![]() ![]() “You had a truly great producer – the best in the world along with Quincy Jones – you had a slightly narcissistic journalist, you had this heterosexual scouse energy and this very exploratory gay energy, all mixed up in one place. “It was an unexpected combination of energies,” muses Morley, ever the pop theorist. The latter – one of the founder members of Frankie’s label Zang Tumb Tuum (ZTT) along with Horn and Horn’s wife Jill Sinclair – might consider Frankie a “Dada boy band”, but in a way they were a prequel to Public Enemy, the rap collective with multiple auxiliary members: Rutherford was a less camp Security of the First World, Horn a one-man Bomb Squad and Morley the Minister of Information. The hi-tech sonics were the work of producer Trevor Horn the intellectual subterfuge was courtesy of former NME writer Paul Morley. ![]() Their symphonic future disco came in sleeves full of literary allusions and they issued missives in T-shirt form: Frankie Say War! Hide Yourself, Arm The Unemployed and Bomb Is a Four Letter Word. They were a one-off: two self-styled “ferocious homosexuals” up front, backed by three prototype Liam Gallaghers, who were known as “The Lads”. But that’s because it would be impossible to recreate what they did. Yet they rarely get cited by other bands: they didn’t, for example, feature in the NME’s recent cover story on the 100 Most Influential Artists. Frankie’s achievements – first three singles all No 1, a double debut album with advance sales of more than a million – are colossal. ![]() Relax and Two Tribes are the sixth and 22nd bestselling UK singles ever – above Relax there are just charity records (Band Aid, Candle In The Wind) and novelty songs (Mull of Kintyre, You’re The One That I Want), give or take Bohemian Rhapsody. “It was controlled Mayhem’: Paul Rutherford Photograph: Ian Dickson Photograph: /Ian Dicksonįrankie were a blip, albeit a seismic one. To further playfully mark the occasion, drummer Peter “Ped” Gill and bassist Mark O’Toole have swapped instruments, while singer Holly Johnson, to the bemusement of the BBC cameramen, prefaces his performance – with a mixture of relish and disgust – by tearing up a copy of the Sun, the newspaper that has been doorstepping his parents in Liverpool for quotes about their gay son. After all the controversy surrounding Frankie – their previous No 1, Relax, was banned for its “obscene” content, and the video for Two Tribes was banned for being indecent – even this choice of outfit seems like a provocative gesture. To celebrate their final performance of it on Top of the Pops they are wearing matching white wedding jackets with black trousers and bow ties. They have just spent their ninth week at No 1 with Two Tribes, that ultimate cold war-era document with the annihilating bassline that sounds, in the words of Capital Radio DJ Roger Scott, “like the end of the world”. It is August 1984 and Frankie Goes To Hollywood are in their pomp. ![]()
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