Frankie Goes to Hollywood (FGTH) was one of the most controversial and commercially successful UK new wave acts of the early 1980s. The Liverpool group was fronted by vocalist Holly Johnson, supported by Paul Rutherford (backing vocals), Peter Gill (drums), Mark O'Toole (bass) 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 seasonal "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).
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.
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David Bowie (born David Robert Jones on 8 January 1947) is an English Grammy Award-winning singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer, arranger and audio engineer.
Active in five decades of rock and roll, and frequently re-inventing his music and image, Bowie is widely regarded as an influential innovator, particularly for his work through the 1970s. Bowie has taken cues from a wide range of fine art, philosophy and literature.
He is also a film and stage actor, music video director and visual artist. In 1981, Queen released "Under Pressure", co-written by and performed with Bowie. The song was a hit and became Bowie's 3rd and Queen's 2nd #1 single. In the same year Bowie made a cameo appearance in the German movie Christiane F. Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo, the real-life story of a 13 year-old girl in Berlin who becomes addicted to heroin and ends up prostituting herself. Bowie is credited with "special cooperation" in the credits and his music features prominently in the movie. The soundtrack was released in 1982 and contained a version of "Heroes" sung partially in German.
Bowie then scored his first truly commercial blockbuster with Let's Dance in 1983, a slick dance album co-produced by CHIC's Nile Rodgers. It was a departure from Scary Monsters for which Bowie received a bit of inside criticism; rather than revolting against 1980s dance music, he had in fact joined the scene. The title track went to #1 in the United States and United Kingdom and many now consider it a standard.
The album also featured the singles "Cat People", "Modern Love" and "China Girl”, the latter causing something of a stir due to its suggestive promotional video. "China Girl" was a remake of a song which Bowie co-wrote several years earlier with Iggy Pop, who recorded it for The Idiot. In an interview by Kurt Loder, Bowie revealed that the motivation for recording China Girl was to help out his friend Iggy Pop financially, contributing to Bowie's history of support for musicians he admired. Let's Dance was also notable as a stepping stone for the career of the late Texan guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan, who played on the album and was to have supported Bowie on the consequent Serious Moonlight Tour. Vaughan, however, never joined the tour after a pay dispute between Bowie and Vaughan's manager at the time. Vaughan was replaced by Earl Slick. The Simms Brothers Band toured and performed with Bowie at this time. The tour was a huge success, and a single performance at the US festival actually scored Bowie a million dollars on its own.
The 1984 follow-up album Tonight was also dance-oriented, featuring collaborations with Tina Turner and a cover of The Beach Boys' "God Only Knows". Critics labelled it a lazy effort, dashed off by Bowie simply to recapture Let's Dance's chart success. Yet the album bore the transatlantic Top Ten hit "Blue Jean" whose complete video, a 22-minute short film directed by Julien Temple, reflected Bowie's long-standing interest in combining music with drama. This video would win Bowie his only Grammy to date, for Best Short-Form Music Video. It also featured the minor hit "Loving the Alien". The album also has a pair of dance version rewrites of "Neighborhood Threat" and "Tonight", old songs Bowie wrote with Iggy Pop which had originally appeared on Lust for Life.
In 1985, Bowie performed several of his greatest hits at Wembley for Live Aid. At the end of his set, which comprised "Rebel Rebel", "TVC 15", "Modern Love" and "'Heroes'", he introduced a film of the Ethiopian famine, for which the event was raising funds, which was set to the song "Drive" by the Cars. At the event, the video to a fundraising single was premièred – Bowie performing a duet with Mick Jagger on a version of "Dancing in the Street", which quickly went to #1 on release.David Bowie as the Goblin King JarethAlso, Bowie worked with the Pat Metheny Group on the song "This Is Not America", which was featured in the film The Falcon and the Snowman. This song was the centrepiece of the album, a collaboration intended to underline the espionage thriller's central themes of alienation and disaffection.
In 1986 Bowie contributed the theme song to the film Absolute Beginners. The movie was not well reviewed but Bowie maintained for many years that the song, a UK #2 hit, was one of the best and most professional he'd ever written. He also took a role in the 1986 Jim Henson film Labyrinth as Jareth, the Goblin King, who steals the baby brother of a girl named Sarah (played by Jennifer Connelly), in order to turn him into a goblin. Bowie wrote songs for the film, some of which became singles.
