A posthumous “Best Disruptive Innovation” award to Frankie Goes To Hollywood, and producer/impresario Trevor Horn.
Eighties music was rife with social and political commentary, but much of it was either too soft or too hard. The masses weren’t smart enough for Devo, and Black Flag was a little rough on most suburbanites’ ears.
In comes Horn, previously known for his being one half of the Buggles (“Video Killed The Radio Star”). He grabbed a Liverpool band already making waves in England, added some of the best electronica of the era, and eventually recorded an epic double album – in the span of about a year.
Oh, yeah… he and the band – which positioned two very apparently gay men out front, singer Holly Johnson and backup Paul Rutherford – also turned pop culture on its ear in the process. They made eyebrow-raising, thought-provoking music that you could dance to – huge club hits, actually – and raised eyebrows even further with lots and lots of sex and politics. Reagan, Gorbachev, leather & BDSM imagery, gay culture. Thumbing noses at censorship and Thatcher’s neo-fascism, while raking in piles of cash doing it. Hedonism and headlines, with a beat.
Their first hit was about ejaculation; the first print ads in England had a nautical/BDSM theme, with the caption “All The Nice Boys Love Sea Men.” One of the decade’s biggest dance singles, it quickly became a slogan plastered across millions of t shirts and buttons around the world. A genuine, medium-spanning phenomenon.
They gleefully fucked with the BBC, and then as a coup-de-grace the group gave ’em a reach-around with one of the most beautiful, most romantic songs of the era. A song and video the BBC couldn’t ban.
FGTH’s “Welcome To Pleasuredome” tour of 1984-85 was expectedly a spectacle, with new fans lining up for blocks to get into arenas; New Wave Beatlemania, with black & white t-shirts. Amazing stage presentation, delivering on the hype. I was there.
God bless you, Frankie Goes To Hollywood and Sir Trevor Horn. Generation X will never forget you.
(“Two Tribes” video directed by 10cc’s Godley & Creme)
– Steve Stav
