It's no hyperbole to describe Trevor Horn as one of the greatest music producers of the last 50 years.
From his first MTV-defining hit Video Killed the Radio Star with techno-pop duo The Buggles, Horn has redefined what was possible in the recording studio, pioneering Fairlight sampling in sparkling pop records by Dollar, ABC, Malcolm McLaren, and even Yes.
With his own record label Zang Tumb Tuum and a backroom team of engineers, session musicians and visionary sound manipulators, Horn took the art of production into a new computer age, releasing classic albums from The Art of Noise, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Propaganda and Act, while simultaneously spearheading the artistic and commercial power of the 12" remix.
Horn went on to produce some of Pet Shop Boys’ greatest tracks (Left To My Own Devices remains a fan favourite) and a critically acclaimed album Fundamental, while creating synth-soaked backing tracks for singers including Marc Almond, Robbie Williams, Cher, Paul McCartney and of course, Seal, who has worked with Trevor on no less than five albums, their partnership culminating in the Grammy-hoovering monster hit Kiss From a Rose.
As well as solo artists, Horn has also sprinkled his magic studio dust on projects from bands including Simple Minds, Belle and Sebastian, Captain, Spector, Simple Minds and Genesis. There's a reason that producer and fan Nigel Godrich once put up an inspirational sign in the studio while working with Radiohead that read: "What would Trevor Horn do?"
Horn's recent speaking tour across the UK gave music fans an opportunity to be regaled with stories from his recent autobiography Adventures in Modern Recording, including the infamous tale of him having to beg members of Yes on his knees to play Owner of a Lonely Heart, or when he and the Sarm West team developed the definitive version of Relax by Frankie Goes to Hollywood late into the night after smoking some very strong Nepalese hash...
We caught up with the incomparable studio magician before a run of Trevor Horn & His Band gigs, talking at length about the 41st anniversary of Welcome to the Pleasuredome, Dolby Atmos mixes, radical changes in studio technology and his views on AI in music.
Trevor, you've just finished a speaking tour talking about your career and the recent autobiography - what has that been like for you?
“Yeah, I kind of enjoyed it. It was interesting 'cause you get into a bit of a bubble in London. It was nice to go out and meet people. You know, people who like music again! You forget that sometimes down here. Because we were up North, people actually knew where Durham was - down here they haven't got a clue…”
You recently said on your Instagram, "please don't ask me about how to get into the music business because it doesn't exist as it did when I got into the industry!"
“Yeah, my partner would get cross with me for that, because she's a music publisher and you know, the music business is still actually turning over more money than it ever did. But, to an old guy like me, who was around when it was records, it feels like it's non-existent now, you know?”
There's a good scene on Bandcamp with artists selling directly to fans, but it's perhaps on the periphery of Spotify, Apple Music and streaming services...
“Yeah. I don't really like the actual sound of Spotify very much. It does something to the sound that I don't like. I mean, I used to love cassettes, 'cause cassettes used to romanticise everything. Most of the lower-grade digital formats spoil everything a bit. It depends on what you're listening back to stuff on, though - if you're just listening back on a small set of computer speakers, you probably won't notice the difference. It's all the sort of ‘between’ information that's missing.”
So Trevor Horn & His Band is playing live in December?
“Our mega-tour! Well, it's only for three days. I've started playing every day, to get my hands hard again. One of the problems where you just do one gig in the summer, and then nothing, it's very hard to keep playing when you don't have shows to do.
“When I was young, I used to play every night. Now I have to work to get myself back to where I was before. But I love playing live - if anything else, now in my time of life, it's my favourite thing, because it's instant, you know? It's just hearing the music out in the world, there's something about it. It's something I really enjoy doing - and I don't quite know why! I do like playing in front of an audience; it gives you a sense of purpose.
“I've been in the music business all my life, but for some reason now, just producing things doesn't feel like enough for me. I never played live for years, but now it seems more important to me.”
Was that because you came out of playing huge stadium gigs for Yes in the early 1980s?
“Yeah, but I was singing with Yes and that felt different, you know. Playing bass is such a satisfying thing when it's right.”
I saw one of the first gigs by Producers at the Barfly in Camden in 2007 and you and the band said afterwards that you were so delighted that people knew the lyrics and sang along to tracks like Freeway, as it was the first time you'd played them...
“Yeah, yeah. Do you know, I tried to get everybody back together again to do another Producers gig, when they brought out one of those box sets where there's every fucking version [Producers, 5CD Box Set on Cherry Red]. But I couldn't get everybody together, the same problem back then. Chris Braide was only here for a while then he went back to America. Ash [Soan] and I were in good shape because we'd been doing lots of gigs, but Chris hadn't done a gig for a long time - but I felt like he was very keen.”