Bowie's final dance album was Never Let Me Down (1987), where he ditched the light dance of his two earlier albums, instead producing harder rock with a dance edge. The album, which 'only' scraped to a UK #6 peak, drew some of the harshest criticism of Bowie's career, condemned by critics as a faceless piece of product and ignored by the public — Bowie himself openly apologized in an interview for the album's quality; defenders of the album maintain that many of its songs are underrated and that Bowie at this time was simply facing the inevitable backlash of an overexposed superstar.
Opening on 30 May 1987, the Glass Spider Tour sought to market the album; visiting fifteen countries and produced eighty-six performances, as well as nine promotional press shows. Musicians included: Carlos Alomar (guitar), Peter Frampton (lead guitar), Carmine Rojas (bass), Alan Childs (drums), Erdal Kizilcay (keyboards, trumpet, congas, violin) and Richard Cottle (keyboards, saxophone). Dancers included: Melissa Hurley, Viktor Manoel, Constance Marie, Craig Allen Rothwell (aka Spazz Attack), and Stephen Nichols.
Some critics called it overproduced and claimed that it was pandering to then-current stadium rock trends in its special effects and dancers. However, fans that saw the shows from the Glass Spider Tour were treated to many of Bowie's classics. In August of 1988, Bowie portrayed Pontius Pilate in the Martin Scorsese film The Last Temptation of Christ.
Never Let Me Down is an album by David Bowie, released April 1987. It drew some of the harshest criticism of Bowie's career, condemned by critics as a faceless piece of product and ignored by the public—Bowie himself openly apologised in an interview for the album being so bad. However, defenders of the album maintain that many of its songs are underrated and that Bowie at this time was simply facing the inevitable backlash of an overexposed superstar. Featuring more of Bowie's own compositions, the album certainly maintained a greater degree of originality than its predecessor, Tonight. Tracks from Never Let Me Down formed the backbone of Bowie's highly theatrical Glass Spider world tour in 1987.
Tonight is a 1984 album by David Bowie, featuring collaborations with Tina Turner and a cover of the Beach Boys' "God Only Knows". Critics slammed it as a lazy effort, dashed off by Bowie simply to recapture Let's Dance's chart success. Yet the album bore the Top 10 hit "Blue Jean" whose long-form video, a 22-minute short film directed by Julien Temple, reflected Bowie's long-standing interest in combining music with drama. It also featured the minor hit "Loving the Alien", a deep song about religious conflict and one of the few songs from Tonight to later return to Bowie's stage repetoire. The album also has a pair of dance version rewrites of "Neighbourhood Threat" and "Tonight", old songs Bowie wrote with Iggy Pop, both of which originally appeared on Lust for Life, possibly to recreate the success of his earlier rewrite, "China Girl".
The Thompson Twins were an English New Wave/pop band normally associated with the 1980s. The band formed in April 1977, and disbanded in May 1993. Massively popular in the mid-1980s, the band scored a string of hits in the UK, broke into the USA and Canada and enjoyed huge popularity around the globe. Total worldwide record sales are estimated at 50 million. The band was named after the two bumbling detectives in Hergé's comic strip, The Adventures of Tintin.
They broke into the UK Singles Chart and the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart at the beginning of 1983 with "Lies" and "Love On Your Side". Further singles from their third album Quick Step And Side Kick (called simply Side Kicks in the U.S.) followed with "We Are Detective" and "Watching". Bailey's flame-red hair and bright ponytail and Currie's wasp-swatting style at the xylophone swiftly becoming endearing images of an exciting new act. Bailey primarily wrote the music (with significant enough input from Leeway that he received co-authorship credit on all tracks), and Currie contributed most (if not all) of the lyrics. Leeway was also responsible for the band's exciting live visuals.
At the end of 1983, a single "Hold Me Now" was released. An extremely simple love song with gentle guitar lines, it marked a clear break from the Thompson Twins' previously hard-edged electronic sound. "Hold Me Now" relied almost wholly on an emotive piano, some clever percussion from Currie, and heartfelt vocals from Bailey. It hit the top three and remains one of the more timeless singles from an era and decade which tends to date a little more easily than others.
Four equally mature singles followed into 1984: the pop hit "Doctor! Doctor!"; the quirky "You Take Me Up" (at number two, their biggest UK hit); the haunting "Sister of Mercy"; and "The Gap" with its Middle Eastern rhythms (this was not released in the UK). The corresponding album, Into The Gap, was one of the bestsellers of the year, selling five million units worldwide and topping the British album charts. The album sold more copies than many of their contemporary's offerings, including Duran Duran's Seven and the Ragged Tiger, Eurythmics' Touch and Culture Club's Colour by Numbers.
