"Warriors of the Wasteland" is the sixth single from Frankie Goes to Hollywood

Frankie Goes to Hollywood

Frankie Goes to Hollywood were a British dance-pop band popular in the mid-1980s. The group was fronted by Holly Johnson , with Paul Rutherford , Peter Gill , Mark O'Toole , and Brian Nash .The group's debut single "Relax" was banned by the BBC in 1984 while at number six in the charts and...

, released in 1986. It was taken from the album Liverpool

Liverpool (album)

Liverpool is Frankie Goes to Hollywood's second album, released in October 1986 . It would be the band's final album of all-new material, and lead singer Holly Johnson would leave the band following the corresponding world tour, followed by a flurry of lawsuits from ZTT.The album was a commercial...

.

Having already referenced literary heavyweights like Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla...

 in "Welcome to the Pleasuredome" and Thomas

Dylan Thomas

Dylan Marlais Thomas was a Welsh poet and writer, Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 11 January 2008. who wrote exclusively in English. In addition to poetry, he wrote short stories and scripts for film and radio, which he often performed himself...

 in "Rage Hard

Rage Hard

"Rage Hard" is the fifth single by Frankie Goes to Hollywood. It was released in August 1986.-Background:Having topped the charts around the world with Welcome to the Pleasuredome and its accompanying singles, Frankie Goes to Hollywood took off to Amsterdam to record the follow-up album, Liverpool...

)", for "Warriors of the Wasteland" Holly Johnson turned to T. S. Eliot

T. S. Eliot

Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...

 for inspiration. Johnson cited Eliot's The Waste Land

The Waste Land

The Waste Land[A] is a 434-line[B] modernist poem by T. S. Eliot published in 1922. It has been called "one of the most important poems of the 20th century." Despite the poem's obscurity—its shifts between satire and prophecy, its abrupt and unannounced changes of speaker, location and time, its...

poem, the 1981 Mel Gibson

Mel Gibson

Mel Colm-Cille Gerard Gibson, AO is an American actor, film director, producer and screenwriter. Born in Peekskill, New York, Gibson moved with his parents to Sydney, Australia when he was 12 years old and later studied acting at the Australian National Institute of Dramatic Art.After appearing in...

 film, Mad Max 2, and the 1979 film, The Warriors as inspirations.

Even though it featured 3 different 12" singles, "Warriors of the Wasteland" reached number 19 in the UK singles chart (making it the group's first UK hit not to go Top Five), #7 in Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 (for two weeks) and #13 in Switzerland

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

.

7": ZTT / ZTAS 25 United Kingdom

1. "Warriors of the Wasteland" - 5:01
2. "Warriors (Of the Wasteland)" - 3:55

• The 5:01 side is the album version, featuring the band's original instrumentation; the 3:55 flip is a 7" mix recreated digitally using samples and synths.

12": ZTT / 12 ZTAS 25 United Kingdom

1. "Warriors" (Twelve Wild Disciples Mix) - 9:45
2. "Warriors" (instrumental) [unlisted] - 4:50
3. "Warriors" (return) - 1:22
4. "Warriors" (end) - 3:29

• As with many ZTT
  ZTT Records
  ZTT Records is a record label founded in 1983 by NME journalist Paul Morley, record producer Trevor Horn, and businesswoman Jill Sinclair. The label's name was also printed as "Zang Tumb Tuum" and "Zang Tuum Tumb" on various releases....
  
   releases, unlisted tracks have created confusion as to which track has which title. "Warriors" (return) can be taken to be the full 6:12 instrumental track, or just the 1:22 reprise.
• "Warriors" (end) began life as an unreleased track called "Pocket Vibrator".
• On the sleeve notes to this release, producer Trevor Horn
  Trevor Horn
  Trevor Charles Horn CBE is an English pop music record producer, songwriter, musician and singer. He was born in Houghton-le-Spring in north-east England....
  
   noted: "On Liverpool the members of Frankie Goes to Hollywood played Warriors with their own notoriously fair hands ... This so-called 12" is in fact a total cheat ... No-one played anything, in any orthodox sense. It was all done by computers, very powerful computers ... juggling and organising pre-recorded sounds."

