Songs That Changed Music: RELAX - Frankie Goes To Hollywood with Stephen Lipson
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- Опубліковано 8 чер 2022
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What songs do you think changed music? Share below!
Blister in the Sun, Pride and Joy
Grace Jones 'Slave to the Rhythm' (Another amazing Horn production)
Paranoid Android, Radiohead
Maybe Sex Pistols, God Save The Queen? Odd you haven't done that one on the anniversary!
@@tonelab heck yes! Would love to see a breakdown of Slave to the rhythm 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
I hope we're all aware how lucky we are to listen Relax/FGTH directly from a PT file, from the source, with one of the guys who made it for real.
40 years ago someone said me that I wouldn't have believe it, for sure
Thank you!
Agreed! Special thanks to Stephen for doing this!
@@Producelikeapro Hi Warren, I was surprised there was no mention of this track being used in Brian DePalma's film "Body Double" where Holly actually performs the track where they are in a club scene in the film. Really great movie- Relax fits the tone and energy of the film storyline. Love your channel and all of your outstanding analysis videos- The track breakdown with Stephen Lipson is one of the best I have seen so far! This one is another Home Run for you! Peace ~JP
I’ve been waiting for the day when record companies will release the actual tracks as masters so we can mix our own versions or fade out certain parts. I’m sure they’ll do it eventually since everything gets rereleased ad infinitum through the decades.
@@MLB9000 Agreed!
No we are all twits, but thanks for telling us
I cannot stop smiling. The breakdown of this song is a dream come true (no pun intended).
Thanks ever so much!!
The song sounds modern and fresh even today. Incredible production and song writing.
Thanks ever so much!!
Often when you study a great pop song, it's "all about the guitar riff", or "all about the bassline", or "all about that drum break", or (very commonly) "just a brilliant vocal melody", with various other parts just acting in support of the main hook, but this production has no weak points. Every single element - drums, bass, guitar, vocals, synths - sounds superb in its own right. It must have been a joy for Trevor Horn and the mix engineers to be provided with so many exceptional parts for the final mixdown. That master tape has more great stuff on it in 4 minutes than some bands' entire careers!
At 15 I nearly wore the single out. I was a bit of a metal head at the time but that beat and Holly’s voice were irresistible.
I was staying in DC when FGTH first went to the US. They did an appearance at a local record shop where my friend worked, so I went in to help out. While the band were in the shop signing records, they got two actors dressed as Ronald Reagan and Chernenko to pull up in a limo with fake secret service men. They ran into the store and got two signed records from the band and ran back out and left. Brilliant. I got to see the gig as well. Fun times.
This is G-E-N-I-U-S !!! So glad it's possible now to hear all those amazing isolated tracks four decades later. Truly a masterpiece!
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
Thanks ever so much M!
It’s CRAZY how many of these individual parts became such recognizably massive parts of the tune. It’s like an all-star team of licks n’riffs. To hear that a lot of it came from just fiddling around reminds me of how much time can be wasted in the studio overthinking and hashing over simple parts trying to make them “perfect”.
Basically any song, if you take it apart into individual tracks opens up a whole new universe.
It’s all about getting into the flow state.
"Relax" was such a massive single that nobody paid attention to the words. After a while however you realized what he was talking about. But by then it was just a dope song. Sometimes it ain't the lyrics....
Sure they DID
This was the bangingest beat if the 80s, bar none! My buddy had a little Toyota truck with about 2000 watt stereo in it in 1985. We would cruise down broadway and just crank the hell out of this tune. Had a friend who was having dinner in a restaurant tell us that their drink had the circles in it when we got close. Ie: like the ones in Jurassic park when the tyrannosaurus is getting close… just drove the beat right through your body. Prob why my hearing sucks today.
Absolutely
I'd never appreciated just how brilliant Holly Johnson's vocal performance was on this song, but there's so much character and attitude going on. Marvellous video yet again.
An incredible singer!
Trevor Horn also produced the “Yes 90125” album which also has an immaculate production and technical musicianship quality.
And he was a Buggle, and Video Killed the Radio Star... ;)
Yes! Wonderful album
@@raygunsforronnie847 indeed!
