Another look behind the scenes at some work I’ve been doing on the Frankie Goes To Hollywood box set for the 30th anniversary edition of their ‘Welcome To The Pleasuredome’ album. Earlier this year I visited photographer Steve Rumney who took a set of photos backstage at the London launch party of ‘Relax’ at the Camden Palace (now Koko) back in November 1983, one of which ended up on a promo poster, cassette and sheet music.
We looked through boxes of negatives and found very little aside from some prints and one badly damaged negative strip. Nevertheless, on that strip was an image that I recognised from the inside sleeve of the original album and he graciously let me take it away. After having it scanned at a professional lab I took the digital files and proceeded to repair all the dust and scratches it had incurred over the years. See above the 5-step cleaning and cropping process, this will then be used on the inner sleeve of the new version of the album. Quite a bit of work for one small 4 x 5.5cm image which – at the last minute – we decided to drop from the sleeve altogether.
artist: Frankie Goes To Hollywood title: Relax format: restored image scanned from original negative design: n/a photography: © Stephen Rumney 1983 cat. no: n/a date: 24/11/83 art of notes: The photo was taken 24th November ’83 by Steve Rumney backstage at a promo gig for the launch of ‘Relax’ at the Camden Palace in London. The girl in the photo is Ange, a friend of the band who featured in the original video for ‘Relax’.
