THEY SAID IT WOULD NEVER HAPPEN. IN FACT, THEY DIDN’T JUST SAY IT, THEY ASSURED US THAT NO WAY, NOT EVER, WOULD IT HAPPEN. BUT THEN… IT HAPPENED!
Frankie Goes To Hollywood have reformed and played together – the classic five-strong line-up – for one last time at a Eurovision opening event in Liverpool back in May. It made me realise that if there’s one thing in pop that’s an absolute guarantee, it’s that bands that split up will reform. Including – and maybe even especially – the ones that assure us they never will. Definitive groups of the 60s, 70s and 80s have all now proved this to be the case.
In the 60s, not only did The Beatles assure us they weren’t getting back together, we even had album tracks from John Lennon such as the anti-Paul McCartney tirade How Do You Sleep? on Imagine. And while they never performed together again, all four Beatles had reformed socially by 1980.
From the 80s, one of the classic quotes about a group refusing to reform came from the Eagles. The kings of MOR scored six hit albums and as many Grammys but, by 1980, the band had split up. Four years before his Boys Of Summer meisterwerk, Don Henley was asked when they would reform – “When hell freezes over” was his answer. And he was still equally against the idea in 1982, telling People magazine, “I just rule out the possibility of putting the Eagles back together for a ‘Lost Youth and Greed’ (-type) tour.”
But again, to prove the point that bygones will inevitably always become bygones, by 1994 not only were the Eagles out on the road together again (Henley alongside The Heat Is On co-writer Glen Frey) but they also named their live album of the tour Hell Freezes Over.
All of which brings us to the Frankies, who were on record with an equally definite – or so we thought – quote as to if and when they would ever get back together after relations between the five members broke down so intensely post 1986’s Liverpool album. Q magazine tracked down Brian Nash, Peter Gill, Paul Rutherford, Holly Johnson and Mark O’Toole for a Where Are They Now? piece in the mid-90s. All of