Some of the most jaw-dropping production of all time. Gary Langan mixed it.
he also produced the excellent Yes album entitled 'Drama'.
I was too young to appreciate this song at the time, but I only just realise now how simple but very clever and multifaceted this is! I could listen to Stephen talk all day. So humble and bullshit-free. I bet he's a joy to work with.
I had never been aware of the amount of sound layers that this song has. Amazing!
I had no idea!
I know! It’s incredible!
Great production
Brings back memories ❤loved it
First time I heard it in 1984, it sounded like a song from another planet, and still does.
Argh, my older sister had this on cassette back in the 80s. And a ton of Paul Hardcastle. Nice to hear about production.
Very cool! Thanks ever so much
I still have a 12" of "Nineteen".
@@taxus750 Thats so killer man !
My mind is blown to learn this was *only* 23 tracks. I remember being kind of starstruck with the song/production and just assuming it was almost certainly some gigantic production with sequencers and endless tracks.
And here's the great reveal - all it took was a great song, great musicians and even greater creativity. I love it all the more - thanks to Warren and Steve - that was magnificent viewing!
Having 24 tape tracks must have been a bit of luxury back then. Certainly it must have been nice to be a keyboard player that had 3 or 4 tracks for synth sound effects alone. The guys at home with their portastudios only had 4 tracks for the entire song, so there wasn't much room for background effects or layering.
Most of The Beatles albums were created on a 4-track recorder. Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon was produced on a 16-track recorder. Having 24 tracks was a luxury.
What an absolute BANGER!!.. If someone asks you "What did the 80's sound like?" direct them to this.
Thanks ever so much Scott
@@Producelikeapro Thank you!, I'm a huge 80s music fan and hearing these iconic tracks broken down gives me a whole new appreciation for these amazing song. People dismiss "pop" music like this as throw away but when you look at the layers of complexity in a song like this you cant help but be wowed. Again, thank you!!
the thing that defines the 80s was how different the bands were, the 80s was a gradual transition from the innocent fall out of punk all the way through to something far more manufactured and contrived that kick started the 90s.
Frankie got me into record collecting when I bought Two Tribes Hibakusha (if you know you know)
The album version of Welcome To The Pleasuredome is probably the finest piece of music I’ve ever heard.
You need to get Steve back and do a video on that version I think it would be mind bowing!
right, please do another video with lippo about wttp album version.
I'd love to hear this treatment for Welcome to the Pleasuredome which was my favourite track from that album.
There’s so many little things that make this song great but the “Boom… Boom… Boom” bassline is what ties everything together and makes it work.
Funny he says "that was the blockheads guy that came up with that"
Because when you listen to that part isolated, it sure sounds like the blockheads.
Them playing with the daw was so outlandish futuristic at the time. It was the same time that I was still thinking, I could emulate Jean Michel Jarre with a single CASIO synth, I really believed that.
"Frankie say 'no more'". Thanks Warren for covering yet another song from my college soundtrack.
Thanks ever so much Craig!
Same... in fact, I still have the vinyl single at 0:43 :)
@@TheChzoronzon got vinyl too! We're old school.
I love this… thanks. How about a video on Paul Hardcastle’s classic song “19” or “Rain Forest” ?
Thank you so much for making this video possible. It's so vitally important that we get these thoughts, memories, and comments recorded before it's too late. Even the most trivial recollection to someone in the recording studio when these songs were being created, can be the inspiration for someone decades later. We are losing these memories each day when someone passes away. I'd love to see a video like this about some of the Talk Talk hits. "It's My Life", "Such a Shame", "Life's What You Make It" etc. would be amazing to have a break down of by anyone who was a part of the recording process. It's already been three years since we lost Mark Hollis and more pass each year :(
I feel like for how amazingly complex Talk Talk's songs were, there's been very little documentation like this video provides.
I've heard it so many times that I can sing the vocal line along with which ever snippet he's featuring at any given point. Nothing filled the dance floor quicker than this at the time it was released.
Fantastic! Thanks ever so much for sharing
yes it was a great dance track!
This song has always sounded just absolutely epic to me, especially that guitar riff
Thanks ever so much!
Great video! Love that Trevor Horn sound , actually discovered them via Art of noise
Thanks ever so much Jens!!
