Bigwigs from the Chinese Communist Party and the People’s Liberation Army were on hand as stoner-rock favourites Deep Purple took their banana tour to the exotic environs of Beijing

It definitely counts as the most surreal gig I’ve ever been to. Fourteen bigwigs of the Chinese Communist Party and People’s Liberation Army (PLA) were lined in a neat semi-circle in desk-seats straight out of the Great Hall of the People. They even had their white tea-cups, with lids. It was an all-seated gig, with an acre of space left in front of the stage lest there be any rioting. And out into the weirdness walked a barefooted Ian Gillan dressed in the Indian whites of Jawaharlal Nehru.
His thick make-up barely hid Gillan’s nervousness but the distance between the stage and the audience would have challenged any band. With legendary local rabble-rouser Cui Jian opening for the visitors local authorities were taking no chances. A file of young PLA officers faced the crowd at each tier of the stadium. The reception was muted for opening songs ‘I Got Your Number’ and ‘Strange Kind Of Woman’ but the green glow-in-the-dark sticks were moving to the beat for ‘Perfect Strangers’.
Lead guitarist Steve Morse drew a huge cheer for ‘Contact Lost’, a luscious instrumental dedicated to the memory of the Columbia space crew that perished last year. Gillan’s obsequious bows and “helloooo” waves added to the spectacle of a bunch of cheerful old rock tourists playing unknown tunes in front of a backdrop of bananas. Bananas, bananas everywhere. If the tunes were solid the night was choreographed and very polite: keyboardist Don Airey drew the biggest cheer of the night when he played Beethoven and a Chinese traditional tune.
The climax to the gig was as farcical as the double-chinned PLA general slumbering in his VIP seat. An overweight woman dodged the soldiers and ran towards the stage to boogie for all she was worth, shaking her rear frantically to the riffs of ‘Smoke On the Water’ until she was grabbed by four sweating police men. The Communist party officials and army brass had vacated their perch or dozed off by the encore, when the front of stage was littered with green glo-torches.
Tickets for the concert weren’t cheap considering a local salary averages at 900 yuan (E89) a month. Prices started at 1,580 yuan (E157) for front-row seats, dropping to 180 yuan (E17) for a back-of-the-house perch. Still, scalpers were selling the 1,580 yuan tickets for as little as 125 yuan outside before the show. “I’m satisfied with the ticket sales,” said local Niu Jiawei of promoter RGB. “I’d expected to sell around 60 per cent, but we sold more than 80 per cent.” Niu admitted that the sales were driven by the opening act, Cui Jian, who opened with six of his old hits. Beijing being the political capital, the local rocker is kept on a tight leash and has his setlist approved by government officials. In more liberal Shanghai and Guangzhou Cui had the same play-time as the westerners. Famed across China as the pioneer of local rock, Cui Jian’s biting satirical tunes like ‘Balls Under The Red Flag’ were the anthems of the students mown down in Tienanmen Square in 1989.
Although the visitors got a good reception, Cui Jian was the star of the night. Barred from headlining any Beijing show since 1989, Cui was last year slotted in to open for the Rolling Stones, who pulled their Chinese dates when SARS began to take a grip on the country. Mellow pop a la Westlife and Enya, instrumentalists like Yanni and Kenny G and the ubiquitous Mando-pop dominate China’s music scene. “I bought one of their albums in the 1980s when I was starting out in rock,” said Chen Jin, guitarist with local hard-rock band Second Hand Roses, who watched the gig on a free ticket. “Later we played ‘Smoke On The Water’ in Beijing bars.” Local rock producer Gao Qi meanwhile was in awe of the band’s longevity. “I admire those who never stop performing until they’re very old.”
There’s plenty of creativity and a good deal of talent on Beijing’s own rock scene. But audiences are small and performance spaces limited. Li Yaguang, drummer for trash metal group Death Way, lives in a ramshackle factory roughly converted into artist studios and leftfield performance spaces. He survives on a cheap diet of radishes and cabbage and drinks strong rice whiskey to ward off the cold in his sparse digs. “Rock and roll is my only quarry,” says bandmate Wang Xin who wears a gaudy Pantera t-shirt as the band rehearses in a dank college dorm. “Rock and roll is our dream. We meet some things on the street, some problems in life, and we speak them out with our own music. Music makes us feel alive.” Not able to make money from his music, Wang spent a year working in a Beijing textiles plant. Playing pop staples in bars and restaurants had “no soul”.
Death Way does it own lights and sound, borrowing the entirety of their stage from local shops and scrapyards. They usually put on their own shows, free, in parks, sheds and any bar that’ll have them. Death Way’s peers, punk-ska outfit Hang On the Box, do slightly better, having released two albums on China’s only national indie label, Modern Sky. The talented group, made up of three girls and a male guitarist, were refused permission to tour Europe however, the government having deemed them “an inappropriate example of Chinese culture.”
So there!