Library Rock's Backpages

Frankie Goes to Hollywood

Frankie Goes to Hollywood

46 articles

Free articles

Frankie Goes to Hollywood: Hammersmith Odeon, London

Live Review by Mat Snow, New Musical Express, 13 April 1985

"HALLO HAHMMERSMITH...we are U2!" Holly say. Some say, ha ha, very funny; I say, many a true word spoken in jest. ...

Audio interviews

Frankie Goes to Hollywood's Paul Rutherford (1988)

Interview by Simon Witter, Rock's Backpages audio, 19 October 1988

Rutherford talks about the end of Frankie and life after, his move into dance music and clubbing, and working with ABC.

File format: mp3; file size: 47.6mb, interview length: 52' 02" sound quality: ***

List of articles in the library

By date | By writer | Most recently added

Phenomenal: Frankie Goes To Hollywood

Report by Barney Hoskyns, New Statesman, 1984

THAT A GROUP should make the fourth-best selling British single of all time with their first release is remarkable; that they should follow it up ...

ZTT: Who Bridges the Gap Between the Record Executive and The Genius? Me

Essay by Paul Morley, New Musical Express, 18 February 1984

PAUL MORLEY, the man who took FRANKIE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD to Number One, takes a long day's journey into night where he wonders whether he ...

Frankie Goes To Hollywood: The War Game

Interview by Neil Tennant, Smash Hits, 26 April 1984

They've become the most notorious British group since the Sex Pistols. Now they're dressing up in army uniforms to promote their new single – "a ...

Frankie Goes To Hollywood: Chain Reaction

Interview by Max Bell, No. 1, 4 August 1984

Frankie Goes To Hollywood are what's been happening while we've been away. They've been at Ho. 1 with 'Two Tribes' and at No.2 with 'Relax'. ...

Into Battle: Declaring War On The Pop State

Essay by Ian Penman, New Musical Express, 8 September 1984

IAN PENMAN goes over the top, typewriter at the ready, and asks, Can one speak of the state of pop without protecting the interests of ...

ZTT: The Morley & Horn Show present How To Make A Spectacle of Yourself

Report and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 13 October 1984

The first year of ZTT has been a spectacular success, with Frankie Goes To Hollywood singles 'Relax' and 'Two Tribes' becoming respectively the fourth and ...

Frankie Goes To Hollywood: The Wild Boys

Interview by Tom Hibbert, Smash Hits, 25 October 1984

Pedro, Nasher and Mark are not quiet types. "Getting absolutely bladdered and smashing the place up" is a little more their line. That and slagging ...

Frankie Goes To Hollywood: Welcome to the Pleasure Dome

Review by Richard Cook, New Musical Express, 3 November 1984

IT IS, of course, brilliant. And nothing more so than the last glittering shards, the final breaths taken in this pleasure dome. ...

Frankie Goes To Hollywood: Welcome To The Pleasuredome (ZTT IQ1)

Review by Max Bell, The Times, 3 November 1984

Frankie say pleasure can pay ...

Frankie Goes to Hollywood: Welcome To The Pleasuredome (Island)

Review by Richard Cromelin, Los Angeles Times, 18 November 1984

FRANKIE GOES TO EXTREMES ...

The American Dream: Frankie Goes To America, The Diary

Report by Max Bell, No. 1, 1 December 1984

Max Bell joins Frankie Goes to Hollywood for a week of high excitement on the road in the U.S.A. ...

The Holly Johnson Interview: "You've Got Fifteen Minutes, Christians."

Interview by Max Bell, No. 1, 1 December 1984

HOLLY JOHNSON keeps himself to himself for much of the tour. ...

Frankie Goes To Hollywood: Welcome To The Pleasure Dome (ZTT/Island)

Review by J.D. Considine, Record, January 1985

ACCORDING TO the press out of Britain, Frankie Goes To Hollywood is the hottest thing since Duran Duran discovered eye-liner. ...