Following up on the surprise success of the "Love on Your Side" single, the reconstituted Thompson Twins quickly regrouped to create an album to capitalize on their new, more direct sound. Quick Step & Side Kick is the Thompson Twins' most fully realized work, with a trio of dance-rock classics -- "Love Lies Bleeding," "Love on Your Side," and the big U.S. chart hit "Lies" -- that all hew close to the synth-bass-and-Latin-percussion groove of "In the Name of Love." Interestingly, however, the trio also branches out to explore a variety of sonic moods, most of them considerably darker than their cartoonish new look, lead singer Tom Bailey now sported a waist-length red ponytail, and percussionist Alannah Currie had a mohawk and no eyebrows -- would suggest. The highlights of these were the simply gorgeous, ghostly ballad "If You Were Here" and yet another elegy for the late Judy Garland, the bitter "Judy Do." Although the follow-up Into the Gap was an even bigger chart success, Quick Step & Side Kick is the better, more consistent album. The somewhat delayed U.S. release of Quick Step & Side Kick shortened the nonsensical title to Side Kicks and scrambled the running order to some ill effect, pulling all of the dance-oriented material on side one and all of the more atmospheric, experimental songs on side two. This version of the album was eventually supplanted by a CD release that retained the title and superior sequencing of the original U.K. issue.
Thompson Twins' atmospheric and moody 1984 album Into the Gap was their commercial breakthrough in the United States, and remains a classic as far as '80s new wave pop is concerned. Nearly every song on this set differed from the others, with each track taking the listener on a different musical journey. The song that cemented Thompson Twins as a presence on American Top 40 radio was their earnest ballad (and biggest hit) "Hold Me Now," which years later still sounded as fresh and innocent as when it was first released. The album yielded a couple of other hits, including the feel-good, percussion- and harmonica-heavy "You Take Me Up" and the mysterious, melodramatic "Doctor! Doctor!" "The Gap," the album's final single (and a definite standout), heavily leans toward Middle Eastern influences (as does "Doctor! Doctor!") and ranks as the album's most unstoppable (and unusual) dance cut. Other tracks, including "Sister of Mercy" and "No Peace for the Wicked," rank almost as high as the singles. Thompson Twins were quiet visionaries, blending intelligent lyrics, Eastern sensibilities, and new wave pop to create a wholly unique and unforgettable listening experience and an album that ranks as one of the '80s' most unique.
Set is the second album recorded by English pop group Thompson Twins. Released in February 1982, it was the second album they recorded for their own "T Records" imprint on the Fame/EMI label.
Compared to the first album, A Product of ... (Participation), Set featured a more polished sound thanks to producer Steve Lillywhite, and it was received positively by the British music press. Keeping true to form with their shifting lineup, Thompson Twins had now swelled to seven members, adding Matthew Seligman on bass guitar to free up Tom Bailey for full frontman duties and keyboards. Former sax player Jane Shorter was replaced by Alannah Currie, who was Bailey's girlfriend at the time (they remained partnered until 2004). Oddly, three of the songs featured on Set do not feature Bailey on lead vocals at all, but rather are sung by Joe Leeway. While not an official member of the band, Thomas Dolby was also on hand to lend additional keyboards to three of the tracks.
While the album was given praise in the press, the band found itself on the verge of yet another personnel change. The album track "In the Name of Love" was written by Bailey simply as album filler, but it wound up being such a strong track that it was chosen as the lead-off single from the album. While not a notable presence in the pop charts, the single was released in the United States as a club single, and from there it went straight to number one on Billboard Magazine's dance charts, where it remained unseated for five weeks (from May 22 to June 19, 1982).
The success of the track opened many doors for the band, who suddenly had the potential to be more than just an underground sensation. Together with the band's manager, John Hade, Tom Bailey reinvented the band as a trio, keeping Alannah Currie and Joe Leeway while firing the others.
Set was also released in the United States on the Arista label as In The Name Of Love, which saw three of the album's tracks replaced by two songs from the band's first album, A Product of ... (Participation).
Here's To Future Days (itself making the top twenty) spawned the track: "King For a Day", which made the US top ten, but only reaching number 22 in the UK. Other singles included the anti-drug message "Don't Mess With Doctor Dream" and a cover of The Beatles' 1968 hit "Revolution". The Thompson Twins made headlines when they performed at the American-end of Live Aid and were joined onstage by the fresh-faced Madonna, who was in only her second year of fame. The UK leg of the album's support tour had to be cancelled because of Bailey's breakdown (fans with tickets received a free live album as compensation) and the album itself was delayed by many months, causing the band to lose momentum. Despite this, the latter half of 1985 saw sell out tours for the band in the USA and Japan.
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".
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.
