462 Hello Holly Johnson* - Relax

( * as  part  of  Frankie  Goes  To  Hollywood )

Chart  entered : 26  November  1984

Chart  peak : 1

Number  of  hits : 13  ( 7 with Frankie  Goes  To  Hollywood, 5 solo , 1 as  a  named  participant  on  a  charity  single )

We're  dealing  with  one  of   the  biggest  singles  of  this  or  any  other  decade  here  but  it's  also  our  first  encounter  with  one  of  the  most  intriguing  stories  in  pop, how  a  short-lived  post-punk  outfit  from  Liverpool   played  host , not  all  at  the  same  time , to  some  of  the  biggest  movers  and  shakers  in  pop  over  the  following  two  decades . This  isn't  quite  the  first  chapter ; one  of  the  drummers  was  already  comfortably  installed  in  a  band  that  regularly  had  hits  and  one  of  the  guitarists  had  produced  two  number  one  singles  in  1982.

William  "Holly"  Johnson  was  born  in  1960  and  drifted  into  the  Liverpool  punk  scene  as a  teenager. At  the  end  of  1977  he  was  recruited  into  the  band  Big  In  Japan  as  a  bassist. His  playing  was  rudimentary  and  his  scene  stealing  antics  as  a  tartan-trousered  skinhead  were  not  appreciated  by  singer  Jayne  Casey  so  he  was  sacked  after  six  months. The  band  themselves  jacked  it  in  a  couple  of  months  later  but  Bill  Drummond  and  Dave  Balfe  scraped  together  enough  recordings  to  issue  the  EP,  "From  Y  To  Z  and  Never  Again"  as  the  first  Zoo  release in  November  1978. The  latter  two  tracks  "Suicide A  Go-Go"  and  "Taxi"  feature  Holly. They're  OK  as  far  as  post-punk  goes, a  bit  like  The  Slits  singing  with  Siouxsie  and  the  Banshees  but  Casey's  off-key  singing  is  hard  on  the  ears  and  the  production  is  very  rough  and  ready. Nevertheless  it  created  enough  of  a  buzz  to  persuade  Casey  to  try  and  revive  the  band  with  a  line  up  of  herself, Ian  Broudie, Holly  and  drummer  Budgie. They  recorded  three  new  tracks  for  a  John  Peel  session  in  March  1979  which  have  some  decent  guitar  work  from  Broudie  but  little  else  to  commend  them. That  was  the  last  product  from  the  band  who  fizzled  out  shortly  afterwards.

Holly  still  frequented  Eric's  in  Liverpool  and  in  November  1979  put  out  a  solo  single  on  the  house  label  , the  self-written  "Yankee  Rose", as  "Holly". It's  so  spectacularly  bad  that , even  at  three  and  a  half  minutes,  getting  to  the  end  of  it  seems  like  a  major  feat  of  endurance. Holly  lays  down  a  "bassline"  that  I  think  even  I could  play  and  improvises  an  inuendo-laden  lyric  about  cowboys  wailed  like  a  drunken  pub  singer. It  makes  Marc  Almond  sound  like  Colin  Blunstone.  The  record  also  employs  the  Roger  Waters  tactic  of  trying  to  distract  you  with  sound  effects  but  nothing  could  save  such  a  terrible  song.

Next  to  that  horror   his  follow  up  single  a  year  later  "Hobo  Joe"  is  relatively  palatable, a  vaguely  anti-nuclear  ditty  competently  produced  by  Broudie  at  Cargo  Studios  Rochdale  though  still  lacking  anything  like  a  tune  and  very  derivative  of  Gang  of  Four. For  the  first  time  Holly  appears  in  leathers  on  the sleeve.

Solo  fame  did  not  appear  to  be  beckoning  so  he  joined  a  group  called  Sons  of  Egypt  alongside  Peter  Gill  and  Brian  Nash. This  morphed  into  Frankie  Goes  To  Hollywood  who  played  gigs  with  two  scantily-clad  girls  known  as  The  Leatherpets. They  recorded  a  Peel  session  in  August  1982  then  at  the beginning  of  1983  appeared  on  The  Tube  which  featured the  Leatherpets  gyrating  to  a  rudimentary  white  funk  track  called  "Relax". It's  usually  put  out  that  Trevor  Horn  signed  them  up  to  ZTT  after  watching  this  - Paul  Morley  suggested  he  was  particularly  interested  in  the  girls  -  but  given  that  his  wife  Jill  Sinclair  was  one  of  the  show's  producers  I  suspect  they  were  already  interested  in  the  group  and  putting  them  on  the  telly  was  an  inducement  to  sign.  

The  Popular  thread  is here . ( one  of  the  first  to  feature  comments  from  yours  truly ).

