686 Goodbye Holly Johnson - Where Has Love Gone ?

Chart  entered :  1  December  1990

Chart  peak : 73

Frankie  Goes  To  Hollywood's  career  is  the  textbook  case  of  too  much  too  soon. After  their  trio  of  number  one  singles, there  was  general  disappointment  with  the  "Welcome  To  The  Pleasuredome  "  album  where   too  few  ideas  were stretched  to  breaking  point. That  didn't  augur  well  for  the  follow up  "Liverpool"  in  1986  which  was  derided  in  the  music  press  and  sold  relatively  poorly. When  the  band  toured  it, the  relations  between  Holly  and  the  rest  of  the  group  deteriorated  beyond  repair with  stories  leaking  out  of  Holly  having  a  separate  dressing  room. He  quit  the  group  while  the  third  single  "Watching  the  Wildlife"  was  still  in  the  charts  in  March  1987. He  then  spent  the  next  18  months  locked  in a  highly  acrimonious  court  battle  with  ZTT  who  wanted  to  hold  him  to  his  contract. Part  of  their  case  was  that  the  band  were  talentless, merely  a  front  for  Trevor  Horn's  production  skills  with  Holly's  vocals  having  to  be  electronically  treated  to  make  them  fit  for  purpose. That  does  beg  the  question  why  they  were  then  so  keen  to  keep  him and  that  contradiction  may  have  helped  Holly  to  win  the  case  and  sign  with  MCA. He  was  vindicated  the  following  year  when  his  solo  album "Blast" reached  number  one  and  yielded  four  hit  singles  ( two  of  them  Top  5 ). He  also  returned  to  number  one  as  a  named  participant  on  the Hillsborough  charity  single "Ferry  Cross  The  Mersey". However, later  that year  his  remix  album  "Hollelujah"  failed  to chart, suggesting  his  solo  career  might  have  similarly  shaky  foundations  particularly  as  he  didn't  intend  to  tour.  

By  the  time  "Where  Has  Love  Gone ?"  was  released  as  the  trailer  for  his  next  album, Holly  was  already  at  loggerheads  with  the  record  company  over  his  promotional  budget. He  would  have  preferred  to  release  a  different  track,  "Penny  Arcade", though  they  sound  much  of  a  muchness  to  me.  The  song's  critique  of  consumerism  is  quite  sharp  lyrically  but  musically  producer  Andy  Richards  keeps  it  in  average  Erasure  territory  without  either  Vince  Clarke's  sonic  twists  or  Andy  Bell's  vocal  warmth. It's  bright  and  breezy  enough  but  fairly  forgettable.

The  follow-up  was  "Across  The  Universe"  in  March  1991   and  again  the  funny  camp  lyric  is  let  down  by  Holly's  vocal  limitations  and  the  toytown  Hi-NRG   backing  track. When  that  failed  to  chart  MCA  lost  all  faith  in  him  and  stalled  on  releasing  the  album  "Dreams  Money  Can't  Buy "  until  the  autumn  and  then  pressed  only  a  few  thousand  copies,  deleting  it  almost  immediately. While  that  ensured  its  failure  to  chart , it's  difficult  to  make  a  case  for  an  album  where  one  track  sounds  much  like  another  and  only  "Boyfriend  65", a  welcome  duet  with  Kirsty  McColl  stands  out  and  might  have  given  him  another  hit  if  released. Instead  the  flat-footed  "The  People  Want  To  Dance"  was  sent  out  instead  and  bombed.

It  was  then  that  Holly  received  the  diagnosis  that  he  was  HIV  positive  and  disappeared  from  the  public  eye  for  a  few  years, re-emerging  in  1994  with  his  autobiography  "A  Bone  In  My  Flute "  and  a  standalone  single  "Legendary  Children" , a  list  of  famous  homosexual  men  ( some  of  them  very  contentious  )  set   to  his  trademark  Hi-NRG  beat. It's  not  a  bad  song  but  sounds  like  it's  from  1984  rather  than  1994  and  didn't  chart. He  also did  a  single  with  Ryuchi  Sakamoto  "Love  &  Hate"  an  episodic,  electronic  epic  with  Holly  supplying  the  state-of-the-world  lyrics

For  the  next  few  years,  Holly  concentrated  on  his  painting  and  had  exhibitions  at  the  Tate, Liverpool  and  the  Royal  Academy. He  re-surfaced  in  1998  with  the  promotional  single  "Hallelujah" , a  gospel-tinged  house  tune  with  a  good  sax  break  but  otherwise  very  average. Holly's  vocals  are  less  commanding  but  just  as  reedy  as  before  which  isn't  a  great  combination.

