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Many visitors to the site know frank either through
his music or tv career and not aware of frank the artist.
This video proves without a shadow of doubt that frank
had the knowledge of art history and was
the complete artist
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Frank Sidebottom was a 35-year-old man from the Manchester suburb of Timperley, where he lived with his mum. He had a wide and varied career in that there showbiz, even though his mum didn't approve. He made music, releasing many recordings on vinyl, cassette, cd, and even video (designing all the artwork). As well as performing many concerts, made radio programmes, had his own Television show and made guest appearances on dozens of other tv programmes including hosting the 1990 subbuteo world cup, created art for oink! comic, founded his own football team (The Timperley Bigshorts) and for a while was the mascot for Manchester City. and so much more
According to the liner notes of his best of compilation "A B C & D", between 1984 and 1994 he:
made 23 musical releases ("on 7"; 12'; picture disc; cassette; CD and flexi");
made over 360 "radio timperley" broadcasts, not including guest appearances and hospital radio;
made over 300 TV appearances, two of which were cancelled,
performed over 1000 concerts, including Glastonbury and Wembley Stadium.
And that's just the first ten years of his career; He retired in 2010.
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As frank had a music career with many recordings and live concerts, people ask how was it possible for him to have also produced so much art, create video games, produce tv shows, run a football team amongst many other things. Surely there can't have been just one person who wore the mask. Well the conspiracies can stop right now, there was only one man. Frank Sidebottom was the creation and alter ego of musician Chris Sievey.
Chris had an encyclopaediac knowledge of the beatles, 3D films, a passion for science fiction (particularly the works of Gerry Anderson) and a strong desire to make it onto Top of the Pops. Chris released a series of records from 1975 to 1983 both with and without his band, the Freshies, they almost broke through with the single "I'm in Love With the Girl On The Manchester Virgin Megastore Checkout Desk" but events conspired against the band. as a side project, Chris created a video game, the Biz, for the ZX Spectrum, which allowed players to create a band and attempt to push them to national chart success. here was the first time we heard Frank Sidebottom as The game came with an interview conducted by a certain pop music fanatic from Timperley.
Soon afterwards in the early eighties, Frank became the more prominent side of his career.
Frank inhabited a strange space between his world and ours: often literally pushing his way in to the pop world, the Frank Sidebottom persona was both a celebration and a condemnation of pop music: Frank was self-promoting and desperate for attention, but he retained a naiveté and enthusiasm for music that was hard to dislike. He was annoying and repetitive to many, but sometimes his rearrangements of songs showed a flash of genius. Frank's world, as heard on his radio programmes and records and seen in his TV series, was a strange idyll in the North of England; a fantasy world where Zoo animals co-existed with home-made science fiction robots and a trip into outer space was as likely as a day out in Blackpool.
Chris Sievey died of cancer in 2010, aged just 54.
A life size statue of Frank was erected in Timperley in 2013.
For more about chris I highly recommend the Steve Sullivan documentary
"Being Frank".
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