Holly Johnson: “‘Relax’ keeping ‘Radio Ga Ga’ off Number One must have been like a knife through Freddie Mercury’s heart”

In early ZTT adverts for Frankie Goes to Hollywood, which band did you claim you were making “lick the shit” of your shoes?

“It’s got to be Duran Duran or Wham!? Or both! [Laughs]”

CORRECT. Next to an image of the group’s Paul Rutherford wearing a sailor cap, and under the phrase ‘ALL THE NICE BOYS LOVE SEA MEN’, the provocative ad boasts: ‘Making Public Image seem like men of good will…making Duran Duran lick the shit off their shoes.’

“We laughed when we saw it because we were five lads from Liverpool who didn’t have hairdressers’ appointments to have millions of highlights put in like [Duran Duran members] Nick Rhodes or Simon Le Bon. But it was nothing to do with us. We didn’t write the copy for those adverts – some twat who used to write for NME did! [Laughs]”

Otherwise known as former NME scribe/ZTT Records co-founder Paul Morley…

“If you say so!”

Did you ever hear from Duran Duran about those adverts? Apparently Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s 1983 chart-topper ‘Relax’ inspired them to write their Number Two single, ‘The Wild Boys’, which was released a year later. 

“I did hear that, and I also heard that me saying The Wild Boys: A Book of the Dead by William S. Burroughs was my favourite book gave Nick Rhodes the title. We were definitely ‘Wild Boys’ compared to Duran Duran who seemed to be ‘Nice Middle Class Boys’. You can’t imagine them misbehaving badly. They were going for Roxy Music glamour; we definately weren’t.”

According to Frankie Goes to Hollywood guitarist Brian Nash’s autobiography, when the band were working on the second album ‘Liverpool’ in 1986, they secretly contacted Duran Duran frontman Simon Le Bon asking him to replace you as their singer. Did you know about that?

“[Laughs] No! You’re joking?! According to Brian Nash’s autobiography – the one who looks like Uncle Fester now? The only one I heard was they asked Pete Wylie and he said no, but I didn’t know about Simon Le Bon. I’ve never read his book, obviously.”

Who once wrote a letter to Record Mirror claiming the iconic video to ‘Relax’ was “tacky and very insulting to anyone with a brain – a Hilda Ogden type view of homosexuality. You are not educating people, only telling them that being gay is like a four-letter word sprayed on a toilet wall — cheap, disgusting and very childish”?

“That’s dead easy – Boy George.”

CORRECT. The Culture Club frontman.

“[Laughs] Who, at the time, was claiming he preferred a cup of tea to sex, and wasn’t out of the closet and bonking his drummer! [Jon Moss]. I remember that issue, although I always thought it was Sounds magazine – both minor publications compared to NME, I have to say!”

“He was last year’s band and we were this year’s band in 1984, so it was fuelled by jealousy. We were knocking him off the front page of Smash Hits, and he didn’t like it because Culture Club were massive, and he didn’t like these upstarts. I didn’t laugh about it at the time. ‘You bitch!’ is actually what I thought!”

“It was highly competitive, and no one liked being usurped in the charts or magazine covers, because it was all considered so important. The fact that ‘Relax’ kept Queen’s ‘Radio Ga Ga’ off Number One must have been like a knife through the heart for poor Freddie [Mercury], because no one had heard of us the week before.”

Ever talk to Freddie Mercury about it?

“No, we exchanged looks in gay bars – but they were friendly looks! I was shy and would go to gay bars on my own, so I wouldn’t approach Freddie with his entourage. We weren’t best mates, put it that way. We smiled at each other, though.”

For a bonus half-point: ‘Relax’ was finally knocked off the Number One spot in the German charts after a six-week reign in 1983 by (ironically) which song?

“Er, would it possibly have been Alphaville?”

CORRECT. Alphaville’s ‘Big in Japan’.

“Oh my God! [Laughs] Alphaville’s Marian Gold famously said he wrote that song after learning I was in a ’70s punk band called Big in Japan, whose other members were [Siouxsie and the Banshees’] Budgie, Ian Broudie [The Lightning Seeds], Bill Drummond [The KLF] and Jayne Casey – who later became an NME cover star in 1980 with her group Pink Military. It was a supergroup in reverse. I was in Big in Japan between the ages of 16 and 18, so I was a baby – their youngest member.”