12": ZTT / 12 ZTAX 25 United Kingdom

1. "Warriors" (Turn of the Knife Mix) - 8:09
2. "Warriors" (instrumental) [unlisted] - 4:50
3. "Warriors" (return) - 1:22
4. "Warriors" (end) - 3:29

12": ZTT / 12 ZTAK 25 United Kingdom

"Heavy Mental"

1. "Warriors" (attack mix) - 6:30
2. "Warriors" (instrumental) [unlisted] - 4:50
3. "Warriors" (return) - 1:22
4. "Warriors" (end) - 3:29
   • The "Attack Mix" featured additional guitar parts by Gary Moore
     Gary Moore
     Robert William Gary Moore , better known simply as Gary Moore, was a Northern Irish musician from Belfast, best recognised as a blues rock guitarist and singer....
     
     .

12": Island / 0-96799 United States

1. "Warriors of the Wasteland" (Twelve Wild Disciples Mix) - 9:42
2. "Warriors of the Wasteland" (Turn of the Knife Mix) - 8:11

CD: ZTT / ZCID 25 United Kingdom

"Warriors" (Compacted)

1. "Warriors" (introduction) - 2:25
2. "Warriors" (Twelve Wild Disciples Mix) - 9:45
3. "Warriors of the Wasteland" [fewer lyrics] - 5:02
4. "Warriors (Of the Wasteland)" - 3:57
5. "Warriors" (Monopoly Re-Solution) ['rats in a cage'] - 2:21

• The CD is one track without a title list, and the titles above are for convenience of reference, apart from "Warriors" (Twelve Wild Disciples) and "Warriors" (Of the Wasteland).
• "Introduction" starts with various vocal sounds, then sped-up samples re-edited, then slowed down samples, moving into what sounds like the Return Mix and some re-edited instrumental bits.
• "Twelve Wild Disciples" is the first 12" mix - a reconstructed version with additional keyboards.
• "Fewer Lyrics" is the album version with verse lyrics missing.
• "Warriors (Of the Wasteland)" sounds similar to Twelve Wild Disciples, but a 7" edit.
• "Monopoly Re-Solution" is a stand alone track.

MC: ZTT / CTIS 25 United Kingdom

"Warriors (Cassetted)"

1. "A Matter of Life and Death" - 0:04
2. "Warriors of the Wasteland" [instrumental] - 2:59
3. "Warriors (Of the Wasteland)" [7" version] - 3:09
4. "Warriors" (Twelve Wild Disciples) [instrumental] - 8:32
5. "we're rats" [various noises from 'Introduced'] - 0:43
6. "Warriors" [excerpts from 'Return'] - 1:27
7. "Warriors" (Monopoly Re-Solution) ['rats in a cage'] - 3:03

• As with the CD single, no individual tracks are listed on the sleeve, which simply states "... featuring Warriors (twelve wild disciples mix) and a phenomenon of megabytes". The latter could be taken to be an unidentified track, or a description of the production process.
• The opening voiceover and the instrumental version of the Twelve Wild Disciples mix were unique to this cassette, until CTIS25 was finally released on CD in 2011 as part of the Liverpool
  Liverpool (album)
  Liverpool is Frankie Goes to Hollywood's second album, released in October 1986 . It would be the band's final album of all-new material, and lead singer Holly Johnson would leave the band following the corresponding world tour, followed by a flurry of lawsuits from ZTT.The album was a commercial...
  
  deluxe edition.

Chart performance

Chart (1986)	Peak position	Total weeks
Dutch Singles Chart	26	5
French Singles Chart	50	8
German Singles Chart	7	17
Irish Singles Chart	12	3
New Zealand Singles Chart	30	4
Swiss Singles Chart	13	8
UK Singles Chart	19	10

External links

• Zang Tuum Tumb and all that - Warriors discography and sleeve images