Do you know what this song is about, lyrically? Most people don't. It's pretty sleazy and disgusting. No offense, but I'm a little surprised you would praise a song like this.
@@Ken5244 😂 ok there Pastor Ken.
@@sub-jec-tiv I'm not a pastor nor a prude, nor does a person have to be to be disgusted by such degenerate lyrics. I love Trevor Horn's work with The Buggles and YES, but he should be ashamed of himself for having been part of such a trashy song.
@@Ken5244 Fair point. I was 9 or 10 when this song came out, and even if I did not discover it until a few years later, then it was the music and the sound that completely blew me away and I was not really paying attention to what the song was about.
That said, it is not a topic that is uncommon in music, just take songs like Crosscut Saw or Whole Lotta Love, or in fact, any Jazz Standard where the images become vague and about a distant bell, and stars that fell etc. That is not really the musical climax of the song that is about looking out the window at nature.
I don't think Sinatra was singing Fly Me To The Moon to Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos, and the question is maybe what that song is really about?
One of the best songs of the 80's and one of the best produced-still sounds fantastic today.
The sound choices are perfect-the Jupiter 8 sounds amazing and I never knew that was a Roland guitar synth on there.
Every little part fits perfectly.
A joy to hear all the stems-Thanks Warren!!
Agreed 100%!
Around the time that Relax came out I had a little grey Roland SH101 synth. I would call it kind of 'second wave' affordable synth after things like the Wasp and the Mini Moog.
All of the sounds were set using rotary knobs, sliders and switches for the various oscillators and filters. It was quite good fun setting up the different sounds, but it could be time consuming and very impractical if you wanted to use it for playing live and changing sounds between songs.
The advent of inexpensive polyphonic synths with presets and user savable presets made a huge difference to using them by the average person.
I still think that MIDI was an amazing development. For competing manufacturers to get together and agree a standard interface for exchanging data between their different products was a remarkable and far sighted thing to do.
and it’s too sad that we recently lost Dave Smith, the one who brought MIDI to its realisation (still on ver 1.0 after 40 years)
Thank you Warren for bringing Stephen Lipson back again. That man is an open book about what can be done in a studio. Thank you very much for sharing this material. A big hug from Buenos Aires.
Thanks ever so much! Yes, Stephen is wonderful
I just know they had a ball making this song. The production is phenomenal
Probably the best song of the '80s. Still sounds amazing in 2024
I have a whole new appreciation for the track after this. Remarkable.
There's that passion again! That's why I love these videos. I share the passion for this music and the era when I was a teenager. Great to hear how this song came to be.
Thanks ever so much!
I pull out my 12inch vinyl of relax when I want to see where the party will go. The 80s LeRox good times.
Genius, genius, genius, genius!
I was 13 (1980s) in the car with my parents. I was enthusiastically singing this song. My mom looks back at me … do you know what this song is about? No, mom. It’s just a great song. 😳
The confidence to not fear is the secret to creating anything... Cooking, painting a picture, or making music.
I remember when the song was released, it was just an incredible sound - which has held up through the years. To peel back the onion of how it was made is amazing. This UA-cam video is simply one of the best explorations of musical history I've seen. 100 years from now I'm sure this video will be still be studied ... assuming UA-cam doesn't implode in the interim!
That bass/synth toe tap riff will never be banned. It cooks.
Trevor Horn changed so much of music - made dance music an artform. It's the only dance music where I prefer to sit and listen
Stephen Lipson - Truth! Great interview
I went to a Baptist boarding school up in Canada. The had an attached bible college with a huge cafeteria where we ate all of our meals. They played this lousy christian music on these cassette tapes. I snagged one of them and inserted a recording of Relax in the middle. I put the tape back and waited. GLORIOUS!!! I did get in trouble, worth it!
Great episode of an outstanding debut - though I still prefer Two Tribes, which is still enormously powerful and somewhat chilling.
Thanks ever so much for sharing
"the power of love" is amazing
Agreed 100%!
Takes me back to the Camden Palace. Great song being pumped-out with the bass rearranging my innards! 👍
Haha I hear you!
Hearing Stephen talk through the multitrack, and share the other insights from his career, is absolute *gold*. I've been fascinated with this music since 1984 and it's amazing to experience it now in a whole new way.
