Relax [NEW YORK Mix] - Frankie Goes To Hollywood

"Relax" is the debut single by English synth-pop band Frankie Goes to Hollywood, released in the United Kingdom by ZTT Records in 1983.

The hit version, produced by Trevor Horn and featuring the band along with other musicians, entered the UK top 75 singles chart in November 1983 but did not crack the top 40 until early January 1984. Three weeks later it reached number one, in the chart dated 28 January 1984, replacing Paul McCartney's "Pipes of Peace".[8] One of the decade's most controversial and most commercially successful records, "Relax" eventually sold a reported two million copies in the UK alone, easily ranking among the ten biggest-selling singles ever. It remained in the UK top 40 for 37 consecutive weeks, 35 of which overlapped with a radio airplay ban by the BBC.

Although the 7-inch version of the single remained unchanged throughout its initial release (a mix generally known as "Relax (Move)"), promotional 7-inch records featuring a substantially different mix of "Relax" (entitled either "The Last Seven Inches" or "Warp Mix" because it is a compilation of other versions) were the subject of a limited 1984 release.

Trevor Horn said "One of the reasons we did all the remixes was that the initial 12-inch version of 'Relax' contained something called 'The Sex Mix', which was 16 minutes long and didn't even contain a song. It was really Holly Johnson just jamming, as well as a bunch of samples of the group jumping in the swimming pool and me sort of making disgusting noises by dropping stuff into buckets of water! We got so many complaints about it — particularly from gay clubs, who found it offensive — that we cut it in half and reduced it down to eight minutes, by taking out some of the slightly more offensive parts [this became "Sex Mix (Edition 2)"]. Then we got another load of complaints, because the single version wasn't on the 12-inch — I didn't see the point in this at the time, but I was eventually put straight about it."

Horn attested that visits to New York's Paradise Garage club led to the creation of the final "Relax (New York Mix)", which ultimately replaced the original "Sex Mix" releases:

It was only when I went to this club and heard the sort of things they were playing that I really understood about 12-inch remixes. Although I myself had already had a couple of big 12-inch hits, I'd never heard them being played on a big sound system, and so I then went back and mixed 'Relax' again and that was the version which sold a couple of million over here.

The original 12-inch version of "Relax", labelled "Sex Mix", ran for over 16 minutes, and is broadly as described by Horn above. The subsequent "Edition 2" was an 8-minute-plus edit of the "Sex Mix", and can only be distinguished by having 12ISZTAS1 etched on the vinyl. The final 12-inch mix, containing no elements from the foregoing versions, was designated the "New York Mix", and ran for approximately 7:20. This was the most commonly available 12-inch version of "Relax" during its worldwide 1984 chart success.

The UK cassette single featured "Greatest Bits", a unique amalgam of excerpts from the "Sex Mix", "New York Mix", "Move" and an instrumental version of "Move".

Since virtually all of the UK "Relax" 12-inch singles were labelled "Sex Mix", a method of differentiating between versions by reference to the record's matrix numbers necessarily became de rigueur for collectors of Frankie Goes to Hollywood releases.

"Relax (Come Fighting)" was the version of the song included on the Welcome to the Pleasuredome album. This is ostensibly a variant of the 7-inch single "Move" mix, but is different from that version. For example, the 7" mix fades in on a foghorn type sound while the album mix fades in on sustained synth chords. Also, the backing vocals of the 7" mix are panned to the left, whereas they are mixed in the centre on the album version. Additionally, the 7" mix features a prominent reverberated kick drum sound during the introduction that also appears in other parts of the song, which is completely absent from the album mix. The album mix also has a certain post-production sheen that is absent from the original 1983 7-inch single mix. The "Classic 1993 Version" is a version of the original 7" mix that uses "Bonus, Again" as the instrumental track, although modification with elements from "Come Fighting" thrown in and much of it made to sound more clear.

The original airing of Relax on The Tube, before the band were signed to ZTT, featured another verse that was edited from all the released versions, "In heaven everything is fine, you've got yours and I've got mine", presumably removed as it was taken directly from the David Lynch film Eraserhead.

According to a fan enquiry by a member of the Alternate forum to Holly Johnson over accusation that "Edition 2" was created by a DJ, "Edition 2" was edited by Trevor Horn at the Sarm East studio with J. J. Jeczalik engineering and Johnson watching.

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