Frankie Goes To Hollywood: Royal Court, Liverpool

Live Review by Penny Kiley, Melody Maker, 5 January 1985

HOMETOWN BOYS ...

Frankie Goes To Hollywood: Welcome To The Pleasuredome (ZTT)

Review by Jeffrey Morgan, Creem, February 1985

SOME THINGS just aren't worth getting upset over, and this album is one of them. ...

Frankie Say Buzz Off

Profile and Interview by Jim Sullivan, Record, February 1985

WELL, HOLLY Johnson, lead singer of Frankie Goes to Hollywood, would use a more explicit four-letter word than buzz to express his feelings toward anyone ...

Relax, It's Only A Rock Group: Frankie Goes To Hollywood

Profile and Interview by Max Bell, The Times, 14 February 1985

CARL GUSTAV JUNG, in one of his lighter moments, once wrote: "Liverpool is the pool of life". A year after Jung's death his words were ...

Warhol: The Face Interview

Interview by Fiona Russell Powell, The Face, March 1985

"I HAVE NOTHING to say — read my books" is Andy Warhol's standard riposte to most would-be interviewers. David Yarritu — a former assistant of ...

Frankie Goes to Hollywood: Hammersmith Odeon, London

Live Review by David Sinclair, The Times, 1 April 1985

HAVING TENACIOUSLY eschewed the medium of live performance as a factor in their rise to ministardom, Frankie Goes to Hollywood now find themselves hoist by ...

Frankie Goes To Hollywood: Swiss Franks

Report and Interview by Helen Fitzgerald, Melody Maker, 25 May 1985

Finally, FRANKIE relaxed and invited Helen FitzGerald to chase them round picturesque Montreux. So what did happen in that brothel in Frankfurt? What do Frankie ...

Frankie Goes To Hollywood: Rage of Chance

Interview by Ted Mico, Melody Maker, 9 August 1986

Those tax-exile terrorists FRANKIE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD return home to Liverpool with a new single, 'Rage Hard' and a ruthless new attitude. Ted Mico investigates ...

Frankie Goes To Hollywood: They're Back!

Interview by Chris Heath, Smash Hits, 27 August 1986

Back! BACK! Yes, after 18 months of faffing about and not making any records and getting married and painting and motor racing and selling egg-cups ...

Frankie Goes To Hollywood: Liverpool

Review by David Quantick, New Musical Express, 25 October 1986

WHAT DO you do when you've made a completely excessive double album which made history as highly moderate filler? How do you feel when everyone ...

Bloody Tourists...

Report and Interview by Dave Rimmer, Q, November 1986

... they come over here, appear on our TV shows, drink all our beer, wreck the place, and then expect us to go out and ...

Frankie Goes To Hollywood: Mad Bastards

Interview by John McCready, New Musical Express, 8 November 1986

WITH A LITTLE help from his friends, Frankie went to Number One. He found that Number One was more exciting than Hollywood ever could be. ...

Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Berlin: G-Mex Centre, Manchester

Live Review by Paul Mathur, Melody Maker, 17 January 1987

MR HOLLY Johnson is right, shooting stars never do stop, more's the pity. Instead they tumble entropically to the back of beyond, hollering, hooting and ...

Is this the end of Frankie Goes To Hollywood?

Report and Interview by Sylvia Patterson, Smash Hits, 25 March 1987

Just two years ago they were one of the biggest pop groups ever. Now, it all seems to be going horribly, horribly wrong. V. sad ...

Frankie goes to Litigation

Report and Interview by Adam Sweeting, The Guardian, 18 January 1988

Holly of Frankie Goes To Hollywood takes his label to court today. Adam Sweeting reports ...

Frankie Went To Hollywood And All I Got Was This Stupid T-Shirt

Interview by Michele Kirsch, New Musical Express, 20 February 1988

When two tribes go to war... As the Great Frankie Case ends, MICHELE KIRSCH talks to the victorious HOLLY JOHNSON ...

