Renowned in Hong Kong as a radio and live DJ, including for the Hong Kong Sevens, Simon Willson has worked on diverse projects on the mainland at key moments in the four decades since opening-up. Jon Lowe listens in.

Pop music is an ephemeral thing - short blasts of fun, heartache or joy, over and forgotten in moments. Yet it has the tendency to indelibly mark the popular perception of history. In China's case, the economic and cultural opening-up after 1978 had a strong Western pop component. French instrumental artist Jean-Michel Jarre wowed the country with his Concerts in China in the autumn of 1981. The baton was taken up by the racier Wham!, who performed in Beijing and Guangzhou in April 1985, whetting the appetite of China's younger generations for the musical onslaught to come.

Enter DJ Simon Willson. "I have been lucky really; I've found myself at key moments in China," Willson reflects. He was the first foreign DJ to take up a residency in China, in Shanghai in the spring of 1986. This was at the disco of the brand new five-star Sheraton Hua Ting Hotel in the heart of the city center - back when it was the tallest building in at 26 stories high.

Sino the times

"It was packed every single night of the week," Willson recalls. "They were coming because it was new and I guess it was exciting. At the time you don't really think that you're actually making history."

For a Hong Kong-born Western DJ, then aged 21, it was a musical eye-opener. "We were playing the pop songs of the day, but also some old rock 'n' roll songs, a bit of cha-cha, a bit of waltz - in fact the most popular song back then was by (1980s synth-pop group) Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, of all things, which was a three-step. It was the dancing that they were familiar with that would bring them out on to the dance floor - real floor fillers."

Willson found the denizens of the Sheraton's nightclub both uninhibited and refreshing. "Often at clubs in the West there's lots of toe-tappers that are more concerned with looking cool than actually enjoying themselves, but that wasn't the case there. They were really into enjoying themselves and dancing. It was a great gig."

During an eight-month stint that lasted until January '87, Willson got to explore the city as it was then - on two wheels, naturally. "Riding bicycles around Shanghai was an absolute pleasure then. It had a huge park in the center of the city just off the Bund."

Park life

When Willson returned some 11 years later, "the old Shanghai had completely disappeared", the park replaced by modern hotels and office towers. "To a certain degree it was already recognizable as modern Shanghai - though the Pudong area hadn't yet been developed."

His return, he says, was for "another groundbreaking gig" - a tour of 38 mainland cities that also included Taiyuan, Beijing and Chengdu, to promote Heineken. Willson managed the tour that featured the band Kix Interactive, four dancers and a DJ. "We traveled round China entertaining - with Heineken bunting everywhere," he grins. "That tour made it the best-selling imported beer in China at that time. The bars didn't have to pay one red cent, so needless to say they were absolutely ecstatic that they got a level of entertainment that they'd never seen before, brought right into their bar at no cost."

The next mainland project Willson was involved in was the celebrated Shanghai Expo in 2010, a job that drew on both his video production experience and the outdoorsmanship inherited from his father, record-breaking former world 16m glider champion and renowned Hong Kong cricketer B.J. "Tug" Willson. "I was part of the training team for the flag boats that went up the Huangpu River. We were the 'wet team' - 'cold and wet' we called ourselves because the temperatures were quite chilly working on the water, first out at Dishui Lake and then later on the Huangpu River, training students from the Shanghai Maritime University how to drive rigged boats and operate the catamarans.

"If you watch the footage from the Expo opening ceremony, we're the ones responsible for the two chevrons of boats that go up the Huangpu River with the flags of the participating countries all raised up."

East meets Westlife

The last time Willson worked in the mainland was as assistant tour manager for Westlife, the hugely popular Irish boyband who gave a farewell tour in 2012. He noted that fans in China were just as devoted to the band but more restrained than in other places. "It's the only place in the world where we've had ribbon barriers, like they have in banks to organize queues, to separate the band from the crowd. I've been involved in a lot of live event productions and I was quite nervous when I saw those flimsy barriers, but no, they stopped at the ribbon barriers. It was the most amazing thing.

Even when they managed to find out which hotels the band were staying in, the fans were far from a nuisance. "They would hang out in the hotel lobby, and when they saw members of the band coming down they'd be doing a-cappella versions of the songs with perfect harmonies! So of course the band were more than happy to shake their hands, give autographs, and have photos and selfies taken. It was a real pleasure touring China with Westlife."

Willson is the official DJ for the Hong Kong Sevens 2018 from April 6-8. "It's been a real privilege to be a small part of the hard-working team that helped to promote Rugby Sevens on the world stage and get it to the Olympics," he says. It involves several days of near sleepless toil, plus weeks of preparation sourcing hundreds of tunes to be belted out every time there's a triumphant play on the field - but it's work he relishes. The key thing, he says, is to avoid giving in to the temptation to over-egg the music, in order to build energy levels in the stadium throughout the day and night. That, truly, is the art of the DJ.

Contact the writer at jon.lowe@chinadailyhk.com

(HK Edition 04/07/2018 page6)