"Warriors of the Wasteland" is the sixth single from Frankie Goes to Hollywood, released on 10 November 1986. It was taken from the album Liverpool. Having already referenced literary heavyweights such as Coleridge in "Welcome to the Pleasuredome" and Thomas in "Rage Hard", for "Warriors of the Wasteland" Holly Johnson turned to T. S. Eliot for inspiration. Johnson cited Eliot's The Waste Land poem, the 1981 Mel Gibson 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 (for two weeks) and #13 in Switzerland. Critical reception On its release, James Brown of Sounds described "Warriors of the Wasteland" as a "predictable piece of rock junk" which he believed showed how Frankie Goes to Hollywood had become "appallingly tame and useless" and "so bloody obviously boring that they have resorted to making competent rock records". Billboard said of it that "art-rock megaproduction waxes critical of society's inequalities." Track listings (All discographical information pertains to UK releases only unless noted) 7" ZTT / ZTAS 25 "Warriors of the Wasteland" (Twelve Wild Disciples Mix Edit) - 3:55 "Warriors (Of the Wasteland)" - 5:00 The single version (A-side) is a remix by Trevor Horn, recreated digitally using samples and synths. The AA-side is the album version, with the spoken intro to Rage Hard tagged onto the end. The titles were swapped on most overseas releases, thus causing confusion on most fansites. 12" ZTT / 12 ZTAS 25 "Warriors" (Twelve Wild Disciples Mix) - 9:45 "Warriors" (instrumental) [unlisted] - 4:50 "Warriors" (return) - 1:22 "Warriors" (end) - 3:29 As with many ZTT 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. The 2014 digital reissue labelled both pieces as "Warriors" (return). "Warriors" (end) began life as an unreleased track called "Pocket Vibrator". On the sleeve notes to this release, producer Trevor Horn 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