HOLLY Relaxed
AFTER 15 YEARS HOLLY JOHNSON IS BACK WITH A CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED NEW ALBUM AND SERIES OF TOUR DATES. HE TALKS TO CARY GEE ABOUT HOW GAY LIFE HAS CHANGED SINCE THE 80s, HOMOPHOBIA, AND WHAT HE REALLY THINKS ABOUT GEORGE MICHAEL AND MORRISSEY
Don’t tell Holly Johnson to Relax. He doesn’t have the time for that. After pre - recording a number of interviews for TV and radio at the BBC he just has time to talk to me before dashing out from his home in West London to resume his on-air offensive in support of new CD Europa. It’s his first release for 15 years. So where has he been all this time?
“Well, after my last album Soulstream I decided to take a bit of a diversion. I had always planned to go to Liverpool Art College in 1983, just before Frankie Goes to Hollywood, which kind of got in the way. So in 2001 I decided to go back to college and pursue the things music had prevented me from doing. I met the pop artist Peter Blake at the Royal College of Art who invited me to put some of my own work into an exhibition he was curating. I then found myself working with some students from the college at the RCA in Kensington. One of them happened to be Kate Bush.” Johnson describes Bush as “amazing, unique. I was lucky enough to be invited to her opening night in London in August, 37 years after I saw her in Liverpool!”
During his years occupied with painting and print-making Holly continued to write songs, but it was only after a chance meeting with Mark Ralph, “a lovely young man”, best known for his work with Hot Chip and Franz Ferdinand that he finally began work on Europa, a process which he describes as “hugely enjoyable”.
And what of the attention that comes with it? He laughs. “I’m not doing it for the attention!”, although he concedes that “having survived a career of 30 years it’s nice when people finally start treating you with some respect.
“I’ve put a lot of work into this album. People want to hear it. It’s very gratifying to hear my new single In and Out of Love receiving so much airplay on Radio 2. At a time of life when some people are thinking about retirement [Holly is now 54] my life is just picking up again.”
It’s been 30 years since Frankie Goes to Hollywood became just the second act in history to score number one hits with their first three singles. Does it feel that long ago to Holly?
“I’m the kind of person, and I think this quite typical of gay men, who still believes I’m 14 years old! Perhaps we don’t feel the need to grow up in the traditional sense. We still have an interest in glamorous pop divas, and like to know what’s going on in pop culture.”
I take it that means Holly has no desire to wed his partner of 30 years, and acquire a couple of kids from “ebabies”?
“I have absolutely no desire to do that at all. Obviously, I’m glad that gay people have the right to do that nowadays but nothing could be further from what I want. I feel no need to tie the knot. It’s just something I have no interest in doing.” Were the 80s a happy decade for him? “Well, the early 80s weren’t happy at all. In Liverpool there was economic depression, unemployment, riots where I lived in Toxteth, and coaches full of policemen. Thatcher was strangling the city economically because it was a Labour stronghold. It really wasn’t a great place to be in
“Having survived a career of 30 years it’s
nice when people finally start treating you with some respect”
the 80s, living on social security with no hope of getting a job. But there were opportunities, unless of course you were a miner.”
Which brings us neatly onto the film Pride, the brilliant new film starring Bill Nighy and Imelda Staunton which tells the true story of a group of gay and lesbian activists who raise money for the families of striking miners. Both Relax and Two Tribes appear on the soundtrack. “I attended the premiere. It’s beautiful, funny and had me in tears by the end. It brought it all back.”
Another tragedy from the decade, which struck close to home, was the Hillsborough disaster, in which 96 Liverpool fans were killed at a football match. Holly has sung on two number one singles which benefited those affected and he was understandably thrilled when a report into the tragedy finally vindicated his home town. “It was a very long battle.”
Last time I bumped into Holly it was at the Rewind eighties pop festival in Henley-onThames in 2011, the gayest festival of the summer. Did he hang out with his gay pop contemporaries back in the day?
“Surprisingly, not really. There were only two or three openly gay pop stars: me and Paul [Rutherford] from Frankie, and Jimmy Somerville. Boy George and Marc Almond, who were obviously gay, took a long time to actually say the word. I think they were simply told to shut up by their record companies. That’s my view.”
