Day After Day #331: Two Tribes

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

Two Tribes (1984)

Younger generations who only know life in the 1980s from watching old TV shows or retro creations like Stranger Things might have the impression that the '80s were all bright colors, big music and cocaine. And there certainly were those elements, but there was also plenty of Cold War tension between the West and the Soviet Union. For a while there, it seemed like thermonuclear war was inevitable.

It was an interesting time. ABC aired a movie called The Day After about the aftermath of a nuclear missile attack on the U.S. The movie aired on November 20, 1983, and was the seventh-highest rated non-sports show to that point, with more than 100 million estimated views of the initial broadcast. There was so much hype around it that we had a whole class discussion dedicated to it at school.

Naturally, pop culture reflected this atmosphere through movies like War Games and Red Dawn and from songs as varied as "Red Skies" by the Fixx, "1999" by Prince and "2 Minutes to Midnight" by Iron Maiden. A different, more exuberant take on the topic was presented by English dance pop act Frankie Goes to Hollywood, which made a big splash in the fall of '83 with their first single, "Relax."

Formed in Liverpool in 1980 by lead singer Holly Johnson, the first version of the group split up fairly soon after forming, but it was reformed by Johnson in 1982 with Peter Gill on drums and brothers Mark and Jed O'Toole on bass and guitar, respectively. Jed O'Toole left and was replace by his cousin Brian Nash, and the band later added dancer/backup singer Paul Rutherford. Johnson and Rutherford were openly gay and made no attempt to hide it in the band's music or performances, which was revolutionary for the time.

After performing on the British show The Tube wearing fetish gear, Frankie Goes to Hollywood was signed by ZTT Records, a new label co-founded by producer Trevor Horn (who was best known for his stint in the Buggles and as the post-Jon Anderson singer of Yes for one album and tour). Impressed by the band's in-your-face gay sexuality at a time when society was still pretty repressed, Horn recommended "Relax" as their first single and created a completely electronic version of the song without the band. The first video for the song was set in an S&M club and the band performed it on BBC's Top of the Pops in January 1984. The song was soon banned by the BBC, which created more publicity for the band, and it soon hit #1 on the U.K. singles chart; after four weeks in the top spot, the BBC reversed the ban.

The label also launched a promo blitz that included a line of t-shirts with slogans like "FRANKIE SAY RELAX" that became hugely popular. The song was also featured in the Brian De Palma thriller Body Double, spawning another video featuring scenes from the movie, which starred Melanie Griffith and also featured the band.

In June 1984, Frankie Goes to Hollywood released their second single, the anti-war banger "Two Tribes," which featured a funky guitar riff and a thumping bass line as Johnson gleefully sang about nuclear war. Add to that a video directed by Godley & Creme that features doppelgangers for U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Konstantin Chernenko, the Soviet secretary of the Communist Party, wrestling in front of the band and representatives from other world nations.

"When two tribes go to war/A point is all that you can score/(Score them all, score them all)/When two tribes go to war/A point is all that you can score/(Working for the black gas)/Cowboy number one/A born again poor man's son/(Poor man's son)/On the air America/I modeled shirts by Van Heusen/(Working for the black gas)."

The single was a huge success in the U.K., entering the singles chart at #1 on June 10 and staying there for nine straight weeks, while "Relax" climbed back up the charts to #2. It was the longest-running #1 single in the U.K. for the decade. The song featured snippets of narration from British public information films about how to survive a nuclear war. 

"We got two tribes/We got the bomb/We got the bomb, yeah/Yeah/Sock it to me biscuits, now? Are we living in a land/Where sex and horror are the new gods?/Yeah/When two tribes go to war/A point is all that you can score."

The song wasn't quite as big in the U.S., where it hit #43 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #3 on the Dance Club Songs chart. But the video got plenty of play on MTV. It ends with Reagan and Chernenko realizing that everyone else is fighting around them, and the world explodes. 

The band released their debut album, Welcome to the Pleasuredome, featuring both "Relax" and "Two Tribes," in October 1984. A follow-up single "The Power of Love" was released in November and also went to #1 in the U.K., and the fourth single. "Welcome to the Pleasuredome," went to #2.

By the end of 1984, Johnson began distancing himself from the band, which left the U.K. in 1985 for tax purposes and wrote songs for their second album in Ireland. There were media reports of band divisions and Nash later claimed that Simon Le Bon of Duran Duran was approached to replace Johnson but declined. Johnson stuck around and completed the album, called Liverpool. But it didn't fare nearly as well as the band's debut; the first single went to #4 but the album received bad reviews and the following singles were less successful. After the tour, the relationship between Johnson and the rest of the band was so strained that the band broke up. Johnson later told ZTT he planned to sign with MCA Records and ZTT filed an injunction to prevent the move; the High Court found in Johnson's favor and the band members were released from their contract. Nash, O'Toole and Gill tried to reform the band with a new singer, but Johnson blocked the project.

Johnson's first solo album, 1989's Blast, went to #1 in the U.K., but his 1991 follow-up was a flop. He was diagnosed with HIV that year and took time off to recuperate. The other members of Frankie had less success. In 1998, a band using the name Frankie Goes to Hollywood started touring the U.S., led by an American singer who claimed he was Johnson's brother and performed uncredited on the first Frankie album. Horn and the real band members disputed this, but the fake band kept performing at small clubs in the U.S. until an article was published in Spin about the controversy in September 2000.