That’s amazing to hear! Glad to be able to showcase such a wonderful song and production
“It’s a bad guitar pert”, Lipton said. Sometimes bad becomes a good thing.
Agreed!
Any song slated by Mike Reid must be a classic 😊
Haha thanks for the great comment
Stephen is a guru. Love that he said, "if you can hear the part, it's good enough." And the fact that he spent 2min on Jeff Beck's guitar sound. There's a guy who can get stuff done.
I'd still like to know how they got such a futuristic, expansive and clear sound. Not many songs have that.
Great to hear the synths deconstructed. It's amazing how much is going on when you unpack it all.
Had one of the best summers of my teens with this song - my friends and I at the lake every day playing hacky-sack, while the extended single cassette played over and over on repeat through the boom box. This was in '84 I think...
Love this track and love this series! Splendid Warren thank you!
Thanks ever so much Dane!
That guitar sound is fabulous.
Another great piece. If I could just throw in my 2c worth: the final version going down to tape so fast was probably due to all the previous work, and not just some lucky inspiration. What often happens in the creative process is frustration and failure overcome by persistence -- a kind of "critical mass" can be achieved, and everything past that becomes almost self-sustaining. As to the synth sounds: just prior to the DX7 and the preset revolution, it was almost impossible to get a synth to sound the same from day to day, even with patch notes, etc. What we hear in these recording is truly a sound from a different era, and not just a different sound -- and I'll take it over auto-tuning any day.
Thanks ever so much for sharing
an audio masterpeice. should be preserved for all future life in the universe.
Early version of Relax on The Tube at 1:40. Pretty sure that's Norman Watt-Roy from (Ian Dury & the) Blockheads fame on bass.
I did watch it and it looks like Mark O’Toole, the Frankie Goes To Hollywood Bassplayer
The Blockheads were drafted in only once Horn realised that he could not get the required sound out of FGTH on Relax. The video you see features Mark O'Toole.
Relax is a masterpiece,amazing!❤
I love when bands, producers etc break down hit songs from yester year. It's eye opening to the fact that songs are really a tappestry of sounds, a collage of creative elements that when combined create the complete picture/song that we appreciate and enjoy as a whole.
80's music was creative, experimental, theatrical and full of mystery and magic thanks to those amazing synthesizers, filters, gates and guitar pedals.
This interview is why I LOVE THIS CHANNEL!
Thanks ever so much
Lived in a dormitory when this came out.. on Friday evenings while getting ready to go out to party we would have “dorm wars”. This song with the best speakers won every single time.. the whole building would shake…. And no police were harmed….
Amazing! Thanks ever so much for sharing
As a kid of the 80’s this track was huge when it came out
Massive hit!
That is why love your channel!
Frankie Goes To Hollywood was in the 80ies like porn was to the film industry: Direct, dirty, no compromises, appaeling to your basic instincts. It was revolutionary ... but in no way cheap. And it played with gay sexuality, no wonder it was banned by the (no sex, please-)BBC.
And decades later we we get demonstrated what a great work that was technically and musically, and how precise and exact they had to work to make that happen.
BTW.: How many conversations have these files undergone to play in probably a actual ProTools session?!
Thanks ever so much for your wonderful comment!
Love the Jupiter 8 rezzy bass stabs, so happy to hear them isolated for the first time. They sound just like how direct prostatic stimulation feels!
Good music composition can be so simple. Love it.
Thank you, Sir! ❤️
Thanks ever so much
One of the most greatly mixed and mastered songs ever heard on top of being so musically exciting ...still today. I can't deny that I'm using that song as mixing reference for my own songs and "Power of Love" for my slower creations 🙂 Well done indeed guys. Thumbs up.
That ‘quiet confidence’ story about the upright Royer microphone , is enough to drive me along for the rest of my years as a recording artist.