There are pictures of you hanging out with the late Dead or Alive legend Pete Burns. Ever feel the force of his notoriously barbed tongue?

“No. I was an admirer of Pete Burns. He was older than me, and I met him and Jayne Casey on the same day. They were working in a Liverpool salon called A Cut Above the Rest. He was amazing with his big black bouffant quiff, and Jayne with her shaved head and outlandish make-up. Pete didn’t really like me behind my back to other people [laughs], but he was always nice to me when we met. We weren’t bosom buddies, but I thought he was iconic and I was a fan of his image-changing and waspish wit. Pete was never in Big in Japan, but he wanted to be. He wanted them to sack Jayne and install him.”

In 2022, South Park depicted which world leader dancing to Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s 1984 chart-topper ‘Two Tribes’?

“Vladimir Putin. That clip is hilarious.”

CORRECT. Any pop culture moments you’ve enjoyed?

“Going to New York and meeting Andy Warhol was one of my wildest dreams. I was obsessed with him and I took my name from Holly Woodlawn – the Andy Warhol superstar.”

Warhol reportedly propositioned you. When you asked him how you get on the cover of his Interview magazine, he said: ‘I think you should sleep with the publisher’. When you enquired who the publisher was, he replied ‘I am’. Was he being serious?

“It was very tongue-in-cheek. He had a sense of humour. He was witty – not at all like he appeared in interviews where he didn’t say more than ‘Oh gee!’. He was a smart, funny, New Yorker. I met him in 1985, two years before he died, so I feel lucky.”

Which 2024 Paul Mescal-starring film does Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s 1984 Number One single ‘The Power of Love’ play a key role?

“All of Us Strangers – I met Paul Mescal at the BAFTA afterparty and he was very nice, and [fellow star of the film] Andrew Scott was also lovely.

CORRECT. Talking of films, your own biopic, titled Relax, is in the works, starring It’s A Sin actor Callum Scott Howells as you…

“Allegedly! [Laughs] Working Title Films purchased an option to make a film of my 1994 autobiography, A Bone in my Flute, several years ago. I occasionally get presented with scripts to read and comment on, but that hasn’t happened for a while. I don’t know what’s going on with that.”

Have you given Scott Howells any tips on how to portray, or sing like, you?

“I thought meeting him when he was performing in Cabaret would be a good way of him seeing me and how I spoke and behaved; that’s the only thing I did in relation to giving him tips. What I’m led to believe is that he’ll be miming to my vocal performances, but at this stage, I’ll be amazed if the biopic happens!”

You once rejected an offer to duet on ‘90s band Dubstar’s track ‘The Last Song’, because you thought it was “too camp” for you. Which artist did you suggest as an alternative?

“Misery! Which is my name for that person! [Laughs]”

Erm, according to them, you replied: ‘Have you tried Marc Almond instead?’

“Nooo! I might have said Marc Almond, but I definitely suggested it was very like that Mancunian singer whose name sounds like Misery!”

Just for the Moz nickname, CORRECT. Ever encounter Morri…sorry, Misery?

“When we were once both doing Top of the Pops, Misery positioned himself next to me wearing a hearing aid, so I mouthed the word ‘HELLO!’, and walked off. That was my only brush with Misery!”

Name either of your teammates when you appeared on BBC1’s Pop Quiz in 1985.

“Was Bob Geldof there?”

CORRECT. Bob Geldof and Small Faces’ Steve Marriott.

“I knew Bob Geldof was there – I could smell him!”

Geldof wanted Frankie Goes to Hollywood to play Live Aid in 1985. You were in favour of it, but the rest of the group prevented it…

“They didn’t want to do it. They took the advice of our manager who said ‘Ooh lads, you don’t want to do that. You won’t get a soundcheck and it’s going to cost us £20 grand’. The truth is, we were all absolutely knackered at the end of a 77-date tour and they didn’t want to go back to the UK and do it. My view was that was mad – and we should do it. Bob even gave me the option of just me doing it with his band, but I didn’t think it would be as good without Frankie Goes to Hollywood. If I’ve got any regrets, that was the one. We should have done it – it would have been great to feel that Wembley stadium atmosphere.”

