Thirty years ago, Holly Johnson’s group, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, generated mass pop hysteria comparable to Beatlemania. Their singles Two Tribes and the innuendo-laden, BBC-banned Relax were at No 1 and 2, while the “Frankie Says … ” T-shirt became the year’s must-have fashion accessory. Since then, though, Johnson has faced splits, court cases and being HIV positive; he recently told the Observer how difficult it had been to find a promoter or agent to take him on.
And yet, here he is, touring for the first time in three decades and playing a packed house to a hometown crowd who still adore him. “I love you, Holly!” begins the first of many such declarations. “Bless,” he says, touching his heart.
Johnson is a picture of health in sparkling black; only his now-grey crop makes him look different from his 80s self, and while a couple of Frankie’s old hits show their age, the singer’s enormous baritone remains the same.
The set includes old solo hits (Love Train, Americanos) with tracks from a new album, Europa, the best of which reinvent him as an electronic soul man. Dancing With No Fear offers clubby positivity while So Much It Hurts suggests he can still pen a startlingly honest love song.
The crowd’s increasing fervour rekindles the old irreverent, cheeky humour. He refers to his drummer’s “hard drive”, breezes through a technical hitch (“My battery ran out”) and sighs theatrically when a woman at the front proposes marriage: “Why do I always get the women?”
“Are you ready for an ejaculation?” he asks, naughtily, as turbo-powered versions of Relax and Two Tribes trigger Frankiemania once again. By the time he is putting everything into The Power of Love and the crowd are giving him a standing ovation, it must be this year’s most heart-warming comeback.
