A saxophone played from a rooftop in Notting Hill at two in the morning became the opening of a record that would outsell every debut single in British history. The band was Frankie Goes to Hollywood, and the song was "Relax." On October 24, 1983, the single arrived on ZTT Records, a label so new that the group had been its first signing only months earlier.
Trevor Horn's three failed attempts
Producer Trevor Horn did not think much of the band's original version. He called it closer to a jingle than a song, and he admitted he could not sync the group's playing with his studio equipment. Horn made three attempts at "Relax" before bringing in keyboardist Andy Richards and guitarist Stephen Lipson, then one night asked Lipson to erase the third version because nothing was working.
The erasure never happened. When Horn returned to the studio, Richards was playing modal chords in E minor under Lipson's guitar on the still-intact recording. That accidental session became the foundation of the final track. Only two members of Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Holly Johnson and Paul Rutherford, appear on the finished single; the other musicians' contribution was reduced to a sampled splash of them jumping into a pool.
Rooftop saxophone and a costly recording
Johnson got his saxophone part after Horn heard him playing on the studio roof and suggested he put it at the start of the song. The recording cost 70 thousand pounds in studio time, an enormous sum for a debut single from an unknown group. ZTT's co-founder Paul Morley built the promotion around what he called a strategic assault on pop, choosing sex, war, and religion as the band's themes, with "Relax" as the first.
The single entered the UK Top 75 in November 1983 at number 67, then crawled to 35 by its seventh week. Everything changed after the group performed "Relax" on Top of the Pops in January 1984. The song jumped to number six the following week, and on January 11, 1984, Radio 1 DJ Mike Read complained on air about the cover and the lyrics. Two days later the BBC banned the record from its programmes.
The ban did what bans often do: it made the song impossible to ignore. "Relax" climbed to number two on January 17, 1984, and hit number one on January 24, 1984, where it stayed for five weeks. Top of the Pops, unable to show the band, broadcast a single still photograph while the record held the top spot. The first official video, shot by director Bernard Rose in a gay S&M club at Wilton's Music Hall, was never shown on BBC music programmes.
The ban did what bans often do: it made the song impossible to ignore.
In the United States, "Relax" took a slower route. The March 1984 release used a different mix, almost a minute shorter, and stalled at number 67 on the Billboard Hot 100. A January 1985 version closer to the British hit reached number 10 two months later. The song also anchored the band's first album, Welcome to the Pleasuredome, which came out in October 1984. The single's chart life was unusually long: it spent 48 straight weeks in the UK Top 75 and returned for four more weeks in February 1985. A 1993 reissue entered the chart at number six and later climbed to number five.
By then "Relax" had already become the best-selling debut single in UK history, a record it still holds 43 years after its release. The BBC's attempt to silence the song gave Frankie Goes to Hollywood a notoriety no ad campaign could buy. A saxophone played from a rooftop at two in the morning had become the sound of a national scandal.