------------------------------------------------------- OCTOBER 30, 2004 ------------------------------------------------------- Source: London Times http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7948-1333375,00.html Horn of plenty By Laura Lee Davies If his music career had gone pear-shaped, Trevor Horn could have run a cracking B&B. Talking about a forthcoming Prince’s Trust gig, which celebrates his 25 years as a record producer, it’s clear that, despite spending most of that time locked away indoors, Horn loves people. Croaky from a late-night recording session, he launches undaunted into impressions: Seal doing Kenneth Williams, Grace Jones being her majestic self, teen “ lesbian” popettes Tatu sneaking fags from their manager: “Cee-gar-ettes, Trevor,” he mimics in his best 14-year-old Russian growl. “You get cee-gar-ettes. Don’t tell Ivan!” he laughs. With his wife, Jill Sinclair, he has also found success managing artists and running a record label. Last year, there were shrieks of horror in the indie world when he produced Belle and Sebastian, the ultrahip antithesis of the mainstream biz. “Oh yeah, death threats,” Horn smiles. “My daughter tells me there’s one bloke who’s still got it in for me.” The band, however, claim they were won over when he used an analogy with outside loos while discussing recording techniques. Despite his “backroom” job, Horn is no stranger to fame. Or infamy. Mocked in the music press for his own Buggles hit, Video Killed the Radio Star, he was then adored in the same inkies once Paul Morley tuned into his work with Dollar and ABC. The national papers castigated him in 1983 for producing Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s raunchy Relax, and then again when he worked with Tatu on their 2003 powerpop hit All the Things She Said. Horn laughs recalling the outcry when Tatu’s stage show involved scenes of teen same-sex horseplay. “I think the manager was stupid to play up the “lesbian porn” thing. But one newspaper implied that I was a well-known promoter of homosexuality because of Frankie Goes to Hollywood! For a while, I jokingly referred to myself as ‘the king of paedo-pop’, or whatever they called me.” It’s unlikely that many of us would come running with pitchforks if Horn moved into our street. Instead, fans of great chart music are more likely to declare a celebratory concert long overdue. ABC, Art of Noise, Belle and Sebastian, Lisa Stansfield, Pet Shop Boys, Seal, Simple Minds, Yes and members of Frankie Goes to Hollywood will perform their own Horn-produced classics at the Prince’s Trust gig and yes, even Buggles will play. The accompanying hits compilation makes one hell of a CV. “Most people in Normal-land don’t notice who’s produced a record. I’m just paid by the artist to take them through the horror of the recording studio. I was very lucky in the late 1970s because some big things happened. Kraftwerk made The Man Machine which just turned everyone’s world upside down. Suddenly there was an alternative to Elton John. It meant more than any punk record. Punk was just b*******. Also, technology in recording transformed more in five years than it had in the past 70.” Horn recalls how he got blisters playing Video Killed the Radio Star for 14 hours just to get it right. He and his recording partner Geoff Downes chose the distinctly uncool band name of Buggles as a reaction against punk. “Punk was just, well, if you’ll buy that you’ll buy any crap. But when I was an artist, I really learned from ABC. They told me that they were the most fashionable band in the world, or that they had been last Thursday. They said it in all seriousness. They had such chutzpah. If you really want a career, you have to work hard at all that. It’d drive me nuts.” ABC’s album Lexicon of Love (1982) was one of Horn’s first big triumphs. The album was predominantly about the singer Martin Fry’s break-up with his girlfriend. Horn lent the whole album a sense of drama. To a backdrop of rain effects and thunderclapping chords, Fry sounded as if he was accepting failure with heroic panache. When Buggles split, Horn turned to his manager wife to sort out his own career. Her first advice was to give up the day job and concentrate on producing. “The first act that she got me to produce was Dollar, ” says Horn. “I did it totally unselfconsciously but suddenly the NME loved me. I did bask in it for a while, but I’m used to the other side of it, too.” Working with the likes of Paul Morley and Anne Dudley, Horn has enjoyed a spot of collective creativity with ZTT and Art of Noise. As a producer, however, he has achieved a longevity that most artists could only dream of. “These days, over a career, you have to write more material than Mozart. People ask me who I’d like to work with. Well, anybody who’s got great songs. I don’t care who it is. I mean, I love Bob Dylan, but would I like to produce him? I don ’t think so.” In the early 1980s, Horn hooked up with his boyhood heroes, Yes. Initially, he was unimpressed by the material that he was due to produce. By accident he heard a track intended for another artist. It was Owner of a Lonely Heart and it was going to save the rock dinosaurs from extinction. “I had to beg the band to do it. Then they kept making it all Yessy and complicated. I pleaded with them to let me programme it on a drumbox. I actually pulled at Chris Squire’s trousers and grovelled for the sake of my reputation.” A 12in mix of the single made No 1 in the black dance chart in America. “It was such a hoot. The idea of cool people turning up to a Yes show and then wondering what all this Starship Trooper stuff was about. But there were ego battles. One day Chris Squire was five hours late. When he arrived I just lost it. I was grumpy all afternoon and he was trying to be friendly. The Tube was on the studio TV and they showed Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Chris said: ‘There ’s a band that you should sign; they’ve got girls tied to the wall.’ It was the first time that I had seen them.” Soon after, Frankie Goes to Hollywood signed to ZTT. In those heady days, Horn would find himself in the hippest New York clubs where DJs would play his 12in mixes in homage. It was a vibrant time, although Horn puts a lot of that down to snowdrifts of cocaine. “I was lucky,” he says. “I never touched the stuff. My wife told me that she would divorce me if I did. But yeah, you’d go to a club where everything happened in the ladies’ toilets.” Horn has never been short of work since. However, he has gained a reputation for taking an unfashionably long time in the studio even though many acts fear that excessive recording time is somehow artistically compromising. “That’s b******,” says the man who took six months to finish the Pet Shop Boys’ hit Left to My Own Devices. “Bands will cite a group such as Nirvana as ‘raw’. Nirvana were totally produced. I’ve just done an acoustic greatest hits with Seal and it’s fantastic. I’m so glad I did it, people will see that I can do simple.” Although Horn has never got round to writing his life story, there is a book about his work. It’s dauntingly titled Pop Music ­ Technology and Creativity: Trevor Horn and the Digital Revolution. “I don’t want to upset the guy, but you’d think that if there was a book written about you that was two inches thick, you’d have a great time reading it. Boy, I only got through two pages.” Horn admits that, despite having four children, most of his life has been spent in the studio. Perhaps the Prince’s Trust gig is his autobiography. “When it was announced. I had terrible ego misgivings. But now we have such a great line-up. I’m going to do things that I’ve always dreamed of doing. I’m going to get Yes to join Buggles for one song.” Produced by Trevor Horn is at Wembley Arena, November 11 Close Window YesInThePress.com For site comments, inquiries, corrections, or additions, contact yitp@yesservices.com