I’m sure I’m the only one who cares
…and even I’m not sure I do that much, but this article about Bands Reunited on VH1 gets a couple of facts wrong. After Kajagoogoo “arranged for their manager to boot (Lihmal] out of the band without explanation,” it didn’t “effectively [end] his career.” In fact, he had just as many top 40 hits as a solo artist as he did with the band. If anything, it’s their career they effectively ended, since their efforts to be a grown-up pop band were stymied by the limits of their talent.
And they say this about “The installment featuring Frankie Goes to Hollywood (1983’s “Relax”) doesn’t have quite so happy an ending. That’s because lead singer and self-appointed serious artist Holly Johnson is a gwumpy little man whose sense of humor seems to have been surgically removed in the decades since the homoerotic dance-pop outfit’s ultra-brief heyday. Never mind “Relax.” Someone should tell this guy to “Chill.”
Yeah, well, it might change your view of that installment if you have a little piece of information they left out of it: Holly Johnson has been HIV-Positive for years. That’s a reason to avoid any undue stress, I should think, such as a reunion with a bandmate who once tried to beat you up, and it might even make one “gwumpy” and lacking in humor at times. Plus, IIRC from having skimmed Johnson’s autobiography a few years back, he knows full well that without producer Trevor Horn…
