Tom Dunne: A salute to the genius producer that is Trevor Horn
Trevor Horn has an incredible CV in the world of music production. (Picture: Bruno Vincent/Getty Images)
A truism, when we started out in bands, was that a good producer could fix any song.
Rubbish bands would sigh deals but then release great sounding records. We’d console ourselves by muttering, “bloody producer saved them. You should have heard the demo!”
Later, I went the opposite way: It was all about the song. Write a good song, and everything else follows.
However, having read Trevor Horn’s Adventures in Modern Recording, I may need to adjust that a little. A good song is one thing, but if you can then send in Trevor, well, strap yourself in.
His stories are mind-boggling. For instance, did you know that there is a shotgun blast on the second verse of Yes’s ‘Owner of a Lonely Heart’. Jon Vangelis had written a lyric referencing an eagle. Trevor hated it, so he metaphorically “shoots” the eagle. Listen for it, it’s there!
Elvis Costello recorded an entire album in the two months it took Trevor to produce just one Frankie Goes to Hollywood single. Horn worked on tracks for months and months. He sometimes scrapped everything, replaced everything, left almost nothing of the original song.
He saw songs like mini, epic, films, where every frame needed to do something! It was utterly obsessional.
From being a bass player in live bands around the UK scene he had drifted towards production. He was quite attracted to the idea that as a producer you weren’t limited to a bands’ line up. You could draft in bassists, programmers, and vocalists with aplomb.
This was where his gift lay. He saw instinctively how bits of music could go together and drew out the best in everyone. ‘Video Killed the Radio Star’ with The Buggles, which he fronted, was a huge hit, but performance was not where his heart lay.
His soon to be wife, Jill Sinclair, who also managed him and Sarm Studios, told him he could either be a mediocre performer, or a world-class producer. He opted for production, soon getting stuck into work with Dollar and then ABC.
ABC’s Lexicon of Love became his calling card. It was the early days of the Fairlight synthesiser, and Horn (along with Peter Gabriel, Kate Bush and Pete Townsend) was at the forefront of its use in recording. There are things on that album that had never been achieved before.
It made him a very in-demand producer and soon he was not only working with top artists, but set his own label, ZTT, with Paul Morley. That label, with Frankie, Propaganda and appearances on Channel 4’s The Word basically defined music in 1984.
But it was not all plain sailing. In Yes he side-lined the keyboard player and got their drummer, the world-renowned Alan White, to - horror of horrors - replicate a drum machine pattern. The band tried to ditch it, but label boss Ahmet Ertegun overruled them. It gave them their only ever US number one.
But it’s the story with Rod Stewart that most amazes. The idea was to record a version of Tom Waits’ ‘Downtown Train’. In London, at a meeting, Rod said he would sing it in the key of G. He then added that he’d normally go higher, but his voice was tired.
Trevor assembled a band and over many weeks teased up a version of the song. He then recorded a 50-piece orchestra in Abbey Road. The drum track, the sound and particularly the instrumental break proved challenging but eventually all was good.
He then flew to the US with the masters, where they were on a tight deadline for Rod to record his vocal. But after a run through, Rod announced that although he loved the track, it was in the wrong key. He wanted to sing it in the key of Bb. The singer then left the building.
That night Trevor assembled a new band of session-players, and they re-recorded the backing track. But what of the orchestra? He reasoned, it being the home of the film industry, that they must ‘manipulate’ orchestras all the time.
Amazingly he found a program that could pitch shift the entire orchestra from G to Bb without making it sound rubbish. Rod sang the vocal. An expensive boxed set that was expected to sell 50,000 copies suddenly sold 500,000 instead.
I wonder would I ask him to re-do my own song, ‘Parachute'...