It  was  followed  nearly  a  year  later  by  "Disco  Heaven"  his  tribute  to  the  friends  he'd  lost  through  AIDS. This  updates  his  sound  a  bit  to  the  early  nineties , has  a  decent  tune  and  could  have  been  a  hit  if  anyone  had  been  interested  enough  to  give  it  some  airplay. The  album "Soulstream "  followed. There  is  some  evidence  of  Holly  shifting  his  pitch  away  from  Hi-NRG  to  more  contemporary  dance  pop,  with  trip  hop  influences on  the  title  track,  but  it  still  sounds  dated. His  re- recording  of  "The  Power  Of  Love"  was  a  minor  hit  in  the  Christmas  market  but  that  wasn't  enough  to  get  the  album  in  the  charts.

A  very  lengthy  recording  silence  then  ensued. In  2003,  Frankie  Goes  To  Hollywood  were   the  subject  of   a  Bands  Reunited  programme.  The  producers  were  partially  successful  in  that  they  got  all  5  members  together  in  the  same  room  for  the  first  time  in  16  years  but  Holly  wasn't  happy  with  the  idea  of  playing  live  without  extensive  rehearsals  and  guitarist  Brian  Nash  took  his  side. Similarly,  both  declined  the  invitation  to  appear  at  Trevor  Horn's  25th  anniversary  concert  in  2004, after  which  the  remaining  trio with  a  couple  of  new  additions   did  a  tour  of  Europe  as  Frankie.

Holly  started  easing  his  way  back  into  the  spotlight  towards  the  end  of  the  noughties , performing  the  odd  song  on  TV  and  then  playing  a  full  set  at  2011's  Rewind  Festival. The  following  year,  he  was  part  of  The  Justice  Collective  who  had  the  Christmas  number  1  with  "He  Ain't  Heavy  He's  My  Brother"  in  2012  for  the  Hillsborough  cause.

In  May  2014  he  announced  his  first  solo  tour   ( though  it  was  only  7  dates )  to  be  preceded  by  a  new  album. A  single  "Follow  Your  Heart"  was  released  that  July, an  over-wordy  but  inoffensive  piece  of  electronica.  The  follow-up  "In  and  Out  of  Love"  in  September  makes  a  better  fist  of  coming  up  with  a  chorus  hook  but  it's  still  not  very  exciting. The  album  "Europa  came  out  a  week  later, its  title  track  a  collaboration  with  Vangelis  that  was  first  recorded  in  1990  but  tweaked  since. I  think  its  tuneless  bombast  about  the  fall  of  the  Berlin  Wall  would  have  been  better  off  left  in  the  vaults.  The  album  is  slightly  stronger  than  its  predecessors  with  the  next  single,  "Heaven's  Eyes",a  cheery  number  about  the  approach  of  death, the  standout  track. Elsewhere  the  more  uptempo  numbers  are  more  appealing  than  the  slower  ones  where  Holly's  inimitable  vocals  start  to  grate. It  charted  for  a  week  at  63  while  the  tour  was  underway.  Holly  released  a  live  album  "Unleashed  from  the  Pleasuredome"  , recorded  at  one  of  his  shows, later  in  the  year.

In  2015,  he  decided  to  do  another  six  shows  and  released  a  fourth  single  "Dancing  With  No  Fear"  ,  one  of  his  usual  pleas  for  love  and  tolerance  set  to  a  mid-tempo  dance  track  with  vague  echoes  of  Orbital's  Chime  in  the  keyboard  work.

Last  year  he  recorded  a  song  "Ascension"  for  the  film  Eddie  the  Eagle  with  the  dreaded  Gary  Barlow. It  was  released  as  a  single  and  is   an  overblown  piece  of  nonsense.