FRANKIE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD
Liverpool
ZTT (1986)
Liverpool cost £500,000, twice as much as the multi-million-selling double album debut, Welcome To The Pleasure Dome. Sessions in Ireland (“Fucking dilapidated shithole,” cooed Mark O’Toole) and Ibiza (“We got up at two, went to the studio until four, had dinner, got bladdered,” remembered Ped Gill), provided feeble results. Trevor Horn left the production to Stephen Lipson, who persevered in Holland as the band finished their tax year out (something they would never need to do again), before completing the task in Liverpool. By then, the band were imploding and Liverpool all-too-appropriately sounded like some brickies fronted by a singer who couldn’t rock.
Highest UK Chart Position: 5