Frankie Goes to Hollywood's Liverpool turns 40, the expensive rock record that ended the band

Forty years ago today, Frankie Goes to Hollywood tried to prove they were a band. Liverpool came out on 20 October 1986 on ZTT, two years after Welcome to the Pleasuredome turned "Relax" and "Two Tribes" into events. It was also the last studio album the group would make.

From studio spectacle to band in a room

Pleasuredome leaned heavily on session players and producer Trevor Horn's machinery. For the follow-up the plan was almost the opposite. Producer Stephen Lipson pushed the five members, Holly Johnson, Paul Rutherford, Brian Nash, Mark O'Toole and Peter Gill, to play their own instruments, and the sound swung harder toward guitars and arena rock.

Sessions ran from November 1985 to June 1986, mostly at Wisseloord in Amsterdam, with overdubs and mixing at Sarm West in London. The track "Rage Hard" alone is said to have run to more than 50 multitrack versions. Horn stayed on as executive producer and took over the mix. The total bill is reported at about £840,000, a large share of it on that mix, which left the band deep in debt.

The songs

Eight tracks, 43 minutes. "Warriors of the Wasteland" opens, followed by "Rage Hard", the lead single released on 25 August 1986, which reached number 4 in the UK and number 1 in Germany. "Warriors of the Wasteland" followed in November as a UK top 20 single and "Watching the Wildlife" in February 1987 as a top 30. The long closer, "Is Anybody Out There?", runs 7 minutes 25 seconds. Guests on the record include guitarists Steve Howe and Trevor Rabin.

The album reached number 5 in the UK and in Germany and the Netherlands, 4 on the European chart and 88 on the US Billboard 200. Compared with Pleasuredome it was a commercial step down. Sales were put at around 800,000 by March 1988, with Gold certifications in the UK, Germany and France.

Why it still gets dug up

The back story has as much pull as the record. Johnson left after the album, and a run of lawsuits involving ZTT followed. Frankie never made another studio album.

Our view: it is the sound of a pop group being asked to become something else, with a budget that made every choice permanent. "Rage Hard" still lands as a proper single, and it is the cut to start with if you only have time for one.

A 2011 two-disc reissue added session recordings, mixes and covers, if you want the fuller picture.

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