One of the Quintessential tunes from the 80s that I grew up with and was one of my jams! I would take out my bass and just go into automatic slap mode to the metronomic beat of the song while jumping around my room. Yes, I had a metalhead Marshall bass stack back in the day so I was very loud, much to my parents' chagin, but MAN did this song (along with War, Two Tribes, and Born To Run) absolutely slay it! Of course, I honestly think that they did MUCH better versions of Bruce Springsteen's music than he did (I always thought Bruce just flat out sucked when it came to performing his music). FGTH and Manfred Mann Earth Band both did much much better versions of Bruce's songs. Props to them and thank you Warren for this interview! I LOVE these videos about songs that I grew up with! Outstanding!
Can't believe I get to see this. Thanks so much Warren!
Thanks ever so much
This was fantastic to hear all the plethora of sounds they created on the fly and just mucking about. Great song, great production, and great longevity. Thanks for sharing this piece of musical history with us.
Thanks ever so much! I really appreciate it
Great vid. LOVED the extended interview with Steve Lipson, he was great to listen to about his approach to a creative endeavor.
Wow. I could never pick that song apart just listening to it. So much layered stuff in there, and very unique sounds. Love it.
Trevor Horn did a lot that was in a category by itself...his production techniques. Thinking his work with Seal. Delicious ear candy that always pops and draws you in.
He did great work with Pet Shop Boys also.
This is great stuff - it's nothing short of a masterclass.
Thanks ever so much!
An amazing video! I love this song, the band and the voice of Holly Johnson.
I remember hearing this as a ten year old kid here in Sydney Australia in 1984. Really liked the song then, still fond of it!
Thanks ever so much
Love this Warren. ...and the Slave breakdown.... these were my inspirations too in the late 80s. So amazing. (BTW, I think that first keyboard "stringy" line that Stephen demos is def Fairlight)... I love it that you are capturing these Warren. we're losing history right before our eyes and to get these conversations, is archival absolute gold for the future when the "new kids" discover the 80s.... yeah the 80s, that for some reason, got savaged, by the critics of the 90s and naughties!! Keep up the great work!
Another example of your high quality Video production! You deserve way more Subscribers!
Aw schucks! Thanks ever so much
Wow - I can tell the Jupiter immediately - LOL. I had a JP-6. A few years later I played with/programmed an JP-8 for quite a long while, and a Fairlight. This is ALL amazing technology. 🥰
What a ledge!!!!! Amazing interview! While basically everything I’ve ever done is overproduced, i never realized how many synth tracks there are in the song!
Truly amazing to see and hear the original PT layout. I'm in awe at the cleanliness and organization of the comp... It all fits into a single view without miles of scrolling and zooming.
I think the art in this production is that, with all the extra stuff going on, it never sounds cluttered or over done. Very clever mixing.
That spasmodic three note riff (bwah, bwah, bwah) always goes off in my head when I finish off slapping the bass. 😆
Marvelous. Truly marvelous. Stephen was a gent, met him briefly and was star struck. He happily signed my t shirt.
This song was so huge- definitely one of the best records of the whole 80’s.
Relax was the first 45 I bought as a teenager in 1984. I still have the single and it still sounds fantastic.
Thanks for sharing!
This song literally changed my life. I remember the exact moment I first heard it, the 12 inch mix. that was it, lost in music forever after.
Such a kick-ass song. Thanks for making this breakdown and showing how all the layers combined to make this.
I was 6 when the song hit the States. Been in love with it ever since! Beautiful piece of music
Thanks ever so much for sharing!
One of my favorite songs of my teenage years. Thanx for showing us Warren!
Brilliant, thanks Warren such a classic, love hearing how others write studio n life tales and what was used in recordings. The 80's so much great music, 👍
this was the first interesting song i heard when i was a kid. i was mindblown and scare shitless when the erupting volcano breakdown kicked in. it's still my favorite sounding song till this day
ZTT -"Zum Bang Ching". Thank you very much...
Another fascinating breakdown of an iconic song from my fave decade. I went out more or less the day Relax was released and bought the 12" single with picture cover, just after that it was soon banned of course. That 12" still sounds fantastic today and has a cherished place in my record collection. Thanks for a superb video Warren!
Great video, thanks Warren! This record was huge, I bought when it came out and played it over and over, couldn't get enough of it, the freshest, most modern sounding production of its time . . . I wore out my vinyl. Still sounds massive. Love Steve's guitar parts!
That whole Trevor Horn era is just magical. Big, big sound.