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Holly Johnson on orgasmic pop and his second coming: ‘It’s a miracle of modern science I’m still here’
His band, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, ruled the charts in the 1980s with their libidinous, unapologetically queer songs. Then he was told he had months to live. As a new exhibition celebrates Johnson’s art and influence, he tells the hidden story
It’s a pop fact that four of the top 10 bestselling singles ever in Britain were written and performed by gay men: George Michael (at No 9 with Wham’s Last Christmas); Freddie Mercury (No 3 with Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody); Elton John (No 1 with Candle in the Wind). Forty years before Brat summer, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, a Liverpudlian band comprised of three straight men known as “the Lads” and two flamboyantly homosexual frontmen (the other was the mustachioed dancer and backing vocalist Paul Rutherford), caused delighted outrage across Britain and beyond. This hedonistic ethos more than met its match in Frankie’s music: Relax had lyrics about delaying ejaculation, underlined by Johnson’s orgasmic growls and grunts of “Huh!” The producer Trevor Horn had blown their song up to epic proportions, turning a punk-funk chant into a throbbing floorfiller with the aggression of a rock classic and the sound effects (including copious squirting and splashing noises) of a George Lucas blockbuster.
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