★★★★✩
For much of 1983 and 1984, Frankie Goes to Hollywood dominated the pop landscape so totally that they effectively left themselves with nowhere to go. The Liverpool band’s hi-nrg debut single, Relax, with its video of an orgy in a gay nightclub, managed to get banned by the BBC and go to No 1: the ultimate pop achievement. The follow-up, Two Tribes, put fears of nuclear obliteration to a thrilling funk beat. Then Frankie did their most shocking move yet: play it straight, with the heartfelt nativity ballad The Power of Love. That’s sex, war and religion, all in the first three No 1 singles.
All these years later, the band’s singer, Holly Johnson, knew what people had come to the Palladium for. But first there was a full set to get through. Johnson has one of the great voices in pop, dynamic and emotional, but with a suggestion of mischief. After he walked on stage in leather jacket and leather trousers, wielding a smoke machine, he launched into Warriors of the Wasteland and made clear that the power of that voice remained undimmed.
After that there was a touch of cabaret to the whole show, even with its rock band set-up, which was very much in keeping with the Palladium’s spirit. Johnson told us he lived for “the roar of the greasepaint, the smell of the crowd”, borrowing an old Anthony Newley line. “You smell lovely,” he said before his 1990 solo single Perfume, surely a lie, but one that inspired various audience members to profess their love for him. He complained of having senior moments and reminisced about “the memories of how fabulous we all were’. It all served to bolster the image of Johnson as an old-fashioned trouper, giving his fans what they wanted.
It led up to a triple whammy of Frankie’s three greatest songs. “Are you ready for an ejaculation?” Johnson asked before Relax, which still sounded dangerously illicit, 40 years on. “We could do without these bloody wars,” he said, underlining the continuing relevance of Two Tribes. Finally came The Power of Love, which, coming from such apparent miscreants as Frankie Goes To Hollywood, was a moment of shocking beauty on its release. It provided an emotional finale for a concert that had Johnson, the one-time tabloid-scaring figure of transgression, turn into that most respectable figure: the showbusiness professional.
Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool, November 10; then touring
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