My  contributions  mainly  focused  on  Mike  Read  for  whom  this  record  was truly  epochal. Read  had  carefully  cultivated  a  youthful  image  since  arriving  at  Radio  One  at  the  end  of  the  seventies. Despite  being  already  in  his  thirties,  he   championed   punk  and  new  wave  music  at  the  same  time  as  trying  to  look  like  Cliff  Richard  and  listening  to  prog  rock  at  home.  It  worked; he  replaced  Noel  Edmunds  on  Saturday  morning  kids  TV  and  got  his  own  Pop  Quiz  show.  But  everything  started  falling  apart  that  January  morning  when  he  publicly  declared  he  wasn't  going  to  play  this  single  anymore . Like  Urban  II's  speech  at  Clermont  nobody  seems  to  have  recorded  or  transcribed  exactly  what  he  said and  Read's  own  constant  Pinocchio -style  revisions  make  him  the  least  reliable  witness  of  all. It  doesn't  really  matter  anyway  ; the  damage  was  done. From  being  one  of  the  more  credible  DJs  on  the  station, Read  stood  revealed  as  the  squarest  Tory  of  all.

His  empire  started  crumbling  almost  immediately. Pop  Quiz   was  put  to  bed  at  the  other  end  of  1984. In  1986  he  was  taken  off  the  breakfast  show  and  shunted  around  the  weekend  schedules  until  he  left  the  station  in  1991. Saturday  Superstore  was   shut  down  in  1987  and  re-vamped  without  him. He  disappeared  into  commercial  radio  for  the  next  decade  and  would  have  been  better  off  staying  there.

In  2004  he  agreed  to  go  into  I'm  A  Celebrity  Get  Me  Out  of  Here  as  a  last  minute  replacement  for  Frank  Carson  and  his  amazement  at  being  the  first  one  voted  out   showed  a  painful  lack  of  awareness  of  his  fallen  status. That  same  year  he  suffered  another  disaster  when  his  musical  Oscar  closed  after  one  night  where  it  was  ritually  slaughtered  by  the  critics. Read  blithely  ignored  the  reviews  and  said  it  was  the  venue's  fault. He  moved  on  to  setting  up  a  new  "pirate"  radio  station  Big  L   operating  from  the  obscure   seaside  town  Frinton  on  Sea. The  venture  had  serious  money  behind  it  but  when  it  opened  its  doors  to  Harvey  Goldsmith  in  2007  for  his  Get  Your  Act  Together  series  ( itself  not  a  roaring  success )  it  was  exposed  as  a  veterans'  pipe  dream  and  the  funding  was  pulled  the  following  year  leaving  Read  unpaid.

In  2008  Read  managed  to  launch  a  new  version  of  Pop  Quiz   on  the  satellite  channel  Red  TV.  My  friend  Jon  Kutner  was  his  producer  and  I  was  invited  to  take  part  as  a  contestant,  pretending  I  was  in  a  pub  team  with  a   young  sibling  duo  I'd  never  met  before. It  was  filmed  in  a  studio  on  the  outskirts  of  Birmingham  that  was  little  bigger  than  a  lock-up  garage. I was  apprehensive  about  meeting  Read,  wondering  whether  I  could  conceal  my  contempt  for  him  but  he  wasn't  nearly  as  bad  as  I  expected. He  saw  the  show  in  terms of  football :   "It  might  only  be  Swindon  v  Mansfield  but  at  least  we're  on  the  pitch " and  took  it  on  the  chin  when  the  ignorant  director  walked  into  the  room  and  said  "Right, who's  the  presenter  ? " We  had  some  light  banter  about  the  Dale; I  never  knew  he  came  from  Heywood. My  main  gripe  about  him  was  that  in  the  final  quickfire  round  he  kept  forgetting  that  he  had  to  reset  the  buzzers  after  each  question  so  each  time   I  was  faced  with  a  silent  buzzer  I  said  "beep  beep"  to  attract  his  attention,  assuming  they'd  replace  it  with  the  correct  noise  when  it  was  edited. Of  course  they  didn't  so  I  ended  up  looking  a  bit  of  a  berk.

Shortly  afterwards  he  was  declared  bankrupt  and  had  to  sell  his  prized  record  collection  and  I  started  to  feel  a  bit  sorry  for  him. He  saw  his   possible  salvation  in  politics  and  touted  himself  as  a  candidate  for  the  Tory  nomination  as  London  Mayor  to  widespread  derision. In  2012  he  moved  across  to  UKIP   and  two  years  later  wrote  a  song  "UKIP  Calypso" , rather  unfairly  attacked  as  racist. No  one  flung  that  accusation  at  known  liberals  like  Sting  or  Don  Henley  when  they  adopted  West  Indian  accents  to  fit  their  music.