What about the Trevor Horn & His Band lineup? Is Lol Creme [10CC] joining you for this one?
“Oh yeah, it wouldn't be my band without Lol in it. It's funny, a couple of years ago, I had T-shirts made for everybody in the band and I gave everybody a band name, like, Izzy Chase of the singers, had ‘The Izzy Chase Experience’. We had ‘The Lol Creme Band’, but I actually wore that Lol Creme band T-shirt! We still play 10CC's Rubber Bullets - we're playing it on this tour.
“So we've got Lol, myself, our usual guitar player, Simon [Tong]. Ash Soan is back on the drums again, which is wonderful, because he hasn't been able to do any gigs for us for a couple of years, because he's been out on the road with Tori Amos and Snow Patrol. It's great for me as a bass player because I love playing with him. Also Julian [Victor Hinton], and Florence [Rawlings] and Izzy, but also got Jakko Jakszyk from King Crimson, who's going to come and sing with us, which is kind of funny - and singer Roberto [Angrisani] too.”
It is the 41st anniversary of Welcome to the Pleasuredome by Frankie Goes to Hollywood, with another box set reissue. Do you have fond memories of working on that album?
“I've got really fond memories of working with Steve [Lipson] on the Welcome to the Pleasuredome track, because it started out just being three-and-a-half minutes long. Steve showed me this thing he'd worked out, how we could do additive editing, with the two Sony digital tape machines using time code offsets. And I was like, ‘Come on, let's see how long we can make Welcome to the Pleasuredome!’
"Then we came up with the ‘time tunnel’ bit in the middle of the song - I mean, we should have had some of the songwriting for that, but I never used to claim any of the publishing back then because I was too worried that people would get pointy-headed and stop us rearranging the songs.
“But it came out great - Steve was brilliant on that track. There's a guitar solo towards the end by him and it's still one of my favourite guitar solos. It was funny how those things happened - he said, ‘maybe we should do a guitar solo here, something like this…’ and just did it! There are some great Andy Richards keyboard sounds too - [Roland] Jupiter 8 stuff. There's also PPG Waveterm all over it. Steve used a lot of that on the Propaganda album [A Secret Wish] too.”
Was it on Pleasuredome that you got the Synclavier?
“We used a lot of the Synclavier on the Pleasuredome album because we had 69 seconds of sampling time. The only person that could work the Synclavier was Lippo [Steve Lipson]. It was very technical. But you know that Synclavier was still the best-sounding piece of kit ever. But they were so up themselves. That was their problem.
"We had so many arguments with them when we first bought it - there was a sequencer in it, and we tried sequencing a bass drum. I remember all the phone calls where we said, ‘there's something wrong with the sequencer, because we're programming four-on-the-floor and it doesn't sound right.’ And they said, ‘That can't be the case.’ Then we asked, ‘is it actually perfectly accurate?’ And they said, ‘Oh, it's perfectly accurate, to within 10 milliseconds.’
“‘Oh, for fuck's sake. 10 milliseconds?’ I replied, ‘I know people who can hear one millisecond!’ Eventually, they got it to be accurate, but we said, ‘it's still not right!’ The Synclavier company followed up and said, ‘It's perfect - and if it isn't, it corrects itself.’ ‘Oh, for fuck's sake," I said, ‘We can hear it correcting itself!’ They then brought out this WORM [Write Once, Read Many] optical drive - I remember that's when I bailed, as it was $25,000. Very soon after that, they went broke. But Two Tribes - those Frankie singles still sound great today. We bust a gut on them, we spent a lot of time and money on them.”
Have you heard the new Dolby Atmos mix of Welcome to the Pleasuredome by Steven Wilson? Are you interested in Atmos?
“Only peripherally. I haven't listened to those - they don't consult me on it. I don't do the Atmos mixes. I think it's one of the most boring things under the sun. I don't think music is meant to be listened to like that. Stereo is enough for me.”
Welcome to the Pleasuredome was recorded at the iconic Sarm West in Notting Hill [now Three Six Zero Studios] but the industry has mostly moved away from bigger studios and desks into smaller, more compact units - what's the reason for that?
“The studios stopped making money at the beginning of the 2000s. Well, they were losing money in the '90s. If you think about it, back in the '80s, the only way to record master quality audio was a two-inch machine, properly lined up, obviously. Then with computers, you could have broadcast quality - I mean you have broadcast quality audio now on your phone! It's incredible.
