32 MusicWeek 02.08.13 Q&A TREVOR HORN
CLEVER TREVOR C
Trevor Horn is busy penning a musical, but with a wildly successful career behind him and major changes coming to his world famous Sarm complex, he has plenty more to talk about
STUDIOS BY PAUL WILLIAMS
hart-topping frontman, legendary producer and music industry businessman with interests including Sarm, Perfect Songs,
ZTT and Stiff. Now Trevor Horn is turning his hand to a new talent as a musical composer. Under a new manager, Sandy Dworniak, he has teamed up with former 10cc man Lol Crème to pen a stage production set appropriately enough in a recording studio. “I’ve nearly finished it,” he tells Music Week,
revealing: “I’m a big fan of musicals. I got to see a lot of them. The musical Billy Elliot was brilliant. That’s the best modern one I’ve seen. I loved that.” It marks a new departure for Horn, best known as the lead singer of Video Killed The Radio Star chart-toppers Buggles and ace producer of such albums as ABC’s The Lexicon of Love, Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s Welcome To The Pleasure Dome, various from Seal and more recently Robbie Williams’ Reality Killed The Radio Star (see what he did there?). Besides the musical, Horn talks to Music Week
about what else he has been up to, how he became a record producer in the first place and whether it is still possible to make a living out of the profession.
You have worked with so many people over the years - is there anyone left? I always like working with people who’ve got really good songs and something they want to say. I don’t care if it’s a first record or a 15th record. In fact, if anything I prefer the first record. I don’t really like going through the motions. I like things where there’s something in it. Like Johnny Borrell, I did his sort of album and Johnny definitely felt like he had something to say, he had to get it out and I like that. ABC: Martin [Fry] had something to say. Seal had a whole new view of the world, Future Love Paradise or whatever. He was saying something.
Do you get lots of approaches or do people think you are probably too busy? Most people think I’m way too expensive so they don’t bother.
Are you way too expensive? It depends how much I like the music. I like to do a good job of things.
What do you make of the way production is often done these days with songwriter/producer teams - sometimes a whole series of them for one album? It obviously depends who you are, but when I started out I wrote sort of three songs for Dollar with Bruce Woolley and then I produced the records, but then I thought if I just write them it’s really going to limit me. In the same way, if I have to play on every record I make then that’s going to
www.musicweek.com
ABOVE
Horn survivor: Trevor says he prefers artists who “definitely feel like they have something to say”
“When I was making Relax, they kept saying to me: ‘You’ve got to start on our second album now.’ I said I couldn’t and that they just had to wait until I’d finished. Mark, the guitar player said: ‘We wouldn’t wait for God this long, so we’re certainly not waiting for you” TREVOR HORN
limit the kinds of records I make. Back then in the Eighties you could still earn money from selling records so I didn’t [write] . If you look at all the Seal albums I’ve done I’m not credited anywhere as a writer. Frankie Goes To Hollywood I’m not credited as a writer, yet we chopped that stuff up a lot, but I had this ethic I was the producer. That was paramount. These days writer/producer teams are fine. It works. It’s a different sort of job really,
because all the stuff, all the keyboards that we had to buy in the Eighties, now you can get all of those sounds so easily. It’s a different world.
You mention you like to work with new artists. Some of the biggest records you worked on like ABC’s Lexicon Of Love you didn’t subsequently work on the second albums. Were there circumstances there? There were circumstances with ABC because I was wrestling with [the creation of Frankie single] Relax and they kept saying to me, “You’ve got to start our second album.” I said I couldn’t and, “You’ve just got to wait until I finish this one.” Mark [White] the guitar player said, “We wouldn’t wait for God that long so we’re certainly not waiting for you,” which I thought was funny at the time because I said, “You’ve got to let me have another four weeks” or whatever. So that was the reason I never did the second one - but after
Pic: Paddy Balls
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60