Frankie Goes to Hollywood: The Final Chapter?

Report and Interview by Lloyd Bradley, Q, April 1988

ON WEDNESDAY 10 February, the usual knot of press photographers and television camera crews on permanent point duty outside the Law Courts in The Strand ...

Holly Johnson: Frankie Say See You In Court!

Report and Interview by William Shaw, Blitz, August 1988

Despite rampant early successes, the Frankie Goes To Hollywood saga ended in a bitter courtroom battle. Now freed from his ZTT contract, frontman Holly Johnson ...

Frankie Goes To Hollywood: Holly Go Lightly

Interview by Lesley White, The Face, June 1989

AS LUNCH DATES with professionally outrageous people go, mine with Holly Johnson — upstairs and upstairs again at L'escargot — was an affair of studied ...

Frankie Goes To Hollywood: Where Are They Now?

Profile by Martin Aston, Q, October 1992

THERE ARE FEWER more meteoric sagas than that of Liverpool's Frankie Goes To Hollywood – from almost complete obscurity to the hottest, and the most ...

Holly Johnson: A Life Of Johnson

Interview by Stuart Maconie, Q, April 1994

Diagnosed as suffering from an AIDS-related illness, Holly Johnson decided to write his life story before the tabloids did it for him. ...

Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Art Of Noise et al: A Force From Above

Review by Chris Roberts, Uncut, October 2000

MAXIMUM JOYPROPAGANDAA SECRET WISHTHE ART OF NOISEWHO'S AFRAID OF THE ART OF NOISE ...

Frankie Says Come Again

Retrospective by Max Bell, Uncut, July 2004

The T-shirts. The gay sex imagery. That BBC ban for 'Relax'. Nine weeks at No. 1 with 'Two Tribes'. For one amazing year — 1984 ...

Frankie Goes to Hollywood

Profile and Interview by Paul Lester, The Times, 11 October 2009

Paul Lester remembers the two years when the band ruled the world ...

Frankie Goes To Hollywood

Retrospective and Interview by Johnny Black, Music Week, December 2009

SURELY, BY NOW, there should be a commemorative blue plaque on the central reservation of Princess Avenue in Liverpool's Toxteth. ...

Frankie Goes To Hollywood: Welcome To The Pleasuredome Vinyl Icon

Retrospective and Interview by Johnny Black, Hi-Fi News & Record Review, February 2010

IT STARTED in jail. In the spring of 1982, Mark O'Toole, bassist of fast-emerging Liverpool band Frankie Goes To Hollywood, was jamming on a new ...

Frankie Goes to Hollywood: Liverpool

Review by Paul Lester, bbc.co.uk, 20 June 2011

The second album from Liverpool's second most famous sons. ...

Beyond the Pleasuredome: Frankie Goes to Hollywood's Liverpool

Retrospective by Wyndham Wallace, The Quietus, 4 July 2011

Wyndham Wallace follows last year's celebration of Frankie Goes to Hollywood's landmark album, Welcome to the Pleasuredome, with a look at its neglected follow-up, Liverpool, ...

Interview: Trevor Horn

Interview by Simon Price, The Stool Pigeon, 2 February 2012

"That coldness; that precision": Simon Price meets the man who invented the '80s ...

Frankie Goes To Hollywood: Frankie Says Pop Revolution

Retrospective and Interview by Rob Hughes, Record Collector, January 2014

It's easy to forget how big an explosion Frankie Goes To Hollywood caused in the '80s. Rob Hughes peers through the cracked windows of the ...

Eric's, Probe and the Armadillo: The Story Of Liverpool Music, 1976-1988

Retrospective and Interview by Patrick Clarke, The Quietus, 10 April 2018

Through a series of interviews, Patrick Clarke charts the history of Liverpool's brilliant, bitter and burgeoning music scene of 1976-1988, from Eric's and Probe to ...

see also Big In Japan

see also Holly Johnson

RSS

back to LIBRARY

COPYRIGHT NOTICE