PHENOMENON OF THE YEAR (DECEASED)
FRANKIE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD: Welcome To The Pleasuredome (ZTT)
“I am no longer an artist, I have become a work of art.”
From the solemn announcement that opens their fourth single, Frankie Goes To Hollywood claim for themselves the Body Of God, even if to the rest of us they still look like dogsbodies done up like dogs’ dinners.
Make no mistake, for the truly transcendent minutes of ‘Two Tribes’, Frankie Goes To Hollywood achieved brilliance —
I can’t share Barney Hoskyns’ enthusiasm for Holly Johnson’s ‘ordinariness’, especially when it appears so reluctant. Holly would dearly love to be the screaming superstar deviant; unfortunately he lacks the flamboyance to carry it off. As for the rest, well, Paul Rutherford is a charming chap to have lunch with, and the ‘Lads’, from what I’ve read, are tedious in the extreme.
Raw materials for a Quentin Crisp-type ‘All I have to do is be’ artwork? Well, I think not.
Frankie were built with the briefest span of a built-in obsolescence —
Meanwhile, with an optimism that broaches the surreal, the marketing posters blare THEIR FOURTH NUMBER ONE. What is this? Sarcasm? Is ZTT turning the Frankie campaign into a public flogging? The nerve to release yet another single from the thinnest double LP of all time suggests a certain glee in ramming the last morsel of Frankie down our throats. But as the eminent Harry Flowers might say —
Can ZTT follow Frankie? See below.