The original members of Frankie Goes to Hollywood appeared on a 2003 episode of the VH1 show Bands Reunited but did not perform. A year later, the band reunited without Johnson and Nash (who declined to participate) to perform at a Prince's Trust charity concert at Wembley to celebrate Horn's 25 years as a record producer. Ryan Molloy was picked to be the new singer and Jed O'Toole replaced Nash. The band played a series of concerts in Europe in 2005 and remained active until 2007 as Forbidden Hollywood, since Johnson would not let them use the original name. 

The original lineup finally reunited in 2023 for a concert celebrating Liverpool music for the Eurovision Song Contest, but only played one song, "Welcome to the Pleasuredome." A few days later, it was announced that a Frankie Goes to Hollywood biopic was in the works, based on Johnson's memoir, to be directed by Bernard Rose, who directed the first "Relax" video.

Day After Day #297: Peace Sells

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

Peace Sells (1986)

There was a lot going on in the music world in the 1980s: New wave, synth pop, post punk, hardcore punk, indie rock, funk rock, hair metal. It was great. Another subgenre that popped up even as bands like Motley Crue and Poison were slathering on the foundation and eyeliner was thrash metal, which was as much a reaction to the pop metal that was becoming a best seller as it was a counterpoint to the buttoned-down conservatism of Ronald Reagan's presidency.

The sound combined the traditional metal of bands like Judas Priest, Motorhead and Iron Maiden with the speed and aggression of hardcore punk acts like Black Flag, Bad Brains, the Misfits and the Dead Kennedys. In the U.S., it was Metallica, Slayer, Exodus, and Anthrax. Metallica was formed in Los Angeles in 1981 by singer-guitarist James Hetfield and drummer Lars Ulrich, later adding guitarist Dave Mustaine and bassist Ron McGovney. The band replaced McGovney with Cliff Burton and then in April 1983, replaced Mustaine with Kirk Hammett.

While Metallica became the first thrash band to gain notice, Mustaine was bitter and decided to form a faster and heavier band. After reading a pamphlet by California senator Alan Cranston that discussed "the arsenal of megadeath," Mustaine wrote a song called "Megadeth," which was about the annihilation of power. He formed a band called Fallen Angels, but eventually the name changed to Megadeth. After several lineup changes, the group was made up of Mustaine on vocals and lead guitars, Dave Ellefson on bass, Gar Samuelson on drums and Chris Poland on guitar. 

The band signed to Combat Records, which gave them $8,000 to record their debut album. Megadeth spent half the money on drugs, booze and food and then fired the original producer and finished the album themselves. Killing is My Business...and Business is Good! came out in June 1985; it included a cover of Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'," sped up and with different lyrics. Years later, songwriter Lee Hazlewood complained about the changes and threatened legal action until the song was removed from pressings released from 1995 to 2001. 

Megadeth got $25,000 from Combat to record its second album, but ended up signing with Capital Records. Poland and Samuelson were struggling with heroin addiction, and both were fired after the subsequent tour. The group's second album Peace Sells...but Who's Buying? came out in late 1986, featuring political commentary and complex arrangements. 

Samuelson had encouraged Mustaine to write more political lyrics, and when Mustaine read an interview in which Patti Smith said, "Peace sells, but nobody's buying it," he had the idea for a song. He didn't have any paper so he wrote the lyrics on the walls of the rehearsal building the band was living in. With "Peace Sells," Mustaine lashed out at the image of metal bands as being dumb.

"What do you mean I don't believe in God?/I talk to him every day/What do you mean I don't support your system?/I go to court when I have to/What do you mean I can't get to work on time?/Got nothing better to do/And what do you mean I don't pay my bills?/Why do you think I'm broke? Huh?/If there's a new way/Oh, I'll be the first in line/But it better work this time."

Mustaine came up with the song's distinctive bass intro, which later was used as the introduction to MTV News, but the band received no royalties because the clip was so short.

"What do you mean I hurt your feelings?/I didn't know you had any feelings/What do you mean I ain't kind?/I'm just not your kind/What do you mean I couldn't be the president/Of the United States of America?/Tell me something/It's still "We the people," right?/If there's a new way/Oh, I'll be the first in line/But it better work this time."

In 1986, the Cold War was at its peak, with the threat of nuclear war seemingly imminent. The song's refrain of "Peace sells, but who's buying?" was particularly unusual for metal, although Iron Maiden's "Two Minutes to Midnight" from two years earlier covered similar ground. 

The song's video was a hit on MTV and featured quick cuts of Megadeth playing live and war footage, although it was banned in the U.K. because of the flashing images at the end. The album hit #76 on the Billboard 200 chart and Megadeth opened for Alice Cooper in early '87 before beginning a headlining tour. 

Since then, the band has released 14 albums and had many lineup changes, with Mustaine being the only constant. His bitter feelings over being kicked out of Metallica lasted for decades, highlighted by interview footage included in the Metallica-produced documentary Some Kind of Monster in 2004. Mustaine and the Metallica members finally made up in 2010 during a tour of the "Big Four" thrash bands: Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax and Slayer.