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Frankie Goes to Hollywood

Frankie Goes to Hollywood
Frankie Goes to Hollywood (L-R: Paul Rutherford, Peter Gill, Holly Johnson, Mark O'Toole, Brian Nash)
Frankie Goes to Hollywood (L-R: Paul Rutherford, Peter Gill, Holly Johnson, Mark O'Toole, Brian Nash)
Background information
Origin Liverpool, England
Genre(s) Dance
Synthpop
New Wave
Years active 1980–1987
Label(s) ZTT, Island
Associated
acts		 Big in Japan
Website http://www.fgth.org.uk/
Members
Holly Johnson
Paul Rutherford
Peter Gill
Mark O'Toole
Brian Nash

Frankie Goes to Hollywood (FGTH) was a UK dance-pop band that was popular in the mid 1980s. The Liverpool group was fronted by Holly Johnson (vocals), supported by Paul Rutherford (vocals, keyboards), Peter Gill (drums, percussion), Mark O'Toole (bass guitar) and Brian Nash (guitar).

The group's debut single "Relax" was famously banned by the BBC while at number six in the charts, and subsequently topped the UK singles chart for five consecutive weeks, going on to enjoy prolonged chart success throughout 1984 and ultimately becoming the seventh best-selling UK single of all time (as of May 2006). Following the phenomenal follow-up success of "Two Tribes" and "The Power of Love", FGTH became only the second act in the history of the UK charts to reach number one with their first three singles (the first being Gerry and the Pacemakers in 1964).

Contents

  • 1 Career
    • 1.1 Formation
    • 1.2 "Relax"
    • 1.3 "Two Tribes"
    • 1.4 "The Power of Love"
    • 1.5 "Welcome to the Pleasuredome"
    • 1.6 Return and decline
    • 1.7 Split
    • 1.8 Later years
    • 1.9 Reunion and comeback
  • 2 Legacy
  • 3 Band members
    • 3.1 FGTH 1980's members
    • 3.2 FGTH 2004/5 members
  • 4 Discography
    • 4.1 Albums
      • 4.1.1 Original material
      • 4.1.2 Compilations
      • 4.1.3 DVD Compilation
    • 4.2 Singles
    • 4.3 Alternative Remixes
    • 4.4 Lost tracks
  • 5 Trivia
  • 6 Computer game
  • 7 External links
  • 8 Notes

Career

Frankie Goes to Hollywood's biggest selling single, "Relax".
Frankie Goes to Hollywood's biggest selling single, "Relax".

Formation

On the B-side to the group's first single, Johnson explained that the group's name derived from a page from the New Yorker magazine, featuring the headline "Frankie Goes to Hollywood" and a picture of Frank Sinatra. An alternate story relates that a similar article about Frankie Vaughan was the source for the group's name. The original group named "Frankie Goes to Hollywood" allegedly dates from 1980.

The nucleus of the group emerged from the late 1970s Liverpool punk scene. Lead singer Holly Johnson had played bass with Big in Japan, and had also released two solo singles. Paul Rutherford — who did not join until later — had sung in The Spitfire Boys. Local musicians Peter Gill (drums), Jed O'Toole (bass) and Jed's cousin Brian Nash (guitar) initially joined Johnson, calling themselves Sons of Egypt the band secured a number of small local gigs. The group disbanded shortly after only to be partially reprised when Johnson joined Mark O'Toole (bass) and Ped to form FGTH, during a particularly fluid period of personnel changes brother Jed joined on guitar. A female vocalist, Sonya Mazunda, subsequently joined the group, and this line-up performed the first Frankie gig at the Leeds nightclub "The Warehouse", supporting "Hambi & The Dance".

