(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Sat 11 October 2025 6:00, UK
For a brief but dizzying moment in the 1980s pop sphere, new wave cohort Frankie Goes to Hollywood smashed to the top of the charts like a thunderous maelstrom of pop ingenuity and gleeful subversion.
Eager to turn heads, frontman Holly Johnson knew from their Liverpool founding in 1980 that he wanted a band that would combine punk’s political urgency with disco’s decadent dancefloor sexuality. Corralling the city’s Peter Gill in drums, brothers Mark and Jed O’Toole on respective bass and guitar, and recruiting Paul Rutherford as the crucial backing dancer, a reputation quickly surrounded the revamped Frankie Goes to Hollywood two years later, often playing their early sets in S&M bondage gear and heavy leather popular in the day’s gay clubs.
Such overtly homoerotic flair needed a fittingly queer and hedonistic anthem. Late to rehearsals in the winter of 1982, Johnson’s rush to go through Toxteth’s Princes Avenue sparked the lines “relax”, don’t do it”, triggering such mirth he was laughing to himself while singing out loud lyrical reverie to meet the band. Turns out, Frankie Goes to Hollywood had their first number one.
First seen by a mass audience via their performance on Channel 4’s The Tube, ‘Relax’s early incarnation possessed little of the sonic bluster that would see the Scousers to pop conquer. A more sleazy funk affair, the unsigned band caught the attention of up-and-coming hotshot producer and former ‘Video Killed the Radio Star’ Buggle Trevor Horn, who caught Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s low-key TV spot and decided to sign them up as the first artist to join his newly launched ZTT Records.
It was here that ‘Relax’s essential sonic bombast was forged. With all the latest synthesisers and sampling technology at their disposal, including the revolutionary Fairlight CMI, Frankie Goes to Hollywood headed to Oxfordshire’s Manor Studio and injected their camp disco cut into a beefy, electro NRG banger that both heralded an electric new sound in the pop world while also elevating the song’s paean to unabashed gay sex.
Complete with Bernard Rose’s Caligulan music video and ZTT co-founder Paul Morely’s visionary marketing campaign, responsible for the iconic “Frankie says…” T-shirts, Frankie Goes to Hollywood launched into the mainstream, announcing the decade’s true arrival amid its arresting pop whirlwind and smart, media machine. Sales were sluggish initially, but a raucous appearance on the BBC’s Top of the Pops swiftly found the band spiralling upwards, as well as courting some juicy controversy with Radio 1 DJ Mike Read’s public displeasure at the single’s artwork, resulting in Auntie Beeb’s soft internal ban.
Frankie Goes to Hollywood would trump themselves with the follow-up single ‘Two Tribes’, pouring all their dark satire into another ZTT monster, taking aim at the day’s Cold War tensions, but ‘Relax’ is the hedonistic anthem they’ll always be remembered for.
Their debut album, Welcome to the Pleasuredome, would drop, featuring ‘The Power of Love’, and the whole unit fizzled a few years later after a less successful sophomore. However, for a moment, Frankie Goes to Hollywood stood as the UK’s most sensational group, pointing at just how powerful a musical and cultural phenomenon pop can really be.
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