According to its producer Trevor Horn, how many depictions of sex with animals does the sleeve to Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s 1984 debut album, ‘Welcome to the Pleasuredome’, contain?

“How could one possibly know that?! 100 or a thousand? I’ve never looked at the album and counted, but I assume he hasn’t either and just came out with a number off the top of his head. I must claim ignorance!”

WRONG. His 2022 memoir claims it’s 32.

“Was that all?! [Laughs] I’m disappointed!”

Frankie Goes to Hollywood reunited for the first time in 36 years to perform the album’s title track at Liverpool’s Eurovision opening concert in 2023 – after all the acrimony, did it feel like closure?

“The lead-up was exhausting. The preamble between Universal Records, who bought the Frankie and ZTT label, and the amount of emails that went on was ridiculous. When I actually got into the rehearsal room with the band, everything was fine. It was like it had been all those years ago, and Mark [O’Toole] and Paul [Rutherford] did their ‘Ooh-ahhs’ [backing vocals], and I did the vocal of the video version that I’d been performing for 10 years, so it was absolutely fine. It was not ‘closure’; it was just good to see everyone and no one was hostile. The Eurovision Song Contest being held in Liverpool seemed a big enough moment for Frankie Goes to Hollywood to turn up.”

Has it paved the way for a full band reunion?

“I can’t see it happening. It could have done after that event. Promoters were offering things, but not all the members were on board and that’s OK. It’s always ‘never say never’, but we’re all getting a bit long in the tooth so it’s unlikely.”

Which Vermont rock band has a 1998 song called ‘Frankie Says’?

“Bloody hell! [Long pause] Were they called Phish?”

CORRECT.

“I’ve never heard it. Is it any good?!”

Frankie Goes to Hollywood were one of the first bands to have a video game tie-in. But which fictional location does the 1985 game Frankie Goes to Hollywood take place in?

“I had the Commodore 64 version of the game which was called Welcome to the Pleasuregame…”

Despite your title being better, it was simply named Frankie Goes to Hollywood…

“Are you sure?! My brother had a copy of the game for the ZX Spectrum. There were lots of mini games and was it set in… Nowheresville?”

WRONG. So close! Mundanesville.

“You got me! [Laughs] I only watched my little brother have a go. I loved that we had a computer game, and that you got a free live version of ‘Relax’ on the cassette. I’ve still got the game in my basement but it’s never been played. I was too busy in 1985! But I’ll never forget Mundanesville now!”

Can you remember the two special guest musicians who joined Frankie Goes to Hollywood at their Hammersmith Odean gigs in London in 1985?

“Did George Michael get up with us? And Lemmy?”

CORRECT.

“George Michael also turned up when we played Birmingham, and did backing vocals on ‘Relax’, because he loved that song. Little known fact: at those London gigs, Gary Glitter, in full glitter regalia, walked into my dressing room as I was getting ready, gave me that wild-eyed stare he used to give the camera on Top of the Pops, and then walked out again. I’ve no fucking idea why that occurred or why he was even in the building! I shouted: ‘WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING HERE??!’ That was the weirdest moment that’s ever happened to me.”

“Lemmy was a nice guy. We met him in Heathrow Airport where he was with Kirsty MacColl, because he was going to mime guitar for her on the German pop TV show Musikladen.”

“I played the first televised HIV/AIDS benefit [Stand By Me: AIDS Day Benefit] in 1987. George Michael came on in total darkness and I realised then what a fantastic voice he had. Everyone was there, including Elton John. When I asked Bob George if he had a brush or a comb, I remember him calling me a comb-osexual.”

After he performed ‘Relax’, George Michael said you didn’t need him, commenting: ‘I’m like a spare part at a wedding.’

“That’s a good quote! [Laughs] And it’s true, because he was a bit of a smoothie in terms of vocalising – not the aggressive type of song that ‘Relax’ is. He was more of a melodic pop person.”

The verdict: 8.5/10

“That’s what comes of not taking drugs or drinking alcohol!”

Holly Johnson is currently on the road with his ‘Welcome to the Pleasuredome 40th Anniversary Tour’ , including a  homecoming show at Liverpool’s M&S Bank Arena on June 21. The Holly Johnson Story exhibition at Museum of Liverpool runs until July 25

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