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The Latest Breaking News from Simon NapierBell

Careless whispers: what really happened between George Michael and Lindsay Anderson? The Wham! movie producer reveals all

How did the pioneering director get involved – then fall out – with the 80s’ poppiest band? How are Sam Peckinpah and Michael Jackson’s Thriller involved? Prepare for a tale of ambition, deception and shuttlecock-stuffed shorts

The Guardian - UK

Vicki Wickham obituary

Journalist, producer, talent manager and driving force behind the 1960s pop music TV show Ready Steady Go!

The Guardian - UK

Wham! 10 Days in China review – pop meets politics in George and Andrew’s great leap east

The duo’s groundbreaking 1985 tour reveals a strange collision of pop stardom and communism, a re-edit of Lindsay Anderson’s efforts that got him fired

The Guardian - UK

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“You’re watching a lot of this film through your fingers”: We speak to director Mike Christie about bringing Wham!’s groundbreaking 1985 China trip back to life in a captivating new film

Combining never before seen archive footage with fresh interviews, Christie’s new film is the ultimate document of Wham!’s momentous but turbulent 1985 trip - and the legacy it left on a generation of Chinese fans

MusicRadar

“Sylvian then felt justified in mixing our work alone – which by any other name would be known as hijacking”: The destructive breakdown of a band that reached artistic greatness only to fall apart due to internal tensions – twice!

While Rain Tree Crow was an unlikely second chapter for Japan, its existence proved that their collective talent was too rare to walk away from

MusicRadar

“One room, six of us in bunks, sleeping with the light on or the cockroaches would come in… that was the lowest point – before we got in the recording studio”: Japan’s career was much more fun than it seemed

Attacking punks, getting stuck on a disco label, fighting the New Romantic tag: Steve Jansen recalls how the schoolmates’ natural sense of rebellion became unique music before egos got in the way, and the flukes that made them big in actual Japan

Louder

“That was also where Mitch Mitchell brought Jimi’s white Woodstock Strat for me to set up, prior to him selling it”: My afternoon interviewing Hank Marvin over beans on toast and chickening out of a Paul McCartney 'audition'

Neville Marten's first assignment for Guitarist was one for the ages, at a venue that is now sadly lost but for a time was the place for the biggest bands to rehearse

Guitar World

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‘The police were scared there would be riots’: When Wham! took Western pop to China

IN FOCUS : The CIA wanted them to spy as well as perform. The Communist Party insisted that fans were not to dance to them or learn their ways. Forty years ago, George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley were the first Western band to tour China – Mark Beaumont revisits an…

The Independent UK

"I remember Jimmy yelling at us and calling us hooligans": Jimmy Page, Keith Moon, Jeff Beck and the chaotic session that sowed the seeds for Led Zeppelin

In a small London studio, two Yardbirds, one member of The Who and a pair of passing session maestros united to record a spontaneous instrumental track. Things would never be the same again.

Louder

Why ‘Last Christmas’ annoyed George Michael

Singer, who died on Christmas Day in 2016, was always ‘slightly upset’ by the song, according to his former manager

The Independent UK

Dead dogs, capitalist critique and only four songs: when Wham! squashed Lindsay Anderson’s China film

The British pop stars hired the Palme d’Or winner to record their groundbreaking shows in east Asia. After it all ended in tears, the unseen film was locked up in a Scottish university

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