Looking back at Frankie Goes To Hollywood, and the often-forgotten ultra-straight members of that nominally gay band:
They were a one-off: two self-styled “ferocious homosexuals” up front, backed by three prototype Liam Gallaghers, who were known as “The Lads”
“It was an unexpected combination of energies,” muses Morley, ever the pop theorist. “You had a truly great producer – the best in the world along with Quincy Jones – you had a slightly narcissistic journalist, you had this heterosexual scouse energy and this very exploratory gay energy, all mixed up in one place. It was a ridiculous formula and you couldn’t have planned it – it was too toxic. But the toxicity of it worked well creatively and commercially for a few months, until we woke up and realised we all hated each other, or certainly that we were very different from each other.” (…)
Gill, Nash and O’Toole – despite doubts about their musical input – were similarly essential, lad archetypes to offset the band’s arty epicureans. “They were Geordie Shore, three decades early,” laughs Morley. “They were the guys who, today, would be having sex on reality TV. A show that followed Frankie on tour would have been horribly sleazy. And yet their enormous capacity for vulgarity was part of the energy of the band. They may not have played on the records, and Trevor might have had night sweats about some of their exploits, but there’s no way you could have had Frankie without them.”
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