Rutherford, who had been temporarily filling in as backing vocalist for the headlining act, apparently got so caught up in Frankie's performance that he effectively replaced Mazunda that very night. The new all-male musical line-up subsequently toured locally with a leather-clad duo known as "The Leatherpets", and managed to fund promotional videos and demos, despite being eventually turned down by both Arista Records and Phonogram. In October 1982, the group recorded a John Peel session for BBC Radio One, comprising the originals "Krisco Kisses", "Two Tribes", "Disneyland" and "The World Is My Oyster". Around this time Jed O'Toole left the group, to be replaced by the returning Nash.

In February 1983, the group were invited to record a video for "Relax" by the Channel Four show The Tube at the Liverpool State Ballroom. After the broadcast, the Peel session was repeated on radio, and a new session recorded for the BBC, comprising "Welcome to the Pleasuredome", "The Only Star In Heaven" and "Relax". These performances, along with a repeat of the Tube video, apparently convinced Trevor Horn to sign the group for his new label, ZTT Records, in May 1983.

"Relax"

"Relax" was released by ZTT in October 1983 and got a modicum of airplay, allowing it steady progress into the UK Top 40. Following a debut appearance on the BBC's Top Of The Pops on January 5, 1984 while at number 35, the single shot to number six in the charts — and then would come the incident which propelled both song and band into pop notoriety forever.

  • Relax ('New York Mix') excerpt ("Frankie Say WAR HIDE YOURSELF" t-shirt design by Katharine Hamnett.
    "Frankie Say WAR HIDE YOURSELF" t-shirt design by Katharine Hamnett.

The provocative notes on the back of the "Relax" sleeve were attributed to music journalist and ZTT associate Paul Morley, who was also responsible for the PR campaign that followed the BBC ban, and which led to a massive demand for both the band and the banned song. Part of this promotion (although it actually came later in the year, with the release of "Two Tribes") included the iconic "Frankie Say Relax Don't Do It" T-shirts, which were credited to Morley but were in fact based on designs by Katharine Hamnett, who had produced similarly minimalistic black-on-white shirts depicting positive slogans such as "Choose Life" and "Go Go", as worn by Wham! in promoting "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go". "Frankie Say..." T-shirts would become ubiquitous in the UK during the summer of 1984.

Adding to the controversy surrounding "Relax", rumours began to circulate after its chart success that the single had actually been recorded by session musicians. This rumour eventually gelled into the general accusation that "Frankie cannot play", since the group were unavailable for touring duties during the whole of 1984. Some time later, producer Trevor Horn admitted that in fact he had recorded a 'demo' version of "Relax" with FGTH and The Blockheads, the renowned backing group for New Wave icon Ian Dury. He had then cut a second version with FGTH alone, but was unhappy with the result of both sessions, and had finally taken the tape away to work on. Horn allegedly spent five more weeks augmenting the track with extensive overdubs by session musicians, incorporating previously recorded bass hooks by the Blockheads' Norman Watt-Roy and a bass pulse sampled on a Fairlight CMI two years earlier at Battery Studios by session bassist Mark 'Thumbs' Cunningham. Despite apparently unilaterally spending such extensive time and money on one single, Horn would later assert that "Relax" represented a massive gamble for himself and his new record label, ZTT, and that its failure could well have bankrupted him. By the time it was completed, it had cost a reported £70,000 in studio time alone, with the video clip costing an additional £15,000. The question of studio time, costs and who should ultimately pay for them would become a key question for FGTH (and other signed ZTT groups such as Propaganda) beyond 1984.

"Two Tribes"

Twelve inch picture disk of "Two Tribes" with video image
Twelve inch picture disk of "Two Tribes" with video image

"Relax" remained in the charts when the follow-up, "Two Tribes", was released in May 1984. The anti-conflict song was given an aggressively topical nuclear war slant. Featuring sirens, the unmistakable voice of Patrick Allen (who had voiced the British Government's actual nuclear warning ads, Protect and Survive, two years earlier) and another innovative electronic backing, it went straight into the UK charts at Number One and stayed there for a phenomenal nine weeks (the first single to do so since Wings' "Mull of Kintyre" during 1977–78), with total sales exceeding 1.5 million copies and becoming one of the top 30 best-selling records in the UK ever.


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