Log in / create account
What's your thing?
 
Search

Endpoint: Frank Tovey



54:48
Videos (3)
created on: 21/08/2025
by: Lo55o (13647)
 
 

Person properties

General info :
Francis John Tovey (8 September 1956, London, England – 3 April 2002, London, England (aged 45)), known also by his stage name Fad Gadget, was a British avant-garde electronic musician and vocalist. He was a proponent of both new wave and early industrial music, fusing pop-structured songs with mechanized experimentation.

As Fad Gadget, his music was characterized by the use of synthesizers in conjunction with sounds of found objects, including drills and electric razors. His bleak, sarcastic and darkly humorous lyrics were filled with biting social commentary toward subjects such as machinery, industrialization, consumerism, human sexuality, mass media, religion, domestic violence and dehumanization.

Frank Tovey signed as Fad Gadget to Daniel Miller's Mute Records. He was the first artist to sign to Mute. "Back to Nature" was recorded as the second Mute Records release at RMS Studio in London.
"Back to Nature" was a success for Mute Records so a follow-up record was produced; the follow-up was titled "Ricky's Hand". The recording included Gadget's wife, Barbara, singing a vocal part near the end of the recording; the vocal part is then mixed with a synthesiser part into the outro of the song. Fad Gadget then went on to record an album for Mute Records. Fireside Favourites was recorded at Blackwing Studios in London.

Gadget also felt the ideas and concepts behind his live performances were just as important. His live appearances progressed to dressing in theatrical costumes, reflecting back to his days studying visual arts, and he quickly became known for his confrontational stage antics. Some of these included covering himself in tar and feathers, swinging his microphone like a whip, leaping backwards into the audience, dancing across bar tables while kicking over people's drinks, climbing up speakers, hanging from ceiling fixtures, pulling out his body hair and playing instruments with his head, often ending up in personal injury. Gadget was particularly infamous for spreading shaving cream on his naked body onstage, an image of which is depicted on the cover of The Best of Fad Gadget.

Fad Gadget recorded two more albums for Mute Records at Blackwing Studios which was using more complex recording equipment: Incontinent and Under the Flag.
The recording of Gag was a turning point in Gadget's recording career. It would be the first time he used a band of musicians to record an album; before he had recorded most of the musical parts himself. It would also see a major change in the recording location from London to Hansa Tonstudio in Berlin.

After recording the album Gag, Gadget began recording under his real name – Frank Tovey. He carried on moving toward acoustic instruments and in 1984 had decided he might want to record on his own again. He recorded several LPs of more experimental work under the name Frank Tovey, beginning with Easy Listening for the Hard of Hearing, a collaboration with Boyd Rice recorded in 1981.

In 1989, he changed musical tactics in his criticism of industrialisation, recording a mostly acoustic album of protest and labour songs Tyranny and the Hired Hand, including such standards as "Sixteen Tons". He then tried his hand at writing similar material, recorded two more albums with a backing band named The Pyros. After touring in 1993, Gadget withdrew from the music business.µ

In his later years, Gadget began to perform at festivals and also supported his former colleagues and Mute label-mates, Depeche Mode, on their European tour. He was working on a new album at the time of his death.

Fad Gadget suffered from heart problems since childhood, and died of a heart attack on 3 April 2002 at the age of 45.

Despite a lack of commercial success, Fad Gadget is regarded as a pioneer in synth-pop, electro and industrial music.
Relations :
Founder of : Fad Gadget
This endpoint is approved in the database from previous submissions.
Websites
Source :
Copied Wikipedia parts under license :
ENA's

Music

(2 items)

Person

(2 items)

Item number : 70516

Submitted by : Lo55o (13647)
on : 21/08/2025