If you’ve never before attended the campfest of Rewind, I’d recommend it. It’s a scream. And not just for the punters. “Nowadays there’s no competition, we’re all more mature and can really enjoy each other’s company. I think we’re all now aware that time was wasted bitching about each other.”
But surely there must have been some contemporaries that even the more mature Holly really couldn’t stand?
“Well, I was never too keen on George Michael or Morrissey! To be honest with you, George Michael I minded less. But Morrissey, being from the North and not too far from Liverpool, I was just very disappointed by his determination not to make any kind of statement about his sexuality. I felt that his silence made a mockery of his others stances, on vegetarianism for example. If he had spoken out then all those tortured individuals who were attracted to him, many of them gay, many of them questioning their sexuality, would have had a much more positive experience.”
Although Holly was already out before Clause 28 was passed into law he remains angry about the effect it had. “It denied teenagers safe sex information at a time when it should have
been a vital part of the curriculum.”
Holly himself was subjected to all kinds of homophobic abuse at school. His own schooling at a boys’ grammar school in Liverpool he describes as “torture on a daily basis. Homophobic bullying really ruined my education” and it wasn’t just from other kids: “I was bullied by the teachers as well. I’ve always despaired that there are no real measures in place to protect gay children in schools.”
He describes recent changes in attitudes to being gay as “miraculous”. We’ve seen unimaginable changes in the law. Civil partnerships, the right to adopt, “even the taming of the great plague HIV. The unfortunate side to this is that people no longer adhere to safe sex. They see HIV as a manageable condition. It’s a shame that young people don’t look after themselves as well as they could.”
Holly was diagnosed with HIV in 1991. His acclaimed autobiography, A Bone in my Flute (1994) was conceived as a memoir. Is he surprised that his book is no longer available, but that he is playing a string of live dates in support of a new album almost a quarter of a century later? “It’s amazing that I’m still here,” he admits. Does his status as an openly gay man with HIV adversely affect his everyday life? “Well, for years no one outside the gay world wanted to employ me. It was very difficult. People don’t want to engage with someone who is going to get ill and die. When that happens there are suddenly very few people in your life.
“But things are much more optimistic now. You just have to keep taking your medication.” What gets Holly out of bed each morning is a cup of tea from his boyfriend, and work. “You just have to get on with things.”
It’s an optimism that runs through Europa. “One of the things that introspection teaches you is that a positive message is very beautiful when you have to listen to a song over and over again. I try and write optimistic lyrics. The album is largely electronic but with real instruments overlaid on the top. I’m a songwriter and the album is basically just a collection of songs. I’ve written all the lyrics and all the melodies myself.” Though he did have a little help from the legendary Vangelis on one song.
What’s on Holly’s iPod? ‘I don’t even have one. I listen to CDs and vinyl.” Does he ever listen to Frankie? “Yes, but only to remember the lyrics when I need to perform the songs!”
The most famous of those songs was, of course, Relax. Even now Holly blames the BBC’s decision to ban the record on homophobia. “Without a doubt that’s what it was. Without the alternative sexuality of the first video, which depicted ‘certain goings on’ there would have been no problem.
“On the one hand the BBC did me a great disservice, in that I’m still being asked questions about it all these years later. On the other hand they did us a huge favour, making us seem the most rebellious and controversial band of the era.”
Holly comes across as many things. Charming, outlandish, laugh-out-loud funny, deeply thoughtful and utterly likable, but controversial is not one of them. I wonder whether Holly felt controversial at the time?
“Not really. I just felt passionate about what I was doing. The rest was incidental. My attitude to being gay was just ‘f**k you, if you don’t like it. I wasn’t asking for acceptance.” Is that still how he feels? “I think I’ve mellowed, a bit. But I still don’t care if people discriminate against me. I tend to think it’s their problem rather than mine. I think it’s sad that they are missing out on the amazing things gay people add to the world. The culture we create, the sense of fun that we have, all the positive things about being gay. If that’s a threat then I feel sorry for them.”
“I’ve always despaired that there are no real measures in place to protect gay children in schools”