We were getting so many complaints about the Sex Mix, including from gay clubs which found it offensive, that I decided to do another 12-inch, something more ambitious with material that wasn’t on the original. They thought it was disgusting.Ībout a week later, I went to Paradise Garage for the first time. The guys from Foreigner, who didn’t like me much anyway, wanted to see it. Paul (Morley) sent over the video on VHS cassette. I was in New York working with Foreigner when I realised how risque Relax was. In my imagination, he was among minarets on top of a temple playing to a crowd below as they all moved towards him in time with the music. He came down to do the vocal, and I suggested he play it at the start of Relax. Holly had been blowing his saxophone on the studio roof in Notting Hill at 2am, and a bunch of guys appeared on the street, calling up to him. We put our heads down and got it first take. We had to work for hours to get to a point where we could record it. Steve was playing guitar, Andy keyboards and JJ working the Fairlight. I was working the drum machine and was manually switching between patterns on the fly and singing a guide vocal. I could program a drum machine perfectly in sync with the piano. This was the first time you could sequence natural sounds, which was a huge step forward. The Fairlight had a program called Page R. All the work we had put into these different versions suddenly coalesced. Sometimes when you do that and give it one more go, you get lucky. We were all frustrated because it felt like we were going nowhere. On the final single version, I was recording with three brilliant people: Steve Lipson, Andy Richards and JJ Jeczalik. But that’s why I hired the Blockheads – I needed to try the track with some other musicians, to see if there was anything else we could do with it. By the time we finished Welcome to the Pleasuredome, he was good.
FRANKIE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD FRANKIE SAYS RELAX HOW TO
Brian Nash came in, but had only just learned how to play. The original guitarist was the bass player Mark O’Toole’s brother, Jed, but he had to leave and get a day job. The band we signed weren’t quite the band who had appeared on the original demo, though we didn’t know that at the time. It was the perfect pop moment, which sparked the age of multiple dance remixes that are obligatory for today’s digital pop and dance artists. I try not to look back on this period too much, but am aware Frankie Goes to Hollywood is the lens I’ll always be viewed through. This was a disappointment as it was every young kid’s dream to appear on that show with a No 1. We had already performed it on The Tube and Top of the Pops’ 20th anniversary show, which catapulted the single up the charts, but were unable to play Top of the Pops when Relax reached its peak position. ZTT celebrated Relax being banned by the BBC, as it went to No 1 in the UK shortly afterwards. Unlike the other members, I attended many of the studio sessions so I wasn’t surprised by the final version after he scrapped three or four others. Trevor didn’t like the band’s standard of playing as he couldn’t sync it to his machinery, which was fairly cutting edge at the time. The sound of us jumping into the swimming pool was sampled into the Fairlight – the only thing that survived those sessions. We were booked into the Manor Studio to record it. Their only asset was Trevor Horn at his peak, which was a big carrot waved in front of our donkey. We all had to sign on the dole because ZTT were tight with money, unless they were spending it on our behalf in their own studios. This proved to be a very expensive choice. Beggars Banquet offered us each £40 a week for the next year, but we signed to ZTT. Relax was written in my head, and I sang it out loud to myself walking down the middle of Princes Avenue in Liverpool, laughing as I went.
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