“Once that happened, it was the beginning of the end. Then in the '90s, the music fashion changed because the drugs people were taking changed. People would take ecstasy, and they were listening to that bleep music. And it all sounded better through a Mackie desk with new op-amps - all of those things, and business rates, were sort of the death knell of recording studios.”
If you had a desert island set-up with just a few bits of kit, what would you include in that?
“Well, I've got a little Neumann eight-channel interface. I have a Pro Tools rig. A couple of little Quested speakers. I've got a couple of those new, little Roland keyboards. They sound brilliant. There's one that looks a bit like a kind of tiny Jupiter 8 [JP-08], I really like it. I have it set up in the vocal room for when I'm doing harmonies so I can find the note.
“Although I've always been very fond of Korg Tridents - I have a few of those kicking around. I'd probably have an Akai MPC Live, 'cause I'm very fond of that. It's surprising what you can do with it. I prefer drum machines to doing drums in a computer. The MIDI in Pro Tools is okay, and we do use it, but I prefer to try and do drums without MIDI if I can.”
Do you still have the Linn Drum that you started working with in the 1980s?
“Yeah, I still have a Linn 2. But, you know, an MPC is just as quick. It has the same sort of instinctive way of operating. I mean, the old Akai MPC60 is still a great piece of kit.”
The new Akai MPC Live 3 is basically a studio in a box...
“Yeah, it is. I think my MPC Live is probably the previous one, and it's got a little set of speakers in it, which is even better, because I always have the keyboards in the control room. I always have them hooked into a single monitor, so that you don't have to listen to them through Pro Tools, because quite often you find Pro Tools is in a different mode and you can't hear things. Just so you can find and play an idea quickly.”
Do you still have the Roland JX-8P synth too?
“Yep. It's a fantastic synth. In fact, we've still got some of the sounds in it that Jamie Muhoberac [keyboard player] put in for the second Seal album. But I love those sounds - Fat Fifths, Voices - it's a great little thing, you know? I've also still got a couple of Korg vocoders - they've got some good sounds in them.”
The Buggles had some great vocoder sounds - speaking of which, are you and Geoff Downes working on any new songs?
“Yeah, we finished off one song. I'm trying to get Geoff interested in going out on the road - he keeps saying that he wouldn't mind doing it, but we haven't got around to it yet.”
Back in The Buggles days you used to have a fantasy about having a computer in the basement that would just come up with tunes. We’re now at the point where it's become a reality with AI. What are your views on it?
“Well, to be honest, I don't know what to make of that. Have you been online and looked at Abandoned Films? It's where they have basically used AI to make a piece of a film - and there's lots of footage of John Lennon and Elvis, and it’s obviously AI. There's something really phony about it - where it has no real actual physical quality to it. So, it frightens me to think that pop music's become so formulaic that they can have it made by a computer, but I suppose they could use AI to do classical music too.”
Music platforms like Spotify now have a lot of AI-created music...
“Somebody was telling me about how some guys defrauded Spotify by writing a load of AI stuff and then buying a bunch of computers and having them going 24 hours a day, streaming it. You know what the music business is like – any way that they can get rid of real people they will, you know? It's the same with bands. Bands back in the 1920s and '30s, they were big, there'd be 20 people in a band. Now, you're lucky to have two or three. Guys go on the road, and it's all coming off a tape.
“Sometimes, when you go to the show, you can't tell what's coming off the tape and what's being played, because it's so easy. It was much harder back in the day - it was possible, but it was frowned upon. I remember when Jeff Lynne first went out with E.L.O., he had two 24-tracks hooked up, and they were playing back master tapes, and people didn't like it. Now, everybody does it.”
So, you're currently working with Bloc Party?
“Yeah, they're a very interesting band, quite unusual. I'm doing an album. It's nearly finished.”
It's a full Trevor Horn album?
“No, it's not a Trevor Horn album - it's a Bloc Party album. That's why I don't work with groups very often because you can't put much of your stamp on them. It's much more that way when you deal with a singer, because you're making the backing track, like we did with Robbie Williams' album [Reality Killed the Video Star] for example.
“That's why a lot of the time, bands are generally better off with engineer-producers, because getting a good sound of the band is the most important thing. So the new album is very much Bloc Party, but hopefully I made a bit of a difference to it, and hopefully it's been a nice experience for them too.”
Trevor Horn & His Band will play the following ‘Video Killed The Radio Star’ dates:
18th December – Newcastle, O2 City Hall
19th December – Manchester, O2 Ritz
20th December – London, O2 Shepherds Bush Empire
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