By Lewis Jennings
Over 40 years ago, Liverpool was on the verge of a pop renaissance. Tambourines and fuzzy guitar tones were out, electrifying beats and hedonistic synths were in. At the forefront of the new wave takeover was Holly Johnson’s group Frankie Goes To Hollywood. When the band rose to prominence in 1983 with their debut single ‘Relax’, the world was not prepared for artists who were unabashedly LGBT+ and proud. The provocative lyrics of the song, which came to Holly during a walk down Princes Avenue, led to a ban by the BBC, but that didn’t stop ‘Relax’ reaching no.1. The mass hysteria that followed had not been seen in Liverpool since the dizzy heights of Beatlemania in the sixties.
Since then, Holly has dealt with the highs and lows of the music industry, all of which are captured in immense detail in his new exhibition at the Museum of Liverpool. Stepping into The Holly Johnson Story is like a scene reminiscent of Pixar’s summer blockbuster Inside Out 2, in which the heroes enter a character’s stream of consciousness, full of memories connected to glowing strings. The exhibition feels similar; an ethereal place, swirling with neon memories from the musician’s early years growing up in Liverpool, to his rise to superstardom as frontman of Frankie Goes To Hollywood. It is immersive, exhilarating and, at times, incredibly moving, particularly the parts of the exhibition that cover the fear, loss and stigma caused by the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980s.
Holly reveals he was blown away when he first stepped foot in the exhibition. “I had been shown some photographs of what it was going to look like and they’ve done a great job. I’m made up with it,” he beams. Talks of an exhibition first began in 2002, when James Lawler, one half of DuoVision Arts, curated The House of Holly as part of Liverpool Biennial. A renowned painter, Holly has had his work displayed in Tate Liverpool, The Royal Academy of Arts and now the Museum of Liverpool.
“I started exhibiting in various group shows that James put together like Fellow Travellers and Hello Sailor,” recalls Holly. “From there, we had talked about an exhibition for a long time, but it was always a matter of funding. After we did the Eurovision Song Contest opening ceremony with Frankie Goes to Hollywood, James had the idea of applying to the National Lottery Heritage Fund and secured the funding. DuoVision Arts, Homotopia and the Museum of Liverpool got involved and it all just came together and it’s quite exciting really. Seeing it in reality, it’s so colourful. It brings back memories.”
Holly has a sentimental smile when he reflects on some of the items on display, such as a photograph of him performing at Wembley Arena to raise money for Terrence Higgins Trust, the UK’s leading HIV and sexual health charity. In the photograph, he wears a denim jacket covered in golden hairpins, designed by the late fashion designer and performance artist Leigh Bowery. Although the exhibition celebrates Holly’s life, in a way, it’s also Holly celebrating the people that have inspired or influenced him, whether that be in art, fashion or music. Outlandish outfits designed for him by the likes of Bowery and Vivienne Westwood take centre stage at the exhibition, as does a dazzling portrait of himself, which he commissioned from Liverpool-based artist Ben Youdan. The two had met while exhibiting in The Hanover Gallery, a former gallery on Hanover Street, where Holly said he fell in love with Youdan’s “sparkly and over-the-top” work.
With a long, illustrious career to look back on, it should come as no surprise that Holly has met and worked with some of history’s most distinguished musicians, from Paul McCartney to David Bowie. He cites the androgynous styles of Bowie and T. Rex frontman Marc Bolan as influences, while commending Lou Reed. “There was something very queer about him,” Holly remarks. “Even though he ended up marrying Laurie Anderson, for a long time he had a trans girlfriend called Rachel (Humphreys) and he definitely swung sexually in the 60s. His work, the album Transformer, was a big influence on me.”
Another inspiration for Holly growing up was the eccentric artist Andy Warhol, who he discovered one night in 1973 while watching a David Bailey documentary profiling Warhol and his entourage. One of the Warhol superstars, American actress Holly Woodlawn, is where Holly’s name comes from. “Andy as a visual artist and his whole entourage seemed so glamorous to me when I lived in Liverpool, even though being gay or queer, as we were called, wasn’t the thing to be,” he says.
Living as your true authentic self is championed by LGBT+ communities today, but it was a difficult feat back when Holly was growing up in Wavertree. Not that this stopped him from living his truth, much to the disdain of his peers. “There was a lot of bullying that went on and name calling and physical bullying in my teenage years at school,” Holly continues, “which, to some degree, truncated my education, because I started playing truant and not going to school and hanging out in Newton Park or St John’s Precinct, which was new then and seemed very modern, I can tell you. But then meeting people like Jayne Casey and Pete Burns, who worked in a unisex hairdressing salon (at St John’s Precinct), all of those things formed me as a person and as an artist, really.”
Despite a meteoric rise to fame and success, Holly and his bandmate Paul Rutherford were never shy about their sexuality, even at a time when pop stars were warned against being openly LGBT+. “It never occurred to us, to me and Paul (Rutherford), to be in the closet,” admits Holly. “We were on an independent record label – they were happy for us to be as controversial as possible because it gained column inches in those days, since no one else was out in the pop world. Initially, when Relax came out in 1983, we were the only band with openly gay members. It was quite isolating, even Elton John wasn’t fully out then.”
The 1980s were a turbulent time in British LGBT+ history, with incessant homophobia and attacks on LGBT+ rights rife, partially fuelled by the HIV/AIDS epidemic and, in the latter end of the decade, Section 28. The sheer horror and struggles faced by local LGBT+ communities of yesteryear are a pivotal part of The Holly Johnson Story. One poster reads, ‘Defy Clause 28 – equal rights for all, fight for lesbian and gay rights.’ Another feature allows visitors to pick up a vintage telephone, complete with a rotary dial, and hear local people talk about their experiences with Liverpool’s LGBT+ scene in the 1980s, as well as the devastating impact and legacy of HIV.
A moment that Holly wouldn’t forget came in 1991, when he was diagnosed with HIV – only a few weeks before the death of Queen frontman Freddie Mercury, who had succumbed to bronchial pneumonia resulting from AIDS. Despite a media witch-hunt against people living with HIV/AIDS, Holly was ready to take control of his own narrative by 1993 and bravely tell the world about his diagnosis, in his own words, via an interview with The Times. However, a transcript of the interview was stolen from The Times database by journalist Piers Morgan, who splashed excerpts on The S*n’s frontpage just days before the full interview was due to be published. It led to some unpleasant experiences, including the press harassing Holly’s parents.
Over 30 years later, Holly agrees attitudes towards HIV/AIDS are changing. “HIV and AIDS has become a mainstream condition within the NHS,” he says. “The important message now is ‘U=U’, which means undetectable equals untransmissible and that’s the message we try to get across now, as far as HIV is concerned. If you’re receiving the right treatment and undetectable, you’re not any danger to anyone. And of course, the advent of PrEP is a brilliant thing, but was really hard to achieve. There was a reluctance to give it to people initially but there are sexually active people out there.”
As we come to the end of the interview, Holly reflects on 40 years of Welcome to the Pleasuredome and plans to celebrate the anniversary with a tour in 2025. “It’s a great way of going out there and performing the songs from that album and I’m really excited about that,” he says, adding, “but at the moment, I’m more excited about this exhibition. I hope it does really well for the Museum of Liverpool, which I always visited anyway.”
The Holly Johnson Story runs at the Museum of Liverpool until 27 July 2025. Tickets start from £5 for adults. To book a ticket or find out more information, please visit: liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/whatson/museum-of-liverpool/exhibition/holly-johnson-story#section–the-exhibition
