Trivia / Frankie Goes to Hollywood

---

• Banned in China: The BBC blocked "Relax" from airplay thanks to its overtly sexual lyrics.
• Beam Me Up, Scotty!: Thanks to a infamous scene from Friends, a lot of people think one of the shirts Frankie sold at their tours said "Frankie Say/Says Relax" when said shirt actually read "Frankie Say Relax Don't Do It". It's even made it into this.
• False Credit: The band's debut album, Welcome to the Pleasuredome, infamously saw producer Trevor Horn replace everyone except vocalist Holly Johnson with himself and various session musicians. Despite this, the full band is credited in the liner notes despite only one member contributing to the finished product.
• One-Hit Wonder: In the United States, Frankie is only known for "Relax". They had five very successful singles in Europe, with "Two Tribes" being the highest selling single of 1984 in Britain.
• Streisand Effect: "Relax" being Banned by the BBC cemented its (and the band's) notoriety and probably had a lot to do with it going on to become one of the UK's top ten best sellers of all time. Many went to see Body Double for the "Relax" porn sequence after.
• What Could Have Been:
  • "Slave to the Rhythm", another Trevor Horn production, was intended to be Frankie Goes to Hollywood's second single; the band recorded a demo, but the song was ultimately given to Grace Jones. With her on vocals, it ended up ballooning into an entire album of the same name, with the track being retitled there as "Ladies and Gentlemen: Miss Grace Jones".
  • Want to know what Liverpool would have sounded like had Trevor Horn produced it? All of the remixes of "Warriors of the Wasteland" were produced by Horn, and they definitely sit alongside the Pleasuredome material. Ditto his additional production on the "Rage Hard" extended mixes.
• Word of God: Holly Johnson is on record saying "Wish (The Lads Were Here)"'s actual title was and always will be "Love Has Got a Gun." Legend has it that the song was a late addition to Welcome to the Pleasuredome and was shoehorned in between "San Jose (The Way)" and "The Ballad of 32", an instrumental that originally carried the title "Wish the Lads Were Here" (without parentheses) as a nod to Pink Floyd and "32"'s similar sound to that band's 1975 classic Wish You Were Here. The title renaming was conducted by Paul Morley against the band's wishes, and "32" was heavily edited for length (the full version appearing on a reissue.) The album artwork has never been corrected.

---