire ramble through an alcoholic mist...tremendous fun' - Gay Times * 'Funny and totally absorbing' - Pink Paper"
Book Description
The acclaimed author of Black Vinyl White Powder and You Don't Have To Say You Love Me takes us on a Far Eastern pop adventure as he tries to take Wham! behind the bamboo curtain
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Following on from the hilarious You Don't Have To Say You Love Me and Black Vinyl White Powder, this is the bonkers tale of how SNB managed to make Wham! the first Western band to play in China. Living in some luxury with his two (quarrelling, competitive) lovers, SNB gets persuaded to represent Wham! - not really the sort of music he's used to, but it gets him out of his sometimes tense domestic environment. First he has to get them out of their ridiculous contract which guarantees them no money at all for years, then he want to break them in America, where the big bucks are. With (at that point) no obvious USP for the band, he decides that getting them into China will immediately make them well-known all over the world (and will, incidentally, allow him to travel to the Far East a lot - a long-held ambition). And that's why Wham! went to China - PR!
Getting China sorted takes a very long time indeed, during which SNB gets rid of Japan (the band), meets all sorts of shady characters, tussles with Chinese bureaucracy and corruption, struggles to keep Wham! going (they're haemorrhaging money and making hardly anything), and copes with George Michael's suspicion and paranoia about pretty much everything and everybody, and with GM's desire to go it alone just as everything is coming together. And as history shows, come together it does... and SNB can exit without loss (albeit without as much as he might have wished).
I really don't give a toss about Wham! or George Michael - my musical taste was largely formed in the period of SNB's first book, namechecked above. But this book is absolutely brilliant (as are the other two), because SNB is such a engaging and charming character - not a "suit" at all - and he has such interesting adventures on the way, and tells his tale so well. There's any number of doom-and-gloom books about pop/rock music ripoffs, bad times, and deaths (all of true, to be sure), so it's great to read a largely upbeat and amusing tale like this.
Getting China sorted takes a very long time indeed, during which SNB gets rid of Japan (the band), meets all sorts of shady characters, tussles with Chinese bureaucracy and corruption, struggles to keep Wham! going (they're haemorrhaging money and making hardly anything), and copes with George Michael's suspicion and paranoia about pretty much everything and everybody, and with GM's desire to go it alone just as everything is coming together. And as history shows, come together it does... and SNB can exit without loss (albeit without as much as he might have wished).
I really don't give a toss about Wham! or George Michael - my musical taste was largely formed in the period of SNB's first book, namechecked above. But this book is absolutely brilliant (as are the other two), because SNB is such a engaging and charming character - not a "suit" at all - and he has such interesting adventures on the way, and tells his tale so well. There's any number of doom-and-gloom books about pop/rock music ripoffs, bad times, and deaths (all of true, to be sure), so it's great to read a largely upbeat and amusing tale like this.
Lots of fun, read through it very quickly laughter and suprise in almost every page...Doubt whether its all true and found a couple of factual mistakes in the book... referring to Botswana as a homeland where Sun City is a case in point. The homelands name was Bophutatswana and Botswana is a proud independent country which has nothing to do with Apartheid and Sol Kerzner... Simon Napier Bell you are the sterotype that I hoped you would be and pity that the grey boring people have taken over from you..
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