After scraping the bottom of his psyche (rumors of a very real suicide attempt abound), Frankie dug himself out of the depths. He ended up at a clinic for the deaf on the coast of Spain, where he learned sign language. “Me and some mates ran into him on the beach a few months after he came out of his house, and he was just a changed man,” says Ibiza party promoter Gemma Englund. “He could read lips perfectly and he was all smiles. He seemed quite drunk, I’ll admit. But I didn’t spot his previously ever-present circle of coke around the nostrils.”

Frankie’s manager Max Haggar, always one to see an angle, began building Frankie up as the world’s only deaf DJ. And it was true — Frankie found a method to make music despite his lack of functioning ears. “He was always obsessed with flip-flops,” says friend Devin Creighton. “Anyone who went by his house saw his closet full of the bleedin’ things. So what he did was glue these flip-flop tops onto a couple of massive speakers and slide his feet in there. He felt the beat through his entire body.”

The press started to come around and the crowds were ready to pull for The Deaf DJ. Buzz was building, the scene was ready for a new champion, and Max prepped Frankie for his return. Haggar engineered a stellar comeback gig for Frankie at Ibiza superclub Pacha (a resurrection the likes of which hasn’t been seen since the first Easter).